The dark side of the brick

Many years ago, I did an engineering undergraduate degree and my closest contemporary through all the different options was Matt.  We share a love of science fiction and, as adults, a rediscovered passion for Lego.  He claims that he's trying to educate his daughters but I doubt that they share his passion for the biggest and most complex technic sets.  I pretend no such excuses and freely admit that this is my own mid-life crisis aversion tactic. A while back, Matt whatsapped me a photo of the lime green Lambo Sian ( 42115 ) and told me that it was by far the better build when compared to the Chiron.  I'm somewhat behind the times on these sets - I typically wait until I can get a deal which is at least 35% off but eventually, I got the Sian back before Christmas.  It was my plan to make it over the Christmas vacation but in the end we did much less travelling than expected and once I was home, I settled into deconstruction.  A long weekend away in late Ja...

Way before the buildable figures, which I have very mixed feelings about, came the technic Star Wars figures.  These were released between 2000 and 2002 and I count 9 of them.  The buildable figures sometimes have some arm articulation (turn a cog on the back and the arm moves) but that is strictly it in terms of cleverness.  In contrast, the technic figures almost all do a range of really clever things via internal mechanisms. They also have a range of rare and unique part/colour combinations which is useful to have in the back pocket. I've purchased them all over the years and as part of the Grand Deconstruct, am now taking them apart.  I did the C-3PO, R2-D2 and Jango Fett straight off and forgot to take photos.  However, a few thoughts are: The 3PO model ( 8007 ) looks really good with all the metallic gold parts and stickers.  To date, I believe that this remains the only non-minifig version of C-3PO ever released.  The "clever thing" that this mo...

It's been a while since I blogged anything here - mainly because I was away for 3 of the last 4 weeks but also because once the Grand Work was done, I've spent time doing bits and pieces of Lego tidying and deconstruction.  Not very exciting!   Yesterday, on my return from travels, I did put in my order to Lego for the summer release sets so will be blogging some more when they arrive and I get around to building them. Especially looking forward to the UCS gunship. The next thing on the list, though, is the grand deconstruct.  I have something like 300,000+ bricks built up in sets and they all need to be put away, sorted into the little ziplock bags and then into my storage system.  I reckon that's going to take me the best part of a year - probably around 1000 bricks a day is manageable.  I'll blog about some of the sets that I built early as I go... The first is the 2003 Hailfire Droid ( 4481 ) which was, I think, the last of the "technic" Star Wars sets....