There are a lot of things up in the air right now, and one of the nicest is this Fiesta Balloon by Pete Strege. Excellent shaping combines with bright colors to really let your imagination soar. From a design standpoint, I like the exposed studs in the balloon itself. Translated to a real-world aircraft, those patterns would make an excellent LEGO print on a full-scale envelope. If you look closely, there’s a happy family in the basket, too. I love cheerful details like that.
Talking with Pete, we got some great information about this creation:
[This is] a color-swap of Harley’s Balloon with rainbow colors spiraling around to emulate a vibrant pattern you might typically see. The name “Fiesta Balloon” is in honor of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, which I’d someday like to attend after the pandemic is over.
My original balloon technic skeleton has been strengthened with #24121 11×11 quarter technic gear racks to beef up stability and allow easier access inside. There is a reversible handle at the top of the balloon to make it swooshable or hangable.
The original plan was to display this alongside other airships at a Eurobricks collaborative display at Brickworld Chicago 2020– which was eventually done at Brickworld Virtual Halloween this past Saturday instead. I also plan to submit this as a Lego ideas project shortly.
We’ve featured a few other hot air balloons in the past, but not nearly enough of them. Hopefully, Pete’s build will inspire others to take flight as well.
That’s fantastic. and I think it would be successful on lego ideas, because it has some of the the key factors:
– it’s technically advanced
– it’s “dreamy” – what I mean is that it is one of those builds that bring you somewhere else with your imagination, like the treehouse or the fishing store or the ship in a bottle
– it’s aestethycally great and of easy promotion
– it has no IPs – which is good from a licensing point of view as well as pricing
@Pietro
There’s also the stability issue. An Ideas set would require to be stable and balanced in a way a photographed Moc wouldn’t.
Then, it might not be an issue here. It’s hard to tell from just a photograph…