Tag Archives: Competition

Festival of Mundanity | The Winners!

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It’s Winners time in BrickNerd and TLCB’s Festival of Mundanity!

Over the past two months we’ve been looking for the delightfully dull, brilliantly bland and monumentally mundane; no supercars, monster trucks or powerboats this time!

Across both the Object and Vehicle categories almost one hundred entries were submitted, with BrickNerd looking after your boring Objects and The Lego Car Blog your soporific vehicles.

You can check out the fantastic winning entries within the Object category via BrickNerd’s Winners Announcement, whilst here at TLCB we’re delighted to announce the Vehicle category winners!

Four key criteria were considered by the judges:

  1. Mundanity – Does the MOC represent something you wouldn’t really think about in real life?

  2. Concept – Does the topic matter show creativity in its idea and overall execution?

  3. Quality – Is the MOC built well, feature any NPU (nice parts usage), and make you look twice?

  4. Presentation – Is the MOC photographed/presented and composed in a way that compliments the subject matter?

Honourable Mentions

It was really close, with vehicles or all types, sizes and functionality entered. Three entries scoop the prizes, but lots caught our eye, so before we move on to the winners here are few honourable mentions!

Caleb Flutur‘s ‘3x Upscale 6654’ recreated both a mundane vehicle and object in one go, whilst iBrickedItUp spanned both categories too with his Cozy Coupe parked by the bins on a grey Tuesday, which came seriously close to a prize spot! IBrickedItUp also entered a slew of boring vehicles, with the ‘Hurtz’ Rental car lot making us chuckle the most. Thomas Gion captured the height of dreary ’90s econo-SUVs, whilst Zsolt Nagy and Saberwing007 impressed with excellent technical functionality packaged with vehicles of utmost tedium.

There are plenty of other entries that scored highly too; from lawn-mowers to removal vans we can’t mention them all, but a big boring thank you to everyone who entered!

Winners!

1st Place | Toyota Corolla Sedan (1saac W.)

Scoring highly in every category, it’s the most default, boring, and unimaginative vehicle in existence, looking for a parking spot and finding only a loading zone. 1saac W. is the, um… lucky owner of a mid-’00s Toyota Corolla Sedan in real life, and has captured one of life’s most mundane tasks in brick-form. Keep looking 1ssac, there’ll be a space around the corner. Probably.

1saac W. wins a Golden Nerdly Trophy & BrickNerd Swag Box, a $50 LEGO Gift Card (or local equivalent) from BrickNerd, an awesome BuWizz 3.0 or 2.0 Bluetooth Brick, an iDisplayIt case/stand bundle for LEGO models, and a Game of Bricks lighting kit of their choice!

2nd Place | Hyundai Venue (Tim Inman)

In second place is what will undoubtedly overtake the Corolla Sedan as the most dreary vehicle on the roads; the Korean crossover. Bought to give an impression of adventure and dynamism, crossover SUVs instead portray nothing more than an imagination deficit created by the force-feeding of endless marketing drivel. Tim Inman‘s Model Team Hyundai Venue captures the segment brilliantly, being about as interesting as your Aunt’s Facebook feed. We’re bored just thinking about it.

Tim Inman wins a $25 LEGO Gift Card (or local equivalent) from BrickNerd, and a Game of Bricks lighting kit of their choice!

3rd Place | Er… Shopping Cart (Nikolaus Lowe)

Yes it is a vehicle. We’ve all driven one, they’re all crap, and if you do try to extract fun from one it immediately veers towards the watermelons and your parents / security / other shoppers shout at you. There is nothing more disappointing than a shopping trolley. They even make you put a coin in to gain access to the trundling misery. Nikolaus Lowe takes third spot (and very nearly earned a podium over at BrickNerd too) with his inspired homage to modern-day mundanity.

Nikolaus Lowe wins a Game of Bricks lighting kit of their choice!

And so concludes The Festival of Mundanity. Thank you to our amazing prize sponsors, BrickNerd for choosing to partner with us idiots here at TLCB, and to all of you who participated! Winners; we’ll be in touch via your online channels to discuss your prizes!

Conclusion of Mundanity

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Judging the near one-hundred entries submitted to BrickNerd and TLCB’s Festival of Mundanity is underway, but before we reveal the winners there’s time for a few entries that snuck in before the deadline.

First up, and managing to span both the ‘Object’ and ‘Vehicle’ categories, is Caleb Flutur‘s ‘3x Upscale 6654’. “A mundane set, in a mundane theme, from a mundane year” to quote Caleb, his digital super-sized 6654 doesn’t just inflate the scale of the model, but each individual brick used in its creation.

A monumentally clever undertaking, this competition entry is both appropriately mundane and fascinating in its construction. With Caleb vowing to build his design in real super-sized bricks soon, we’ve never been so intrigued by something so dull. Big points.

Equally clever yet unexciting is Sberwing007’s Festival of Mundanity entry, that most forgotten of vehicles; the scissor-lift.

Not just a dull machine, but a dull machine designed to enable dull tasks, Saberwing’s Technic scissor lift captures the dreariness of the real thing beautifully, including its operation, with working tight-radius steering, an extending platform, and – of course – a linear actuator operated lifting mechanism.

There’s more to see of Saberwing007’s scissor lift at both Flickr and the Eurobricks discussion forum, where further details and images of the creation’s really rather clever mechanisms can also be found.

Click the links above to complete such boring tasks as changing a lightbulb, de-leafing the gutter, and removing that dead pigeon from the air-conditioning duct.

Before we sign-off our final Festival of Mundanity post prior to the Winner’s Announcement (and a review of the awesome BuWizz 3.0 Pro prize on offer), here’s a secret bonus link to an entry which recreated the most boring vehicle of all time. Every single one of us will have ridden in this vehicle, multiple times, and yet we’ve never once thought about it. Maximum mundane points!

The Festival of Mundanity is Closed!

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Like all the best mundane things, like heading to the shop for milk and finding it shut, BrickNerd and TLCB’s Festival of Mundanity is now closed!

Around one hundred creations have been entered across the two categories (Objects and Vehicles, with a few cunningly spanning both!), many of which can be viewed at the Flickr Group of Mundanity here.

We’ll be rounding up some of the recent vehicular entries shortly, before judging begins (and some really rather excellent prizes are handed out).

Until then, thank you to each and every brilliantly boring, delightfully dull, and magnificently mundane entry, and best of luck!

One Week of Mundanity!

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There’s just one week to go in BrickNerd and TLCB’s Festival of Mundanity!

We’re looking for your builds of boring vehicles. No Lamborghinis, Ferraris or Porsches here! There have been over forty competition entries so far, including a white Toyota Corolla, a Geo Tracker, a Hertz rental car lot, and a (rather inspired) shopping trolley.

There are some awesome prizes on offer for the winners including Game of Bricks lighting kits, iDisplayIt display stands, and a BuWizz Pro programmable bluetooth control!

To be in with a chance of scooping the swag get your mundane entry uploaded before the end of March 2022!

Maximum Mundanity

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We’re half-way through the Festival of Mundanity, in which we’re looking for the most boring vehicles built from brick!

There are some awesome prizes on offer including the ace BuWizz 3.0 Pro, a package of iDisplayit stands for LEGO sets, and any Game of Bricks lighting kit!

Hoping to score said loot, two entrants previously featured here have recently maximised the mundanity of their creations to increase their scores, after we said “this could only be more boring if…”.

That ‘if’ for 1saac W., who had built the default for motoring mundanity (and his own car), involved recreating the tedium of interpreting parking restrictions. In a white Toyota Corolla. Now that really is mundane.

Another builder on the hunt for more mundane points is iBrickedItUp, whose Cozy Coupe manages to span both our Vehicular category and our partner BrickNerd‘s Object category. It was pictured in a rather delightful garden scene, but outside, in the rain, next to the bins… that’s a whole heap more mundane.

IBrickedItUp has also recreated the sea of dull that is a rental car lot, with a choice of ‘white, off-white, pale-beige‘, BHBricks has built a Scion xB – a car that tried so hard not to be mundane it’s the very thing it became – and the tedium of loading a box truck, whilst Sergio Batista has built the Fiat Multipla, which is a quandary for us, as it wasn’t mundane at all, but its purpose absolutely was.

There’s still half the competition to go, and we’d love to see your boring vehicles, built in any scale, whether Town, Creator, Technic or anything in-between. BrickNerd are after your mundane objects; a few of the fantastic entries received so far are pictured above!

You can see many of the entries to date in the contest Flickr group, and we’ll end this competition update with an extra link to surely the most mundane object in the history of mankind… Bravo Tim Inman, bravo.

Check out the full Festival of Mundanity Competition details here.

Alright M8

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This rather excellent Technic Supercar is a BMW M8 Competition, BMW’s 600bhp, twin-turbo V8, all-wheel-drive flagship.

Constructed by IA creations, this recreation of BMW’s super coupe includes a wealth of Technic functionality, with both traditional mechanical ‘supercar’ elements and motorised remote control.

A working V8 engine, all-wheel-drive, steering, and double-wishbone suspension take care of the former, whilst a BuWizz bluetooth battery powers twin drive motors, servo steering, and three sets of LEDs for the head and tail lights, enabling programmable bluetooth remote control.

It’s a fantastically well engineered creation and one that you can build for yourself too, as IA has made instructions available. Head to the Eurobricks forum for full details, plus you can find the complete image gallery of IA BMW M8 Competition on Bricksafe.

Finally, you can win an awesome BuWizz 3.0 Pro like the one powering IA’s magnificent M8 by entering TLCB and BrickNerd’s Festival of Mundanity competition! This M8 Competition is definitely much too interesting of course, but a grey 320d… that could do very well indeed!

Prizes of Mundanity!

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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!

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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

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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

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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

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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!

The Weekly Shop

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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.

Cozy Coupe

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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!

Festival of Mundanity | Building Competition!

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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!

Something Boring is Coming…

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Huh? A building contest celebrating the unexceptional? A collaboration between one of the best Lego blogs around and, er… this smoking hole in the ground. Stay tuned for more imminent mundanity! Let’s start 2022 with a yawn.

What a Load…

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Loading. Reloading. Unloading. All the loadings are excellent. At least according to mahjqa and his co-conspirators.

This is mahjqa’s lovely Model Team / Technic truck, and it is – as you’d expect from a TLCB Master MOCer and motion-making extraordinaire – fully remote controlled, right down to the ‘fifth wheel’ trailer hitch.

Of course mahjqa didn’t stop there though, devising a fiendishly tricky competition in which Lego trucks such as this one, plus trailers and ingenious little RC forklifts all operate to, well… move stuff about rather pointlessly.

In the words of the creator, it’s “ten minutes of bad manoeuvring, dropped cargo, and unprofessional commentary”, which definitely sounds like our kind of contest film.

Take a look via the video below, and you can see more of mahjqa’s entry at his Flickr album and at the Eurobricks discussion forum via these links.

YouTube Video

Build & Capture Photo Contest

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Regular readers of this seedy alleyway at the edge of the internet will know that we (well, our Elves) source the Lego creations showcased here from all over the internet.

The most common source however, is Flickr, thanks to a large Lego Community, excellent groups, chats, and free-to-view imagery that doesn’t require the need to set up an account (take note Instagram).

Flickr have recognised the vibrancy of this sizeable community within their users via their new photography competition, the Flickr x LEGO Build & Capture Contest.

Flickr are looking for images of your builds (or even just mini-figures) displayed in an ‘artsy, fun, or fantastic way’ and here are some great LEGO prizes on offer for the winners.

You can check out the rules, entries, and submit your own photos via the Flickr x LEGO group here, and we hope to see a vehicle creation amongst the winners!

Three Speed

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Flickr’s ace ‘Lego Speeder Bikes’ group doesn’t include many cars. Or any at all in fact, being a) a group for speeder bikes, and b) having a far greater discipline in sticking to the title than we do.

Still, our tangental approach to blogging cars does means that ‘Lego Speeder Bikes’ current ‘Let’s Get Tropical’ building contest is appearing here, with three excellent speeder bikes to kick off the competition!

First up (above) is Julius Kanand‘s ‘Checkpoint 13’, in which a delightfully funky speeder navigates a suitably tropical beach-based course.

Today’s second Speeder Bike build comes from one of the contest judges Dan Ko, so it’s not technically an entry, but it does epitomise the 2021 competition beautifully, being a simple brick-built bike of just a handful of pieces, the likes of which anyone with a few LEGO bricks can create at home.

The final of today’s three speeder bike creations continues the simplicity, with aide k utilising the stickers from an official LEGO set, some trans-blue tiles, and a few red and white bricks to create the superbly dynamic scene above.

There are loads more brilliant speeder bikes to see at the ‘Lego Speeder Bikes’ group via the link above, and if you’d like to check out the current ‘Let’s Get Tropical’ competition and maybe enter a bike yourself you can find full contest details by clicking these words. There are even prizes on offer provided by a proper Lego blog that understands sci-fi and everything!

TLCB Lock-Down B-Model Competition | Winners Announcement!

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Winners Announcement!

After two months of brilliant B-Model building, forty of your amazing alternates have made the competition shortlist and appeared here at The Lego Car Blog!

Many entrants also saw their work featured here for the first time too, so an extra congratulations to those of you who debuted at TLCB with your contest entry. Our Elves now know who you are (which is far less scary than it sounds), and will be watching your builds with interest!

Judging the forty creations that made the shortlist was incredibly tough, with some genuinely stunning models created only from the parts found within an official LEGO set. Ford Mustangs were turned into AC Cobras and Citroen DS19s, LMP1 racers into Formula 1 cars and Dodge Chargers into LMP1 racers, there were trucks of all kinds; including tow trucks, roll-off trucks, hook-lift trucks, and even Bugatti trucks, Fiat 500’s became aircraft, and so much more besides.

Well done to all our shortlisted entrants, we hope you had fun building your B-Models, and we may be back with another competition at some point with more chances to win some awesome loot!

 

Winner: SBrick Pro Pack; James Tillson (Ferrari Enzo)

Includes SBrick Plus, Wire, 2x Lights, Servo, L-motor, Battery Pack, & colourful cases

Runner-up: SBrick Starter Pack; mpj (JCB Telehandler)

Includes SBrick Plus, Wire, & colourful cases

There were no less than six creations that fought it out at the top, with ridiculously close scores making for ‘heated considerations’ here at TLCB Towers.

Well done to our Winner and Runner-Up, we’ll be in touch soon to obtain your delivery details which will passed to our wonderful competition sponsor SBrick, and if you’d like to learn more about the 5-star rated prize bundle that our winners have won take a look at our review of the SBrick programmable bluetooth brick by clicking here – it’s one of the coolest things ever to enter the Lego-building arena.

Thank you to all our entrants, and stay safe if lock-down continues where you are.

TLCB Team