Category: Featured

Head Over at UK’s Smyths Toystore in the UK on Bank Holiday for Some LEGO Harry Potter Freebies

This Wednesday, June 15, is the special launch event for the LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) set. In line with that is the appearance of designer Justin Ramsden at the Leicester Square LEGO Store in London to graciously sign the very first Hogwarts Castle sets (71043) purchased there. But that’s not the only significant Wizarding World-related event going on for the UK this month. Ten days from now, during the British Bank Holiday weekend on August 25, retail chain Smyths Toys will be doing an epic LEGO giveaway event; that means free LEGO Harry Potter sets await!

Word of this giveaway at Smyths Toys was posted on HotUKDeals, and further details reveal that this will be going on at all Smyths Toys Superstores throughout Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so interested collectors need only to check out the Smyths branch nearest to them. These LEGO Harry Potter giveaways are good only until supplies last.

Smyths Toys

The LEGO Harry Potter Giveaway events at Smyths Toys Superstore will go on for only three hours, 11AM to 2PM, of Saturday, August 25 during the Bank Holiday. Also happening in conjunction with the giveaways are special Potter-verse activities like wand casting demonstrations and more.

Just to reiterate, the LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) is now available for LEGO VIP members, and is slated for a general public release on September 1. The set retails for $400, coming in at 6,020 pieces.

LEGO Pooper Scooper Solution Gets Chuckles Online

Just how hard is it to clean up LEGO bricks after play? The answer to this question can vary it seems. There are those who claim it’s time-consuming; from this line of thought comes the concept of brick vacuum cleaners. LEGO made an April Fools’ joke of it, but some builders have actually made them. And then, there’s this “hack” brought up by a mother on the Facebook page “Kmart Mums Australia”, a group that offers some delightful household tips to make things easier for homemakers (it’s not actually affiliated with Kmart despite the name). One Aussie mum, Ange Dobbin, suggested using a LEGO pooper scooper to pick up those pain-on-the-foot ubiquitous pieces.

You probably know this specialized (if borderline extraneous) household tool used to pick up your pet’s waste. Some variants even have long handles so you can remain standing while you scoop LEGO bricks to dump them back in their containers.

LEGO pooper scooper

Reactions to that post seem to range from high praise to incredulous commentary. Still, plenty of housewives on “Kmart Mums Australia” seem eager to try the LEGO pooper scooper hack. Other even offered their alternatives such as getting a large play-mat and making the kids play with their LEGOs on it; when it’s time to clean up, the mat is simply rolled or folded up (with the bricks brought along) and stored.

That’s all well and good, and certainly cheaper than the DIY LEGO vacuum. But surely picking up LEGO the old-fashioned way isn’t as back-breaking as these alternatives make it seem.

Filipino AFOL AC Pinlac Awarded for Custom LEGO Flower Designs in July’s Bricks by the Bay CA Event

It’s very amazing sometimes how inspiration for the most unexpected things can strike the most unexpected person at the most unexpected time. Such was the situation for Amado Canlas “AC” Pinlac, a Filipino engineer based in New Jersey, when a few years ago he was tidying up his home and found some stray LEGO bricks belonging to his high school-age sons. On a whim, AC Pinlac began assembling those LEGO pieces, aided by his engineering background and spurred by his Star Wars fandom. That led him to design some alien-inspired LEGO-built flowers, and his work was commended in several past events.

From NJ, Pinlac found himself in no less than Billund, Denmark last year, where he became the only Filipino out of 34 exhibitors to get his brick-built flowers displayed at the LEGO House itself. Much attention was paid to his LEGO plants’ extraterrestrial styling, though Pinlac says they were rooted in real exotic flora like the famous insect-trapping pitcher plants.

AC Pinlac

And then, just this past July during the Bricks by the Bay LEGO event in the Santa Clara Convention Center, Amado Pinlac showcased five of his brick flowers, where they received an award citation for “innovative use of LEGO parts”.

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Pinlac’s flowers were described as “very artistic” by Bricks by the Bay president Eric Wilson, who might have something in common with the “accidental” designer by the serious nature of their non-LEGO profession (he’s a biochemist). As for Pinlac, he hasn’t forgotten his land of birth and has donated more plants to the Philippines, where they are on roving tour moving between LEGO Stores in the Metro Manila capital area.

source: Inquirer.net

Autodesk’s Brickbot Project is Able to Sort and Actually Build Using LEGO Bricks

LEGO as an invaluable tool for learning not only applies to people, especially children, but also to machines. It has been proven, if only little by little, with research undertaken by various groups such as Autodesk. This team has been working on developing machine learning capabilities to improve industrial robots. Such industrial robots, like the ones found in car assembly lines, are usually seen as effective in putting things together. But it’s an open secret with tech researchers that most industrial robots, when encountering something not part of its programmed routine, will mess up their work. That’s what Autodesk’s “Brickbot” project is hoping to address.

The San Francisco-based research group assembled their Brickbot, consisting of two manipulator arms and a camera-sensor suite, to do something that would be effortless for a child but complex for a “smart” machine: sorting through components in a container then assembling them into a whole. Guess what the pieces used are. Well, that’s right – it’s LEGO. Click the thumbnail below to see the Brickbot in action.

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Autodesk’s co-head researcher Yotto Koga explains the use of LEGO pieces for their machine learning development with Brickbot, saying, “By starting with plastic bricks, we’ve been able to keep the project manageable while still having the freedom to experiment from the design stage all the way to a finished product.”

With the promise being shown by the performance of Brickbot in discerning and putting together LEGO pieces, Autodesk is ready to see how this machine learning potential can be used in actual industrial robots, with future collaborations planned with a manufacturer and a construction outfit.

LEGO Builder Makes a Giant Flying Foam Version of Helicopter from the International Jetport (6396) Set

There’s never an end to the amazing things one can do when inspired by LEGO. If you search enough, you might find a number of brilliant home tinkerers who have taken model sets of LEGO vehicles and created larger mechanized versions of them, and then posted their machines’ performances online. Adam Woodworth, known on YouTube as ajw61185, is one of those customizers who have made remotely operated drones of vehicles from a multitude of toy franchises. His latest video shows his latest work, a foam-built and enlarged replica of a helicopter that was part of a 1990 LEGO set, the International Jetport (6396).

International Jetport (6396)

Everything about this LEGO-inspired flying contraption was lifted from the design of the International Jetport (6396) set’s helicopter model, and was made out of lightweight foam including the pilot minifigure in the cockpit. The only details not found in the LEGO chopper were the internal motors that drive the foam-version’s main and stabilizing rotors.

If you notice, the model’s rotors don’t actually perform the lifting and flying action for this foam model. Instead, Adam Woodworth snuck in some drone mini-quad rotors on the helicopter’s landing struts. With the whole thing mostly built of foam, the drone rotors (nearly invisible against the black skids) are able to do their work well.

This isn’t the only enlarged foam-constructed LEGO vehicle model that Woodworth has worked on. You can find more incredible videos of a LEGO space shuttle and light aircraft on his ajw61185 YouTube channel as well.

Here’s A Great Way To Raise Funds for Charity: Help Build This Custom LEGO St. Edmundsbury Cathedral

Encouraging donations for the sake of charity using LEGO can take so many different forms, the same way the namesake bricks can be assembled into anything within limits of the imagination. Only this Monday, we talked about the Fairy Bricks Bikes to Billund challenge where they would travel on bicycle and ferry from London to LEGO House while supporters donated on their website to give LEGO sets to children’s hospitals. And then there’s this charitable initiative launched by St. Edmundsbury Cathedral in Suffolk over in the UK. They have a number of charities under their umbrella and have been thinking of means to raise funds for them. The answer came in the idea of involving charity donors in an ambitious project: a minifigure-scale, custom  LEGO St. Edmundsbury Cathedral to be collectively built.

With the help of UK LEGO group Bright Bricks, St. Edmundsbury has received comprehensive building instructions for the brick-built model, plus all the bricks they would need to complete it. The nice part of their initiative is inviting visitors to the cathedral to participate in their model-building project for charity. They can pitch in with adding LEGO bricks to the miniature cathedral, worth £1 apiece.

Custom LEGO St. Edmundsbury Cathedral

This custom LEGO St. Edmundsbury Cathedral was officially begun back in May 28 of 2016, and according to cathedral officials the actual construction is now ¼ completed. The total brick count is at 200,000 so the donation total would eventually reach that much in pounds sterling throughout the initiative’s duration.

Bright Bricks, which conceptualized the model build, also created some exclusive LEGO-certified box models of St. Edmundsbury in small and medium dimensions (tinier than mini or micro-scale). These custom sets are limited-edition (500 each size) and can only be purchased from the cathedral’s model-build exhibit. They’re hoping it will become a local Suffolk tourist attraction.

This Brick-Built Bust of Winston Churchill in Harrogate, UK Gets Defaced with Theft of Brick-Cigar

The risk of having brick-built LEGO constructs being put on exhibit with near unrestricted access at public places is the possibility of it being tampered with. It’s fortunate enough for exhibits like the LEGO Park People in Houston to remain unmolested; other displays like a Duplo statue outside a Gloucestershire toy store that got its head stolen in March, are not as lucky as Houston. Now yet another mishap has taken place in the UK regarding a vandalized LEGO brick-build exhibit. This was in the Royal Hall Theatre in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. Featured on display is a brick-built bust of Winston Churchill, with a cigar clenched between his teeth; but not anymore.

This LEGO brick-built bust of Winston Churchill was put at the Royal Hall at the request of the Harrogate Convention Centre, which would itself be playing host to a LEGO event, The Great Brick Adventure, on the August-September weekend.

brick-built bust of Winston Churchill

It was over the first weekend of August rather, when it was discovered that the usual cigar in the Churchill bust’s mouth was gone. Harrogate Convention Centre PR manager Richard Catton has launched an investigation on the theft, positing that it may have happened during a recent awards ceremony that was held in Royal Hall.

In line with the investigation, invitations have been given to all attendees of that ceremony for whoever was responsible to come forward and return the brick-cigar. Doing so would mean no charges will be filed against him with the police.

Catton did manage to find some humor in this occasion, describing the cigar-less LEGO bust of Churchill as “like Yorkshire pudding without onion gravy – just not complete.” He’ll also have other matters to attend to, such as preparations for The Great Brick Adventure at the Harrogate Convention Centre, running from August 31 to September 2.

LEGO Builder Recreates Custom High-Performance LEGO Car Engines

I don’t think we’ll ever get tired of reminding – and being reminded – that you can build almost anything you imagination desires with the help of a pile of LEGO pieces. They can be something simple as the Barnes & Noble Build and Take Hogwarts Express or its more complex official countepart which is the LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Express (75955). There are some builders out there who have made a business out of their uncanny knack for constructing complicated objects in LEGO. For instance, Instagram user replicamotorsport has gotten attention due to his talent at making some small-scale LEGO car engines with some intricate detailing.

Now, we’ve seen impressive LEGO-built engines ourselves, like the aircraft engine currently waiting for the LEGO Ideas 2018 Second Review Stage. But these custom LEGO car engines by replicamotorsport are something else with their accuracy considering their size, their average L-W-H dimensions being 7-4-5 in inches, but still remarkable in resemblance to their original full-scale real versions.

Already replicamotorsport has posted several LEGO engines on his Instagram page taken from some very impressive cars. There are flat-six engines as seen in Porsches and the Chevy LS, or a K-series inline-four like found on a Honda. They might even feature moving LEGO-piece pistons.

Copies of replicamotorsport engines have already been bought up by technically-geared LEGO fans and collectors who usually work with the more high-level lines like Technic. Each costs $35, but that’s money well spent for those eager to have physical copies of these MOC engines so they can rebuilt these themselves.

It’ll be great to look forward to what new future creations replicamotorsport will put up in his Instagram page, here.

Total Sensory Space Debuts at LEGOLAND Windsor

Theme parks are often touted to be the happiest places on Earth, especially if said parks belong to some big-brand name companies. Still, very popular (heavily-visited) theme parks run the risk of being perceived as crowded, noisy and over-flashy. Some park guests might need a nice quiet place to get away from all of that. And LEGOLAND Windsor may have hit on a solution for their crowd-weary visitors with their conception of the Total Sensory Space. Located in the LEGO Friends-themed Heartlake City area, this indoor attraction is being promoted by LEGOLAND Windsor as a welcome calming environment, great for guests with “individual sensory needs”.

With its offerings of interactive visual projections, bubble-blowing tubes, vibrating beanbags, musical sound pads, fiber-optic decorations and activity touch-panels, all under soft lighting, the Heartlake City Total Sensory Space has been designed to give just the right amount of sensory needs, and there’s a particular sort of guests who will get the most benefit out of the room’s various features: those within the autism spectrum.

Total Sensory Space

LEGOLAND Windsor’s Total Sensory Space director Vanessa Ford is proud at what the park managed to achieve with their attraction. We hope that people of all ages with sensory needs enjoy the area, and that it contributes to making a great day out even better,” she said. And in fact, their Sensory Space facility has already received positive reviews from the UK’s National Autistic Society.

For more information on LEGOLAND Windsor’s Total Sensory Space, and for inquiries and ticket bookings, you may visit LEGOLAND Windsor at their official website here.

This Micro-Scaled LEGO Ideas Voltron Is The Cutest Defender of the Universe

I have to admit: while Lendy Tayag’s LEGO Ideas Voltron (21311) is mightily flying all across the globe, I am still waiting patiently for my wallet to recover and say yes to my next LEGO wish list which of course, includes the LEGO Ideas Voltron set on the top of the list of this nerdy 80’s fan boy. The good thing is while waiting for my wallet to wake up from its brick slumber, Lendy was kind enough to share a mini, or more accurately, a custom micro-scaled LEGO Ideas Voltron set that any true-blue fan can assemble and will surely adore.

Over at his Facebook page, and as his way of saying thanks to all who have supported his LEGO Ideas set, Lendy shared this simple, yet overly cute micro-scaled LEGO Ideas Voltron model of the iconic defender of the universe, complete with building instructions and parts inventory.

Micro-Scaled LEGO Ideas Voltron

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A quick overview of the inventory shows that this brick-built custom micro model of LEGO Voltron consists of common elements that may just be sitting around in your own LEGO collection. I’m quite sure that I have these pieces on hand, save for the gold star symbol. A visit at Bricklink will surely cover all these needed parts and much more.

Thanks Lendy for this share and I will surely look forward to have my LEGO Ideas Voltron box signed anytime soon.