Yearly Archives: 2013

Classic Kenworth cab over

I am pretty sure that when most of you think about a large American truck, you imagine it being ornately decorated and having a long nose that sticks out in front of the cab. The type of truck with a flat front, known as a cab over, isn’t very common in the United States (with the exception of light trucks used in cities). In the seventies and eighties things were different, however. Many American truck manufacturers used to build cab over trucks, with the Kenworth K100 Aerodyne, represented by this great model by Maciej Drwięga, being a popular type.

Kenworth K100C VIT Aerodyne

Maciej is in the process of revamping many of his builds and this one isn’t brand new, but well worth having a closer look at. It has a detailed chassis and engine. The dark red colour and the striping give it an eighties look and it looks the part of a work truck. It does have the bells and whistles that you’d expect on an American truck, but without being overly flashy. I also like seeing some exposed studs on the top.

LEGO Disney Princess: Cinderella’s Dream Carriage 41053 [Review]

Next up in the Disney Princess line is Cinderella’s Dream Carriage, coming in at $29.99 and 274 pieces. I admit. I was really, really looking forward to this one. I was not disappointed.
Set

The Build
This build took three bags, but only one instruction book. The first bag was the fountain and bench, while bags two and three built the carriage itself.
Bag One

The fountain and bench are pretty straightforward. The fountain uses four of the new heart jewel pieces.

The carriage was quite fun to build. While not particularly challenging, it does use the parts to shape itself into the round pumpkin-ish shape you’d expect from Cinderella.
Bags Two, Three: The Carriage

The Parts
There are definitely some good things in this: the gold decorative bit, the heart jewels, and the new carriage wheels.
New Wheel

I am happy to report the silver filigree is printed onto the blue slopes.
Detail

Overall, I definitely recommend this one. It’s a fun little build, and the majority of the parts are useful bricks and plates, with some nice printed slopes. I am slightly less enthusiastic about the Cinderella mini-doll, as I prefer the Merida mini-doll, but I think overall it doesn’t detract from the set.

LEGO Disney Princess: Merida’s Highland Games 41051 [Review]

LEGO is expanding their Friend’s scale lines with the addition of the Disney Princesses we reported earlier this year. They’ve started popping up in stores, so keep an eye out. We’ll be sure to let you know when they are available online, too.

First up is Merida’s Highland Games. The set retails for $19.99, and comes with 145 pieces. The set features Merida’s home (I think) along with a tree, a little water fall, and a catapult of all things.

Merida and target

The Build
Overall, I can’t say I’m terribly impressed with this set. There were two numbered bags and two small instruction booklets. I am awfully confused as to the purpose of the catapult or why we’re flinging the enchanted cookies about.

...catapult? With Cookies?

The waterfall and tree aren’t terribly impressive, but they at least make sense.

As far as the castle is concerned, I just can’t get behind lavender and tan as a color combination and it detracts for me. The build itself is fairly simplistic.
Castle Castle

Also, the only printed things are the cookies, the bears, and Merida herself. Everything else is stickers.

The Parts
I think overall this set has a few good things going for it. Merida herself is pretty fantastic. The bears are simply adorable, and everyone needs little printed cookie tiles.
Whole crew

The extra pieces aren’t terribly exciting save for an extra cookie.

Ultimately, I’d recommend the set if you have someone in your life who is a huge Merida fan, as this is currently the only set she comes in. She and the bears are the only real stand-out parts to this particular set. If you can live without her and the bears, then I’d say you’re safe passing this set.

The Hobbit’s Lake Town as it could have been

I’m sure many of you now have seen The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug–or at have read the book. It offers such rich locations, and I’m glad to see some start to crop up!

Lake Town offered something of a welcome rest for the group heading toward the Lonely Mountain, but of course things never just go the way they’re supposed to for the protagonist of any tale. Fianat has presented Lake Town the way he felt it could have been, and I have to say I really dig his version.

Lake-town

The Miura is a red raging bull

Italian tractor manufacturer Ferruccio Lamborghini was a man not to be messed with. When he complained to Enzo Ferrari (of the eponymous sports-car manufacturer) that the busted clutch on his Ferrari was the same one as he used on his company’s tractors and about poor service, Enzo Ferrari famously snubbed him by telling him that, as a tractor manufacturer, Lamborghini couldn’t know anything about sports cars. Lamborghini set out to prove him wrong, by starting a company to build the best Grand Tourer money could buy. He chose a raging bull as the company’s emblem.
Since then Lamborghini has become famous for its supercars and, according to the guys from Top Gear, is the maddest car company of them all. Senator Chinchilla has built an excellent model of one of the fist ones: the Miura Jota

Lamborghini Miura Jota

Unlike Ferrari, Lamborghini doesn’t have a racing history, focusing on road cars. The Miura Jota however, was a development of the road car intended for racing. This explains the particularly unadorned look of the car, when compared to the already very clean design of the ‘normal’ Miura. The car never took part in a race, however. In typical Lamborghini fashion it crashed and then burned to a cinder during a test drive.

Most of the car models we feature are basically detailed sculptures, with perhaps a few functions such as steering or opening doors. I don’t tend to blog pure Technic models. This is not because I don’t appreciate the skill involved in building them, but for me it’s about the aesthetic. I prefer the look of system builds. Senator Chinchilla’s Miura has a beautifully sculpted body, with opening doors and an opening clam-shell engine cover. Underneath the voluptuous curves lurks a Technic chassis with steering, working suspension, gearbox and a transversely mounted engine, like the real car. It combines the best of both worlds.

Thanks to Jack Marquez (Ewok in Disguise) for the suggestion.

Creations for Charity donates over $20,000 of Lego sets in 2013

The 5th annual Creations for Charity ended with over $20,000 worth of Lego sets donated to children in 6 cities across 3 countries. Check out creationsforcharity.org for more photos and to hear the rest of the story. Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas from Creations for Charity 2013!

Merry Christmas to You and Yours

He made his list. He checked it twice. This morning you found out if you were naught or nice. Last night, Santa Claus came to town.

To celebrate, Chris McVeigh (powerpig) gives us more wonderful works in his fabulous line of sketches.

He's Making a List

The Most Famous Reindeer of All
The Most Famous Reindeer of All

He’s a Mean One
He's a mean one.

Ho ho ho, getting ready for Christmas with Gary Davis

Santa’s house, built by Gary Davis (Bricksforbrains), shows preparations for Christmas in full swing, with the elves preparing toys to be delivered to delighted children all over the world. Santa may live in a rustic-looking cabin, but in Gary’s world his whole set-up looks like it could teach amazon a few lessons.

Santa's house1

The elves aren’t running around sorting packages by hand. That work is done by a Rube Goldberg-type contraption (or Heath Robinson, if you’re British) that sorts and packages them before delivering them to Santa’s sleigh. This operation is run by computer from ‘Mission control’ and Santa himself sits behind a desk communicating via his smart-phone. Gary is a big fan of Gerry Anderson’s work, including Thunderbirds, and I think it shows. Merry Christmas.

Frozen’s Olaf Gets his Wish

Disney’s latest hit Frozen has such fantastic characters–Olaf being one of them. His wish is to see summer time (and it’s DEFINITELY close to summer-time weather here in Florida). In his words, winter’s a good time to stay in and cuddle, but put him in summer and he’ll be a….happy snowman.

Joe Meno‘s brilliant Olaf took his WALL-E towel down to the beach to catch some of those rays:

Untitled

You can see Joe’s process and progress in his Flickr gallery!

Lucky Luke: The Man who Shoots Faster than his Shadow

I may not recognize the specific character, but the sculpting and sheer personality completely caught my eye. According to Jimmy (6kyubi6), this here is Lucky Luke, and he’s know as the man who shoots faster than his shadow. He’s from a Belgian comic series, which is set in the American Old West.

Ærsceaft Brycg, Nædercynne

I admit it–I don’t have the foggiest idea on how to pronounce the title of this fabulous bridge. So I’m not going to try. James Pegrum (peggyjdb) probably can. Either way, this lovely little bridge tells a story of a town’s annual tradition of jumping off a bridge.

Ærsceaft Brycg, Nædercynne

This hot rod is bigger than yours

It was inevitable, really. We’ve blogged hot rods and a full size LEGO car before and British LEGO-Technic enthusiast Simon Burfield built a working Lego vehicle large enough to carry a person a while ago (which we sadly neglected to blog at the time), but now there’s an actual full-size drivable LEGO hot rod, large enough to carry two people. This crazy contraption was built by Australian Steve Sammartino and Raul Oaida, from Romania.

About half a million bricks were used in the construction. The wheels aren’t made out of LEGO elements, obviously, and neither are a few of the other structural bits. The engine, however, is built with no fewer than 256 LEGO pneumatic pistons, which are powered by compressed air and can propel the car to a speed of about 20 km/h. According to Steve he is neither a car enthusiast nor a Lego enthusiast, which makes me wonder just how big things get if he is enthusiastic!

Via the BBC. Thanks to billyburg for the suggestion.