Filed under: Con Culture, Retro Fix — Leave a comment Everything is awesome when it comes to LEGO building bricks. When I was a kid the holy grail of toys was the LEGO Technic Expert Builder Chassis set, released in 1980. If you wanted to understand how cars function, that was the set to learn from. It sold for more than $125 back then and now on eBay they can fetch more than $1,500. The best part of the early Technic sets was that they didn’t fudge the basic LEGO pieces for the sake of design. Which is why the current LEGO Creator line is full of great options. Probably the most fun is the coming release of the classic Volkswagen Beetle. Check out the instructions on the LEGO website for the new Volkswagen Beetle here for an idea of the detailed engine design. And you’ll see that the design is true to the basic LEGO building blocks, meaning you get to learn to hone your creativity by adapting to the basic LEGO building pieces. You can pre-order the VW Beetle now here from Amazon, expected to ship around the first of the year.
But if you can’t wait that long, don’t fret. LEGO has already released some other cool car building sets as well as some nifty buildings. If you’re not in the market for LEGO sets right now, they are still fun to gawk at. Like this earlier Volkswagen release, the camper van: Our band director had one of these and this design is dead on. You can order the Volkswagen van now here from Amazon. Or how about this Mini Cooper? It’s also a great design and with 1,077 pieces you can create your own retro variations. Check out more photos here at Amazon. Although they don’t have that cool retro vibe, your thing may be the more stylish modern LEGO car designs. Check out details on the Ferrari here. If you want to get into the guts of how a car works, beginners should start out with a less expensive set like this Formula Off-Roader: The Formula Off-Roader features working steering, detailed chassis, hinged cab cage, vertical exhaust pipes, large roof-mounted spotlights and a detailed 4-cylinder engine.
Learn more about the kit at Amazon here. It’s a lot closer to the classic 1980 LEGO car kit mentioned above, shown here: If you haven’t checked out all LEGO has to offer outside the franchise tie-ins like the various new Star Wars building sets, take a look at this incredible LEGO Creator series Sydney Opera House: At nearly 3,000 pieces that’s certain to keep your favorite LEGO builder busy for a while. Check out that set here and search here for even more sets in the LEGO Creator series available at Amazon here.Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now. Gifts for LEGO Lovers The LEGO Batman Movie LEGO Hard to Find LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes Barnes & Noble® is the ultimate destination for LEGO toys. Shop thousands of LEGO products, including LEGO City, LEGO Super Hero, LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Junior sets. Barnes & Noble® also offers a wide range of LEGO books.This polybag is a mini model of the recent 10242 Mini Cooper set which I unfortunately don't have for comparison.
So it's a Mini Mini Cooper I guess :) (US, CA, UK) in the month of August 2014. As with all polybags, it is a small set with 59 parts. There's not much to say about the build, so I'll leave it to the photos. When compared with the other miniature vehicle (Mini VW Camper Van) promotional polybag set from August last year, it is at a slightly larger scale.Every person had a favorite toy when they were young. Some of us cherished our bicycles and skateboards. Some of us got down with basketball, football, or soccer. Others were video games nerds. But here at Cool Material, we’re in unanimous agreement—our favorite childhood toys of all time were our LEGO sets. We look back fondly on the hours spent building castles, engineering bridges, and even laying the foundation for entire small towns. They were a blast. But as we got older, our grand LEGO sets slowly disappeared from the picture, and instead were replaced by other, more “adult” things: automobiles, girls, and jobs.
Well, today, we’re taking a stand. You think LEGOs are just for kids? We think that’s bullshit! Here are 8 LEGO sets for every guy who clicking Danish blocks together as a kid. What makes this kit awesome, aside from its impeccable detail and 2,793 individual pieces, is that it comes with a full pneumatic system, which allows you to control the outriggers, crane arm, claw, and bed. It also features a fully independent suspension, a detailed engine with moving pistons, a detailed and complete driver cab and dashboard, and all the other small details you’d expect from a kit as advanced as this. The Taj Mahal is one of the greatest monuments mankind’s ever built. Not only is it a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it is, for all intents and purposes, a priceless piece of world history, and all of it just to entomb an emperor’s favorite wife. Most of us only get one wife, and we still wouldn’t do that for her. Also, how shitty would it be to be any of his other wives?
LEGO did the architectural wonder total justice with their rendition. With 5,922 pieces that come together and fill in the details of the base, minarets, domes, finials, arches, and stairs of the grand Taj Mahal, it is far and away one of the most difficult kits to assemble. And with a price tag of at least three grand (no, seriously), it’s also one of the spendiest. If you’re involved in the LEGO building community at all, you’ll know that it’s one that celebrates innovation and beautiful design. Self-made kits are called My Own Creations, or MOCs for short. MOC Nation is a website dedicated to bringing the best MOCs in the world to the mainstream. We’ve covered them before, so here’s that if you missed it. This Red Fox, created by Felix Jaensch is a 638-piece kit that’s challenging enough to take time and patience, but beautiful (and small) enough to look good as a presentation piece in an office, home, or studio. We absolutely love watching things like this come to fruition, and not just because we’re always trolling Kickstarter for the latest and greatest projects.
The Cyclone Roller Coaster is fun, educational, and complex, but not too complicated. It’s compatible with regular LEGOS, and the more kits you buy, the more you can build. The mechanism is simple and is exactly how regular roller coasters work: A chain lift carries the coaster to its peak, where it drops and coasts through the course. You can add hills or bumps, create ledges and plateaus, and see what works versus what doesn’t. When people think “Ferrari,” a rigid, boxy LEGO kit is probably the last thing that comes to mind. Ferraris are some of the most beautifully engineered cars on the entire planet, and the F40 is special because it was not only a celebration of the Italian super car manufacturer’s 40th birthday, but also the very last Ferrari model approved by the one and only Enzo Ferrari. This LEGO kit is superbly detailed and although it’s just 3 inches high, 10 inches long, and 5 inches wide, it is made of more than 1,150 pieces that help detail everything from its legendary 478-bhp turbocharged v8, to its detailed, authentic interior.
Another discontinued gem from the LEGO Creator series, this scale retro MINI Cooper features everything from a detailed engine compartment, to opening doors, hood, and trunk, and even houses a spare wheel in a separate compartment—just like the original MINI Cooper it emulates. It also comes complete with a little picnic set, a pop-off roof, fold-down seats, and an impeccably detailed interior section. We’re super impressed with this one, and we think you will be, too. And since we’re on a car kick right now, why not finish it off with the crème de la crème of detailed replicas—LEGO’s Volkswagen T1 Camper Van. This thing comes with the works. The iconic hubcap wheels and V-shape front color split, the rounded pop-up roof, the classic “splittie” safari windshield, roof rack, side air intake vents, real textile curtains, authentic VW air-cooled flat four, and a detailed interior like nothing we’ve ever seen—INCLUDING A FUCKING LAVA LAMP AND T-SHIRT THAT SAYS, “MAKE LEGOS NOT WAR.”
You’ll have a smile on your face for all 1,334 pieces of this iconic retro classic. This thing right here? This thing right here, ladies and gentlemen, is a goddamn LEGO strip club. No, that’s not a misprint, and you didn’t misread us—it’s a strip club, complete with a full color printed box, working LED lights, hologram foil-stamped wall pieces, four exclusive mini LEGO figures, bundles of LEGO money, and a stripper pole for your sexy yellow brick people. Welcome to the Foxy Blox! What’s perhaps most cool about the LEGO scene is that the LEGO company wholeheartedly supports its community of creators. LEGO Ideas is a section on the LEGO website where people can show off build plans for their own LEGO masterpieces, and then people vote to support them. If they gain enough support, the team at LEGO actually manufactures them and puts them in stores for a limited time. You can view all the cool LEGO ideas here, but we chose this 1950’s diner because it really does look awesome, and we can’t resist a slice of good old-fashioned Americana.