Tag Archives: Bonfire Night

We’re 10 Today!!*

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‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November’. Or so the nursery rhyme popular in TLCB’s home nation goes. Well we forgot.

Not Bonfire Night, which is impossible to forget what with all the fireworks and whatnot, but our own birthday. Still, an effigy of the Brothers Brick lemur won’t set fire to itself.

So whilst we did enjoy the Bonfire Night festivities, we completely missed the ten year anniversary of our own creation. However we’ve remembered now, thus ten years (and eleven days…) later, we’re quietly marking the occasion with a Duplo No.10 brick stolen from Google images.

Of course a lot has happened in the last decade, much of which we’d like to add to the list of things we’ve forgotten, but miraculously this dingy back-alley of the internet has survived, with over seven million of you joining us since our first post back in November of 2011.

Currently around a million of you end up here at The Lego Car Blog each year (many probably by accident), whilst our most popular pages (outside of the Home Page) continue to be the Review Library (which is now pretty huge**), The Rise and Fall of MOCpages, and the Directory.

Over the last decade we’ve also interviewed many of the Lego Community’s very best vehicle builders, including boat-builders, truck-makers, Technic-masters, and creators of things altogether sillier, held three competitions, annoyed ‘patriots’ of various nations (mostly America though), and – most importantly – showcased thousands of the best Lego creations on the web.

So as we continue into double figures, all that’s left to say is a massive thank you if you’re reading these clumsily written words. Without you this site would not exist, and nor would the $thousands raised in advertising revenue for good causes, only some of which has been spent on the executive washroom and sauna.

If you’re new here and you’d like to take a look around, some good places to start can be found below;

  • Review Library: Over one hundred reviews of LEGO sets, books and third-party products.
  • Directory: The place to find links to other (usually much better) LEGO-related websites.
  • Interviews: A TLCB Elf armed with a sharpened pencil can get even the most famous builders to talk…
  • Feedback and Submission Suggestions: Let us know what you think. No, really.

Until next time, thank you for visiting us.

TLCB Team

*Almost
**Just like your Mom

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November…

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Lego Royal Gold State Coach

…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’).

Lego Royal Coach

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.

Lego Royal Minifigures