Do LEGO Constructions Have a Soul?

Posted on November 14, 2009 by Mike Walsh

Saw this on Gizmodo this evening.  It is pretty funny and makes you think.

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Unloading Some Old Sets

Posted on November 4, 2009 by Mike Walsh

From about 1998 – 2002 I accumulated a lot of LEGO sets.  I was very active in the hobby at that time and was regularly scouring Wal-Mart and Target for clearance deals.  I parted out a lot of sets, keeping what I wanted and selling the rest on BrickLink.  Over time a lot of sets piled up that I just never got to parting out.  My old house had an awesome garage where the ceiling was 16 feet high.  I had installed shelving around the perimeter of the garage and would put all of the surplus LEGO up on the shelves.

When we moved and all of the LEGO came out of the various hiding places, it was overwhelming how much stuff I had accumulated.  Some of it I had completely forgotten about.  Our new house was smaller and had a lot less storage and combined with my lack of desire to part out a huge amount of LEGO, I decided to sell off a bunch of it.  A local BrickLink seller bought the majority of the unopened sets I had but I kept quite a few that I wanted for one reason or another.

Four years later, many of those sets still haven’t come out of the box and I find myself with even less time and ambition to break down these sets and do something with them.  I’ve also realized that I have far more than I will ever use in any sort of a layout I might do as I have built plenty of MOCs and don’t need official LEGO sets like I once thought I did.

So I have started another pass through the basement to identify the items that I know I’ll never use.  There are some interesting sets.  What I have is a mix of new (unopened) and used sets.   The used sets are mostly from the classic Town era of the early 1990’s.  So far I have listed on BrickLink several 10001 Metroliner sets (which sold almost immediately), some Pirate ships, an unopened copy of 6416 Poolside Paradise, an unopened copy of 6338 Hurricane Harbor, and a few other odds and ends.  I have a lot more to go as well!  You can find all of these on my BrickLink store.

My main motivation for finally doing this is two fold:  We’re about to do a renovation on our house and the basement where I have most of it will likely become a playroom so some of this stuff has to go somewhere and more importantly, I want a new lens for my camera and it is really expensive!

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Vestas Display at Arlanda Airport

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Mike Walsh

Back in July of 2008 there was a lengthy thread on LUGNET about the 4999 Vestas Wind Turbine promotional set.  The thread was largely an appeal to release this set as a retail item.  The set was made of “unobtainium” as it was a promotional item made for Vestas and their customers.  It was rumored that a few were “obtained” from the LEGO Factory in the Czech Republic and they appeared on eBay for silly prices.  It would have been nice to have one but I didn’t give it a lot of thought.

Last week I was in Stockholm for work and catching a late evening SAS flight from Arlanda to London.  Imagine my surprise when I stumbled up a sizeable LEGO Vestas exhibit in the terminal.

 

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There were six enclosed displays each depicting a large turbine plus a play area which featured a huge turbine constructed of LEGO plus a large minifig.  Each of the displays depicted a Vestas turbine in their typical mode of transport and ultimate installation.

This was a very cool display, some of it done in Minfig scale, some of it done in Miniland scale.

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If you find yourself in Sweden at the Arlanda airport, check it out!  It is in the SAS International terminal.

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Pictures from the LEGO Experience Tour

Posted on October 19, 2009 by Mike Walsh

Here are a few pictures from my visit to the LEGO Experience Tour at the North Carolina State Fair this Saturday.  Isabelle and I spent about an hour playing with the bricks and doing the various activities.

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The City layout.

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Isabelle with the Minifigs!

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Isabelle with her turtle.

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My contribution to the City layout.

There are a few more photos on my Flickr site.

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LEGO Experience Tour at NC Fair

Posted on October 18, 2009 by Mike Walsh

Yesterday afternoon my youngest daughter Isabelle and I went to the NC Fair for a few hours and while we were there we checked out the LEGO Experience Tour.  The LEGO Experience Tour will be at the Fair through today (Sunday) so if you want to check it out, you?ll have to do so today.  

While you are there, check out the LEGO entries in the Hobbies and Handicrafts building.  Joe Meno and I judged again this year and I have to say, this was the hardest year to judge.  I also noticed that some of the results may not be quite accurate because a couple of the items I expected to have ribbons on them didn’t.  Not sure why.

Back to the LET, it is set up near gate 9 which is near the north east corner of the fairgrounds.  Here is a link to the map of the fairgrounds.

I have a few pictures I took which I will try and post later but in general, they have four activities set up and you get an ID badge in the shape of a minifig head.  On the back are places for four stickers.  You earn one at each station.  We started with the timed build and had two minutes to build a tractor but part way through the time, the leader changed the build to an animal.  Isabelle built a pretty good turtle.  I tried to build a bear but ended up with little to show for it!  The best animal in our group was a cow.

We next went to the City build where you can build a small building to go into a central city layout.  Isabelle (who really likes turtles) built another turtle and I built a small building which came out pretty good considering the limited element selection.  There are plenty of parts but they are mostly just basic bricks with the odd special element thrown in here and there.  One of my favorite pieces to build buildings out of is the basic 1×4 and I couldn?t find one anywhere!

From there we went the third activity which is little more than an advertisement for LEGO video games and their magazine.  There is a station with Sony PSPs on it where you can play some of the games.

The fourth activity is to find some odd element in the model in the center of the area.  It is a 10×10 layout which is pretty neat and they have hidden various things (e.g. I had to find C3PO’s head).  The person running the activity will give you something to find and once you do, you earn your fourth sticker.

There is no prize for getting all of the stickers.  We spent about 45 minutes at the LET and had fun.  It was cold yesterday at the fair but fairly crowded being Saturday.  Looks like the weather will be better this coming week but the LET will be gone by then.  It was funny to see people walking around the fairgrounds with their Minifig tags on!

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