Latest news with #LegoIdeas
Metro
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
A Lego fan made a Disney Pixar Luxo Jr. model and now it's a real set
The latest Lego Ideas set recreates the desk lamp and ball from the seminal Pixar animated short Luxo Jr., and it's all thanks to one eager fan. Computer-generated movies and cartoons are everywhere nowadays but in the 1980s almost everything was still hand-animated. Pixar was originally set-up and owned by George Lucas, but he ended up selling them to Disney and in 1986 the team debuted their first animated short: Luxo Jr. The two minute long short featured a desk lamp playing with, and accidentally deflating, a rubber ball. It was so influential it not only secured the go ahead for Toy Story, but the ball and lamp became part of the logo for Pixar themselves – even though it wasn't obvious to most people why until the short was shown before Toy Story 2 in 1999. Now the duo are iconic enough to be turned into an official Lego set, but one originally designed and voted on by fans, as part of the Lego Ideas line. Lego Ideas has been running for many years now and invites fans to post their own designs for sets, which are then voted on and anything that gets over 10,000 votes is considered for a chance of being turned into a real set – which the original creator gets a small percentage of the profits from. The Lego version of the lamp is fully articulated and can be displayed either separately or on top of the ball, which can be given the effect of appearing deflated by removing a few select pieces. Spheres aren't an easy thing to create in Lego, but the ball looks great and it's got some fun Easter eggs hidden instead, with references to other Pixar movies such as Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and Up. More Trending Although the final model design was modified by Lego themselves, the original was created by London-based fan Toby Brett. 'I'm a huge fan of all the Pixar films, which were a big part of my childhood and Luxo Jr. is the mascot that perfectly sums up my love for these movies. I spent a lot of time looking at photos of Luxo Jr. to make my model as screen-accurate and recognisable as possible,' he said. The set is made up of 613 Lego pieces and is 29cm tall when complete. It's quite reasonably price too, for licensed Lego, at £59.99. It'll be available from June 1 at the Lego website and stores, and you can already pre-order today. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Lego has a new space shuttle set and this one comes with its own private jet MORE: How to get Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga for free – but you have to be quick MORE: New Lego Fortnite sets feature Klombo and Mecha Team Leader
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Office' discontinued Lego set on shelves again, on sale in Scranton
You, too, can own miniature versions of 15 characters who changed Scranton forever. Michael, Dwight, Jim, Pam, Ryan, Angela, Oscar, Kevin, Stanley, Kelly, Phyllis, Meredith, Creed, Toby and Darryl round out 'The Office' employees that are sold as part of a 1,164-piece Lego set that was spotted on the market in March after having been discontinued in 2024. The kit was developed by a fan of the show through the Lego Ideas website and released in 2022. Set 21336, consisting primarily of a replica of the Scranton Dunder Mifflin branch, is currently for sale on with the asking price of $144.47, and at Walmart's online retail website for $150. Lego online stores show the set, with a price tag of $119.99, as out of stock. * 'The Office' LEGO set at Cooper's Seafood House gift shop on Tuesday, April 7, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER) * 'The Office' LEGO set at Cooper's Seafood House gift shop on Tuesday, April 7, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER) Show Caption 1 of 2 'The Office' LEGO set at Cooper's Seafood House gift shop on Tuesday, April 7, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER) Expand The set includes callbacks to the hit NBC television show, the listings report, such as the Jell-O stapler, a golden ticket, a Dundie Award, Michael's script, Jim's teapot, the 'World's Best Boss' mug, an engagement ring for Pam, Dwight's hidden weapons and Kevin's pot of chili. It also includes specific NEPA-centric shoutouts. The map behind Michael Scott's desk is 'an accurate representation of the NEPA region,' one Reddit fan was delighted to observe. Alfredo's Pizza even got its own tile. Cooper's Seafood House in Scranton, which was featured in an episode of 'The Office' during the show's fifth season titled 'Business Ethics,' may be one of few brick-and-mortar stores that carry Set 21336. Ryan Cooper, an owner at Cooper's Seafood House who handles most of the purchasing in the gift shop, said 'The Office' Lego sets are a popular sales item. 'A couple a week sell; it's one of the biggest sellers here,' Cooper said, adding that for a while it was rare to come across a set. 'You couldn't find them anywhere,' he said, noting that Cooper's bought hundreds of them 'direct from Lego' at one time. Jack Cooper, also an owner of Cooper's, said he was aware that 'The Office' Lego sets had been discontinued. 'They don't make those anymore, but we had bought them previously, like, years ago,' he said. 'The company does not make them; they are out of production.' He said they'd purchased the sets for the gift shop when they were first released. 'We did buy a lot, which was a smart move,' Cooper said, adding that many people who visit are seeking out a connection with 'The Office.' 'They come in for everything from 'The Office,' ' Cooper said, adding the gift shop consists primarily of items relating to the show. 'It's just totally devoted to 'Office' merch,' he explained. 'We have hundreds of things from 'The Office.' ' Cooper said he felt relieved to hear the sets were on sale again, because inventory was running low. 'We don't have a lot left, we have a few left,' he said. Jenna O'Malley, the early childhood program coordinator for the Albright Memorial Library in Scranton, said she has seen 'The Office' Lego set belonging to a friend of hers in their '20s,' and liked the way it looked. 'I think it's cool. It looks like the set if you were to view it from above with all the different rooms and stuff,' O'Malley said. O'Malley sometimes helps run a Lego workshop at the library weekly Friday and Sunday, where kids through sixth grade are welcome to mingle and model-build. Sunday is the busiest day, with sometimes as many as 15 to 20 families, or 40 to 50 people, attending, she said. The library provides the Legos. The children provide the whimsy. People travel from all over the world to see the real-life home base of 'The Office.' One brought 'The Office' Lego set with him and featured it in a video segment for his Lego-themed YouTube channel, Brick Quest. Lucas Lettrick, 34, a YouTube influencer who also serves as an official Lego brand ambassador, visited Scranton with his two young sons along with a personal challenge — to achieve 10 show-related tasks. At each stop, they took a photo incorporating the Lego mini-figures from the show's cast. Lettrick purchased the set himself, and confessed to being a 'big fan' of 'The Office,' with a personal desire to visit the scenes of his favorite episodes. Items on his 'Office' to-do list included eating a slice of Alfredo's pizza for lunch, and dinner at Cooper's Seafood, and stops at Penn Paper & Supply Co., the Dwight Schrute mural and the Lackawanna County Courthouse. 'I wanted to compare 'The Office' Lego set to the actual locations,' Lettrick said, adding a highlight was their stop at Alfredo's. 'The pizza was really good. Me and my boys loved it.' Leslie Galacci, an owner of Alfredo's Cafe, was surprised to learn that they were part of the LEGO set. 'I honestly didn't know,' she said, calling it 'definitely a privilege and an honor' to be included. After The Times-Tribune tipped her off to the fact that her restaurant has been immortalized in plastic as part of Set 21336, she went online to see it for herself. 'That was pretty impressive,' Galacci said. 'We didn't know about the Lego set out or anything, to be honest. I was surprised. I was shocked.' She added that 'The Office' brings a lot of traffic to her restaurant. 'We have customers who come in to see if our establishment was even an original establishment before the show,' she said. 'They didn't know we were a real place.' Lego aficionados make up a tightknit, all-ages, worldwide crew of fans who band together in clubs, festivals and community to share their love of Legos. Northeast Pennsylvania opportunities to engage in Lego antics as a group are mostly aimed at children — despite the target audience of many Lego sets, with boxes illustrating that the colorful blocks are for users up to age 99. Penn State Scranton offers an afternoon summer camp session for children ages 6 to 16 where they can 'learn basic engineering concepts while playing with Legos' as they build 'seesaws, rolling vehicles, hand-operated lifts and merry-go-rounds,' as well as experimenting with 'pulleys, levers, gears, wheels and axles.' The Jewish Community Center of Scranton chose Legos as the theme of its annual Purim Carnival and celebration in March, inviting participants to recreate Queen Esther's palace, Purim masks, 'graggers' (noisemakers) and anything else they desired out of Legos. The free event also featured prizes, games, face painting and food. Dan Cardonick, the JCC's CEO, said about '400 came through.' 'We chose Lego to be able to build the beautiful setting of Shushan, which is where the story of Purim takes place,' Cardonick said, adding Legos provided an 'opportunity for kids to create and have some fun, and find ways to tie Lego into the story of Purim,' as well as a chance 'for kids to become master builders.' Scrantonians seeking bigger Lego experiences have two options both east and south. One of 11 worldwide Legoland Resorts and one of only three in the U.S. is located in Goshen, New York, an hour-and-a-half drive east of Scranton. The outdoor resort opened for the season April 10. The indoor Legoland Discovery Center Philadelphia at Plymouth Meeting Mall, a train tour through Lego creations, is located an hour and 45 minutes south of Scranton.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Lego Milwaukee Art Museum won't become an official set, but here's how you can still build it
Another attempt to bring a Lego Milwaukee Art Museum set to the masses has been halted. Former Milwaukee resident Todd Elliott's art museum design wasn't selected as one of the five finalists in BrickLink's Designer Program Series 7 competition. That means Elliott's creation won't be considered for production as a limited-edition Lego set in early 2026. However, the Philadelphia father and Army veteran doesn't plan on giving up. Elliott said he may enter BrickLink's next competition this spring and, in the meantime, has made his original art museum instructions available online for a low cost. BrickLink is a Lego Group-owned online community, marketplace and design software popular with adult fans of the toy brand. In January, Elliott's museum design was accepted to BrickLink's Designer Program competition. Through the Designer Program, anyone with a free BrickLink account can vote for their favorite fan-made designs. Elliott said he will likely re-enter the museum into BrickLink's Series 8 competition in April. "I'll decide based on the feedback from BrickLink and if I can possibly make contact with Vida Andras," the Hungarian artist whose much-celebrated 2019 Milwaukee Art Museum Lego set design greatly inspired Elliott's. If Elliott's design is selected for Series 8, BrickLink users will be able to vote for it between May 5 and May 16. The five Series 8 winners will be announced June 14. After Elliott's design didn't move forward in Series 7, he posted the instructions for the 1,184-piece museum to Rebrickable ― a website that lets Lego enthusiasts share their designs and connects users with resellers, allowing them to smoothly obtain the necessary bricks to re-create designs that aren't official Lego sets. Anyone can purchase the art museum instructions for $1. Elliott began workshopping a Lego model of the Milwaukee Art Museum's Quadracci Pavilion and Calatrava-designed "wings" a few years ago. He was inspired by fellow designer Andras' model, which received local media attention and nearly became an official Lego set. Andras posted his creation to Lego Ideas, a Lego-run online community where users can share their ideas and potentially have them turned into official sets. It's similar to BrickLink's Designer Program, but the sets aren't sold on a limited-edition basis. If a design receives 10,000 votes from Lego Ideas users, Lego reviews it for consideration as an official product. Andras' art museum hit 10,000 votes, but, in 2021, Lego announced it wouldn't produce the set. "I was really bummed because I wanted to buy one," Elliott told the Journal Sentinel in December. "So, a couple of years ago, I sat down and tried to figure out how he built it based on the pictures he had submitted. I kind of reverse-engineered it" using Studio by BrickLink ― a software that allows LEGO fans to virtually design almost anything using unlimited brick styles and colors. Andras' design was about two feet long and 1½ feet wide, Elliott said. He's unsure if Andras built that model in real life or only rendered it virtually, but, when Elliott attempted to build it, the wings were "so heavy that they drooped and sagged, so it didn't look good," he said. Elliott said he attempted to reach out to Andras on social media but received no response, so he went "back to the drawing board" and developed another version of the museum that's about half the size of Andras' model. In November, Elliott posted the step-by-step instructions for that 775-piece museum to Rebrickable. Elliott said he posted the instructions for free because the design was "heavily influenced" by Andras', and he felt it wouldn't be fair to profit from it. Elliott continued tweaking his design before submitting it to BrickLink's Designer Program Series 7 and told the Journal Sentinel in February that he now feels it's sufficiently different from Andras'. With his latest model, Elliott said he focused on ensuring that both the wings and the base of the structure were more stable. In addition to rendering the model online, he tested out the wings in the real world. "I built it with actual Legos to see that the wings would be supported and were still movable," he said. "You can put the wings up or down, like what happens with the actual museum." Overall, Elliott said his new museum is "just a much better-looking design." "The other thing I changed ... internally there's a much stronger support, so you can pick up the model without worrying about it falling apart. Lastly, on the back of the museum where the window panes are, there is this slight curve to the building that kind of melts into the foundation. That's really tricky to do with Legos, but I found a way." In addition to his museum, Elliott is known for his viral Brewers Famous Racing Sausages Lego set idea, which is currently up for vote on Lego Ideas. Over the summer, Elliott designed Lego replicas of the five iconic Famous Racing Sausages, as well as mascot Bernie Brewer. Each figurine is comprised of about 500 Lego bricks and is about nine inches high and four inches wide. Elliott also designed miniature, square versions of each of the sausages. They're about half the size of his original figurines and fit into Lego's BrickHeadz line. The sausages ― which Elliott posted on Lego Ideas in August ― have 3,436 votes as of Thursday. They have just over 400 days to get 10,000 votes. If they hit that milestone, Lego will consider them for production. Elliott said it would be up to the toy brand whether the sausages are sold as a set or separately. With MLB Opening Day on the horizon, Elliott is working toward the necessary vote total by publicizing the sausages in the media. He said he also plans to come to Milwaukee this summer, catch a few Brewers games and encourage fans to vote. "I'm thinking of doing is maybe ― myself and my son come back to Milwaukee this summer and attend some Brewers games and walk around the parking lot as people tailgate with a big sign saying, 'Please vote,'" Elliott said. "I'll bring the actual models with so people can see and touch them, and that'll hopefully get people interested." More: Lego set of Racing Sausage built by reporter in time-lapse video More: Building Bratwurst: Brewers racing sausages Lego set enters its next phase of development This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Lego Milwaukee Art Museum won't be official set, but you can build it
