Monthly Archives: February 2022

Prizes of Mundanity!

3 Replies

BrickNerd & The Lego Car Blog’s

Festival of Mundanity Competition is Go!

That right, enough Lamborghinis, monster trucks and fighter jets for a bit, we want to see the most boring creations. The tedious. The unexceptional. The bland. White Toyota Corollas. A suburban street filled with identical grey crossovers. A tired minivan in a Wallmart parking lot.

But why build boring? Well firstly because boring can actually be very interesting (we’ve published more Ferrari’s here than we have Hondas), and secondly because there are some awesome prizes on offer for the winners, and they’re not mundane at all!

…

The Prizes!

Yup, the incredible BuWizz 3.0 Pro bluetooth battery (or a 2.0 if preferred) is up for grabs! Able to control up to six motors, whilst delivering much more power, there is no way to make your Lego creations faster.

Programmable and controllable through your phone, the BuWizz 3.0 Pro can measure G-Force, acceleration and altitude, and enables full bluetooth remote control from up to 100m away.

We’ll let you know just how good the new BuWizz 3.0 Pro is in a full review due here soon, but even the original BuWizz 1.0’s ‘ludicrous mode’ blew our minds.

Find full BuWizz details here

…

Now you can display your LEGO sets (or your own creations) with purpose-built clear acrylic angled stands designed to perfectly support Lego vehicles, with the winner collecting an iDisplayit bundle for a multitude of Technic and Creator-sized models. You could even proudly display your Festival of Mundanity winning creation!

Check out the extensive range of iDisplayit purpose-built LEGO stands and cases here

…

The awesome guys over at Game of Bricks are giving not just the Festival of Mundanity winners, but the runners up too, the choice of any Game of Bricks lighting kit! And there are hundreds to choose from.

Architecture, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Modular Buildings, and – of course – Technic, Creator and Speed Champions vehicles, there are lighting kits for a huge variety of official LEGO sets, all of which are seamlessly integrated to spectacular effect.

See the full range of Game of Bricks lighting kits here

…

And that’s not all!

BrickNerd will be adding a swag bag and LEGO gift cards into the prize pot, so the winner will be able to buy a new LEGO set, supercharge it with BuWizz, light it with Game of Bricks, and then showcase it courtesy of iDisplayit.

Remember that there are similar prizes over at BrickNerd too, who are eagerly waiting to see mundane objects built in brick, whilst we’ll be brining you the best mundane vehicular entries here at The Lego Car Blog.

Get boring, er… building, and Good Luck!

Dyb Dyb Dyb

Leave a reply

The Festival of Mundanity entries are starting to arrive! Hoping to win one of the awesome prizes on offer (more on those later today) is PalBenglat of Flickr, whose International Harvester Scout (hence the title) is, well… actually not very mundane at all.

But despite not exactly maxing out his Mundane Points, Pal’s logic is rather clever. Back in the 1970s the Scout was marketed to middle-America couples, usually living in the suburbs with a dog, as per the recreated advertisement image above. And it doesn’t get more mundane than that.

Of course middle-America didn’t need Sports Utility Vehicles, but International Harvester forecast that it would want them. Which it did. By the million.

Now, partly thanks to the Scout, middle-America only buys SUVs and crossovers, they’re all exactly the same, and suburban motoring has never been more mundane.

The Weekly Shop

Leave a reply

The weekly shop is probably the most mundane task there is. Pushing a trolley along the aisles whilst store radio echos out above your head, wondering why they’ve moved the bloody orange juice. Again.

Capturing this wearisome event is recent bloggee Nikolaus Löwe, whose shopping trolley (which is a vehicle people) could only more monotonous if it were outside empty in a line of other empty shopping trollies.

As it is, Nikolaus’ entry for BrickNerd and TLCB’s Festival of Mundanity competition is wonderfully uninteresting, with even the shopping within it managing to convey utter tedium, whilst the dangly coin-lock thingy ensures you can’t have any fun even if you wanted to. Not without losing your £1 coin anyway.

There’s more to see of Nikolaus’ glorious Festival of Mundanity entry via the link above, and if you fancy entering your own boring build you can do so via the newly opened Flickr group. You might even win yourself some awesome prizes.

LEGO Technic 2022 | Set Previews! (Pt.2)

2 Replies

It’s been two months since the survivors of the select group of Elven ‘volunteers’ tasked with uncovering the new-for-2022 Technic sets returned from The LEGO Company’s HQ. We were down a couple of Elves of course, but you don’t make an omelette without a few Elves getting eaten by the guard dogs. Or something.

But no! Some eight weeks later three very bedraggled and rather thin Elves have made it back! Which means we have three more brand new Technic sets to share with you – huzzah. So without further preamble, here are the final* three new additions to the 2022 Technic line-up.

42140 App-Controlled Transformation Vehicle

The first is this, the ‘Transformation Vehicle’, which is a title both rather meaningless and wrong, as it doesn’t transform at all. What it does do is flip upside-down, revealing another body underneath, and we’d be lying if we said we weren’t properly excited about this!

Controlled by LEGO’s new Control+ app, 42140 can skid steer after the cat via your mobile phone, and if you accidentally turn it over against a chair leg, you can simply carry on using the blue body rather than the orange one shown here, thus continuing the pet torment.

It doesn’t appear as if 42140 does anything else, but nevertheless it looks great fun, although – full disclosure – we may have been influenced heavily by adverts for the Tyco Rebound as children. And yes, toy commercials really were like that in the mid-’90s.

The 42140 App-Controlled Transformation Vehicle includes 772 pieces, is aimed at aged 9+, and is expected to cost around $130/£115 when it reaches stores in March. Your cat’s definitely going to meet its match.

…

42133 Telehandler

From $130 cat-chasing devices to a 143-piece pocket-money starter set. The 42133 Telehandler is one of the smallest Technic sets in the 2022 range, costing just $13/£9, and – as starter sets go – it’s perfectly good. There’s working steering (although at the front rather than the rear), and a boom that can raise/lower mechanically too, whilst keeping the fork level. A decent entry point for the Technic range.

…

42139 All-Terrain Vehicle

The largest of the final three* sets to join the 2022 Technic line-up is this, the 42139 All-Terrain Vehicle. We’d call this a ‘quad’ in our home nation, which of course it isn’t as it has six wheels. All six are suspended, with a pendular axle on the front and shocks at the back, there’s working steering via the handlebars, a tipping load bed, winch, and a piston engine with a high/low range gearbox.

Which all looks rather good we think, although the stickers are probably unnecessary, plus there’s a chain-saw and a few logs so you can pretend to be a lumberjack.

42139 is aimed at ages 10+, features 764 pieces, and is expected to cost around $80/£65 when it reaches stores. It’s also probably our favourite of the bunch. Unless we want to chase cats.

…

*You may have noticed a few asterisk symbols in this post. That’s because these aren’t quite the final three new Technic sets. There’s one more to come, and it might just carry both ‘McLaren’ and ‘Formula 1’ licensing….

Cozy Coupe

Leave a reply

The Festival of Mundanity Competition is go! We want to see your yawn-inducing vehicles, whilst the guys at BrickNerd are after your tedious objects, and Flickr’s James Bush has managed to build something that qualifies for both!

The Little Tykes ‘Cozy Coupe’ has been staple of family backyard life for decades, and James’ build could only be more hum-drum if he’d pictured it not merrily being driven whilst Dad watches on, but parked beside the bins on a grey Tuesday.

James, get on that for some extra boring points!

You can see this entry, along with James’ equally unexciting Chrysler PT Cruiser, at his photostream, and you can read all about our mundane competition via the link above, including the awesome prizes on offer for the entries that bore us the most!

Alternative Alternative Lifestyle

Leave a reply

It seems the ironic that those extolling the virtues of ‘alternative living’ all do it in exactly the same way. But you don’t have to be an all-natural-vegan-top-knot-wearing-bearded-Volkswagen-bus-driving-douchebag to live the ’60s bus life. You could do it in a Transit. And the Transit is better.

Faster, more comfortable, more reliable, less polluting, quieter, and easier to drive, the Mark 1 Ford Transit makes for a much better bus than the noisy, slow, absurdly expensive default.

This lovely recreation of the first generation Transit comes from Flickr’s OutBricks, who has captured the classic van wonderfully in 7-wide. There’s more to see of the build at Out’s photostream, and you can can explore his alternative to the alternative lifestyle vehicle of choice via the link above.

Blue and Steamy

1 Reply

No, not your Mom’s old movies, but this rather lovely steam tractor by Flickr’s Nikolaus Löwe. Working ‘chain’ steering, a spinning flywheel, and other old-timey steamy things are all included, and there’s more to see at Nikolaus’ photostream. Click the link above for more steamy blue action.

Green Slopes

Leave a reply

Technic creations don’t have to be ginormous piece-hungry behemoths. Sometimes small and simple can be good, as proven here by Zsolt Nagy’s ‘Mini Snow Groomer’. Stick to the green slopes via Eurobricks or Flickr.

Festival of Mundanity | Building Competition!

21 Replies

LEGO contests bring out the best in builders. You see entries with amazing castles, sleek cars, gorgeous flora, and fantastical locales. Well, this contest is different. This contest, from one of the best Lego blogs around (and The Lego Car Blog) is here to celebrate the mundane.

Welcome to the Festival of Mundanity!

You heard right! This time we don’t want to see Bugattis, monster trucks, racing stripes, or models combining all three. We want to see the vehicles that have been too boring to be built out of LEGO until now. We’re looking for the most ordinary, mundane, and uninspiring transportation methods you can think of.

Mundanity at Its Finest

There are two boring categories: objects and vehicles. Here at The Lego Car Blog we’ll be dealing in the latter, whilst our pals at BrickNerd will be looking for tedious objects. And if you’re cleverer than us you might be able to think of way to combine the two!

For vehicles that means 265,000 mile Toyota Corollas. In white. That faded red Rover 45 you saw on holiday in the UK and forgot about immediately. That Chevrolet Express van parked opposite your house for the last few days…

But be careful! There is a difference between ‘mundane’ and ‘bad’. Mundane doesn’t mean rubbish. It means common and uninteresting. So no Reliant Robins, no AMC Gremlins, and no concepts, invented vehicles, or indeed anything that in real-life would make you look twice.

However we do want you to make us look twice when it is built out of LEGO! Mundane doesn’t mean presented poorly;  your creations should still be built well, of course (NPU is still NPU!)

Entries will be judged on mundane concept, build quality, overall presentation, photo composition, and how uninspiring each is.

So get building! You have until the end of March!

Prizes!

In contrast to the boring nature of this contest, we have some flashy prizes for the top three creations in each category. These prizes may change (or be added to) at any time so keep an eye out for periodic updates, and we owe a big thank you to our prize sponsors for donating some really awesome stuff to the prize pool (more on them soon)!

Vehicle Category Prizes

1st Place

  • Golden Nerdly Trophy & BrickNerd Swag Box

  • $50 LEGO Gift Card (or local equivalent) from BrickNerd

  • BuWizz 3.0 or 2.0 Bluetooth Brick

  • iDisplayIt case/stand bundle for LEGO models

  • Game of Bricks lighting kit of your choice

2nd Place

  • $25 LEGO Gift Card (or local equivalent) from BrickNerd

  • Game of Bricks lighting kit of your choice

3rd Place

Object Category Prizes

Check out the equally awesome prizes that can be won in the Object Category at BrickNerd here, and remember that if you can build something boring that spans both categories, you qualify for both too!

Festival of Mundanity Rules

  • All entries must be new creations. Entries may be updated as long as the contest is still open.

  • Entries can be posted either on Flickr or Instagram. A link to your entry should be posted in the Festival of Mundanity Flickr group using the hashtags #FestivalofMundanity, #BrickNerd and #TheLEGOCarBlog. If you do not have a Flickr account, you can use the hashtags and tag BrickNerd on Instagram, who will post a link to your entry for you.

  • Please only add one photo/submission of each entry to the group (extras will be removed), but you may enter as many times as you want with unique creations.

  • Entries must be either a vehicle or an object (settings are welcome too). If you can figure out how to combine the two and still make it uninteresting, you could win prizes in both categories.

  • Digital renders are allowed, though the creation must be structurally sound and all the pieces must be available physically. Custom or modified parts are not allowed this time around though unique prints/stickers are acceptable.

  • These rules or the prizes may be modified at any point.

  • The contest ends on March 31st, 2021 at 11:59 pm PT (7:59 am GMT on March 31st for the Europeans). Winners will be announced a few weeks after.

  • The contest will be judged by both BrickNerd and The Lego Car Blog contributors who will evaluate entries based on mundanity concept, quality, presentation, composition, and how uninspiring the build is.

Get Building, Be Boring, and Good Luck!