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Lego is Still Cool

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Those are genuinely terrific. I love how the first one is sloped.

 

Thankee. I never thought I'd get a chance to use this part until this idea rolled around.

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Wow, awesome. Have you tried taking pictures of them in one of them tiny makeshift studio that's just some sheets of paper that curve up as a wall in the background, and lighting from various angles?

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Those are sweet. The second looks like something from Carmageddon (and I didn't notice the mismatched colour until looking at it for a second time).

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I came across one of my many boxes of legos while packing last weekend and I'm wondering if I can manage to set asside a closet in our new place to be a tiny little lego room. It's not the huge livingroom sized thing I imagined when I was a child, but it's a step.

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That robot is straight ballin'. I immediately began to imagine how it would work if hooked up to a Mindstorms controller with motors all over it... but chances are that would be kind of unwieldy to do.

 

Also those cars are pretty sweet. They are so well designed that I actually presumed at first glance that they were official Lego sets.

 

Tobacco, that rental service is a really neat idea. Once I'm back home I'm going to check whether there's a similar one in the UK.

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One day, I want to have enough spare time to study Lego and design cool stuff with it. I think I could happily retire with a load of it. For now, I buy a big set and a small set about once a year. Most recently that's Monster Fighters stuff, which are some of the best sets I've built:

 

7yFKckO.jpg

 

The hearse has a really nice build, where the last steps put the wheels on and jack it up at the back. I thought it looked kind of clunky and awkward in pictures, but the model itself is brilliantly built and proportioned.

 

mwlKVX0.jpg

 

You can tell the designers tried to punctuate it with other stuff as much as they could, but the Haunted House has some long repetitive sections of building while you're making the walls. Still though, it's excellent and has some gorgeous detailing inside and out. It's also huge and took me three evenings to build.

 

Both sets underlined to me how Lego designers don't just try to make cool looking models, but design them in such a way that they're fun to build: not too repetitive, and sometimes surprising and suddenly recognisable things emerge from the blocks of abstract shapes you're slowly building up.

 

I'm sad they seemed to discontinue Monster Fighters so quickly. If you disregard the heroes, it's kind of Lego for weirdos. Hotrods and monsters seems like a halfway thing between the polarised goodies/baddies licenses there are so many of, and the blank slate most Lego used to be. I probably also love monster fighters because I grew up surrounded by people who'd disapprove.

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Monster Fighters was one of my favourite lines! I bough the hearse for myself ages ago (the second car I did uses a lot of parts from it specifically), but I could never afford the haunted house, which was the one I really wanted.

 

 

The first car looks like Jonny's from Redline :D Sweet!

 

You mean JP? JP's Trans Am was the chief inspiration for the model, and was also specifically why I game the driver the closest thing to a sweet pompadour that Lego makes.

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Oh man these are sooooo coooooooooool!!

 

The other day I dug out my childhood LEGO and built this weird little weird little wobbly Boschian automata which I will probably expand and make properly cool as soon as I find time and inclination to do so. My LEGO is very much 80s and early 90s and I have little inclination to buy new sets, but who knows. The grand centerpiece of my collection—what'll allow me to make some really dope automata—is the fabled Technic plotter, set 8094, and its motherlode of gears. Last time I looked at new Technic sets a few years back, very few of them seemed to be mechanically oriented which was a huge bummer.

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Monster Fighters was one of my favourite lines! I bough the hearse for myself ages ago (the second car I did uses a lot of parts from it specifically), but I could never afford the haunted house, which was the one I really wanted.

 

Thought that might be where those spikes came from :)

 

I thought I was going to miss the haunted house, and had to scrimp. Lego are still selling it online and in their UK stores. There are some other big sets I've missed in the past, and it makes me sad the only option seems to be paying triple the money on ebay now :(

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mwlKVX0.jpg

 

I went down a youtube hole of lego videos one day and totally saw one about the design of this thing, then proceeded to watch every lego designer video thing I could find. It was rather annoying because they don't just have them in a playlist on their channel.

Here it is: 

 

Also strangely that video seems to be on another official LEGO channel with way less bullshit videos so it's way easier to navigate. FML.

EDIT: that channel is missing a ton of the designer videos, it's like lego doesn't want me to watch their advertising :P

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I have a stack of higher tier Lego exclusives (Town Hall, Arkham Asylum, Pet Shop) in my attic waiting for that fabled time I'll finally get around to them. I just love them, and the Haunted House is amazing. Wasn't entirely convinced by the rest of the Monster Fighter line though, seemed a bit silly at times. But maybe in real life they're better than they looked on the box.

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I wish there were a Lego Ghost Rider minifig in the superheroes line, 'cause I just made this:

 

NsXsdar.png

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Sadly I had to accept that I couldn't finish the robot due to a lack of pieces, and started to scrap it for parts.

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The best thing about the Simpsons minifigs is swapping their heads onto ridiculous bodies.

 

QjakQ1c.png

 

 

 

 

...I need to clean and windex my desk.

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I'm working on a big thing right now and almost finished it, but need a few more cheap sets to get the pieces I need in the right colours. Frustration!

 

Also, the Mixels have been a godsend. They're kind of fuck-ugly, but they're five bucks a pop and have so many great parts. I can't get enough of their tiny ball and socket joints.

 

UtOfffO.jpg

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I didn't know we had a LEGO thread! I've been playing the games for ages, but it wasn't until the movie came out that I actually bothered to buy some real LEGOs.

 

If you can't tell by my new avatar, I'm really into them now. 

 

I actually bought the giant Monster Hunter mansion very recently, they still have it at the LEGO store... I don't think I'll even buy anything so big again, it was a nightmare to find a place to display it.

 

I also got two sets from the movie and used the spare parts to create "Unitron" a fabulous robo-skeleton:

 

BlxoahuCIAAnbFL.jpg

 

 

You can order pieces directly from the LEGO store, which is nice if you want to create your own thing, but I'm sure there are some you can't get anywhere unless you buy the whole set.... :|

 

Where do you store the spare pieces you get from sets? I don't even that many can the tiny tin box I have for them is getting pretty full. 

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It's a little weird that Lego is doing Disney princess stuff now, but haven't done any sets for either Frozen or Sleeping Beauty, considering that Frozen is super recent and Maleficent comes out this month.

Where do you store the spare pieces you get from sets? I don't even that many can the tiny tin box I have for them is getting pretty full.

I use sewing kit/bait and tackle/etc boxes they sell at dollar stores for keeping tiny parts sorted. Here's the big one I use for minifigs.

uLjl2TC.png

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I see you ditched the motorbike hero from the Monster Fighters Hearse too :)

 

The good guys from that series are so dull.

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I'm completely new to LEGO, but I noticed that the Disney Princess set characters are just the same as LEGO Friends, the "girl" sets, because the heads aren't compatible with normal LEGO minifigs and are much larger.

 

Aren't the Disney Princess sets brand new? I assume we'll get more later, I would love to build the Ice Castle from Frozen.

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I see you ditched the motorbike hero from the Monster Fighters Hearse too :)

 

The good guys from that series are so dull.

 

What? He's in there. Just under Santa Claus. The thing's pretty deep too.

Also, the Monster Fighters heroes seemed like they were trying too hard or something. Bowler hat, robot leg, AND fencing foil?

 

 

I'm completely new to LEGO, but I noticed that the Disney Princess set characters are just the same as LEGO Friends, the "girl" sets, because the heads aren't compatible with normal LEGO minifigs and are much larger.

 

Aren't the Disney Princess sets brand new? I assume we'll get more later, I would love to build the Ice Castle from Frozen.

 

Yeah, the Friends figures were designed from scratch specifically to contrast with the classic minifig since test audience girls hated them. I guess we'll have to wait to see how profitable the princess line is to see if it keeps going, since sometimes Lego does Star Wars and keeps making sets for fifteen years and sometimes Lego does Avatar: The Last Airbender and makes two sets before stopping. I might get the Cinderella one with the pumpkin coach.

 

That reminds me, there's a second wave of The Lego Movie sets coming out; probably to coincide with the DVD/BR release. I don't know much about it besides the fact that there's some kind of awesome hover SWAT thing, featuring Batman, Johnny Storm, and one of the Ninjago guys.

 

gfZLhhY.jpg

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I've had a little taste of the dark side. Yesterday a friend gave me a present from Japan: NanoBlocks! They're really small, the name does them justice. What I like about them is that they're very distinct from Lego and their models are not about playing, but sculpting building, animals and trains. It's targeted specifically at adults, which makes sense considering the tiny, tiny parts.

 

I have the shrine in the bottom left corner.

 

nanoblock-sights-to-see-home.jpg

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