Merry Christmas

The Christmas display this year has come from the Lego Winter Village collection, and the City Advent Calendar.

The village I've collected over the last few years comprises of a post office, toy shop, bakers, cottage and a winter market and merry-go-round that with a turn of a handle also rotates.

However I must say the festive spirit in Lego City is a bit of a worry. Alongside the snowman, festive table and toys under the tree quite early on you got a policeman and a burglar. 

Not exactly keeping in with the spirit of the season I'd say personally considering other variations of the minifigures they have produced over the years.

Anyway all the best 

Derek

ps. The last book review of the year will follow shortly.

Lego travels "Back to the Future"

One of my favourite films from the 1980s has to be "Back To The Future". Every time I watch it I’m convinced that with Doc Brown hanging from the cable connected to the clock tower, the time ticking away, the storm on the horizon and Marty stalling the engine there is no way our time travelling hero is going to get home.

Imagine my surprise and delight when I heard that Lego had released a Back to the Future set. Cue music, Da-da-da-daaaa, da-da-da-da-da-Dummmmm.

Off I trod to the local Lego Store and part with my £34.99 to take away a pack that allows you to build the DeLorean time travelling car in any variation from the three films, as after you have built the vehicle there are additional customisation options. The pack also comes with two wonderful Lego Minifigures , Doc Brown and Marty McFly.

On go the CDs

So on went the CDs, and out came the instruction manual and I set to work building the car of my dreams. (There was this time I took part in a stage hypnotist show, *cough* but that’s another story)

Three CDs later I had finally built my Lego DeLorean – I’m sure the original took Doc Brown a lot longer. It also took a lot longer for the original designers of this set to get it from conception to market. This is set number 4 in a range of sets from Lego named ‘CUUSOO’.

The CUUSOO project in short - you can design and submit a Lego model you think other people would love to build to the Lego Cuusoo website.  Then once it appears on the website if it receives 10,000 supporters it goes up before a review committee. The reviews are now undertaken by Lego on a quarterly period and if it passes the review and is chosen for production you get a small royalty, 1% of the sales.

http://lego.cuusoo.com/

The designers of the Lego Delorean project are two Japanese Lego enthusiasts called Togami & Sakuretsu , they are depicted in the instruction book as two Lego Minifigures. They have also donated their royalty payment to the Michael j. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. .

https://www.michaeljfox.org/

These guys form a group called Team Back To The Future and have several other models vying for votes on the website - I'd love to see them released as Lego sets so please give them your support.

The DeLorean in hover mode with doors open, Marty & Doc and some of the customisable features.

Lego, Tower of Orthanc

Lego are about to release a few additional sets in their ‘Lord of the Rings’ range. For the moment one new set is exclusive to their VIP club, this is the Tower of Orthanc. Currently available online and in store to members between 17^th – 30^th June, along with a free poster.  I believe you can sign up in store and purchase it but online you will only be able to access the offer on your second order. It’s beneficial to be a member, as there are often free Lego offers, and you collect points that give discounts on subsequent purchases.

Along with the great tower there also comes a Tree Ent, a Great Eagle, and Gandalf the Grey, Saruman, Grima Wormtongue, Uruk-hai  & Orc Pitmaster minifigures.

There are trap doors, a light brick to illuminate the Palantir and other interaction parts that make this more than just a model. The one warning with these large models, handle with care once finished.

Here’s the model taking shape.

The finished tower stands at around 2' 4.75" (73cm) tall. More details:

http://shop.lego.com/en-GB/VIP-Early-Access-10237

June Lego display

I had a little rearrangement of the Lego table display recently; the Lord of the Rings display gave way for related collection The Hobbit. As we finally enter into summer I'm thinking a Lego carnival should be next.

Love of Lego

During the 1970s as a small kid I discovered Lego. I loved it, and so did my parents if truth be told. I think most adults do. Quite often I remember setting Mum and Dad a challenge to build something after I had gone to bed, to come down in the morning and see what they had made. I remember a yellow castle very well although I don’t have any photos of the models. 

In those days you didn’t photograph everything that moved or didn’t unlike today when camera phones get whipped out at any and every opportunity.  (But that’s a discussion for another time.)

As time went by I remember buying small sets of either tiny models or just assorted bricks to take home and build up my collection. It really is no wonder I still make model houses today from all sorts of materials, but back then it was Lego. There were small stickers in the boxes which you stuck to collector sheets to send off for bonus sets, people that were giants to the mini figures of today and trees that were flat.

Then along came mini figures and space Lego. I got some of the early sets and build my lunar landscape, and made up stories about monsters from outer space that terrorised the base. I recall being influenced by a TV series at the time called ‘The Nightmare Man’ (look it up – go on) and ended up scaring the hell out of myself courtesy of my own imagination.

Then as the years went on the sets got broken up and put away, but never forgotten about. Then a few years ago a couple of friends got me started collecting the packets of mini figure collectables that Lego now release. And like anyone else inflicted with the “completest gene” I had to collect the whole set of sets. 

This has led on to me rediscovering the whole world especially now that there are sets for Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and Monster Hunters to name but a few. Although I do think the new sets, however ingenious with new style pieces and parts that interact and light up in ways they never did before are a trifle more flimsy being built from single width bricks (1x3) rather than the thicker (2x3) bricks when the range of pieces and colours were fewer.

However, the addiction has been awoken and I now have a display of Lord of the Rings at the moment, plus a Halloween display planned, along with Lego being my planned style of Christmas decorations for this year

Archives, Distractions and Daleks

A very young DJK with first train set

It has been a while since I posted. Not much model work has been done; instead I've been ploughing through the family archives and scanning old photos creating some very interesting photo collections. 

Most of which have no place on this blog with the exception of my first model railway, probably the first introduction to scale model making. This was a ‘OO gauge’ Hornby railway.

Lego Olympic Stadium in John Lewis, Stratford

For fans of Lego and similar building blocks, and Doctor Who here are two photos taken in John Lewis at Westfield in Stratford. (I think they’ve been doing some big sporty thing there recently). This is the Olympic stadium built from Lego.

They also have a large red Dalek, I’m guessing built with Character Options’ building blocks. Quite ideal considering the deadly pepper pots have just made a welcome return to TV this weekend here in the UK.

Character Options Dalek in
John Lewis, Stratford

I have done some work on the ‘Ship and Hankor’, and at the bottom are a few photos of the latest stage, mainly working on the chimneys and walls.