LEGOLAND California Photos by Ricky Romero

Going back to my old habit of occasionally featuring photo sets from LEGOLAND parks, today I'm featuring this set of photos taken by Ricky Romero. The photos are meaningful in all the ways I like in LEGOLAND photos - they are excellent photos and they show some new and/or seasonal models in one of the parks. In this case, you can spot a few Christmas and winter themed designs. Again, the set I'm featuring today is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickyromero/sets/72157623147861715/

Modulex Christmas Trees

Name of Model: Seasonal greetings

Created by: maxx361

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40863406@N05/4191992583/

Details: Modulex bricks are really little bricks LEGO manufactured for architects. They're now something of a rare collectors item - LEGO long ago outsourced their production, and has since given up on the Modulex brand entirely. They also come in strange colors that don't match normal LEGO colors. Another interesting feature is that they're reasonably scaled to be bricks that minifigures can build with. Oh, and did I mention that they make nice Christmas trees? The same builder has also built a larger tree and provided instructions on how to make this simple tree design.

Santa at his Workshop

Name of Model: Oh no, they be stealing me sleigh!

Created by: I Scream Clone

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28773832@N08/tags/workshop/

Details: While the sleigh isn't visible in this model (based on the title, I think we're supposed to assume it has been stolen), this is an interesting new twist on the traditional "Santa's workshop" theme. The "elves" here are a fairly clever mix of parts - those torsos are from 1980's Forestman sets, the legs have only started showing up in sets these past few years, and the little hats are from the 2009 Venice Canal Chase kit (which, by the way, appears to be on a promotional offer at Amazon at the moment - that set has a generous amount of parts for $40, so at $34 it's a pretty great deal). While the elves and gifts make the scene, the interior lighting is what makes this piece a winner - check out the photos of this workshop in the dark. Another detail with looking out for is the door behind the elves - notice how it has been built out of bricks. That rounded section at the top is actually made from this curved arch brick, which has some space underneath. The space was filled with plates and tiles to get this effect - which is a tight enough fit to hold the other plates and tiles in straight. EDIT 9:17 PM: Word from the builder is that the door technique was borrowed from a similar door built by Noddy.

Modular-Style Christmas House

Name of Model: Lego Christmas House

Created by: zaberca

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15902478@N02/tags/christmas/

Details: I like to focus on some pretty clever techniques here, but sometimes you can build a very detailed and pleasing little model without getting too fancy. This one still features some nice tricks ("headlight" bricks to use tiles as a realistic brick texture, pairs of round 1x1 plates stuck with string in the middle to make lights, rows of parts used to get architectural details, wheel well elements as window arches, etc.) but is largely built with standard bricks, standing up straight in a simple and elegant pattern. The scale is perfect, too - the house is the right dimensions to fit with "modular buildings" like Cafe Corner and Green Grocer, but the dark red section only goes up to a more classic town height of 7 bricks tall. The remaining three bricks' height before the roofline is done with various architectural details.

This is Thursday's model of the day

Micro Gingerbread House

Name of Model: Micro Gingerbread House

Created by: Mariann Asanuma

Found at: http://www.brickjournal.com/view/article/8/ and http://modelbuildingsecrets.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/micro-gingerbread-house/

Details: Here's another seasonal gift of building instructions - a gingerbread house (presented by BrickJournal magazine). Designed by former LEGOLAND Master Builder Mariann Asanuma, this is another masterpiece - and (assuming you can locate the parts in your own collection - a challenge, but in this case it is actually possible that a fairly small collection could contain all the right parts) you can even build your own! Alternatively, you could build your own similar house (a worthwhile challenge that has already been attempted by at least one builder). Since I live in the US and we have insane consumer protection laws, I'm pretty sure I'm required by law to remind you not to eat any LEGO parts used for building gingerbread houses (please tell me you already knew not to eat plastic parts before the goofy law went into place to remind you about that...please!)

This is Friday's model of the day - and yes, we intend to catch up for Wednesday and Thursday yet...

Seasonal Model Instructions

Recently, the LEGO company posted instructions for a series of holiday models on their website. There's a good variety of models - life-size sculptures, minifig-scale characters, and even a few minifig-scale ideas. You can find those instructions (PDF format only, sorry) at http://shop.lego.com/HolidayShop/festivefun.aspx

Turkey

Name of Model: HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Created by: JON

Found at: http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/168346

Details: Today is Thanksgiving day in the United States. Lacking the strong symbolism of other civic and cultural American holidays, Thanksgiving often gets ignored by LEGO builders. To make matters worse, the official kits that LEGO has made to commemorate Thanksgiving have often included exclusive parts - it's not like Christmas or Halloween, where you can try building things from the parts in your collection or easily buy the parts you need to build the official kits that look like something seasonally appropriate. This year, we're all thankful for the newly-rereleased minifig-scale whole turkey (picture at right), but even that was a rare part not so long ago. Of course, that whole turkey is clearly one that is largely cooked. What if you're looking for a live minifig-scale turkey for your farm or holiday festivities? Well, today's featured model has a solution. While I suspect that a better beak solution (perhaps involving a cheese slope?) could be discovered in the future, this one looks pretty nice for now - assuming you have that back panel that represents plumage here. Since that panel seems to have been designed for use with thick "hologram" stickers, I suspect many of us don't have many plain ones in our collections. It's also hard not to think of good ways to make custom stickers to "ruin" another panel like that by making fancy turkeys for minifigs.

All Souls' Day

Name of Model: grave

Created by: Piglet

Found at: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=407894

Details: All Souls' Day is today, November 2nd. All Souls' Day is not to be confused with All Saints Day (which is really on November 1st) or Halloween (October 31st). In line with the Polish tradition of Zaduszki, "candles" have been placed on this gravestone in prayer for the deceased. The candles here are actually very well placed Power Functions lights - a pretty clever technique that scales very well in this model. Although I'm hesitant to distract from the sombre tone of this model, I'm also impressed by how the tree and plants turned out - it's not a particularly difficult technique to stack things in this way, but it's very effective and organic looking. As a sidenote, we know that we skipped Halloween, but considering that people from all over the world visit this blog, we are intentionally trying to shake up which holidays we commemorate.

Power Miners Impulse Sets at Target(s) in the US

Here's a treat (pun intended) for any Lego fan, young or old. Target has begun to carry the Power Miners impulse sets (there are two of them currently) in their (seasonal) Halloween section.

• http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=8907-1
• http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=8908-1

At $3 a piece, it would be quite expensive to fill every kids candy bag in your neighborhood with one of these sets. However, the price is very reasonable once you consider what you are getting with these sets.

Target has been known to do this before, that is carry small impulse sets around holidays. For example, during Easter this year they carried the V-19 Torrent among other small Lego sets as basket stufers.

So, head out to you're local Target (if you have one nearby, and if you're in the US) and check out the seasonal section to see if they are carrying any of the Power Miners impulse sets.

Happy Halloween to all of you! (It is a bit early for that though.)

Miniland New York New Year's Eve

Name of Model: Miniland New York New Year's Eve

Created by LEGOLAND California's master builders, photographed by chantastic

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chantastic/3154123232/

Details: Yes, I know, I'm plugging the seasonal additions to the LEGOLAND parks too much. I absolutely love this miniland version of New York's famous New Year's Eve festivities. The crowds haven't shown up yet in this scene, but that's just because this is earlier in the week (although I have no idea if they plan to update the parks further as the day goes on).

Christmas Tree / Imperial Star Destroyer

Name of Model: (not given)

Created by: monsterbrick

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/monsterbrick/tags/shootingstar/ with additional photos in the flickr photostream above.

Details: This has been an exciting year for fans of modified Star Wars ships. First we had the FBTB Forum Steampunk Star Wars contest, then there was the Reasonably Clever Spooky Star Wars Contest, and also just finished is the FBTB Star Wars Christmasification Contest. Still, even with all these contests, there aren't that many truly large creations going up. There was also, until now, a shortage of Star Wars themed creations that make great use of DUPLO tree elements. I'm sure you get the joke by now though - it's a giant Christmas tree with presents underneath. The nice thing about building a giant tree is that you can stick all sorts of bizarre parts on it as decorations - although monsterbrick (also known as Matt Armstrong - he was featured in the latest issue of BrickJournal, as you can see in his photostream) showed surprising restraint in only using a few types of pieces higher up on the tree. Still, it's hard not to love all the clever tricks used for the presents at the bottom...

Santa's Sleigh and Reindeer - Minifig scale!

Name of Model: Santa's Sleigh

Created by: Vincent Pace

Found at: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220333040736 and http://toys.albeca.com/santas_sleigh/

Details: Sorry I don't have a cleaner link to use here (it looks like eBay really is the best link, and I know they pull down their listings periodically), but this is truly the best Santa-and-reindeer model I've seen in LEGO form. For quite some time now, there's been widespread criticism of LEGO's official Santa-related sets. They're yet to manufacture a full sized sled or anything with an even remotely realistic reindeer. Part of the problem is that good reindeer are hard to build - you can probably spot a few clever techniques in these reindeer, not to mention a few rare parts (say what you will about tan as a color choice, but switching to any sort of brown would make building reindeer even more of a challenge - LEGO doesn't make all the parts in all the colors). Of course, the finishing touches are the gifts in the sleigh and the little red "nose" on Rudolph.

LEGOLAND California photos

I know it's "cheating" for me to not pick just one model here, but today I'm just linking to a nice flickr photoset of LEGOLAND California photos instead. I love seeing good pictures of the exhibits in the parks, and the master builders who work at the parks make a point to add new items seasonally and over the years to make each visit unique. This photo, for example, shows one of the famous scenes at the park partially decorated for Christmas. These photos are from December 12th, so I'd take it that the seasonal bits popping up are still there and likely will be for another week or two. They may be adding more each day - you never know. At LEGOLAND Windsor, they got into the habit of updating the Doctor Who miniland characters each time a new episode aired - so apparently weekly in-jokes are nothing out-of-the-orindary to the builders of the LEGOLAND parks. Did I miss anything surprising this time around?

Happy holidays from the love bunnies!

Name of Model: Happy holidays from the love bunnies!

Created by: .eti

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eti-eti/3089305337/

Details: This isn't the first time we've seen a nice holiday home, but it is the first one we've seen with Fabuland bunnies living inside. The rare colors stick out right away - and so does the snowman with an actual carrot nose - but even more notable are the rare parts. Sure, there's the small windows, but when was the last time you saw the Fabuland fence piece used so well? It works brilliantly with the white arch piece from the Mickey Mouse sets. Scroll down on the link above - there are some more photos to see. EDIT: As mentioned in the comments, the white arches are from Belville and Fabuland sets. The ones in the Mickey Mouse sets are the same part in red.

Turkey Sculpture

Name of Model: LEGO Turkeys!

Created by: Kevin Whitney (anybody have a link to his other creations?)

Found at: http://www.lugnet.com/pause/originals/whitney/whitney.htm

Details: Here's a turkey. We all knew there'd be a turkey sometime this week. This cute little turkey would work well as a centerpiece, and only uses common colors and parts. If you can't figure out how to do the eyes - they're 1x2 Technic bricks with 1x1 plates stuck in the middle (yes - you really can stick other bricks and plates directly into the side of Technic bricks and beams). Apologies for the lack of posts this week - I unexpected had more "real work" to do then I expected. Regular posts will be back starting next week, but I might try to get a few more posts in this week as well. I hope all of my readers have a happy Thanksgiving and a bargain-filled Black Friday.

Halloween Hearse

Name of Model: Halloween Hearse

Created by: modelbuildingsecrets

Found at: http://modelbuildingsecrets.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/halloween-hearse/

Details: Here's an exciting new blog: Modelbuildingsecrets's Weblog features tips, ideas, and creations by a former LEGOLAND Parks master builder. This particular model is timely for Halloween - and visible in the Miniland New Orleans section of LEGOLAND California through the end of the month. I think both the car and the skeleton may be easy to try out in other themes, but I'm not sure if those jumper plates (also known as off-set plates - they're the 1x2 plates with only one stud on top) are actually available to the public in clear. Occasionally, you can spot parts in LEGOLAND parks that haven't actually ever been sold in a kit - sometimes when the professionals need a certain part that isn't available, they can request it (and then the company makes a large enough run of it that the builders for the parks will have it for quite some time after that). They make a great windshield there, though. It's fairly common for LEGO to do Halloween-themed "easter eggs" in the parks and in video games. There are also "Brick Or Treat" promotions at LEGOLAND parks - you can probably find information about events at the parks at the official LEGOLAND parks website.

This is Wednesday's model of the day

Flower Bouquet

Name of Model: Flower Bouquet for a raffle

Created by: dh34154

Found at: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=134848

Details: Happy Mother's Day! Surprisingly, there aren't all that many good Mother's Day themed models out there. Here's a reasonably-scaled bouquet of flowers (and flowers always make a great gift). The vase they're in is a Pick-a-Brick cup. The design itself is pretty simple and doesn't look too sturdy, but it is an excellent likeness of flowers. Of course, finding enough 1x1 round green bricks and 1x2x3 inverted slopes to build these yourself could be a bit difficult, but you could probably try out some other ideas for flower-building too.

Heart Sculpture

Name of Model: Heart

Created by: maskatron

Found at: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=79872

Details: Here's one for a belated Valentine's day: a small sculpture of a heart - with building instructions. The directions are at the link above. This was made with only basic bricks, but if you look at the parts list, it looks like quite a few unusually long bricks were used. You should be able to substitute smaller pieces in if you want to try this one out yourself.

This is Friday's model of the day

Holiday Train Set

Name of Model: Holiday Train

Created by: LEGO® (this is an official set)

Found at: http://shop.lego.com/Product/?p=10173

Details: Yeah, it's too late to try to order this for Christmas if you wanted to, but it's also too late for the whole 9-volt train line anyway. For those of you who don't follow LEGO® news, the 9-volt train line is being discontinued entirely. They're planning on releasing a new train line next year. I'm not really clear on what the exact details are, but apparently the days of being able to hook up a Mindstorms kit to a train set to automate it are behind us. The reason why they're suddenly discontinuing this line that has been so popular with children and hobbyists alike is that they would need to buy completely new machine now to continue manufacturing many of the pieces, and they're worried about being able to offset that cost by selling new sets. So the holiday train, which they make both with and without the 9-volt motor, is really the last train set in what many of us will always see as the glory days of LEGO® trains. It also happens to be a nice set, with plenty of green parts, a flatbed car full of gifts, another flatbed car full of trees, a passenger car, a nice caboose, and a well-detailed engine and tender. The holiday color scheme is done really well - you'd think more red than just trim would be better, but this is just right. Normally when I plug a set, I just link to Amazon (since I do have an associate's account there), but this set is apparently available at half price in limited supply from the LEGO Shop. Amazon has it for $75 (%25 off) - but it's definitely in stock. Either way, if you want this one, get it now while you still can.

This is Saturday's model of the day