Monthly Archives: November 2013

Bright Lights

We don’t often post ‘Tiny Turbo’s here at TLCB. Mostly this is because they tend to be rubbish, so it’s a brave Elf that returns to the TLCB Towers with a ‘TT’ creation, as more often than not they are rewarded with a slap and a trip out the window courtesy of the office sling-shot.

Not today though, because the brave Elf that brought us this was right on-the-money. This, kids, is how a Tiny Turbo should look. Built by Flickr’s delta triangle, it’s a hill climb special complete with some simple yet wonderfully effective ‘aero’ and a host of night-time spotlights. Plus it’s rockin’ what might be LEGO’s best colour. Check out the images on Flickr at the link above, whilst we give a brave Elf a blue Smartie.

Creations for Charity 2013

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Creations for Charity 2013 is here!

Creations for Charity – a superb charitable event that raises money to buy LEGO sets for underprivileged children – is upon us for 2013. It’s a fantastic cause, as with many charities, but it’s how Creations for Charity raises funds that sets it apart. Money is raised to purchase the toys via the donation and sale of custom LEGO creations, built by some of the best LEGO builders around (some of which have featured right here on TLCB).

All the proceeds go to purchasing LEGO sets for needy children, which are then distributed throughout the U.S and other countries, children who otherwise would not get anything to play with this Christmas. LEGO is the perfect toy too, as it can be played with for years without breaking, without batteries, and has no age, mental or physical limitations.

Get involved!

You can help this amazing initiative in a number of ways; by publicising Creations for Charity, donating a creation, or bidding on one of the awesome creations available in the auction.

To find out more on how to participate please visit Creations for Charity 2013 here.

If you’d like to donate a creation the deadline for signing up is the 15th November. All the details of how to donate, bid and buy can be found at the link above, and we’ll bring you some of the best vehicle-related creations submitted to the auction here on The Lego Car Blog in the coming weeks.

Eurocopter

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One of our Brickshelf-based Elves returned to the office today. It was pretty hungry as it hadn’t found anything on the site for ages, but it’s now eaten for the first time in weeks and we’ve sent it back out the door again. We’re nice like that. Anyhow, it’s find is this; a fantastic Eurocopter X3 helicopter by arththra08. Arththra’s version of the famous tri-rotor aircraft features functional landing-gear, working rotors, and it utilises the latest smooth studless pieces to recreate a model that wouldn’t look out of place in an official LEGO box. You can see all the photos of the X3 on Brickshelf at the link above.

We’re 2 Today!

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Two years ago today MOCpages, Flickr, Eurobricks and Brickshelf started to receive a few extra visitors each night. Always in the shadows and easily spooked, the new arrivals wandered through the vast halls of the online Lego Community in search of their quarry.

They were specially trained (by which we mean bribed and threatened) to seek out creations that had been overlooked by the mainstream Lego blogs. Creations that usually had engines, and wheels…

Today, 778 posts and 498,000 visitors later, The Lego Car Blog marks its second anniversary, and enters its toddler years. In that time we’ve brought you Interviews, Set Previews, and Reviews and of course, the best car and vehicle-related creations that the Lego Community has to offer.

We’ve made some mistakes too, such as annoying the Brothers Brick and sending a few Elves to Flickr knock-off Ipernity (Elves who are still M.I.A), but generally it’s been a great 2 years, largely thanks to you, our readers.

So as we enter the Terrible Twos, what does the future hold for The Lego Car Blog and for the car builders of the online Lego Community?

Well, to be honest, we’re not quite sure, and we think perhaps the two may take different paths. You see, since we started 2 years ago several blogs have stepped up and started to include vehicles in their posts, the newly created BrickNerd and the aforementioned Brothers Brick amongst them. This means there’s less of a need for The Lego Car Blog and perhaps our job is done, although our climbing hit rate may suggest otherwise.

We’ll see, but whatever the future of this blog and the Elves that work for it, Lego cars are finally getting the recognition they deserve.

TLCB Team

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November…

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…Gunpowder, treason and plot. For our non-UK readers today is the British celebration of Bonfire Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Night, marking the unsuccessful assassination on King James I in the Houses of Parliament.

James, the first King to unite Scotland and England, was quite a divisive monarch, largely due to the divided nation over which he ruled. Surprisingly this wasn’t because of the union of the two separate kingdoms of Scotland and England, but because of the religious lines that split the citizens of both. Persecution reigned against both the Protestants and Catholics, depending on who was in charge at the time. Thus some of the disgruntled Catholics during the Protestant King James’ rule decided the best way to further their cause was to bomb the King and the assembled parliament. Not a dissimilar tactic to today’s religious extremists. Things never change eh?

Anyway, poor Guy Fawkes, one of the Catholic assassins, was apprehended guarding the gunpowder barrels stashed in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament prior to their detonation, and met a decidedly gruesome end at the hands of the King’s torturers, an outcome celebrated by the Protestant population in London by the lighting of bonfires in the city.

King James I died peacefully many years after the failed plot, and is now perhaps most famous for his translation of the Bible into modern English, whilst the annual festival celebrating his narrow escape has since grown to embrace all UK citizens, regardless of religious persuasion, and is today a fortnight of fireworks parties, bonfires and the burning of effigies (or ‘Guys’).

Being a British-based blog, we thought we’d share this example of one of our weirder festivals with our worldwide readers, and what better way to do so than with some regal transportation fit for a King? Well, a Queen in this case, but it’s the same deal. Matthew Hocker aka Brickadier General has recreated the Gold State Coach used by our current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, and in use since 1762 in stunning mini-figure detail. Matthew’s work is available to view on Flickr, and you can also vote for it on LEGO’s Cuusoo site if you’d like to see the Gold State Coach become an official LEGO set.

Now please excuse us, we’re off with the Elves to set fire to something.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

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Kermit’s right, it isn’t easy, particularly if you’re a LEGO builder. Until fairly recently green was exclusively reserved for vegetation and base plates, making building from it trickier than wiring a plug wearing oven gloves. There are a few builders that do brave the hue though, and the results can be very good indeed. Here we bring you a speedy run-down of four of the best, whilst the Elves feast on green Smarties for their efforts.

First up (above) is Legohaulic’s brilliant ‘Sludge Puppy’, built for the Lego Adventure Book 2 and suggested to us via the Feedback page. Legohaulic uses – quite literally – a splash of green to great effect. Check out all the images on Flickr here.

Next up, and continuing the sci-fi theme, is LEGOLIZE IT MAN‘s ‘Green Machine’ mech. We’ve featured LEGOLIZE IT MAN’s work a few times here at The Lego Car Blog, despite it never really including a car. You can see all his awesome builds via his photostream at the link above, and you can see what has appeared here by typing his name into the Search function at the bottom of this page.

And finally as we’re supposed to be a car blog we’d better throw in a few cars. Above is newcomer Vilem Sustr’s superb Trabant 601 Combi. One of the nicest cars we’ve seen this year we heartily recommend viewing all the photos and Vilem’s MOCpage here. Below is our final Green Special creation, Vibor Cavor (aka Veeborg)’s Audi Quattro concept. As with all of Vibor’s work there is some very inventive design throughout and you can see all the photos on either MOCpages or Flickr.

That completes our round-up of one of LEGO’s most unusual hues. You can join the discussion on each creation by clicking the associated links, just remember to power-down and turn the lights off when you’re done!

’70s Night

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Long before this Lego Car Blogger was born there was a time known as ‘The ’70s’. The ’70s were a weird and wonderful era, where Radio 1 DJs roamed the earth and everyone was forced to wear massive trousers or brown, and listen to disco-funk continuously. LEGO were just starting to hit the stratosphere during this period, and their pre-curser to Model Team was beginning to produce some excellent large-scale vehicles.

One of these was the 392 F1 car from 1975, a marvellous primary-coloured affair complete with genuine sponsorship decals. Jens M. – one half of the building duo ‘LegoExotics’ – has reimagined the original, retaining the ace look and colouring whilst bringing it up-to-date by incorporating today’s modern smooth pieces. See all the photos on Flickr at the link above.

Our second ’70s redux comes from Bobofrutx, who’s taken the 855 mobile crane set from 1978 and given it a similar facelift. His version of the ’70s classic includes the features that showed the beginnings of Technic, including working 4-wheel steering, a rotating and extending boom and a working winch.

You can see all the photos at Bobofrutx’s photostream via the link above, and you can read The Lego Car Blog’s reviews of some of the classic 1970’s sets by clicking on the ‘Reviews’ tab in the main menu.

7345 Transport Chopper Review

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After their adventures with the 31005 Construction Hauler and the 31006 Highway Speedster, we thought that the Elves would like to practice their nascent building skills on something a bit more challenging. The 7345 Transport Chopper’s RRP is double that of the previous two sets at £24.99 from Lego.com, though we bought our set for £20.00 from Amazon. Inside the box, you get 5 bags containing 383 pieces, which amounts to ½ kg or 18oz of LEGO. This compares very favourably with the price per kilo of bulk, unsorted LEGO on eBay. Being a Creator set, you’re also getting the months of design effort from LEGO’s team, plus printed instructions for three different models. Value for money? Excellent!

The first stage of building, as usual for the Elves, is to rip open the bags and send parts flying everywhere. Next comes the part where we fish bricks, plates, tyres and greebles out of the TLCB executive jacuzzi. The final stage is where assorted Elves batter each other with the larger and pointier components, until they are settled down with a blast from the air horn. You can understand why we haven’t let them build anything from Technic, with all of those spiky axles and cogs.

The three models are rated as “Quick”, “Medium” and “Advanced” builds. The helicopter is the “Advanced” build and seems to be completed in just 56 steps but there are several extra sub-builds within this, plus another 8 for the little red jeep. As usual, some of the steps only add a couple of bricks to the construction but we have to remember that the target age range is 8 to 12. We built the jeep first and gave it to the Elves to zoom around in, whilst we got on with the serious business of building the chopper. As this set is aimed at younger builders, it’s a bit annoying that you have to use parts from four different bags to complete the first three stages of building the jeep. Perhaps this sub-build could be in a separate bag and the rest of the parts could be in numbered bags, like some of the other LEGO product ranges?

The first part of building the helicopter is its chassis, complete with retractable tricycle undercarriage. Continue reading →

Nerdy Acronym Of The Day*

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The online Lego Community is full of nerdy acronyms. Here at The Lego Car Blog, or ‘TLCB’, we try to avoid as many as possible, mostly because we’re not clever enough to work them out. Apart from ‘TLCB’ of course.

Anyhow, today we’re going to cautiously dip a toe in the murky waters of Lego Jargon because we’ve not seen a model that so perfectly sums up a particular acronym as this does. ‘NPU’, or ‘Nice Parts Usage’ is a term that frequents the comments on Flickr. It’s usually used whenever a LEGO piece faces any direction other than up, but really it’s for when bricks are used for a purpose that’s way outside of their intended function.

VolumeX’s latest work epitomises this philosophy, with the wheels alone featuring no less than three piece types that we’ve never seen used in such a way before. Check out all the ‘NPU’ at VolumeX’s photostream here; you’ll never look at a LEGO brick in the same way again.

*NAOTD?

Park ’em at Arkham

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The online Lego world is buzzing with the launch of Mr. Xenomurphy’s latest creation: Arkham Asylum. There are multiple photos on MOCpages and a comprehensive account of the building process on Flickr. Following a dearth of cars in recent posts, the Elves have undergone several compulsory sessions of “re-education” in TLCB’s own “institution”. It was therefore with renewed zeal that they ignored the soaring architecture, the gorgeous gothic lettering and the brick-built “Clayface” figure and homed in on the cars parked in the yard and the street.

Calin (_Tiler) is a master of building minifig scale cars. He has contributed two versions of his 1930s Ford Model A: a police car and a delivery van. Both have nicely smooth running boards and mudguards, which have been neatly attached, plus a great variety of angles of panels in their bodywork. You can see the first versions of these vehicles by clicking this link. The 1920s style Batmobile has been provided by Dave Kaleta, who claims that he is Batman on his Flickr profile. This single-seat roadster has the classic long, smooth bonnet but with a pair of bat-like ears on top of the radiator. Spot more bat-details by clicking this bat-link to Flickr or this bat-link to MOCpages.

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Monthly Archives: November 2013

Bright Lights

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