Author Archives: Dr Asp Menace

Heavy Highway Hauler

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Hauler

This smooth looking rig was built by drdesignz on MOCpages. Its builder cites the 7347 “Highway Pickup” as an influence on his design, though the lowboy trailer is rather more stylish than the back of the Creator set. On top of looking good, the model has plenty of playable functions, which always excites the Elves. The trailer detaches, the digger is playable and the truck steers. As its builder notes, the steering works in the same way as the Model Team 5580 “Highway Rig”. The Elves were also excited because this MOC reminded them of when they helped us build the 31005 “Construction Hauler”, plus it features another digger with which they can smush their colleagues.

You can see more of the truck, trailer and digger by clicking the link to MOCpages or Cuusoo.

Hauler digger

Featured Blog – Lego’s Soul

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LS Cranes

One of our regular readers is tbzz2013, who often leaves comments on our posts. When we clicked on his Gravatar Profile, it turned out that he writes a blog too. Lego’s Soul is written in Polish but we know that The Lego Car Blog has a lot of Polish readers and we think that they will enjoy it. Unfortunately we’re a pretty monoglot lot at TLCB Towers. At the last survey we could order beer in 37 different languages but that’s about it. We don’t actually speak Elvish, as shouting at the Elves (plus a mixture of the airhorn and Smarties) generally gets the required results.

Regardless of what language you speak, Lego’s Soul is packed with photos of Lego sets from years gone by, with a good mix of Space, Town and Technic from the eighties and nineties in particular. We particularly enjoyed this article on Lego Town cranes, which has some great photos and interesting critiques (thank you Bing Translate!). The photos of the 6524 “Blizzard Blazer” from 1988 in real snow looked excellent too. It’s well worth visiting Lego’s Soul to enjoy the nostalgia of sets from your childhood or if you’re younger, perhaps to discover some new ideas.

LS Snowplough

Virtual VTOL

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Harrier LDD

It’s unusual for us to feature MOCs that aren’t built in real bricks on The Lego Car Blog. The Elves prefer something that can be disassembled and used as weapons for beating up their annoying colleagues, something that they can climb all over and into as well. It was with great satisfaction that we heard a “Thump!” as the first Elf who tried to leap into the cockpit of this US Marines AV-8B, fell through the digital bricks and landed on the floor. The we had to get out the airhorn and blast away his co-workers as they tried to pile on top to smush him even further into the carpet.

Justin Davies has an impressive catalogue of LDD builds, many rendered to a very high standard, both on Flickr and MOCpages. His latest build is a Harrier II, very accurately shaped and complete with the working functions you’d expect such as undercarriage, control surfaces, vectored thrust nozzles etc. It’s worthwhile visiting Justin’s galleries to see the view of the underside of this aircraft which shows how he used different plates to achieve an accurate wing planform. The rear of the fuselage has also been very neatly, smoothly and accurately shaped, including the vertical stabiliser.

This Harrier also features a load-out of Sidewinders, rocket pods, LGBs and the cannon pods which form an essential part of the aircraft’s aerodynamics. If Justin’s previous builds are anything to judge by, we can expect to see further versions of this aircraft with a variety of weapons and colour schemes. Justin has also started to put his builds into scenes. The picture below shows an F-4J Phantom II of VF-96 “Fighting Falcons”, hunting for MiGs over Vietnam in May 1972. “Showtime 100” was flown by Cunningham and Driscoll, the first American aces of the war and the first aces to have achieved their five kills using only missiles. Although the lettering on the MOC has been added afterwards, it does feature a nicely brick-built squadron badge on its tail. You can see more of Justin’s aircraft by following these links to Flickr or to MOCpages.

Phantom LDD

Note: As these are virtual creations, the Elves who found them were rewarded with virtual Smarties, which is another reason why the Elves prefer MOCs to be in solid bricks.

Nimrod

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Hyper hooter

In contrast to the bright and sponsor covered shapes of our recent posts is this Blactron build from Pico van Grootveld, with its subtle yellow cheat lines. Pico has featured on the blog before, in our post on this year’s Classic Space Pocket Money Contest. The “Hunter” looks absolutely perfect for blasting across the galaxy and doing whatever evil it is that Blacktron get up to. The ship is packed with play features and has some nice greebling underneath and at the back. It also features windscreen wipers for flying through dense planetary atmospheres or wiping away the blood of your defeated opponents. You can take see more details by following the link to MOCpages or to Flickr.

Btron Hunter

FebRovery’s Finishing Flourish

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CS Landrover

Apologies for the unimaginative title but we’ve been a bit pre-occupied dealing with a combined Elf and Mini-Fig uprising here at TLCB Towers. Now the that airhorn is recharged, we’ve time to bring you this rather charming creation from Miro Dudas, on Flickr. Possibly the most normal looking car in the FebRovery group, the Lunar Rover 90 is standard Land Rover, which has been modified for use in space. Apparently this was done to save money on developing a new moon buggy. You can see the complete range of weird and wonderful vehicles which were created last month by following this link to the FebRovery Group.

Little Big Crane

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Micro-Crane

After a pair of posts featuring giant yellow machines, today we’re featuring something a bit smaller. This crane is ideally sized for removing errant Elves from our desks at The Lego Car Blog. Sylvain Ballivet’s micro-build is part of a bigger, ongoing sci-fi project. You can see more photos of the LTN-201 Mobile Crane and Sylvain’s other micro-vehicles by clicking this link to MOCpages.

Super Sensor

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AMD01

FebRovery continues apace, over on Flickr and with it has come this superb Neo-Classic Space build from Jon Blackford. Jon has updated the 6841 Mineral Detector from 1980 to include bigger sensors, two closed cockpits and that essential on an airless moon: a rear spoiler. All of this has upset the normally smiling driver of the older model, as you can see below. There are more photos on Jon’s Flickr and there are photos of the interiors of the cockpits on MOCpages.

AMD02

Churn-O-Matic

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12398397974_bdf181a1ba

It’s FebRovery again! For the third year running builders on Flickr have been spending the dark February nights coming up with all sorts of weird and wonderful space rovers. As well as building the models, part of the fun seems to be in writing the stories about the function of the vehicles. The “Churn-O-Matic” has some very unusual “wheels”. According to its creator, halfbeak, these enable it to travel the surface of a planet which is basically covered in custard. You can see more FebRovery fun by clicking this link to the group.

Driving on Egg Shells

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F@bz 01

F@bz has attracted the attention of the Elves on previous occasions for his unusually shaped spacecraft but his latest creation is a car. Being a Citroen and therefore a French car, it has to have some novel feature designed into it such as the Renault 4’s gear stick or changing a wheel on a Citroen DS. This futuristic build has blue wheels, which light up, perfect for night-time blasting along those dark, empty autoroutes. They are made from the alien eggs that can be found in the latest Galaxy Squad sets. You can see more of this car by following this link.

F@bz 02

Classic Space Pocket Money Contest – 2014

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03-Teq

The tiny minds of the Elves are often attracted to tiny, brightly coloured things.  They also like the odd bit of sci-fi, especially buggies and spaceships and robots.  It’s almost as though David & David, the hosts of the Classic Space Pocket Money Contest II, created their competition with our workers in mind.  If they were ever given any pocket money (Pay the little swabs? Never!) then the builds in this contest are exactly the sort of thing that the Elves would spend I their loot on.

04-Stuart

The contest took Lego back to its roots, with builders limited to 100 parts.  Having built a hopefully winning MOC, builders then had to disassemble it and come up with two other MOCs, using just the original pieces.  We seem to have forgotten that Lego used to actually encourage kids to take the model on the box-top apart and build something new, rather than having a TIE fighter sitting on the shelf, gathering dust.

02-Digger

This years contest set the competitors the additional challenge of inventing their own Classic Space style theme.  It lead to some strange colour combinations and surreal back stories involving unobtanium and cheese mining.  Andy L’s winning “Space Fire Response Unit” are, naturally, equipped to fight fires in the vacuum of space.  Who cares about the science: just revel in the 1980s retro looks by clicking this link to the contest’s home on MOCpages.

01-Fire

Note:  NEVER give a TLCB Elf any money.  They WILL eat it and those big £2 coins get horribly wedged in their tiny tummies.

7345 Transport Chopper Review

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7345-Box

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?

7345-Helicopter

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

Park ’em at Arkham

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Last Man

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.

DK Batmobile

The Transporter

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The Transporter

The Elves often return from the weird world of Karf Oohlu’s photostream with smiles on their faces and giggling tales of monsters on the toilet and aliens doing the hoovering. At other times they return scared and gibbering on about “chitterlings”, “crowks”, mad scientists and black tentacles. Fortunately, our feeble-minded workers soon forget their worries after a two-hour session of watching Transformers videos.

Today they have returned happy, with a creation which has earned them three blue Smarties. “The Transporter” is a tracked robot, whose belly contains three of the cutest tanks that we’ve seen. The “Battletykes” have been cleverly built with great economy of parts and descend from the Transporter via a nicely designed ramp. Click this link to Flickr to view the Transporter and more of Karf Oohlu’s strange creations.

Monday’s Ma.Ktober Maschinen

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Ferkel MaK

Here at TLCB Towers we have a similar attitude to both the Elves and Ma.Ktober.  We don’t understand how they work but we like the results.  An important part of the Maschinen Krieger style is smooth, rounded armour, which can be very difficult to make from Lego bricks. Tim Zarki has done a super job of the Ferkel spacecraft, using a variety of curved components.  The sphere at the front of the ship is a particularly interesting bit of building technique and the ship is accompanied by a neat spaceborne SAFS.  You can navigate to Tim’s photos Flickr and his blog by clicking this link.

Tiny Trio

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3-Monster-Trucks

Whilst they do like fully functioning Technic supercars, big brick-built aircraft and especially working Transformers, our Elves’ tiny minds are also attracted to skillfully crafted small builds. Swedish builder LegoJalex has used a handful of bricks to produce three super little trucks. The Elves’ favourite is the red one, as they can squash nearly 4½ Elves into the back of it. You can count just how many bricks LegoJalex has used by clicking this link to Flickr.

If you’re a builder who doesn’t own thousands of bricks, check out our Creation Criteria and then fire up your imagination. You never know, the Elves might pay you visit.