In March, California’s LEGOland resort unveiled the latest addition to its Star Wars Miniland; a 1900lb model of the Death Star that is made from over 500,000 LEGO bricks! The replica weaponry, which measures 13 feet high and eight feet wide, hovers above visitors to the exhibition and is equipped with its own [LEGO] planet-destroying super laser. The Death Star model, which is based on the rendition seen in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, is surrounded by X-Wings, Tie Fighters and Y-Wings—all crafted from LEGOs—fighting it out overhead to recreate a dramatic scene from the 1977 epic. Fans of Star Wars-related LEGO creations may be grateful, or gravely disappointed to learn that the actual climax of this scene—in which Luke Skywalker destroys the Death Star—has not been recreated for the exhibit. Related: NPIRE uses 55,000 LEGOs to create a funky pixelated wall The extraordinarily detailed model Death Star, which also features six animated Turbo Laser Turrets, was maneuvered into place by a team of builders, who according to a press release from Legoland “worked under the watchful eye of R2-D2.”
The Death Star was celebrated on launch day as part of the kick-off for the LEGO Star Wars Days event, and visitors will be able to craft their very own LEGO starships under the mighty presence of the (LEGO) Death Star.by AIDAN DIAZ (Aidan's First Blog Post!) This is the first LEGO store in the Philippines. It's a bit expensive but is a fair deal. There are some newly released Lego sets like Simpsons, some old ones like Ninja Go and Star Wars, and some hard to find Lego sets like Minecraft. There are tables where you can play Duplo and see Legos in display cases. You can engrave your names on bricks, and you can choose the color of the brick and the text. Let me tour you around the first Lego Certified Store in the Philippines: This is a sneak peek inside the Lego Store Meet the first customer, Jill Lejano with her new Lego Creator Detective's Office set. A closer look at the 2,262-piece Lego Detective's Office 10246. The back of the creator box which costs P10,149.75.
I couldn't afford that but I can save up for it. Check out the other Lego Creator, Lego Architecture, and Lego Animals sets. LEGO MINECRAFT - My Favorite Lego Section Here's the Minecraft Crafting Box 21116 that has 500+ bricks and 10+ models to make. And in front of the Crafting Box it shows you some of the bricks that you can use. Here's Steve in full diamond set going to battle the Ender Dragon and the Endermans 21117. This is the back of the Ender Dragon set that costs around P5,599.75. The biggest and most expensive Minecraft set - the Mine Shaft 21118 (P7,999.75). It has TNT that explodes when a lever is pulled, you can place TNT in mine carts that can move with a push, and there are spider webs + ores like diamond and iron. The set includes Steve with armor and a weapon, a pickaxe, and some mobs. This is the House of Steve 21115 which costs P3,199.75. Here's the Minecraft farm set 21114 (P2,399.75) which you can add to the house.
It has a weird looking pumpkin that Steve can wear [not in real life]. We were the first boy customers in this store, and this is what we bought. This is the Minecraft set we bought and constructed. Steve's house with a creeper, a pig, wooden tools, and bread or sausage. You can make your own creations... just don't follow the instructions. Bird's eye view of Steve's House. This is me and my bros [brothers] with our first Minecraft set. Here's a promo if you have a single receipt purchase of P3,000+, you can get these for free from: This is what we chose out of the 3 promo sets - Build A Mini (BAM) figure. This is all our creations: A knight, a Dj and a surfer dude. This is me in my second favorite section - Star Wars! Here is the AT-ST and some Lego Storm Troopers. This the Star Wars LED Lite characters and Darth Vader's LED Lightsaber. The Star Wars Sandcrawler 75059 (P19,599.75) and the Jawas. The Empire's TIE Fighter 75095 (P13,749.75).
This is the most expensive Lego set in the store -- The Death Star 10188. This is the Super Heroes section: Avengers Age Of Ultron 76038 (P6,899.75) and The SHIELD'S Helicarrier 76042 (P23,379.75) which is exclusive to the LEGO-Certified store. Check out Lego Jurassic World Indominus Rex Breakout 75919 (P12,499.75) Here's Batman's Thumbler 76023 (P13,949.75) made of 99% Lego (minus the lego wheels). You can customize and Pick a Brick (PAB) sold at P679.75 per 100grams. Monthly Mini Build (MMB) Program for kids age 6-14 - no purchase required. This is my little bro Joshua with his free Lego MMB creation (given by the Lego-Certified store at the start of each month). My other little bro Raphael with his free Lego MMB creation. This is my baby brother Yugi playing with the Duplo. This is the Minifigures Series 13 71008 (P249.75/pc) in a glass case. This is the girly section and the new Lego Friends and Elves sets. Also, check out the Lego Mixels (P379.75/each).
This is the newest addition to the Lego family - The Simpsons! This is the engraving machine that engraves your name into the brick. (P100/name on one side) This is how they engrave the letters of my baby brother Ysrael's name into the Lego brick. Our names engraved in the brick color we have chosen. The Lego Brick Keychain costs P179.75 + P100 engraving. Congratulations on the grand opening of the first Lego Store in the Philippines on May 12, 2015! PHILLIPPINES LEGO STOREFirst LEGO® Certified Store in the PhilippinesPark Triange, 11th Avenue corner Rizal Drive, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig(Ground Floor of the Kidzania building, parking in the basement).On May 12-17, you can get the Spiderman Glider for only P50 - nice deal! LEGO will be selling 5,000 pieces of the 30302 Spider-Man Glider V29 for P50 in support of rebuilding classrooms in Malabon.I could not afford the Death Star. Because it cost four hundred dollars. “But we need it!” my 9-year-old cousin Adam said, speaking not only for himself, but for his entire family, the whole Hagen clan.
We were in his bedroom in Indianapolis, which was a vacuum cleaner’s worst nightmare. Lego pieces were everywhere. There was a crash-landed A-wing and Han Solo’s Lego head was rolling through the wreckage of red and gray bricks. Seeing this space-opera carnage, immediately you’d know it: Star Wars Legos are Adam’s favorite. “We really need the Death Star,” he said, like this was a team effort or something. “For that much,” I said, “it’d better be life sized.” Later on, in Minneapolis, I stopped by the Lego Store in the Mall of America to scope out the Death Star. I had high hopes for the Mall of America. I thought maybe this convoluted temple of pure consumerism would convey something spiritual to me, like I would finally find cultural salvation between an Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and Aeropastle. The Mall of America is just four regular malls stacked atop each other with a couple of roller coasters spiraling through the center. A morose teenager dressed as Spongebob Squarepants posed for pics with kids.
The Lego Store was sheer bedlam. A girl with an excessive number of barrettes in her hair gleefully led her parents to the Death Star. She wanted them to be as amazed by it as she was. And I could see why. The Lego Death, while not worth four hundred bucks, is impressive. The girl tapped the cubic plastic case that contained the Death Star, hoping Han and Luke and Leia and Darth would spring to life. They’d duke it out while we mourned the destruction of Alderaan in a galaxy not quite as far away as we once imagined it was. Except the Death Star, seen here fully assembled and operational, wasn’t really a Lego. When I was Adam’s age, Legos were my everything. And I was their god. Tactile memories: fingertips, carpet, and great piles of Lego bricks, with their sharp edges that always produced a yelp of pain when stepped on in the wrong way. On my hands and knees, adventuring. My twin sister and I, we were the architects, the world-builders. We faced every artist’s chief dilemma: how to realize the wild aspirations of our imaginations, how to turn this rubble of bricks into castles and space stations and underwater-space station-castles.
And when I stared upon the Death Star in the Mall of America, I understood it for what it was: the nadir of imagination. Sure, we always built what was on the box cover first. That was what drew us in. Katharine or I would be enticed by the Saucer Centurion or Explorien, and so we’d cajole our grandma or mom into buying it for us. Sometimes, if we’d done a good enough job of holding onto our allowances for the month, we’d even buy it ourselves. And then we’d follow the numbered guide and render the Lego in its prescribed box-cover design. Then we’d get bored and bash it right to hell. Boredom was the foundation for our greatest creations. We’d be bored some weekend afternoon or during the summer—for the summer was, in my ebbing memory, both a glorious time of epic adventure and an endless epoch of brain-melting boredom—and we’d look at our armada of Star Hawks and Aquanaut Octopods and think, Let’s create something new. We were fearless, you had to give us that.
To create something new meant that first we had to obliterate what we’d already built. Legos were a finite resource. And we couldn’t let our imaginations be tainted by the limitations of the present. Like revolutionaries, we needed to destroy in order to realize our dreams for the future. Hours upon hours went into the worlds we built brick by tiny brick. Sometimes we’d fixate on the same project. Other times, my sister, a much wiser delegator than me, would assign my dad or me some lesser task while she worried about the primary objective. Our blueprints were shape-shifters, forever changing based on our whims and predilections and based on the fact that we never had enough of those one-dot-by-two-dot flat connector pieces. In this vein of creativity, nothing was ever finished, no project ever complete. Every citadel or starship was really just a first draft. We kept dreaming bigger, grander, thinking of how we could tack on one more jet engine or crenellated spire. Our Lego inventions were always almost done.
So when I saw the Death Star there, safe in its cubic plastic case, I wasn’t particularly excited. It would be more compelling, I thought, as a ruin, with all the promise a ruin can inspire in the minds of the young. The wreckage of Legos in Adam’s bedroom is his inheritance, passed down from Katharine and me to his old brothers and then on to him. They’ve been used to build the most wondrous of cities and most destructive of machines. They’re the ruins of our unruly imaginations and have been stepped on countless times. What better heirloom could there be? When I told Katharine about Adam’s wish to own the Death Star, she said she’d chip in fifty bucks, except there was a caveat. Katharine said she’d only contribute if she could play a major role in building it. I shared her stance. I mean, doesn’t that sound like Christmas fun? It’d be a hell of a family project: to assemble the Death Star while my mom watched that one Bing Crosby movie she always watches and my dad fiddled with the logs in the fireplace.
We’d take hourly breaks to benchmark our progress and drink marshmallow hot cocoa. Of course, under Katharine’s rigid supervision, I’m sure we’d annihilate Alderaan before dinnertime. It would be a holiday for the ages, a day the Lego citizens of Alderaan would rue from beyond their intergalactic graves. But this story doesn’t have a happy ending–at least not for Adam who didn’t end up finding the Death Star under his Christmas tree. He’ll have to keep praying to Santa Claus or saving up his allowance, neither of which seems like too practical of a solution. Still, I can’t imagine how excited he would have been to unwrap the monolithic toy. The only thing more amazing would be when, a couple weeks later, Adam finally got sick of the thing, which too perfectly resembled the picture on the box, and smashed it to smithereens and was left only with 3,802 Lego pieces in cataclysmic disarray. Out of that mess, Adam could build something new, something never quite finished, his own space station to inhabit the galaxy of his wily imagination where the future is only a ruin away.