TBB travels to Poland, where apparently there are no lousy builders, as we continue our coverage of New Guy Saturday. Adam Glowacki (Jakeof_), has a fine stable of models waiting for you on Flickr, including this excellent DAF XF. TBB’s own Wreck-it-Ralph is a big fan of this model, calling the big-rig “amazingly accurate for its scale” and would surely have blogged it if not for my weekend campaign of terror on this once serene almost pastoral blog of blogs.
You don’t have to go to a theater to enjoy a movie, as Karwik shows with this lovely rounded truck from the days of black & white cinema.
Much more modern and colorful but no less impressive is Karwik’s Volvo F89 semi-trailer, with fantastic lettering on the cargo container:
Dennis Bosman (legotrucks) returns to the Brother-Ship for the third time this year with a massive truck that was just about a year in the making. If you’d like to have some factual details about this complex model, head on over to Mr. Bosman’s website where a wealth of stats and background information is waiting for you.
I could have sworn I read about this model on another blog, but I can’t seem to recall the name. Oh well, its not like any one blog can claim the rights to a model.
Please indulge me again, constant reader and take a look at another model that isn’t as current as our usual fare. In December of 2012 a nice fellow called Arctic Fox posted a fine looking Toyota Land cruiser that made the best use of the much maligned rubber band that I’ve seen in a long while. I only discovered the model recently myself and I noticed that 5 months ago TBB’s own Mad Physicist called it “excellent”. Good enough for Ralph, good enough for me.
It’s a good weekend for lovers of military builds. Vibor Cavor (veeborg) brings us an excellent rendition of a WW-2 German Army Opel Blitz truck, in desert camouflage. The model is highly detailed and just about everything on it opens.
In the industrial age, armies require vast amounts of stuff to keep going. You can’t have a Blitz Krieg if your supplies can’t keep up with the pace of the advances, which is why armies invest heavily in trucks. Interestingly, even during the war, Opel was owned by General Motors, whose GMC division built the famous ‘Deuce and a Half’; the US Army’s standard truck.
Justin Pratt (legotanks) makes excellent little delivery trucks as well as tanks. At BrickCon last year, I gave him a couple of engraved “The Brothers Brick” bricks on condition that he build us a delivery van. Justin recently finished it, and posted it online last night (after displaying it at Emerald City Comicon this weekend).
That’s “me” behind the wheel, but you may see someone I’m hauling along behind. Per his request, my co-founder Josh is along for the ride in a little red wagon.
Justin’s truck joins what’s turning out to be our delivery fleet, led by the truck Nathan Proudlove brought to BrickCon 2009 (where we successfully fought off a zombie horde).
I rarely blog LEGO models together, but these two wheeled beasts seem almost as though they were designed to be put on as a double act.
Sorting by date gives Shannon Sproule (Ocean) the top billing with his latest excellent addition to Battle for the Moon. And even by his own high standards this one is a winner. He presents the Soviet Lunar Katyusha for our edification.
Following on is Mark Stafford (nabii), taking a very different theme and adding wheels to Space Police 3. It’s another example from Mark of what I call set+ building. Somewhere between set style and over-the-top finicky AFOL style. I’m a big fan of that sort of build, at least in part because I can’t pull it off at all well and here it is made to look effortless.
Dennis Bosman (Legotruck) says it took him six months to build this rugged Kenworth K100 (with Holmes 750) and even a caual inspection proves that it was time well spent. You can see all the fine details in Dennis’s Flickrstream or check out his website LEGO Trucks & Heavy Equipment, that features a wealth of design notes and details.
The VW Camper Van isn’t the only German vehicle released in LEGO form this year. Long-time readers of the blog will recall that I’m obsessed with the Mercedes Unimog, and I’ve featured several — starting with Adam Grabowski’s Unimog back in 2006. Adam now works for LEGO as a designer. I don’t think Adam works on Technic sets, but it’s nice to see an official LEGO version of this awesome vehicle.
It’s been out for a few months, but I suspect it might be news for a couple of you out there. TechnicBricks has the full review.
Moritz Nolting (nolnet) beat me to it, but I don’t begrudge him this awesome Unimog.
What makes Moritz’s Unimog extra-cool is the extra ground clearance he achieved by building the chassis studs-down.
I posted previously about Brickshelf user MisterZumbi’s Mercedes Unimog. Now, Masahiro Yanagi has posted his own version:
One of my favorite vehicles is the Mercedes Unimog. I’ve seen two of them in real-life. One was in Nagano Prefecture, in Japan. That one was all tricked out for Arctic explorations or something (it was white and it had lots of compartments; I was ten; I made assumptions). The other one was on the Microsoft campus when I interviewed there back in 2001. It was dark green and orange (hand-painted, for some reason — very distinctive). I saw it again at the apartment complex we lived in a few months later.
Aaaaanyway, Brickshelf user MisterZumbi has made a really cool LEGO Unimog:
It looks a lot like the one I saw at Microsoft. Given how many configurations this vehicle is available in, how coincidental is that?
Note how he used the steering wheel as the Mercedes symbol. Very nice.