Play-and-Stay Blog

I know I big up Tenuous LEGOLAND® Based Blog of the Week whenever I write one. I know I promise you great things once a week, but this week I have a super special version of the internet’s favourite LEGO® based blog (OK, perhaps not the WHOLE internet’s favourite).  As the title may have given away this instalment is a Halloween LEGO special edition, a seasonal bonanza of all things plastic, bricky and scary.

1) LEGO Zombie

Halloween is not Halloween without zombies, lots and lots of brain-munching, groaning, decaying zombies. Perhaps you thought that LEGO zombies don’t exist, that they are the product of my fevered imagination. Well, allow me to introduce you to Cecil, the LEGO zombie. Cecil lived in an abandoned box of LEGO in a scientist’s attic, he lived a happy and care-free life in his little plastic world. One day, the scientist put some plutonium in his attic for storage, the nuclear radiation mutated Cecil and eventually he was well and truly zombified. Ok, that WAS the product of my fevered imagination, but still…spooookyyyyyy LEGGGGOOO.

2)LEGO Minifig Costume

Perhaps the best possible use for what appears to be a pair of buckets sprayed yellow, these LEGO minifig costumes are obviously pretty damn cool. I googled long and hard to bring you these little gems and let me tell you, there were some seriously heinous minifig costumes on the internet. One appeared to be a tramp with an actual bucket on his head with a smiley face burned out. I may not sleep for a week because that horrifying image is burned forever into my fragile little mind. Back to the point at hand though, these guys deserve some kudos mainly for their costumes realistic LEGO hands. Impressive, impractical, but impressive nonetheless.

3)LEGO Brick Costume

Look how happy that child is, he’s as happy as a kid can be when he’s wearing cardboard. Normally, home-made Halloween costumes are embarrassing affairs involving a truly tragic amount of bin bags and Poundland “witches hats”. One Halloween I tried to make myself a Transformers costume. In the end, I had several brown cardboard boxes strapped to my body and one on my head. I essentially looked like somebody’s recycling.

An obvious big bonus of this LEGO brick costume is the amount of storage space wearing a box lends you. I’m sure that gleeful looking child is packing some serious heat under that box. Silly string, eggs, flour and all manner of other mess making materials undoubtedly lay hidden under that outfit, mark my words. Something to consider though, if you came across a group of children dressed as LEGO would you try and build something out of them? How much trouble would that result in?

4)LEGO Headless Horseman

Fiendishly clever in its simplicity, this LEGO minifig was converted by a blogger called ‘Evil Mad Scientist’. I must say, it does not really take a full on mad scientist to put an LED in a minifig’s head but still, it’s impressive. Interestingly, a minifig’s head cavity (for want of a better word) is the exact size of a LED, it’s as if the LEGO people WANTED people to do this. This clever little project really got me thinking, how many other LEGO creations could be improved with the addition of simple LEDs? Imagine your favourite LEGO castle with light-up flaming torches, LEGO cars with working headlights. The possibilities are endless, well perhaps not endless, after all there are only so many places you can jam an LED.

5)LEGO Pumpkin

The only one of our Halloween line-up that is actually endorsed by the good people at LEGO. The LEGO pumpkin is available in kit form from the official LEGO website but only to our upstart cousins across the pond (Americans). It’s simple, it’s Halloweeny but does it leave you a bit cold? I was far more impressed by literally everything else on our little list. I just can’t work out what’s wrong with the LEGO pumpkin. It might be the fact it’s obviously not going to respond well to having a candle popped inside, but that’s easily overcome with good old LEDs. Maybe it’s the fact it looks deformed, LEGO and round things have never really been good friends. I don’t know why it feels so wrong but one thing I do know…I’ll be using a traditional pumpkin this year. That way I won’t mind so much when it gets either stolen from my doorstep or kicked to smithereens by ASBO trick or treaters.

LEGOLAND® are not doing a dedicated Halloween event this year, but they are putting on a very intriguing looking LEGO® Star Wars™ fireworks event. I’ve had dreams of a life-sized LEGO Millennium Falcon sweeping through the sky dodging red and green fireworks. Of course I also have dreams involving being made of bacon, so take what you will from that.

So far in Tenuous LEGOLAND® based blog of the week we have seen records broken, innovative uses of the Mindstorms® system, and some seriously wacky LEGO gizmos. What we have yet to see however, is some LEGO based interior design. Always keen to break new LEGO ground, I’ve compiled a few of my favourite LEGO themed pieces of furniture for you.

1) The LEGO radiator.

Winter is well and truly upon as and I’m sure many of you, like me, are loathe to turn on your heating due to the inevitable squillion pound bill. Perhaps this (unlicensed) LEGO radiator made by a company called Scirocco would make heating your home fun rather than horrifically expensive. In truth it probably won’t, but look how cool it is!

2) The LEGO lamp.

Ahhh lamps, I do love a good lamp. Turning on the “big light” always seems just a bit too much doesn’t it? Or is that just me? Maybe it’s because I don’t have a dimmer switch in my flat. Nothing says “I’ve made it” like a dimmer switch…or a clapper. I have neither, I’m pretty much going home to the third world! I digress, this (unlicensed) LEGO lamp is made by a company called 25togo and the pegs snap off so you can hide stuff inside! I think I’d buy lots and lots of them and make a giant LEGO castle that glows and turns off when I clap AND has a dimmer switch!

3) Luna Blocks.

Building furniture does not conjure happy memories for many people, except the obvious exceptions of tablemakers and those woodsmith people, what are they called….carpenters, that’s it. Whenever I’ve made furniture it’s always ended in terrible splintery disaster but that might all be about to change. LunaBlocks could allow even the cack-handed likes of me to knock up some useable furniture. The massive perspex faux LEGO bricks come in all the classic sizes, twoers, fourers and flatties. Allowing you to build coffee tables, shelves, TV stands and all manner of other stuff.

4) The LEGO sofa.

The single greatest sofa ever perhaps? This AWESOME (note the use of caps and bold, I’m that impressed) LEGO sofa looks like and works like the real thing. You can actually disassemble the sofa and re-arrange it to your own liking. Imagine the sofa fort you could build out of this thing! No more dragging duvets and cushions around to make your impenetrable monster-proof fortress of solitude, now all you need is one amazing sofa which apparently costs only around £275. It’s only available in America though, so good luck having it shipped over here.

How many of those things do you want? I think if you had all of them, you could dress as a minifig and live the LEGO dream. I think I just figured out my future…

I think it’s that time again, time to treat readers of this wonderful blog to yet another instalment of TENUOUS LEGOLAND® BASED BLOG OF THE WEEEEEKKKK!

This week I have found a ten-foot LEGO® dragon that was built in just a few days at a museum somewhere in America. Children visiting the museum helped to build the dragon and two ‘Master Builders’ sent by LEGO themselves oversaw the project (and did the vast majority of the actual work).

Here’s a video of the project,

That video left me with a few questions that perhaps someone can answer for me,

• 1) Why do Americans feel the need to call LEGO ‘LEGOS’? Yes, I am aware that there are several LEGO bricks in a model but the plural of LEGO is LEGO. It’s like sheep or fish…you don’t need to put an S on the end Americans. While we’re at it, stop swapping S for Z and please stop your evil campaign against the letter U.
• 2) How does one go about becoming a LEGO master builder?
• 3) What significance does a LEGO dragon have to a museum? (UPDATE: It’s for a dinosaur exhibit, which raises the whole new question of why build a LEGO dragon and not a dinosaur?! They missed an opportunity to build LEGO raptors).
• 4) Where did they get those terracotta coloured blocks from? I have an awful lot of LEGO and not a single piece in that colour. I don’t think I’d really use it, terracotta is best left in gardens and perhaps living rooms decorated in the ill-advided style of the 1990s but still…It’s nice to have the option.

If anyone out there can answer any of these questions please let me know via the comment box, particularly if you can give me any answers regarding the unnecessary and incorrect pluralisation of the word ‘LEGO’

We’ve been focussing so hard on ‘Project Dylan’ recently that I feel I have been neglecting the LEGOphiles among my readership. I feel I owe it to you to do a good, old-fashioned LEGO® themed blog. So here it is, this week’s Tenuous LEGOLAND® based blog of the week.

As readers of this blog will know my three great (non-human) loves are; LEGO, comics and video games. Pretty geeky loves I know, but I came to terms with my geekdom long long ago (in a galaxy far far away). My great loves have recently been united in what can only be called a holy trinity of wonderfulness. LEGO and video games have been partners for quite some time but only recently have developers added the magic ingredient, comics.

Some of you might have played the LEGO video games that have been available for quite some time, LEGO Star Wars has been out for ages and is pretty fun. LEGO Indiana Jones is also good, not as good as LEGO Star Wars but that was always going to be the case. It’s not either of those games I want to talk about today though, it’s the upcoming one, LEGO Batman.

The trailer for this game looks undeniably fun but you know what? I’m not going to buy it. This is not to say that it’s not going to be good, providing it follows the model for the other LEGO games I’m sure it will do very well indeed. The problem is not with the game itself per-se, it’s with Batman. You see ladies and gents, I have quite strong feelings about Batman. My main issue with the dark knight is that HE IS NOT A SUPERHERO. He is just a regular hero, albeit a very rich and technologically advanced one.

He, to me at least, comes under the same category as Iron Man. I don’t like either, they annoy me with their lack of actual powers and their excessive ‘edgy brooding’. Personally, I’m waiting and praying to the comic gods that the people who make the LEGO games make LEGO X-Men. Alas, people these days seem to prefer Batman (despite his lack of superpowers). Maybe there are more people like me, people who think the X-men are more deserving of LEGOfication than Batman. Of course there might not be, I might be alone in this one, just like the time I thought the world needed hexagonal bread.

Here’s the trailer for LEGO Batman so you can make your own minds up. After watching it if you, like me, think Batman does not deserve the honour of being immortalised in LEGO please let me know.

I have a confession to make ladies and gentleman. I have never seen a Back to the Future film and I have never watched The Godfather or any of its sequels. Perhaps due to a lack of testosterone, or perhaps because I like my films to have nuns or monsters in them, I have no interest in Scarface or the gangster film genre as a whole. In short, I’m no authority on “the classics” (except Sister Act). Due to this social handicap I miss out on a fair few pop culture references, any “flux capacitor” or “say hello to my little friend” based jokes are lost on me.

Despite my second-rate film trivia knowledge there are a few famous scenes that even I can identify and one of those scenes is the Indiana Jones “big scary boulder” scene. There is something incredibly frightening about the threat of being crushed by a large rolly thing. I know that primal fear only too well, this weekend I popped into Primark for some cut-price socks. I quickly found myself running for my life after a lady (who was no stranger to cakes) fell down the stairs right behind me!. Fortunately, I managed to use a pair of affordable tights to swing to safety before I was squished in the Margate temple of doom.

Some people somewhere in America have combined the natural human fear of crushing with the natural human love of LEGO. They’ve even thrown a bit of Indiana Jones into the mix for good measure. Submitted for your approval this week ladies and gents, a five million brick LEGO boulder “chasing” a man dressed loosely in the style of Indiana Jones down a hill.

Now you’ve enjoyed that wonderful video, time for the bad news. The boulder was apparently polystyrene in the middle so nobody was in any real danger. Good news though, some chap was wearing an absolutely charming fez. Perhaps the fez is making a comeback!?

Have you ever suspected that Victoria Beckham and that woman who’s related to Kylie who does the X-factor are made of plastic? Well just for today, they are. LEGO® are celebrating 30 years of their trademark “minifigs” with a gallery of the world’s biggest celebs transformed into the LEGOmen that are so familiar to us all.

Among the privileged celebs to be immortalised in LEGO form are The Beckhams, Brangelina, Alan Titchmarsh, the X-factor judges and Madonna. Don’t get too excited, you won’t be able to buy a LEGO Madonna to live on your bathtime LEGO pirate ship. These figures are strictly concept only.

As promised, here is yet another blog tenuously linked to LEGOLAND^® because its about LEGO^®. This particular installment is also about Radiohead, a band who I’m sure are big fans of LEGO, thus indisputably making this blog about LEGOLAND.

Recently, Radiohead released a rather progressive and potentially eye-damaging music video that was shot with lasers (or something along those lines) rather than cameras. This process was explained far more eloquently than I could ever manage by the production people behind the whole space agey affair.

“The Geometric Informatics scanning system employs structured light to capture detailed 3D images at close proximity, and was used to render the performances of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, the female lead, and several partygoers. The Velodyne Lidar system uses multiple lasers to capture large environments in 3D, in this case 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute, capturing all of the exterior scenes and wide party shots.”

Still not making a great deal of sense? I had a nosebleed after reading that so don’t worry. It all becomes much more clear when you take a peek at the video for yourself, here you go. Radiohead’s House of Cards for your enjoyment.

I know what you’re thinking, this has literally NOTHING to do with LEGO. Bear with me, I’ve not let you down yet have I? No, no I have not. Sit tight ladies and gentlemen.

In their infinite wisdom Radiohead decided to make the data gathered by their lasers public. This allowed anyone and everyone to have a go at recreating the video however they saw fit. Ian McKinnon’s efforts resulted in…………LEGO RADIOHEAD! Behold ladies and gentlemen, one of the greatest bands of our time made out of LEGO.

Ok I admit it, I misled you slightly. Technically it’s just Thom York made of LEGO and it is a bit blurry. It’s still pretty cool though yeah?!

As ever, if you have any LEGO based news, pictures, videos please feel free to send them our way, and please feel free to comment. We like to hear from you.

I’m terribly sorry, I’m sure there are at least 3 people out there who were eagerly awaiting my tenuous LEGOLAND^® based blog of the week and were left waiting. Unfortunately my computer and I got locked in a battle of wills and it has taken me two weeks to win, but win I did!

To make up for this atrocity I’m treating you, dear readers, to a particularly impressive LEGO based blog. You are, without doubt, the luckiest people on the interwebs today.

In this instalment of my favourite blog of the week I’m going to share a very good use of the LEGO Mindstorms system (which I really want, hint hint.) Behold Donkey Kong ^® cleverly rendered in robotic LEGO.

Was’nt that fun! I desperately want a Mindstorms kit so I can use its super-cool robotic technology to make myself some kind of strength and speed enhancing Iron Man suit - made of LEGO! Ahhh one day……

The Amazing Machines are coming, coming to a LEGOLAND near you…

On the weekend of September 13, 2008, LEGOLAND will play host to one of the most spectacular shows of any theme park in the UK with the arrival of monster trucks, an 11 ft high half pipe and the RNLI.

They are all aimed at giving visitors the ultimate theme park break (and, of course, easing those back-to-school blues). Ride the rides, visit the shops, then watch in amazement as monster trucks perform crazy stunts and world-renowned skaters perform aerial aerobatics, tens of feet above your head.

Those of you brave enough to want to learn some new tricks are welcome to join Team Extreme on the half pipe. Special coaching sessions will be held throughout the day giving you valuable tips on how to perfect that Superman Seat-Grab or the death-defying Christ Air.

If skating isn’t extreme enough for you, then check out Big Pete, Europe’s number one monster truck team. They’ll be battling it out in the special events arena throughout the day with their combination of car jumps and wheelies.

Due to prior engagements and the imminent birth of my first baby, I will not be able to attend the day. Any of you who are going and read this blog, I implore you to take some pictures and let me know how the day went.

Any of you who haven’t got your tickets just yet, check out our main site at Play and Stay, where you can get theme park access and a top local hotel for the night in one great value package.

In the mean time, I have tracked down some footage of Big Pete and Team Extreme for you to enjoy.