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Lego

Some of my fave Lego sets are retiring soon

For way too many years, building Lego kits has been one of my favorite hobbies. I find the construction process fun, and I love seeing the engineering Lego came up with to model various systems in their models. Over the years, we've built a lot of kits—45 or so in 20+ years. I have a spreadsheet that tracks the kits we've built, and while updating it today, I noticed that a number of my favorite sets are retiring soon.

If you like building Lego sets, these four are highly recommended—the builds were interesting, the engineering in the models is amazing, and I really like the finished set.

Emirates Team New Zealand AC75 Yacht: The engineering in this kit is pretty astonishing—there's a working pneumatic system that raises and lowers the hydrofoil arms, the mast turns, and the jib can swing from side to side. At $120, this is quite the bargain in the world of Lego.

Hogwarts Icons Collectors Edition: This wasn't the most fun build (a fair bit of repetition, especially in the owl's wings), but the end result is very cool. The sheer breadth of things in the set is also impressive.

Land Rover Classic Defender 90: The original 1983 model, and this one has a working suspension and steering. Fun to build, and lots of accessories to complete the look. If you're a Lego Insider (free), it's on sale for $60 off right now.

X-Wing Starfighter™: Luke's X-Wing wasn't pretty in the original Star Wars, and this one's not pretty either. It's beat up, missing a panel or two, and has some mismatched colors. But it's a fun build, and the engineering behind the x-wing technology is very impressive to see as you build it.

Once Lego retires a set, they get very hard to find—you can sometimes find remaining stock in stores, but if that fails, you're off to eBay to hope someone's selling a clean, complete set in good condition. What you'll usually find, though, are scalpers with unopened sets they're trying to sell for twice or thrice the actual list price.

So if you want them, buy them before they retire. These four in particular are amongst my favorite builds.



The Art of the Brick at OMSI

We recently toured Nathan Sawaya's The Art of the Brick at OMSI, our local science museum. I had heard about this show, and seen pictures, but they don't do it justice…so here, look at some of my pictures which also won't do it justice. [View on Flickr]

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Part of the reason photos don't do the ehxibit justice is the lack of sense of scale—further accentuated in my photos due to the lack of reference points. Most of these things are quite large; the human figures are all life size (or bigger). The Easter Island head is maybe 8' tall, the Whistler's Mother figure is six or so feet long, etc. Each piece has a descriptive card that includes the total number of Lego pieces used. As you'd expect, it's a lot of Lego!

If you're in the Portland area—or The Art of the Brick is coming to your town—I highly recommend a visit. You don't even have to like Legos; the art is just amazing…even without considering it's made of Lego bricks.