Tag Archives: Phone

Artifacts from a vintage family room

The ’50s are calling! Don’t tell my father – he was born in 1955 and would be highly offended if he heard me using the term “vintage” to describe these items. I’d love to know what inspired LEGO builder Jaap Bijl to choose this era, but I’m so glad he did. The collection inspires images of a very different point in history. A tube radio, rotary telephone, and even a WW2 medal define the time. And the old-school toys and treats mixed throughout tell the story of a young family. Jaap used a bunch of the white 4×4 flower elements to achieve the look, but a couple of my most favorite examples are the ones that aren’t as easy to see, like the racecar wheels and radio tuning sliders.

A family's life

There are many more fantastic examples of Jaap’s work in our archives!

Smartphones are just monkey business

I’m something of a Luddite. For example, I am one of the five remaining persons on the planet older than five years of age who does not own a smartphone. Perhaps among the five remaining creatures. I mean, heck, even the monkeys have them these days. Check out this LEGO build of Rafiki snapping a selfie by alego alego; the Lion King mandrill has expertly posed for a silly picture, squinting one eye. I didn’t know that you were allowed to do that; I thought it was all duck lips, all the time. The shaping on the face is brilliant, making good use of some blue horns for the signature mandrill stripes and lots of car wheel wells around the eyes. But my favorite detail is definitely on the back of the phone. Appropriate for a monkey, the fruit branding is not an apple but a banana. Or maybe some tech company has re-branded and I, living in my stone-age hut, have yet to learn that.

Rafiki selfie

Can you hear me now? I said, can you hear me now!

Entering a new decade has left me feeling nostalgic for my youth and, since I group up in the ’90s, I was amused when I saw Qian Yj’s LEGO version of an early cellphone. Back then, such phones were such phones were nicknamed bricks due to their tremendous size. This particular model is about as close to a 1:1 replica as you can get, as illustrated by this image of Qian Yj holding the brick in-hand. His replica looks spot-on, from the numbered buttons to the thick antenna protruding from the top. Lime green tiles form the screen and are a perfect choice given the then-state-of-the-art LCD technology.

Cell phones in the 1990s

Calls by candlestick

This elegant Candlestick phone looks well-suited to one of those very fancy, expensive offices, decorated in dark mahogany. Brick Classics has created this beautiful stylized phone, making great use of the ornate pearl gold wagon wheel as part of the receiver on the phone. The scale is deceiving, too – it’s fairly small, sitting on a small base.

Candlestick Tellie

LEGO Creator App brings stop-motion studio to your mobile device [News]

Creator App

After the Creator Islands mobile game released back in Fall 2014, here comes a new themed app — the Creator App. This time it’s not just a game, but a number of digital activities for kids. The app features a monthly building contest (the current one is about racing accesories), a number of videos with building secrets and ideas, and a stop-motion studio, which allows the creation of simple videos up to 75 frames (~20 seconds) in length. Assuming the interface is extremely simple and freindly, the app might become the first stop-motion animation experience for many children.

 
The LEGO Creator App is availiable for both iOS and Android.

App Store App Store