The perfect job

My rediscovery of the Brick after emerging from my LEGO Dark Ages a few years back has lead to a lot of enjoyment, but it has been a pretty solitary experience. Sure, I quickly stumbled upon some fantastic online resources such as Brickset, Peeron, Bricklink and Eurobricks and have interacted on various online forums (or should that be fora ?), but despite making some welcome and worthy 'virtual' contacts, I failed to meet a single other AFOL in the flesh in over 3 years.

My antisocial AFOL existence recently ended, however, when I decided to attend my first ever LEGO event - the Great Western LEGO Show at STEAM - during which I was finally able to put a face to some of the personalities that I had previously only encountered online. Significantly, I was also persuaded to join the Brickish Association (BA) while at STEAM. BA are a UK-based community of AFOLs, and in the short time I've been a member, my LEGO obsession has been transformed from a solitary pursuit into something more sociable. As well as the revelation that I am most certainly not alone in loving the Brick despite my advancing years, membership has already opened the doors to some activities and opportunities that I would otherwise most likely never have experienced

This weekend has provided a great example for this. As some of you may know, the LEGO company is shortly to open 2 more brand stores in the UK - Westfield in London, and Cardiff - in addition to the 3 existing stores in Milton Keynes, Bluewater and Brighton. These two new LEGO stores will be internally decorated with LEGO models, and BA members were invited to construct these decorative models for the Westfield store. To sweeten the deal, incentives including a discount at the Milton Keynes brand store were on offer for the builders. I jumped at the chance of being involved, and so it was that I met with 10 or so fellow BA members in Milton Keynes on the Saturday morning ready for a day of communal LEGO building.

The sets we were there to build were not retail sets, but specially designed sets shipped from LEGO HQ in Billund in plain brown cardboard boxes. They came with rudimentary instructions that were, at times, really not for the faint-hearted or inexperienced builder..... I found that the building experience ranged from incredibly simplistic and straightforward to surprisingly challenging. My first building task involved building an extremely rudimentary, but surprisingly endearing, LEGO Zoo (picture below, courtesy of Huw). I have to admit that it was incredibly refreshing to be building with 'real' bricks for a change rather than the increasingly specialised parts contained in many modern retail sets.

LEGO Zoo - gotta love that elephant !

The zoo was pretty straightforward, but things got rather more challenging when I opened the box entitled "Pool Party". This was a significantly larger, more complex set, with instructions that were at times a real mare to follow. To give you an example of this, I had to construct a baseplate out of 150-200 green plates of different sizes, a task which was illustrated by just 2 steps in the building instructions..... This model kept me occupied for the rest of the day, and even then I needed my fellow BA builders to pitch in as time started to run out (thanks guys and gals !). You can see the completed model below - certainly a cruder, chunkier model than today's sleek retail offerings, but it employed some neat building techniques, and contained loads of humorous touches such as a paparazzo shooting pics over the fence, a shark in the pool, and a dog squeezing through a hole in the fence (click on the pic to enlarge).

Pool party, with a few humerous touches....

We probably built anywhere from 15 to 20 models over the course of the day, with the remainder to be assembled by some of our BA colleagues the following day. The completed sets included some real crackers, and more than one of us remarked that we'd gladly shell out our hard-earned cash for some of the models if they ever appeared at retail. The plan is for the completed models to be carefully boxed up and shipped to the London Westfield brand store in time for the grand opening later this month; I'll try and get down there at some point and snap some pics of the models in situ, so watch this space if you're interested to see pics of a few more of the models in their final resting place.

Building the models was an excellent crack, fuelled by some great banter and cooperation between the builders, and if the day was typical of the kind of activities on offer to BA members then I really wish I'd joined a lot sooner. I'm certainly not here to act as a recruiting agent for BA, but if you're a UK-based AFOL and looking to add an extra dimension to your LEGO obsession then you should really consider joining. Next up is a Christmas party at Legoland Windsor - I can't wait !

So there you have it - my first (and unfortunately also probably my last) day as a model builder for the LEGO company.... As well as enjoying the day itself and getting to hang out with some fellow AFOLs, I also picked up a number of sets that I was planning on buying anyway at a discount as part of my 'reward', so I was effectively paid to build LEGO this weekend.... It really doesn't get much better than that !

Not Rocket Science....?

Have you ever watched an adult build a LEGO set ? I don't mean an AFOL, who's been building LEGO for decades, I mean an adult who has never previously built a LEGO set. You should try - it's fascinating !

I recently bought LEGO sets as cheeky presents for a couple of people I know well, and I was present when they built them. It was, to be honest, an eye-opener. Both sets were pretty small and simple, with only a couple of pieces to be added at each building step, no Technic elements and no issues of colour discrimination in the instruction leaflets. And yet they found it surprisingly difficult. I constantly had to fight the urge to intervene. Just to be clear, neither individual is in any way intellectually challenged, nor especially clumsy, which made their struggles all the more surprising.

Set 7634 Tractor - Clearly not as simple as it looks....

This experience really drove home to me the extent to which experienced LEGO builders develop skills which they take for granted, but which apparently don't exactly come naturally and which evolve with 'practice'. Key is the ability to quickly recognise pieces, predominantly by sight, but also to some extent by touch. Watching the uninitiated struggle to identify pieces which I would consider to be pretty basic and 'obvious' was initially a bit shocking, but on reflection, why should the non-LEGO builder easily recognise them ? It's different for me - I've spent decades looking at pieces of LEGO from every imaginable angle. I also must have held some of these pieces in my hands literally tens of thousands of times and can probably now identify the vast majority by touch alone. But for the inexperienced builder, some LEGO pieces must be akin to alien objects, never before seen, and only very subtly different to scores of other pieces. It's really no wonder they struggled.

And then there's the act of actually fitting the pieces together. Again, I would have assumed that anyone with all their faculties intact could immediately do this with their eyes shut, but clearly not. There was some very real confusion evident with respect to how the pieces should align with each other. Closely related to this was a surprising degree of difficulty in following what looked to my AFOL eyes like very straightforward instructions. On more than one occasion, getting a piece in the right position was seemingly a process of trial and error, rather than the intuitive act of an experienced builder. Following the building instructions in a LEGO set can occasionally be a bit of a nightmare due to poor colour discrimination between black, dark grey and light grey pieces in instruction some booklets, but otherwise I've generally considered LEGO instruction booklets to be a masterpiece of clarity and intelligent design. There were however times when my adult guinea pigs looked at the instructions with the kind of bemusement that I more would have expected if I'd offered them an ancient Sanskrit scroll or a tablet covered with hieroglyphics and asked them to translate.....

LEGO hieroglyphics - care to translate ?

Finally there was a degree of confusion at the discovery of unused pieces when the model was eventually complete; this I could certainly understand, having myself wondered at times whether I'd absent-mindedly missed one or more building steps when faced with a smattering of unused parts at the end of a build. I've come to know, however,  that if the unused pieces are small (i.e. 1x1 round plates, cheese slopes, technic pins or other tiny elements) they're just a gift from the LEGO company in case we lose any of the little bits....

So what became of these newbie builders ? Well, I'm delighted to report that their faltering first steps didn't put them off the joys of LEGO - they've both since aquired further LEGO sets and successfully built them, with more to come I suspect. In fact, given that I've now recruited a couple more potential LEGO addicts, perhaps the company should pay me commission.... In LEGO, of course.

Paper Chase

All hail the UK Daily Mirror. I have to confess that it's not my choice of daily newspaper, but every now and then they run a promotion whereby they give away free LEGO with the newspaper, which really can't be bad. We're in the midst of one of these promotions right now - 10 free sets on 10 consecutive days, rounded off with a collector's box and a playmat. There are some really neat little sets in the line up this time round, with my personal favourites being a Christmas Tree and a Snowman (just in time for Christmas), and a splendid parrot. Just buy the paper, take the voucher within to WHSmiths or TRU, and they'll give you a free set (assuming they have any left). And if you can't get to one of these stores, collect 8 different vouchers from the newspaper, send them off with a cheque for £8.99, and they'll send you the goodies instead.

Set 30008 Snowman - just in time for Christmas

I think it's fair to say that the Mirror caused a mini riot last year when they had a similar promotion focused on LEGO Star Wars - 6 different sets on 6 consecutive days that time round, including a few sets which had never previously been available anywhere (Set 30005 Imperial Speeder Bike and Set 30006 Clone Walker, both shown below, and set 30004 Battle Droid on STAP). Honestly, the feeding frenzy that accompanied that promotion was truly something to behold, with outpourings of angst when eager collectors pitched up to collect their sets only to discover that there were none left.

30005 Imperial Speeder Bike

30006 Clone Walker

So bravo to the Mirror for running such splendid promotions, which are a great chance to get some nice little sets at a bargain price (i.e. the cost of a newspaper). But that's not really what I wanted to focus on in this posting. No, the real reason for this posting is to talk about the kind of behaviour that these promotions seem to foster. I'm talking about the compulsion to hoard these little sets. Loads of them.

Before going any further, it should be acknowledged that the hoarders have a team of willing accomplices - there's no doubt that sympathetic staff in WHSmiths and TRU facilitate this hoarding behaviour. Not once did a member of staff actually remove the voucher from my newspaper when handing me my set, thus leaving me theoretically free to visit any number of other WHSmiths or TRU stores and obtain further sets if desired (which I admittedly didn't do, although I could have done). Actually, I'd go as far as saying that some stores seemed positively desperate to get rid of the sets, occasionally handing out multiples without even being asked. I remember one shop assistant who, on being asked whether he had any unclaimed sets left over from previous days, disappeared into the back of the store and returned with a shopping bag full of sets which he thrust into my arms. He commented that they were cluttering up his store, and seemed genuinely delighted to be rid of them. Hell, I left feeling like I'd done him a favour ! No better reinforcement of hoarding behaviour than that.....

Hoarding during these promotions is rife. I remember checking out one of the online LEGO forums on the day that the Mirror gave away the parrot set. One guy on the forums was boasting that he'd managed to secure 40 parrots that day. FORTY of them. When I'd finished shaking my head and wondering quite how he'd managed to do this, I started to consider what could possibly have motivated him to spend his time trying to hoard 40 parrots. And just to be clear, this guy is far from alone in behaving like this - people the length and breadth of the country do seem to be relishing the opportunity to pick up ridiculous numbers of these sets.

Set 30021 Parrot - you can seemingly never have too many of these......

So hoarding these promo sets is clearly endemic, then, but why ? Well, you only need to look on eBay.co.uk right now to see where at least some of these promo sets are ending up - on sale. Some for a pittance, others for a laughably high price, eBay is currently flooded with these sets, so simple opportunism, and the ability to make a bit of money, is as usual one of the major motivators. Other individuals sell off the parts that these sets contain via Bricklink or elsewhere.

Set 7808 Yellow Airplane - another 2010 Daily Mirror giveaway

But what of those individuals who get hold of multiple sets and don't sell any of them ? What's their motivation ? Well, some of them raid the sets for the parts they contain, to use in their own LEGO creations (MOCs).

This however leaves the final group - those people who get loads of sets, don't sell them, and don't even open them for parts. These are the true hoarders, those tortured individuals who, if given the opportunity, will continue to accumulate sets until they eventually drown under the weight. I've written about these hoarding tendencies in a previous blog posting and would be willing to bet that a fair proportion of people fall into this category.

Set 30012 Microlight - part of the October 2010 promotion

So thanks again to the Daily Mirror for feeding our lust for LEGO, and also for filling the eBay LEGO listings.....

"It's an old code, but it checks out...."

It's been hard to find much building time recently but I finally finished putting together Set 10212 UCS Imperial Shuttle and she's a beaut !

You start out by building the body of the ship (including the mechanism for raising the wings into the landing position and lowering them into the flight position) and then construct the floor of the cockpit. This part of the build is great and proceeds almost too quickly - admittedly some Technic elements, but mainly proper bricks and plates. Then you build the enormous tail using a combination of technic beams and regular LEGO (which is a bit tedious, to be honest) after which you finish up the cockpit, and then build and attach the wings. Finally it's a case of adding a few details such as the laser and blaster cannons at the front before finishing off by constructing the huge stand which allows the ship to be displayed with the wings either up or down.

The mechanism for raising and lowering the wings works pretty well and is reasonably robust - 2 LEGO cranks fit into a couple of holes beneath the engines, and by rotating the cranks the wings slowly rise or fall. Then, once the wings are in the desired position, you can remove the cranks so as not to spoil the aesthetics.

I do love the beautiful, sleek cockpit with the huge windscreen (last seen used as a skylight in Set 10211 Grand Emporium). The cockpit drops open to reveal sufficient seating for 4 minifigs - Vader, Luke, an Imperial Guard and an Imperial Pilot. There's even somewhere for Vader and Luke to store their lightsabers. The set also includes a 5th minifig - a stormtrooper - but there's unfortunately nowhere for him to sit in the shuttle. So presumably his job is to guard the shuttle after it's landed, but he doesn't actually get to ride in it.....

The model looks pretty sleek and spectacular perched on its stand I reckon. A number of non-AFOLs have inspected it and all seem pretty impressed. The set comes with an alternative stand only a few studs high upon which the ship can squat when the wings are raised in the landing position; one of the downsides of this smaller stand is however that there's nowhere to attach the plaque (below), which does fit nicely on the taller stand.

The verdict ? It's sleek, elegant and it looks like it's supposed to. It's certainly a big step up from the 4 other versions of the Imperial Shuttle that I've got (Set 7166 is shown built below; the others are still sealed in their boxes & polybags) although it's admittedly significantly more expensive at £239.99 for 2503 pieces.

Set 7166 Imperial Shuttle (2001)

Set 4494 Imperial Shuttle (2004)

Set 20016 Imperial Shuttle (2010)

Set 7264 Imperial Inspection (2005)

Overall, it's not cheap but I think it's worth the money if you enjoy building and displaying big models, especially if like me you also happen to love the design of the ship itself. It was a no brainer for me from the moment it was announced, and I've had no regrets !

Favourite Sets #4 : 1926 Renault

Next up in my list of favourites is set 391 which is the 1926 Renault released in 1975.

This is another set which I had as a kid, and at the time it seemed almost impossibly elegant and detailed when compared with other LEGO vehicles in my possession which were generally small, simple affairs made up of around 20 pieces. This set contains 237 pieces, including some amazing large white spoked wheels which have only ever appeared in one other set - the 1909 Rolls Royce set, in case you're interested. All in all, the LEGO company released 3 vintage cars in 1975 and 1976 under the 'Hobby Sets' moniker, namely the Renault, the Rolls Royce and Set 390 1913 Cadillac, all of which shared many design cues and were in my opinion streets ahead of the kind of vehicles previously released in terms of detail and authenticity - clearly the shape of things to come.

  

I couldn't resist building the Renault again recently, and you can see pictures I took of the completed set below (click to enlarge). It was lovingly constructed from the original pieces and building instructions, although the box has unfortunately disappeared into the mists of time. That's what eBay is for, however, and this set has such sentimental value for me that I later ended up buying another one complete with box....

I also subsequently managed to pick up a boxed Rolls Royce and Cadillac from eBay - if you're patient and don't overbid, they can be had for surprisingly little money given their rarity. You can see pics below.

Set 395 1905 Rolls Royce

Set 390 1913 Cadillac

Three lovely sets, but the Renault was the one I owned when I was a boy and it therefore beats the Rolls and Cadillac by a nose to make it into my favourites list.

Over the Rainbow

Once upon a time when I was a boy, LEGO was a pretty simple affair. Nobody ever talked about dark tan pieces, or nougat pieces, or flesh coloured minifig heads, or even Maersk Blue. We had a fairly rudimentary palette of black, blue, red, yellow and white pieces, plus a few clear transparent bricks and the odd green baseplate and tree, and we were grateful for that. Really, people today don't know they're born, with their chrome lightsaber hilts and tan cheese slopes.

Anyway, one day my parents bought me a big space ship (Set 928 Galaxy Explorer) and my world changed. OK, so the ship was mainly blue, but to my astonishment the wings were grey, the windscreen was transparent yellow and there were transparent red and green pieces stuck all over it. Honestly, it was just the sexiest thing ever.

Set 928 Galaxy Explorer - my ticket to a more colourful world

As the years passed, the LEGO colour palette continued to expand. I'm sure there were purists who probably complained bitterly, said that LEGO had sold out etc. etc., but most enthusiasts surely would have appreciated the flexibility that all these new colours brought.

And then in 2002 a dark cloud passed over the world of LEGO; for reasons explained in detail at the time and since, but which really don't make a great deal of sense to me (something to do with "creating a sustainable colour palette for the future", although others have cited a tendency for some of the original colours to fade badly in direct sunlight), the LEGO company changed some of its existing colours. The original brown colour was changed to a more red-brown shade, and the greys also changed. The dark grey became a more bluey shade of dark grey, and the light grey became a more bluey shade of light grey, nicknamed 'bley'. So just imagine - there you are, accumulating a massive collection of light grey pieces for your 500,000-piece model of Mount Rushmore or some massive castle somewhere, and then along comes someone and subtly changes the grey to a different shade, and all of a sudden the new pieces you aquire no longer match the old pieces in your collection. It's probably fair to say that all hell broke loose in some quarters as a result.

It's also a total pain for the collector trying to replacing missing pieces from older sets. The newer shade of (red-) brown is reasonably distinct from the old shade, and the newer shade of dark grey is again fairly noticeably different from the old shade, but the difference between the new and old light grey pieces can be very hard to spot unless (a) you're somewhere well lit, or (b) you mix the old and new pieces in a model and stand back, in which case you'll inevitably see the difference in colour sticking out like a sore thumb..... Man, it is such a total pain trying to tell the difference between the older and newer light grey at night when you only have a 60W light bulb for company !

New brown and greys (far right column) and the original colours (one column to the left)

These aren't the only colour issues faced by LEGO builders; there have also been concerns about variations in colour within sets. I've had personal experience of this - a distinctly greenish tinge in some of the yellow pieces in set 7997 Train Station was the first time I encountered this issue, and since then I've seen other examples, for instance some significant variations in the colour of dark red pieces in Set 10197 Fire Brigade and red-brown pieces in Set 40005 Easter Bunny which stuck out like a sore thumb after building. I have to admit I'm not unduly concerned by this, but some people do feel very strongly about it and have been extremely vocal in their criticism.

Set 40005 Easter Bunny - love the set, don't love the colour inconsistency....

I suppose one could argue that the explosion of new colours might conceivably have been responsible for these issues of colour consistency - it stands to reason that it'd be harder to keep tabs on the consistency of 100+ colours rather than just 5 or 6. Others have suggested that it's maybe because the LEGO company has expanded manufacturing to new countries such as China and quality isn't yet up to scratch. Whatever the explanation, I'm seeing some evidence from online forums that this issue is becoming less common, so fingers crossed.....

Perhaps if the LEGO company had just stuck with the traditional core colours of black, blue, red, yellow and white with the occasional splash of green and a few clear transparent pieces, this issue may never have reared its ugly head. But then the Galaxy Explorer would never have been the set it was, and I might therefore never have become an AFOL, sitting here and typing this. Which may be a good or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.....

To boldly go....

I'm ashamed to admit that I laughed when my wife told me that we were going on a family visit to the UK National Space Centre. I wasn't aware that my fellow countrymen had made a particularly substantial contribution to space exploration thus far, and I therefore wasn't sure that there'd be much to see. As it happens I was entirely wrong - there was loads to see, including rockets and bits of rockets, a host of interactive exhibits, and an excellent film show in the 360 degree space theatre on site. Definitely worth a visit, and I'll certainly return at some point.

We had an ulterior motive for our trip that day, however - my wife discovered that the UK Brickish Association would be exhibiting there that day, and knowing my love of LEGO, thought that it would therefore be a particularly good day to visit. What a top wife ! Having attended the Great Western LEGO Show at STEAM a couple of weeks ago, which is the Brickish Association's largest annual display, I was expecting something on a much smaller scale, so was pleasantly surprised by how many models there were to see.

Entitled "Hay Carts to the High Frontier" and covering transportation from prehistoric times to the distant future, the exhibition featured a pleasing mixture of 'official' LEGO sets and great MOCs, and I figured that today's posting would be a great way to give some of my favourites a bit more exposure. Click on the pics to enlarge, and please excuse my amateurish photography.

 

Having raved about Ed Diment's magnificent USS Intrepid MOC on this blog a couple of weeks ago, I was delighted to discover that a number of his other creations were on show. "Concorde" (above) and the "Red Bull Air Racer" (below) were just 2 of his models on view.

Ed and long-time collaborator Ralph Savelsberg were responsible for the huge and awesome "Carl Sagan" space station, and also the "Duesenberg" and "Pink Cadillac" (all shown below)

Peter Reid, meanwhile, was showing off some of his amazing Neo Classic Space creations, inspired by the Space sets of the late 1970s and early 1980s (Set 928 Galaxy Explorer in fact remains one of my favourite ever sets). Shown below is his "Marauder" ship, which I'm afraid my photograph doesn't really do justice to at all - the level of detail and greebling on the surface is truly extraordinary. I really will have to devote some time on this blog to the original classic space sets at some point as they are truly iconic and provide me with some of my fondest childhood LEGO building memories, so watch this space.

Meanwhile, Stuart Crawshaw's colossal "Rocket Base" (below left) didn't look too out of place in the company of some of the actual National Space Centre exhibits (below right)...... Interesting that the (LEGO) rocket was called LL483, another reference to the Classic Space era where the ships also had an "LL" designation (or maybe I'm just over-interpreting) 

The combination of some excellent LEGO creations and the interesting National Space Centre exhibits made for a really good day out. Apologies to all those builders whose superb creations I didn't feature - other MOCs such as Andrew Danieli's magnificent "Ave Caesar" arena and a glorious paddle steamer were also on display, as well as a number of smaller, quirky MOCs such as E.T. and Danger Mouse's flying car. Thanks to all the friendly builders for their hard work, and also for being good sports and tolerating my embarrassing boyish enthusiasm and stupid questions with good grace....