Things seem to be getting serious on Ice Planet. Back in ’93 and ’94 – the two short years that Ice Planet featured in the LEGO range – its citizens were a peaceful, inventive and scientific race. Nerds if you will, quietly making satellites and inexplicably eking out an existence on the frozen wastes of planet Krypto.

Unfortunately their work was regularly disrupted by the evil empire of Blacktron, and later by the thieving robots of Spyrius, the bullying locker-room jocks of space.

Being nerds, the mini-figures of Ice Planet simply had to take it and – possessing no tools of defence or retaliation of their own – tattle to the Space Police in the hope that something would be done.

When the theme was quietly dropped in 1995 we assumed that the will of Ice Planet had finally been crushed by the repeated wedgies and swirlies distributed by its tougher rivals, but it appears we were wrong. Those nerds went underground, they hit the gym hard, and now they’re back for revenge!

This monster Ice Planet Battle Tank, created by markus19840420 (there must be a lot of ‘Markuses’ on Flickr) has finally given Ice Planet the means for a fight back. They’ve waited 20 years for this moment and Spyrius won’t know what hit it!

You can see more of the new, considerably meaner, Ice Planet at markus19840420’s photostream – click the link above to watch battle commence.