Firstly, I have to say that I was taken aback at how huge the event was. It took up a massive amount of floorspace across two exhibition pavilions. Yes, most of that was the model trains (more on that in a moment) but it was the Lego I was there to see. The display covered many, many meters and appeared to be a Lego journey through time from the prehistoric ages to the far future.
The attention to detail, coupled with a sense of humour, led to some really outstanding pieces, like this vignette filled Lego skyscraper, featuring a guy getting chased by a ghost, a demonic ritual, and Gandalf having tea with Legolas, among other things...
Join me after the jump to see a browser-clogging ton of images of my favourite things!
I shudder to speculate just how many hundreds of thousands of bricks were used. Here's the side view of a castle atop a waterfall covered mountain and the villages that cluster around the bottom...
This part of the display focused chiefly on a medieval/fairytale vibe, with plenty of ornate structures...
And this killer Rapunzel tower. And if I'm not mistaken, Rapunzel herself is one of the Lego Friends line for girls. It's probably that bitch Stephanie...
I was impressed with the scale of the modern city scape, many buildings of which were based on buildings here in Perth. If you're doubting how large this is, check out the tiny Spongebob minifig in the lower archway for scale...
Here's some of that wonderful detail I was talking about. Yes, the building is impressive, but have a look at the scene that's playing out in front of it...
It's hard to see without including a gigantic image, but the Joker is selling ice cream and three of his customers have already keeled over, their freshly green faces twisted into giant grins.
A slight gap in the display as we're confronted with a giant in-progress bridge made entirely out of technic Lego....
And then what could possibly be larger than a minifig scale Lego oil rig...
And another little detail that I enjoyed...
Next up is the cluttered Lego Entertainment district which contained my favourite models. This is the beginnings of a theme park which contains tributes to Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, and Harry Potter...
A crashed plane near the Hollywood sign. A theatre ominously plays the furnace scene from Toy Story 3...
More theme park stuff here. The rides are all motorised. If you have a keen eye you might be able to see the various carnival games to the right and the walls of prizes behind them...
Loved this Lego night club and all the fluorescent green drinks behind the bar...
This shuttle launch scene is larger than a child...
And another fun detail - I'm not sure where these aliens are being marched too but it felt kind of sinister to me...
And those images represent about 30% of what was actually on display. And the Lego took up about 30% of the show as a whole. The rest consisted mostly of model trains...
Many scenes with a very distinctly Australian flavour...
And then there was some fun stuff for the really small kids. This is just a tiny part of a massive Sylvanian families shindig...
There was a small retail section too and I was hoping that I might find some Lord of the Rings (I've only seen the Helm's Deep set in the wild) but no luck, and what was there was marked up by quite a bit. Seeing a display like this kind of gets me in the mood to buy and create, so I was a little disappointed that there weren't more options here - I thought it would have been a good opportunity to even sell some loose stuff.
But overall a fantastic, imaginative display that completely exceeded my expectations!
The people who make up the Perth Adult Lego Society are awesome - one of them is my optometrist, who had an enormous studio for building Lego behind his work. It was amazing!! He had things I'd only dreamed of!!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-04/world-lego-attempt-at-bridge-fails/4051516
ReplyDeleteNews article on the bridge. World record attempt fail.
-Mongo Muggins