Star Wars M&M Mosaic

A few weeks back, I was trawling through Rebrickable, checking which Star Wars sets I hadn't build up and I came across two promo sets that I'd not found before.  The first was the "Han Solo on his Tauntaun" that I built up a week or so back and documented here.  The other was the altogether more crazy Star Wars M&M promo mosaic (SWMP) which rocks in 5462 pieces, according to Rebrickable.  

It's debatable whether this really a released set, as only 400 were made that they were never available to the general public.  Apparently, it was a Walmart promotion event, held in different locations across the US and you could build these over 48 hours.  

The set is massive - it covers 6 48x48 base plates so is around 76x115cm (2.5x3.75ft for those who work in imperial).  However, the whole thing distils to just 4 plate sizes (1x1, 1x2, 1x4 and 2x4), plus 169 2x2 black tiles.  And there are only 9 colours too.  Before you can start building, though, you've got to construct a mounting for it - I used MDF and some stiffeners but I have to say that I wish I'd found something a bit more sturdy in B&Q - I was left with something that was a bit springy and I ended up putting dinner place mats underneath while I was building.  You also need to attach the baseplates and the only solution I could think of was double-sided sticky tape.  It's going to be messy when I finally take that off!  One other bit of DIY is that you need to create a sticker for the centre top - I cheated and have just printed it off on paper and used bluetack to stick it down; however, I don't think anyone would ever notice from more than a couple of feet away.

If you were lucky enough to build this back in 2005, you got full size instructions, but no trace of these has ever made it to the internet.  So, I tracked down the various photos I could find on the internet, plus this really useful video on Youtube to build my own instructions from.  It took me a week with LeoCAD to build these, painstakingly switching between windows, to add the 4431 plates to the design.  I'll be honest - I've never really used one of these CAD packages before so I was learning how to drive it as I went.  I'm glad that I was working with a very limited palatte of bricks! The instructions will appear on Rebrickable soon, I hope, at which point, I'll add a link to them from here.  

The first observation was that the number of parts listed on Rebrickable was way over what you need for some of the parts.  However, in a few cases, my design leaves you a bit short.  In aggregate, though, you only need 4431 pieces to do my version, which is significantly less than you need according to Rebrickable.  It amounts to a reasonably significant saving in terms of cost of build! 

Having made the instructions, my Easter Sunday project was to start building.  The Youtube guy said it took him two days so I was expecting to spill over into Monday.  However, I think having my computer set up next to me helped massively.  Plus I think I'm a pretty quick builder.  All told, it took me something around 6 hours to complete so that's left me some time for the blog and to upload to Rebrickable before I get on with something else for the evening.  

Here is a photo of the final thing:

I've also done a pair of timelapses, one for each half:

So, was it worth it?  In my effort to be completionist about the Lego Star Wars sets, it was necessary and it's quite a striking picture, even if you take into account the cheesy Darth M&M.  I've also never made up a mosaic (I've got the Sith pointilism mosaic on the shelf but will be leaving that for a while now) and it was quite relaxing just plugging away at plates.  So, my answer would be yes, but only if you're dead keen in the first place. 

And my thumb is really quite sore from pressing down on stud after stud!