Latest news with #Billund
Times
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
This Lego-obsessed city is Europe's best break for kids
For once, my daughters are excited about lunch. They've even knowingly ordered a vegetable, unheard of in their respective five and four years on this planet. But then, they've never before been offered lunch by a robot. Nor ordered it by slotting Lego bricks together and pushing them into a machine. This is the magic of Mini Chef, the restaurant at the centre of Lego House in Billund, southern Denmark (child meals £15, adult £26). Here meals are made — so the story goes — by a Lego chef in a chaotic kitchen that we watch on a tableside screen. The food then makes its way down a spiral conveyor belt to a pair of robot waitors, Robert and Roberta. Wearing Lego bowties and fixing us with goggly Lego eyes, Robert and Roberta wave at the waiting children, prompting shrieks and giggles. And there is something for the parents: the menu is heavy on veggies and dishes are tasty (think cauliflower and chickpea curry, and oven-roasted salmon). I've come with my husband and three young children to visit Billund's Lego House, the 'Home of the Brick', a towering building that appears like 21 giant blocks stacked in the city's central square (from £27, under 3s free; Inside are 25 million Lego bricks, some masterfully composed into models ranging from dinosaurs to a giant tree, the others scattered about in four 'experience zones' ready for building. Energy levels have been high all morning ever since we were issued with personal — and scannable – bright yellow wristbands at the entrance to Lego House and told to use them to identify ourselves at the cameras stationed around the numerous activities in the four zones. Cue sprints towards buckets of Lego blocks, determined to get there first, and endless jostling in front of screens to grab the perfect memento of the latest creation. The selfies we take using the cameras are stored in the Lego House system for us to access via the QR code on our wristbands when we get home. • 16 of the best family adventure holidays We start by grabbing a Lego base plate to build brick self-portraits of how we're feeling (excited, obviously) and load them into a machine that scans our creations to generate a digital version on screen, which we then watch dance to electronic music. Then we move on to create a fish, which is also rendered digital but then released into an aquarium to swim with — gulp — a giant Lego shark. Everything is brightly coloured, larger than life, interactive and the girls can't get enough of it all. Their younger brother, who is two, struggles to play along. But then we find the Duplo train builder activity, which engages him in quiet play for long enough that I can take his sisters to the Robo Lab to program a robot. It's simple coding and almost certainly the first they've ever tackled. Still, my four-year-old daughter figures it out before I do and gets her robot to move around the digital garden, planting seeds and watering them to make flowers for the bees, while I jab uselessly at the screen doing all the wrong things. A preview, surely, of our future family dynamics when it comes to tech. I had thought there might not be enough at Lego House to engage us for an entire day. But, in each zone we walk through, we're constantly pulled from one room to the next by more and more enticing builds to try. Hours pass, we take dozens of photos, and I begin to understand why Lego has long been the world's most popular toy. I even lose myself in creating an intricate Lego flower, shaping two shades of yellow into petals and combing through seemingly bottomless buckets of blocks to find exactly the right hinge to attach them. I'm normally far too impatient for this sort of activity, yet I probably spend at least 20 minutes here, my daughters both silently building right beside me. By the time I've finished and am planting my flower in the Lego garden, my shoulders have dropped and my breathing slowed. I feel like I do after a yoga class, minus the sore muscles. Only in Billund. • 18 of the best European city breaks with children There are ten Legoland theme parks worldwide, including the one in Windsor, but Billund is the only one with a Lego House. It was in this small Danish town that the local toymaker Ole Kirk Kristiansen invented the brick and it very much remains its home. A large factory and the company headquarters are here and it feels like a town that Lego built — not least because there are vast Lego blocks to climb on in the street, and every second person you see is either wearing a Lego employee lanyard or carrying a bulging bag of goodies from the Lego shop. You don't visit Billund if you don't love Lego. And, if you do love Lego, you'll almost certainly want to stay in the Legoland hotel. The themed bedrooms run from Arthurian knights to Ninjago ninjas and are decorated with characters built from Lego bricks — we find a ladybird above the bed and a butterfly in the bathroom — and have bunk beds for the kids. It's fun, if a little tired in places, and the castle-themed playground within easy hollering distance of our room is a boon come evening and the need to run off steam before bed. Billund is a compact place and everything we need is walkable from the hotel. With three children who all require car seats, not needing a hire car is a huge relief. I instantly love the pleasant 20-minute walk from the hotel to the town centre, winding along a pedestrianised riverside walkway lined with large modern sculptures. We stroll this route several times during our May half-term break, walking into the town for cinnamon rolls at Billund Bageri, dinner at one of the simple restaurants (pizza is a fixture) or to let the kids loose in the playgrounds on the roof of Lego House. One afternoon we walk in for a preview of the Lego Masters Academy, inspired by the TV series of the same name, which will pit talented Lego builders against each other when it launches in September. On the ground floor of Lego House, it will offer hands-on sessions for Lego fans, teaching building skills from foundation level to the technically advanced, for a separate charge (adults and children £23). This is most likely to appeal to AFOLs, or adult fans of Lego — an impassioned community of Lego-lovers who create incredible custom builds, some of which are on display in the Masterpiece Gallery on the top floor of Lego House — but the sessions also cater for builders from the age of five. This makes my eldest daughter the youngest these sessions are suitable for. She's completely captivated from the get-go and creates something far more intricate than I would have imagined she was capable of, which she insists we display the second we get home. I resolve to challenge her more in future and to leave the box of Lego out in the living room more often. Before leaving Billund, we must, or course, visit actual Legoland (adults and children £37, under 2s free). After all, we can see it from our hotel. This is the original Lego theme park, opened in 1968 as a place to display the company's exhibition of models. Now owned by Merlin, today it's more focused on child-friendly rides. We visit twice to spin on the carousel and giggle ourselves giddy on the Flying Eagle rollercoaster. There are rides even my two-year-old son can enjoy (a Duplo-themed mini train, a safari to see Lego animals) and the girls are cock-a-hoop when they discover that Mummy isn't allowed to accompany them on the Frog Hopper. I strap them in and watch them dissolve into near-hysteria together, whooping each other into the sort of frenzy of jubilation only childhood knows as they're flung up and down a tower like a frog hopping in the air. I find myself grinning and waving non-stop throughout their ride. • 13 of the best family-friendly weekend breaks in the UK Sure, sometimes parenting means standing back and letting your children have all the fun but on this trip, more often than not, I've been giggling and whooping right along with them. The home of Lego? It's a blockbuster hit. Helen Ochyra was a guest of Lego House. The Legoland Hotel has B&B family rooms from £300, including a two-day ticket to Legoland ( Fly to Billund
Fast Company
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
Lego's first book nook is an addictively interactive diorama
Lego just announced its first book nook: Sherlock Holmes' Baker Street. I was guessing this was coming sooner than later, with Lego's ever-increasing focus on the adult market and the growing popularity of book nooks. The design is fantastic, full of the fine details you expect of high-quality book nooks, which are miniature dioramas that are designed to fit between books on a shelf. But, unlike those, you can actually take this off the bookshelf, unfold it into a three-building Victorian London street, and play with it. Conceived by Japanese artist Monde in 2018, book nooks often depict a street, a room, or some other structure inspired by a theme from a real book. Originally, people made their own but they quickly became popular on social media, so companies in Japan and China started to sell kits. These precious windows into literary realities are very intricate and complex to build, usually with LED lights to illuminate the scene at night. People who build them find them relaxing. Since adult Lego fans mostly buy sets to chill, it makes sense that the Billund, Denmark-based toy company decided to make its own version. It has been doubling down on a trend that began in the late 2000s, when it released the huge 7,500-brick Millennium Falcon, a massive set that started the Ultimate Collector Star Wars line of sets that catered to grown-up Lego fans (like me) by appealing to their childhood fetishes. The success of these earliest complex sets spurred the company to release other lines, like Lego Architecture, which allow people to build anything from Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House. Last year it launched a Botanical Collection line, which got deeper into the adult-oriented relaxing space, and iconic pop culture objects in a line aptly named Lego Icons. This is where you will find the Sherlock Holmes Book Nook, available for pre-order for $120 for shipping on June 1. They are playable! When folded and placed in-between books, the book nook offers a view of a street flanked by precious buildings full with architectural details, and a cobblestone street. You will notice that the façades don't run parallel to each other, but converge towards the back in a faux one-point perspective, a design conceived to create an optical illusion that makes it look deeper than what it actually is. There's Sherlock and Watson minifigs, plus Irene Adler, Paige and Professor Moriarty. I just wish Lego had included LED lighting, too. Unlike assembled wooden or carton book nooks, you can take the Lego book nook out of the bookshelf and unfold it to form a perfectly straight lineup of three buildings. Not surprisingly, the designers found ways to make the set fully interactive. There's even a secret hideout for Moriarty, which you can operate by turning a chimney in the building's roof. You can peek into Holmes' study by pushing open the top floor wall of 221B Baker Street. There's also a bookshelf in a book nook in a bookshelf inside the window display of the book store in one of the buildings, which you can access by rotating its cylindrical window display. The kind of clever infinite loop that can open real portals between our reality and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's universe.
Forbes
18-05-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
LEGO Mario Kart (72037) Review: Worth Every Golden Coin
When LEGO announced the Mario Kart – Mario & Standard Kart set (72037) on March 10 — 'MAR10 Day' — it seemed like the perfect investment for both gamers and brick fans. Now it's finally here, and if you had reservations about preordering it, you can put them to bed because this kit is sublime. This Mario Kart-themed set is arguably the best of all the Super Mario series' builds so far, even the delightful 16-bit Mario & Yoshi (71438) kit. Thanks to some impressive ingenuity from Billund's creative team, it doesn't just look the part — it's also among the more satisfying LEGO releases to put together, and it only highlights the possibilities of the company's upcoming Pokémon partnership. LEGO Mario Kart 72037 is a bit of a whopper, coming in at 1,972 pieces — a reasonable 8.6 cents/7.6p a brick — weighing 5.5lbs (2.5kg) and measuring 9in x 8in x 13in (22cm x 19cm x 32cm) when fully built. I love LEGO's two-part packaging; it's a dream for collectors who prefer to keep the boxes, and it's so much easier to open them. After slicing the tape strips and lifting the lid on the LEGO Mario Kart 72037 set, you might be treated to a new change from the company for the first time. Goodbye plastic, hello paper. Matt Gardner There are 17 packs in all — nine for the kart and its stand, and eight for Mario — and all of them come in waxy paper bags with serrated openings. Sure, it feels like a drop in the ocean to see a company, which trades almost exclusively in plastic, cutting down on using it in its packaging, but credit where it's due: these pouches are great, and are much easier to open cleanly (at least, after a couple of folds). If anything, their sturdiness compared to their plastic predecessors means you have to double-check to see if any smaller pieces are still lodged inside. Best of all, there aren't any stickers. Any detailed pieces, of which there are only 12 — the eyes, hat/kart 'M' logos, glove knuckles, hubcaps, and outer exhaust trims — are printed, which should be the standard for any LEGO display kits. LEGO Mario Kart 72037 is technical to begin with —a bit like building the cores of the LEGO Star Wars helmets. As early as pack two, it gets fiddly, assembling the engine section and the steering pinion. Still, the lack of weird core color blocks as indicators proves it's easier than most detailed, technical sets. Once you've cleared the first four bags, you're on to finessing the kart. Now, I struggle with certain LEGO sets, specifically symmetrical builds, because the instructions can be immediately repetitive, making you run the same routine in reverse. That's not the case with this kart; it's nicely paced, focusing the build on one side for more extended periods — at least, to the point you don't feel cheated out of the chance to predict ahead and run two processes at once. Once you've completed pack nine, you have your kart and stand, which is a thing of beauty on its own. The stand is simple and surprisingly functional as it only moves laterally, with an impressively uncomplicated Technic mechanism. It takes a few minutes to get 'that' combination of pitch and angle, but its small, round link column doesn't limit you to a handful of options. Even without Mario, the kart and stand look great. Matt Gardner You might get your hopes up that Mario can stand alone, but he's built to sit. The hip joints focus on his look, meaning there's no articulation below his waist. It's a good decision, at least for this set. While I'm sure plenty of MOC makers will figure out a way to make him stand tall, he's been custom-made to fit this kart perfectly, right to the pedals. LEGO may've missed a trick to scale him to builds that would benefit from flexibility, but you wouldn't want to be locked into a $169 set just to get Mario for other releases. Sadly, Mario doesn't stand on his own two feet. Matt Gardner In packs 10 through 12, you build his surprisingly small body and legs, looking like a more family-friendly Belvedere Torso, then place them into the kart. The arms follow, and their Technic axle connections are particularly fiddly, but they thankfully hold well in any position once they're in. The most satisfying part of the build is at the very end, when you're creating Mario's head. It's one of those classic moments in a LEGO set when you can complete 90% of a bag and still have no idea why you've assembled what you have, only to slap on the last, larger pieces and create something incredible. The engineering of Mario's hat is marvelous, giving the brim a perfect pitch without sacrificing the aesthetic. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder LEGO Mario Kart 72037 isn't without the odd drawback. The exhausts aren't quite perfect, but it's a lot to ask from the curved pipe connectors. The front wheels are also a little off-kilter; their connections to the main kart body are quite lightweight, meaning they're never quite parallel with one another. The stand exacerbates this, as any pitched position other than level-straight sees them sagging in whatever direction gravity dictates. Mario's head is close to being guilty of the same issue, but just about maintains the right amount of resistance — impressive, considering how heavy his bonce is. For better and worse, one thing that doesn't have resistance is the stand, which slots into the bottom of the kart. If you pick the piece up by the kart, you'll leave the base behind, and I prefer it — better than it hanging on for a few seconds before dropping to the floor and potentially getting damaged. Even though no LEGO Super Mario set has had one before, part of me still wishes the 72037 set included a display plate and minifigure. It's the Star Wars LEGO fan in me, I guess, and it certainly doesn't need it to feel like a statement piece, especially with its stand. What's more, LEGO just released the perfect partner set for this Mario Kart package: the Spiny Shell (40787), also known as the Blue Shell of Death, which is, by all accounts, scaled perfectly to 72037. Annoyingly, LEGO has locked this set behind Insider Rewards, and I only just spent my points on the Micro Command Center (40786) to match my Galaxy Explorer. Roll on the next 4X Points event, unless a decent deal pops up on eBay. It's such a good set that there's a potential market for LEGO — and, if not, MOC creators — to design other karts for the portly plumber to sit in or on. The Pipe Frame, Mach 8, and B Dasher all seem like natural favorites; given Mario's inflexible legs, there's no chance we'll get a bike, or an ATV like the Wild Wiggler. I've got a few statement LEGO pieces I particularly love — the Tallneck, UCS Y-Wing, and even The Beatles' Yellow Submarine — but few have turned as many heads as the LEGO Mario Kart. Here's to whatever's up LEGO's sleeve next, but another tie-in to capitalize on Mario Kart World would be a great move for both the company and my ever-more cramped shelves.
