Monsters

OK, I'll admit to being one of those who regularly calls on the LEGO company to provide me with ever bigger, more detailed sets, be it via online forums or those questionnaires which the company sends out ever so often.

Problem is, sometimes you get what you wish for. Consider for a moment the behemoth that is Set 10179 UCS Millenium Falcon. This is the pinnacle of the LEGO Star Wars theme - the culmination of 10 years of sets. At 5195 pieces it's the second largest set that LEGO have ever produced, and it's gigantic. From the moment I first saw shots of the beast I planned and plotted how I might raise the £350 that it would cost to own it, and when I eventually got it, it took me a full month to build, working on it for 30 minutes here and an hour there. So far so good, but when it was finished, the inevitable question raised its ugly head - where the *@%^ could I display it ?

I captured the picture above (click to enlarge) by setting aside (a lot of) space on the floor, getting hold of a huge black sheet, gingerly lowering the beast onto it, and snapping a few shots. All well and good, but it obviously couldn't stay there - the wife wouldn't have it, and someone would have tripped over it eventually and done themselves and/or the iconic Corellian freighter some serious damage. So I had to find somewhere else for it, and you can see below where it ended up.

Dignified. Not.

It's on a chest of drawers. In my bedroom, behind the door. Hardly a fitting resting place for such a magnificent beast, a few inches above my socks and underwear. And it's also not really on a major thoroughfare - I only get to see it when I wake up in the morning (although it's admittedly not a bad sight on first opening my eyes) and when I crash out at night.

I had similar problems with Set 10030 UCS Imperial Star Destroyer. Another complete monster - 3096 pieces and around a meter long. It's absolutely jaw-dropping once constructed - one of those sets which has even non-LEGO fans shaking their heads in utter astonishment when they see it. It's also incredibly fragile, however - the enormous upper and lower surfaces are held in place by a series of magnets, and woe betide you if you touch it, breathe on it or even look at it - the laws of physics will kick in, gravity will overcome the magnetic forces, and the bottom of the ship will detach. And then you'll spend half an hour cursing and trying to reattach it.

UCS Imperial Star Destroyer - no chance of that fitting on a shelf....

Above you can see my 'staged' photoshoot, but afterwards I had the same problem - where to display it ? Once again my trusty chest of drawers came to the rescue, but once again it's hardly a fitting resting place for the might of the Imperial Fleet. And such was the length of the thing that the front stuck out over the end so I kept banging my head on it when I needed a pair of socks. Not good.

A Google search reveals that others have been a little more creative with their display solutions than I have, with the UCS Millenium Falcon at least. Two solutions which particularly impressed me were wall mounting and building the beast into a glass-walled and topped coffee table, but I have to confess that both of these solutions require somewhat more time and effort than I'm willing to expend. Still, kudos to those resourceful AFOLs.

This problem isn't going away. In a matter of days, the LEGO company will launch the 4th biggest set (in terms of piece count) in their history - Set 10214 Tower Bridge. It looks wonderful, and I want it. And it's a meter long..... Given that the Millenium Falcon continues to occupy the display plinth that is my chest of drawers, I wonder whether the wife will let me put Tower Bridge on top of hers.....?