Hold on to your bricks, Lego lovers. Ewoks, rockets, elves and dragons are all set to descend upon Wyong this weekend for a huge brickfest. Crowds of Lego fans, from kids to adults, are expected to flock to the first ever Central Coast Brickfest, being held at Wyong High School on Sunday.The event is being organised by the Rainbow Bricks Lego User Group and will feature everything from a re-creation of the battle of the Ewoks scene from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi to a Lego Technic Apollo 11 modular landing setup.Self-confessed AFOL (Adult Fan Of Lego) and Wyong High School parent Ian Harkness will be one of many builders from across NSW displaying their creations in the school hall on the day.“Like most AFOLs I got into Lego in the 1970s — my first set was a fire truck, then had a dark period before dusting off my old kits and getting into it again when I had kids,” said Mr Harkness.Now, with three boys aged five, eight and 12 the whole Harkness house is a Lego building site.“
The little one is even getting into the Technic stuff, while my favourite at the moment is the VW Combi van and Mini Cooper,” he said.He said the appeal with Lego was being able to play with something that is interactive and educational.“I love the fact you can replicate anything — whether its fantasy or real, into a small model,” he said.Mr Harkness said for him the Holy Grail of Lego is to get hold of the limited edition Taj Mahal set.“It is now discontinued and worth thousands. I should have bought it Myer years ago!”At Sunday’s event there will also be displays by some of the school’s students and the chance to pick up handy building tips from the experts.As well as the exhibition there will be a play area for kids to build in and of course some Lego for sale.The school’s P and C will be running a sausage sizzle on the day.Rainbow Bricks is one of many Lego User Groups around the world and was formed in 2013 by fans from the East Coast of Australia. The group currently has over 50 active members.■ The brand name Lego was created by using the first two letters of the Danish words “Leg” and “Godt,” meaning “play well.”
■ You can combine six pieces of the eight studded Lego bricks in 915,103,765 ways■ A real house has been built with Lego. Former Top Gear presenter James May constructed the world’s first full size Lego in Britain in 2009. The house contained a working toilet and shower and a bed and was made out 3.3 million bricks.WHAT: Central Coast Brickfest 2016WHEN: Sunday, 10am to 4pmCOST: $4, $10 per family Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixels. Other resolutions: 320 × 240 pixels | 640 × 480 pixels | 1,024 × 768 pixels | 1,280 × 960 pixels | 2,048 × 1,536 pixels. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix – to adapt the work Under the following conditions: attribution – You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). share alike – If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License. You may select the license of your choice. Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. current11:48, 6 September 20092,048 × 1,536 Gaius Cornelius {{Information |Description={{en|1=James May's Lego House nears completion.}} |Source=Own work by uploader | The following other wikis use this file: James May's Toy Stories This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file.
The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong. Date and time of data generation 16:07, 5 September 2009 Digital Camera FinePix S6500fd Ver1.00 File change date and time Y and C positioning Date and time of digitizing Flash did not fire, compulsory flash suppression Focal plane X resolution Focal plane Y resolution Focal plane resolution unit One-chip color area sensorDaniel Novta, Flickr // CC BY 2.0 It looks like Barbie’s dream house is coming down, one brick at a time. Denmark-based block maker LEGO unseated Mattel in 2014 to become the world’s top toy company. Their plastic building materials are omnipresent, ideal for teaching children how to think creatively while their barefooted parents learn how to swear creatively. Check out these 15 fully-connected facts about the beloved brand. When woodworker Ole Kirk Kristiansen started selling toys in Billund, Denmark in 1932—no one during the Great Depression was buying expensive furniture—he had no idea LEGO (from the Danish words Leg Godt, or “play well”) would become synonymous with click-lock blocks.
When a salesman called on Kristiansen in 1949 and offered him a plastic mold injection machine to spare him the labor of handmade playthings, Kristiansen and his son, Godtfred, were intrigued by one of the samples he was carrying: a studded, interlocking brick. Kristiansen began making his own, apparently unaware a man named Hilary Fisher Page owned the patent. (In 1958, LEGO perfected the brick with tubes on the bottom to help tighten the connection.) Page died before he discovered Kristiansen’s homage; LEGO has stated Kristiansen was “inspired” by Page. LEGO later bought his company, Kiddicraft. That injection molding process means … Not, unfortunately, the kind of dough you can eat. In order to get the acrylonitrile butadiene-styrene (ABS) plastic used for the bricks malleable enough to conform to molds, it’s heated to between 230 and 310 degrees Celsius and allowed to cool for up to 10 seconds before being released. The process is so streamlined that only an estimated 18 bricks out of every million are rejected for being misshapen.
Not bad for an item that has an allowance of just .005 millimeters in order to maintain a universal fit. But if there is a problem, that’s all right because … Peer inside any LEGO brick and you’ll see a tiny three-digit number stamped on the interior wall. The number corresponds to which mold was used and where in the line the brick was located. If there’s any kind of defect, LEGO can trace the errant piece to its origin and resolve the issue. Then again, you’re probably not worried about a number when you’ve just tripped over one: Throbbing agony tends to block out all rational thought. It might help a little to know that … LEGO bricks are possibly the toy world’s most durable Toy Hall of Fame entrant. A pair of inquisitive YouTube scientists built a repetitive motion machine and didn’t see any breakage on a typical 2x4 brick until 37,112 snaps had been completed. But such resistance comes at a terrible price. When you sink your bare foot into one—particularly on a hard surface—you simply don’t weigh enough to make it budge.
A LEGO brick can take up to 950 pounds of force without blinking. It simply refuses to transmit any of your applied force, instead giving it right back to your delicate nerve endings underfoot. Since they’re everywhere, you’re bound to experience that trauma at least once in your lifetime, and they’re everywhere because … David Lofink, Flickr // CC BY 2.0 LEGO building sets are sometimes chastised for including seemingly unnecessary pieces that sit on the table after a pirate ship has been assembled. It turns out some pieces are simply too small to be weighed during the allocation process: creating a surplus guarantees everyone gets enough to complete their project. And if you do happen to buy a lot of LEGO vehicles, you might have no problem believing that … LEGO pumps out so many elfin wheels for their sets (roughly 318 million a year) that they far exceed the total output of Goodyear, Firestone, or Michelin, whose products tote around, you know, actual human beings.
The company notes that almost half of their sets include wheels, which you’ll never find on a military convoy unit kit because … Pascal, Flickr // CC0 1.0 The company has vowed never to replicate any kind of military scenario for children. They went so far as to ban tiny guns from their Minifigures until 1999, when many licensed kits began featuring weapons in fantasy settings. The peacetime mandate was a big reason why … Robert McGoldrick, Flickr // CC BY-ND 2.0 By the late 1990s, LEGO was in a tailspin, victimizing themselves by over-producing pieces and failing to control manufacturing expenses. To boost their profile, the board floated the idea of licensing a Star Wars set from Lucasfilm to coincide with the interest surrounding the release of George Lucas’s prequel trilogy in 1999. But longtime LEGO honchos protested the idea, feeling the very name violated their antiwar corporate principles. It took six months of arguing before Kristiansen’s grandson, Kjeld, made the executive decision to take on the license, opening the door to a library of sets (Harry Potter, Disney) that reversed their fortunes after a series of disasters like …
No toy manufacturer has gotten more off-brand than LEGO did with Scala, a Barbie-esque domestic assortment that barely interacted with their decades-old existing line of toys. Instead of utilizing standard bricks, Scala used pieces that would form a flower upon completion. In both size, appearance, and function, Scala could never hold a candle to the classic LEGO Minifigures. For one thing, the dolls weren’t yellow, and … Chris Isherwood, Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0 When LEGO introduced the Minifigure in 1975, it was a boxy, faceless entity meant to accept whatever role-play fantasy a builder might want to project. While the figures later garnered faces and gender roles, they have almost always remained yellow. According to LEGO, that’s because the company felt it was the most racially-neutral color possible. After LEGO branched out into licensing, it began to see its first diverse entries with NBA players. Currently, LEGO assigns skin tone only if a set is based on an existing property or person.
Otherwise, they’re always yellow. And there’s another constant … Pop the head off a Minifig and separate it from its hair and you’ll notice the miniscule noggin has holes on either side. That’s in case a child happens to swallow it. By providing airflow through the plastic, they’re less likely to choke. But for the figure, the lack of brains might be one reason why … Chris Jackson, Flickr // CC BY 2.0 A study conducted at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand examined over 3000 LEGO figures made between 1975 and 2010. Their facial expressions were morphing from pleasant to scowling. Pundits figured the change was a result of more licensed characters being introduced into the line. Christoph Bartneck, who led the study, expressed concern that the change in mood might adversely affect children. For a long time, however, LEGO rejected the very idea of any adult scrutinizing their products, because … Adult LEGO builders are among the company’s most loyal customers, clearing out expensive building sets and buying bricks in bulk for elaborate custom jobs.
Known as AFOLs (Adults Fans of LEGO), the demographic wasn’t always embraced by management. After retailers criticized LEGO for not paying attention to their market, the company responded by calling adults who played with their product “weird” and “a bit bizarre,” dismissing the wacky idea of listening to their needs. Since then, corporate has changed its tune; LEGO and its adult fandom engage each other regularly now. They’ve even gone so far as to allow you to … LEGO’s social media presence allows for members of the LEGO community to come up with ideas for assemblies. You think people want a Golden Girls set? Throw it on up there. Using existing bricks, petitioners can illustrate their plans. If it gets 10,000 votes, it’ll go to LEGO proper, where someone will sit down, figure out the cost of licensing Estelle Getty’s likeness, and decide whether to grant you a royalty or have you committed. Either way, you probably haven’t come up with anything as absurd as …