Gartenschau Kaiserslautern - 2021 Visit

Sadly, I had to leave Germany and Europe. It was a blast living there even if part of it ended up being during a pandemic. Thankfully, I made it to the Gartenschau Kaiserslautern one more time before I left and got to see the LEGO display.

The entrance to the park is in a facility that they used to use for ice skating in the winter. Now you pay the entrance fee there, they sell LEGO sets there, and for the first time they have a LEGO display available. This year it was something I had not seen them display before. They built Fritz-Walter-Stadion - home of 1. FC Kaiserslautern or for those of you not familiar, home to their local football club (what Americans refer to as soccer).

Instead of putting a ton of pictures up, you should have the ability to swipe or click on arrows to go through the pictures in the slide show. If it doesn’t work right, let me know.

The next batch of pictures are right as you enter the LEGO display. It includes:
-A case with large scale minifigures with masks and various MOCs
-A large 2x4 red brick (made of ~24,000 bricks), a globe, and a large scale minifigure
-Some LEGO© House exclusives and a brick build LEGO logo
-A close up on the Lego logo
-Numerous Technic car sets
-Two pictures of a European street by Brick-Fans Rhein-Main including a building from the Old City in Budapest (picture #7 if you are counting)
-A display of London Buses, some race cars, some trains, and some MOCs of VW Beetles
-Some close ups of the VW Beetles

I probably should have gotten someone to stand next to this build of the Statue of Liberty to show it’s size. It is 2 meters tall maybe? An impressive build…

The lighting in the display area is not the best for pictures as you can see by these next to. The first one (on the left) is a Minecraft scene. It pours into a US Western scene. The western scene has been around, but the Minecraft portion is new this year from what I can recall.

Some Elves and Castle sets…

The picture I posted of Das Hambacher Schloss doesn’t do it justice. I think the actual castle is the upper left portion of the picture. You can look this one up, but it’s a castle near the city of Neustadt in Germany. In 1832, there was a protest that took place there and it is now considered the birthplace of democracy in Germany. This build is approximately 82,000 pieces and I think I saw it last year too.

Kleinkastell Pohl was a small fort used in Roman times that was located in Germany. Search this one online for more details, but it’s a great re-creation in brick form.

Here’s a pretty impressive Ninjago scene for those of you who are fans of that genre.

The builders merged the Ninjago display into a display of some of the Chinese Festival Theme sets along with a few MOCs. I like how they did this almost seamlessly.

The City scene they have there is always impressive and they evolve the scene every year with changes. You can click through the pictures I took and then go back to some of the previous years to see if you spot any differences.

Another large scale build of an individual LEGO piece.

2 MOCs… the first looks like it is part of a GBC where the robots pass the balls down the line. The other is a fun display of some collectible minifigures. Now sure who or what “TA” is.

The Empire State Building in a much larger scale than the Architecture set.

Here are two more cases with some more great MOCs and sets inside.

Here is a fun brick built rubber duck.

I’ve seen these before, but here’s the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate. You can see more of them from my visit last year.

I don’t remember this one from last year or I didn’t take a picture of it, but here’s a version of the Berlin Wall.

This one was there last year, but here’s Frankfurt am Main Hauptbahnhof (Frankfurt Train Station).

Star Wars and Space were mixed into the same room this year. Instead of individual displays, they had a large display of various space vehicles in the same room. It was hard to pick everything out with all that was on display, but it is definitely an impressive collection. Click through to see below.

I gush over this one ever year, but the Cologne Cathedral build is phenomenal! If you’re going to visit this display, this is the one you have to take some time to check out. It’s very impressive!

Here are some vignettes of super heroes and a few others along with some animals.

A few close ups of the vignettes.

Die Sendung mit der Maus literally translates to “the show with the mouse.” This is a children’s program that has been on in Germany since 1971.

Last up are a few sets where they either added to them, modified them, or changed them completely into something else.

There’s a lot more there, but I didn’t take pictures of everything since some of them are unchanged from previous years. Still great builds, but you can see them in posts of previous visits I made there.

Hope you enjoyed my visits to various places in Europe to show some bricks off. I’ll miss it there, but I hope to go back some day. Hoping the Gartenschau Kaiserslautern will still have a LEGO display to check out when I go.

Visiting an Open LEGO® Display in 2020 - Gartenschau - Kaiserslautern, Germany

The Gartenschau in Kaiserslautern was closed in early 2020 as COVID-19 first hit Germany. Thankfully, it re-opened and I finally was able to get there to see the updated LEGO® display. So we donned our masks and went in…

Before moving on, here are the links to the previous visits I’ve had to the Gartenschau:
2018, 2019 (part 1), 2019 (part 2)

Here’s the welcome sign. It says die große LEGO® ausstellung (the large LEGO® display) and it is hosted by Lauter Steine E.V. If you live locally, I believe it closes on 31 October and then re-opens in April.

The start of the display had a few cases with some MOCs. Some of the minifigures had masks added to them.

Next up, a large MOC of a 2x4 red brick. Then there was another case with a few MOCs and some sets.

In that case (shown above) were a few MOCs designed by Daniel Krentz. He was the designer of the #375 LEGO Classic Yellow Castle (shown below). Daniel passed away in 2016. There were a few MOCs from Daniel in the case purchased during a Fairy Bricks fundraiser.

The first picture looks like a Native American totem pole only out of bricks and in various build styles.

Next is a case with some train MOCs and some Formula 1 race car MOCs. The bottom has the VW Bus set with some VW MOC. Further down is a space shuttle.

There was no sign next to this one, but it looks like a recreation of the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. It’s a very impressive build!

I apologize for the reflection and lighting. The displays have plexiglass in front of them (smart move) and the lighting is not meant for cameras.

This MOC has been there previously and is a western US scene from the 1800s or so. I like the use of the wallpaper background incorporated with the brick background.

I wasn’t as big of a Castle fan as a kid so I’m not sure if these next pictures are sets or MOCs, but they are in the Castle theme.

I didn’t see a sign next to this one, but perhaps this is a MOC of an actual castle in Germany? The German flag is on top of the main structure so maybe.

This MOC was there last year and it’s a build of the electricity plant of the city of Kaiserslautern in 1894. I like the hot air balloon to mix things up a bit from the industrial look. I’m also a fan of the tall smoke stack they build. I’m curious if it is brick only or if there is a supporting structure inside.

Here’s an impressive build of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. If you look closely, you an see some fun details like Santa Claus.

Here is another Berlin landmark. The Reichstag where the German Parliament meets. I saw this build at a show last year. The new addition this time is the park nearby with the LEGO logo in brick flower form.

Here is a MOC of the Fruchthalle in Kaiserslautern. It’s a music venue for performances. The MOC is built from ~80,000 bricks. It took about a year to build and was built in 2016. I’ll let you read the description in German in the picture below.

I’m not sure if this MOC is new or just hasn’t been displayed in the past few years, but I found it to be the most impressive one there this year. The Frankfurt train station. First picture is the sign on the display letting you know what it is.

Here’s the full display… or at least most of it. I like how they added in the mirrors so you could see the trains. I didn’t get any close ups of the trains, but they had a mix of sets (the Disney train) and a few MOC trains.

A few more pictures of the station. I think the main building is impressive. The curve they were able to recreate in brick is really impressive.

Added into the scene were many of the modular buildings. I didn’t see the Cafe Corner or Green Grocer, but they have the City Hall and a few of the less recent buildings.

Nearby were a few buildings that are re-creations of actual buildings in the Frankfurt area.

I don’t know if this is of an actual train station or not. If you zoom in on the sign, Reiichelsheim (Odenwald) is an actual place. Not sure if they just wanted the sign on the station or not.

The large recreation of the brick fence behind the train station is cool!

I saw these MOCs of Venetian buildings last fall. You can see a few more pictures of them here.

A Ninjago scene.

The city scene has remained a constant over the past few years, but every year they make some changes and throw in some new things. Like last year, they have a fair, a rural area with farms, a European style city center walking area, and a more downtown/urban area. This year included more lights to include LEDs in the modular buildings, a subway type train route (the trains weren’t running while we were there), and a new train station to name a few.

I’m trying out a new (to me) web feature. You should be able to click an arrow or swipe on your phone/tablet to advance through the city scene pictures. Let me know in the comments if it doesn’t work.

I believe this scene was there in previous years. It’s a European style town/city next to hill/mountain. I’m going to guess Bavaria… maybe? The detailing on this one is very impressive and I like the colors too.

An imperial ship from the Pirate’s theme and then some recreations from JK Brickworks.

Some brick built birds which appear to be pretty close to scale. They are designed by Felix Jaensch. You can see his work here on Flickr.

The Dom…

Here’s the Cologne Cathedral again. It’s been there every year that I have visited and I still find it to be an incredible MOC.

Here’s the room dedicated to the space themes (should be able to click through the pictures). There are Ice Planet, M-Tron, Futuron, a large MOC of a ship, and some MOCs in the various space theme styles. This room is awesome! It makes me want to build some MOCs to add to them. I was a huge M-Tron fan and still have my sets.

Here are some architecture themed sets and MOCs. The Statue of Liberty (#21042-1), a MOC of Christ the Redeemer (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), a version of the Taj Mahal, and a few churches.

Various MOCs on display.

Star Wars™ sets have to make an appearance. Here are a few of the UCS sets on display.

A tall brick skyscraper. The top is lit up with LEDs.

Here is the logo for SteinHelden.de. This is a store located on site and they have an online store (only ships within Germany). It loosely translates to “brick heroes” and the business is set up to employ the disabled. A number of the workers are in wheel chairs or have other disabilities. It’s a cool concept!

Here is a microscale representation of the city of Kaiserslautern. Specifically it is the Rathaus (City Hall) and the Pfaltztheater.

A larger scale version of the Burj Khalifa.

A large scene of ancient Egypt.

The western US circa 1800s.

Last display case with some modified sets to include some Ideas sets, the James Bond Car, and some Harry Potter sets. There are also some fighter jet and biplane MOCs on the bottom row.

Another awesome display this year. So glad I was able to visit despite all of the COVID-19 closures. Thanks to the team who puts this amazing exhibit on! Hope you enjoyed my picture tour.

Happy building!

Germany's Wiblingen Monastery - In Brick Form

I recently was able to stop at the Wiblingen Monastery in Ulm-Wiblingen, Germany. It’s about halfway between the cities of Stuttgart and Munich. According to Google, it’s a “Baroque Benedictine monastery, founded in 1093 & expanded in 1714, featuring a rococo library.” We stopped in and saw the cool library and toured the museum. Unexpectedly, we ventured into one of the rooms and saw some LEGO bricks. WOOHOO!!! And here’s what we saw…

Here’s a picture of the actual building. One of the first things you notice is the two towers in the brick version that aren’t in the actual building. The brick builders decided to add on the towers that were never completed in their version. Other than that, it looks like they were pretty accurate in building their version.

Source: https://www.kloster-wiblingen.de/en/home#impression-images-22

So the details (based on a fact sheet placed near the build in English and a few other languages)…
-Built by Burkhard Siemoneit and Stephan Schumann
-It took ~2 years to build (mostly weekend time)
-It contains over 800,00 bricks
-It weighs around 350 kg or over 770 lbs
-It is 3.5 m (11.48 ft) long by 2.6 m (8.53 ft) wide
-The towers are 1.8 m (5.91 ft) high
-It was estimated to cost over 40,000€ or ~$43,600
-The build was finished on 20 July 2017

Here is a scaled down version of the build.

I’ve included a number of pictures for a few reasons. First, you can get some closer views of the details of the build. Second, you can see some of the fun Easter Eggs they threw into the build.

A wedding being held outside

A minifigure walking on the roof, Superman and Superwoman.

Batman climbing up (or down) the side of the tower

A few minifigure “statues”

Some storks on the roof and if you look closely, some burglars in the background on the roof.

Bart Simpson on the roof of the tower.

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Nearby to the monastery was a giant festival scene. It was chuck full of details with food trucks, a band, bakers making a cake, and a bunch of vendors. I included just a few pictures for your viewing pleasure.

As an American, I think we need to have more giant displays at random locations like I have seen in Europe. I’m a huge fan of seeing these displays and I can’t wait to see more. If you know of any I should check out, let me know. In the meantime, happy building!

German LEGO Fans get Some Sweet Discounts on Amazon.de

One of my most popular posts is a conglomeration of various ways to save money buying new LEGO sets. You can see the post here. The post is focused on buying LEGO sets in the US, but what about outside of the US?

If you are new to my site, I am temporarily living in Germany for a few years as my non-LEGO job moved me here. With that, I’ve been able to see bricks across Europe. I have also been able to see some of the LEGO set deals here in Germany. I checked out Amazon.de recently (February 2020) to see what they had and here are some of the highlights

#21045-1: Trafalgar Square - Architecture
Currently 52,99€ versus the 79,99€ German retail price (34% off).
At the current exchange rate, that puts it at $57.87 versus the $79,99 retail price in the US.

#60233-1: Donut Shop Opening - CITY
Currently 54,90€ versus the 79,99€ German retail price (31% off).
At the current exchange rate, its $59.95 versus the $89.99 US retail price.

#75253-1: Droid Commander - Boost
Currently 139,00€ vs the 199,00€ German retail price (31% off).
$151.80 at the current exchange rate versus the US retail price of $199.99.

#42083-1: Bugatti Chiron - Technic
Currently 265,97€ versus the German retail price of 369,99€ (28% off).
That’s $290.46 at the current exchange rate versus the US retail price of $349.99.

And finally…
#42110-1: Land Rover Defender
Currently 139,00€ versus the German retail price of 179,00€ (23% off).
In US dollars that’s $151.80 versus $199.99 US retail price.

Why am I highlighting these? Well if you do a comparison of what’s on sale in the US, you won’t see any of these listed today. It’s interesting that these are on sale in Germany, but not elsewhere. Perhaps sales of these items are lower in Germany? Maybe Amazon.de has a lot of inventory to get rid of? It’s very interesting to see the differences and very tempting to dip in and take advantage of some of these sales I can’t get in the US.

What are your thoughts?

Happy building!

Bricks in Heidelberg, Germany

I recently was in Heidelberg, Germany for their Christmas Market and we happened to pass by Galeria Kaufhof on the Hauptstrasse (main street). This brick built Santa greeted us as we walked by. There was no Brand Store inside and they didn’t have a sign about this model, but it was fun to see as we walked by. Enjoy!

LEGO® Exhibition Visit - Kloster Machern, Bernkastel-Kues, Germany - Part 2

Here’s the second part of my visit to the LEGO® Exhibition in Bernkastel-Kues, Germany. If you missed the first part, you can see it here.

Star Wars did not have a big representation at this show, but there was a hangar of ships on display. Next to it was what looked like Lego Digital Designer and the build of the MOC on a computer screen.

Some nostalgia for you… here is a large 12V train set up with some of the old LEGO sets. It might not be some of the massively detailed train displays you see LUGs set up, but it was still cool to see the 12V trains chugging around the track.

I don’t know if this is a MOC of an actual train station or not, but I thought it was very impressive. I like how the designer incorporated the CITY base plates in the front. There’s a lot of action going on with a tow truck getting a car, construction on the tracks, and a painter at work near the pizza truck.

Next to the train station were a few trains. I would have preferred to see them going around a big display, but I’ll take whatever I can get.

The picture next to it is of a large church with some great lighting behind translucent colored bricks. This would have been cool to see with the lights off.

Next up is a large country western scene with a mid-1800s US-like Army and some Natives about to harass them. The scene was very detailed with the desert scene on the outside of a pretty detailed fort. I took the picture as the builder was showing off the inside of one of the buildings. If I spoke German, I would have more to say about this, but I don’t so just enjoy the pictures.

Not to be outdone, nearby was another country western scene. This one included a train, settlers with horses and wagons, the Confederate Army fighting the Union Army, cattle herders, a steam ship, and some Natives harassing some settlers and their wagon train. This scene was another one where it was hard to know where to look first. I can’t image how long it took to set up each and every single minifigure here. Very impressive!

This display was one of my favorite at the show. I apologize for loading all of my pictures that I took of this one, but as a fan of modular buildings I thought this Venice scene was awesome. The use of different colors helps the buildings to really stand out and the pieces used really create some cool details. I think about some of the pieces that I have and how I often don’t know what to do with them and then I look at buildings like these and realize how I could use them to make some very striking details on buildings.

See if you can pick out some of the pieces used to create details. I really like the scorpions and the Star Wars Battle Droid legs for detail. I also like how the one building uses the ball joints. Awesome work!

Here are 2 more buildings. One appears to be maybe an Asian restaurant while the other appears to be a LEGO® Brand Store.

While a lot of the builders were adults and many were from a LUG, there were also a few teens there displaying some items. I didn’t get pictures of them all, but this group stood out to me. They had a number of mechanical devices to include the amusement park below. They also had a rubik’s cube solver, a machine that held a pen to make some cool drawings, and a few other machines. Here’s a picture of their amusement park.

These may have been the best part of the show. The creativity here is astonishing. They took existing sets and built them using what I can only assume was with parts they had on hand or could get to easily. They had #21303-1: WALL-E build out of various pieces and then the two sets pictured below. The first was #71043-1: Hogwart’s Castle. I first looked at it and was like, that’s a cool looking castle. Then I was like, wait! That’s a real set only with different pieces. How cool is that? That’s some impressive work, but it was probably substantially cheaper than buying the actual set. Next up was #21315-1: Pop-Up Book. They took the design, used the pieces on hand, and added in I <3 U as the item that popped up.

My inability to speak German hit me here as I couldn’t ask questions, but bravo to the person or people who built these. They did an awesome job and did something I have never seen done before. They definitely get my best in show award.

Congrats if you made it this far and thanks for checking it out. I hope to get to more shows in Germany before I depart.

In the meantime, happy building!

LEGO® Exhibition - Kloster Machern, Bernkastel-Kues, Germany - Part 1

I found out about a LEGO® Exhibition in Germany from 1-3 November 2019 and decided to go check it out. It was located in Bernkastel-Kues which is along the Mosel River. We picked a good day to go as the drive there let us see some great fall colors in the trees and it wasn’t pouring rain like it has done a lot this fall in Europe. The exhibition was located in Kloster Machern which used to be a monastery. Now it is a museum and with some eateries and an event room. This place was just outside of Bernkastel-Kues and it was tucked into the valley along the river. There were some great views and if the exhibition was disappointing at least we got to see a cool part of Germany.

Here’s a picture from the parking lot of the monastery.

A few closer shots of the outside of the building.

Here is the sign… Google Translate tells me that “ausstellung” translates to “exhibition.” The cost was 10 Euros to get my family in and the show ran across a 3-day weekend. Our ticket would let us back in all weekend, but we just went for one day.

Upon entering, there were a number of tables of vendors selling sets, loose bricks, and other brick related paraphernalia. The first build we ran into was this tall building and its miniature replica. The building is an office building in Neunkirchen, Germany. It was an impressive MOC, but I didn’t get to enjoy it much as there were no barriers and my little guy really wanted to play with all of the cars on the roads surrounding the building.

Lauter Steine EV. was there in full force. This is the same LUG that displays at the Gartenschau in Kaiserslautern, Germany.

There was a big Christmas themed display with a lot of the Winter Village sets and the Winter Village train looping around the scene. It was a good use of the sets along with some other minifigures and parts. There were some creative scenes and and a few hidden minifigures like Storm Troopers. A bigger sized Uni-Kitty stood guard over the display.

There were a lot of castles on display. Here are just a few.

A Fabuland display and then a bunch of different items to include some space sets, a rocket launch, some vehicles, and some imaginative MOCs.

This is a MOC of Castle Pfalzgrafenstein. It was a castle built in the 14th century to collect duties on the Rhine River in Germany (according to the sign posted nearby). I thought this was pretty cool because I took a short trip on the Rhine River with my family this past summer and we saw the actual castle. A picture I took is shown so you can see the real thing. I think the builder did a good job at replicating the actual building.

Here is an amazing MOC of the Reichstag building in Berlin. For those in the US or anywhere else not familiar, this building is like the US Capitol. It’s where the German Parliament meets. I think the MOC is incredible. They really captured the details well. The sign nearby said the model took 4 years to make and contains around 450,000 bricks.

A large castle scene…

Here is a replica of an old building near Bernkastel-Kues in Morbach (a few minutes to the southeast of Bernkastel-Kues). I’m not sure if the building still exists today or not, but It’s cool how they show a picture of what it looked like.

Props to you if you look down this far. I’ll post part 2 shortly.

Summer 2019 Update - LUG Display - Gartenschau Kaiserslautern, Germany

The good news is that I have a lot of content to share. The bad news is that I don’t have the time to post it all like I want so this post is delayed by about a month. I went to the Gartenschau in Kaiserslautern, Germany back in April 2019 (Initial post here) and got to go back in June 2019. I am finally getting around to posting about my trip there. Sorry for the delay. I hope my pictures do the display justice.

First off is Notre Dame Cathedral and a model of the famous church in Paris, France. The card by the model roughly translates to:

“The Notre Dame, one of the most beautiful churches in France. This beautiful church was built by Ingo Bramigke in Wuppertal. It is partially expanded inside. This beautiful model is made of many rare colors that are hard to find today.
The model was built in 2004-2006 and was built in many hundreds of hours.”

It says the model has around 100,000 pieces. I like how Santa Claus is hanging out on the outside of the church.

Next is a modification of set #21310-1: Old Fishing Store from the Ideas line. You can see my review for the original model here. This was built in 2018 by Klaus Krämer. He did a great job bringing this set further to life. The tree is a nice touch.

Here are some aircraft ranging from jet fighters to biplanes. I didn’t get a picture of a card so I’m not sure who made them or of the specifics behind them.

Aragog’s Lair is from Harry Potter and is a set. You can see my review of #75950-1 here. This MOC is substantially built up and looks more realistic than the small set from LEGO. I like all of the plant pieces in different colors that add to the realism. The builder’s name is Benjamin Kolb and this MOC was made in 2018.

Here we have Ancient Rome right near Notre Dame. You can see the Colosseum and some other ancient looking buildings. There are a ton of minifigures involved too. I only got one picture so you can’t see all of the details… sorry.

I’m not really sure what these are… looks like a giant totem pole type house and maybe everyone was given a set and told to build something and those are what they built. I don’t know…

No label on this one and I’m sorry the glass in front made the picture a little blurry. This looks like a manor or small castle in Germany or France somewhere.

Here are some birds by builder Felix Jaensch. His Flickr stream is here. He has some impressive brick art work on his page and it looks like he sells some of his builds too.

The top is a penguin, a Minion, and a dragon. The penguin and dragon are probably from something, but I’m not sure what.

The bottom build is titled Sperrmüll which Google Translate says is “Bulky Waste.” The card lists the builder’s name as Brixe and says the build was from 2017.

This is a train station in Reichelsheim Odenwald. There wasn’t a card nearby so I’m not sure what time period the build is from. Reichelsheim is about an hour’s drive south of Frankfurt, Germany for those that were wondering.

The display has a huge city scene and I have posted numerous pictures before so I didn’t add a ton of the ones that have been seen before. A few points of interest that I caught this time:

-The bridge with the lime green arch is made up of 2x4 plates. They are all slightly disconnected at an angle to develop the arch. A clever idea that was probably pretty challenging to keep together.

-It’s hard to see in the lighting, but I thought the glass bridge was pretty clever.

-Finally I included a picture of a street scene that includes some of the modular sets and some MOCs. The White Lion is a pub in the UK (I think). You can see a few of the modular sets next to it.

This was not there the last time I was at the display. The U.S. Capitol in Washington D. C. The builder was Gerlach Dominik and it was build between 2004 and 2007 with an estimated 1,236,000 bricks. Wow! Very impressive with a lot of fun details between a class trip from Hogwarts to a car accident. Take a look at some of the details if you zoom in on the pictures.

“This model is private property”

SWK E-Werk was built in 2019. It took 3 months to put together and is made up of 225,000 pieces. The card translates to (using Google Translate):

“Electricity plant of the city of Kaiserslautern in 1894.

On the 25th of February 1894, the city council of Kaiserslautern agrees to build an e-factory based on the plans of Oscar von Miller. Just two months later, the construction of the Karcherstrasse building (near the railway viaduct) began.

The e-werk went into operation on 1 September 1894 for the first time. It was the 4th Electricity Plant in the Palatinate and one of the first 140 works in the former German Reich.

Initially, the power plant only supplied the electricity for the lighting of the station forecourt. Later, even simple citizens could buy electricity, but at the time they had hardly any electric appliances.”

Here is a MOC of the Kaiserslautern Rathaus or City Hall building. Next to the large MOC is an instruction booklet for a smaller MOC with 719 pieces.

Last 2 pictures. First is 42055-1 Lego Technic Bucket Wheel Excavator and next is the Empire State building.

Hope you enjoyed my brief photo tour!

LEGO® House: LEGO® Star Wars™ exhibition

Throughout 2019, the LEGO® House will be celebrating 20 Years of the Star Wars™ line. The special display is located in the History Collection in the basement. If you look at my post on the History Collection, I mention that there is a walk way that you take in a square (or maybe rectangle) to see the history. In the center of that shape is a space with a lot of the old and current sets on display. Well on either side of the room is the Star Wars™ display. I had seen some pictures online and you could see the display clearly. The owners of that site obviously took their camera right up to the glass because you can’t see it clearly in person. Here’s what you see on either side of the room (below). Really? So you have to peer through the slots to see everything.

This is the only picture I have of the sets on display. I didn’t take any close up pictures as it’s just some of the sets as selected by various LEGO® Designers. Each set has a card by it explaining why the designer thought the particular set was their favorite.

On the opposing wall is this sign with a similar glass pattern. LEGO® borrowed a collection and put them on display. I wonder if he got anything in return? Anyways, I did take a few pictures of the minifigures.

The display is set up by year. At the top of each column is the year the minifigures came out. The initial years have only a few and as the years go on, more minifigures appear until you get closer to today and it’s jam packed with various minifigures. I didn’t count them and the sign just says more than 1,000. Where does he put them all?

Anyways, if you get to the LEGO® House in 2019, it’s worth a few minutes of your time to go check out the Star Wars™ display for the minifigures alone. There are quite a few there and it’s pretty cool to see… if you can find the right slot in the glass to peek through.

Happy building!

Any only 1 minifigure in 2001?

LEGO® House: History Collection

The LEGO® House has some fun stairs that you can take up or down. I like how the walls look like they could be made of large size plastic bricks. If you go down, you go to the History Collection. In this post I hope to take you through my experience there. I took a lot of pictures, but still did not capture the whole thing. With 2 kiddos, I wasn’t able to stay and read everything, but I still had a good amount of time to see it all. So let’s go!

(Note: you can take an elevator too. This is especially good if you have a stroller or a little person who is slow on stairs.)

The History Collection is not as bright and colorful as the rest of the House. The walls are black as if you are underground. When you get downstairs, there is a glass covered area in the floor. The area is full of gray 2x4 bricks and some old brick molds. A sign explains how they used to put the old molds underneath new buildings so they couldn’t be used by a competitor. You can read the sign that explains it in the picture. We also thought it was fun that there was a brick built mole digging around in the basement.

From the room with the molds in the floor, you can see a brightly lit LEGO® logo. I took a few pictures so you can see it as you get up close. It’s pretty awesome.

And another mole hanging out…

The tour goes through a hallway in a square. You turn left and you start to learn about the very initial states of the LEGO® Company. It talks about the founding family and you can see some of the early non-plastic toys. It’s impressive that they still have some of the very old toys and first brick sets around.

As you continue to make your way around the History Collection, there are more modern bricks to include some sets or sets mixed in with MOCs.

#10184-1: Town Plan - This was the 50th anniversary set from LEGO®

The factories don’t look like this anymore.

Is this an official set?

The origins of the train line

I’m not sure if the train is an official set or a MOC.

As you continue on, you see more of the modern sets that we’re used to seeing. It was definitely a walk down memory lane to see some of the older items that I still have. And some of the things I always wanted as a kid… like the whole Classic Space line.

The Classic Space monorail

The origins of the minifigure

The castle theme and 9V town sets (I have the police car and fire engine and they still work)

Throughout the LEGO® House are benches. Many of the benches have parts to build with, minifigure parts, or in this picture, DUPLO®. My youngest kiddo enjoyed the History Collection because there were tons of cars, trains, and planes, but it was good to know we had another distraction if needed to occupy him in the “boring” museum portion.

After you finish walking around the square, you can enter into the space inside the square. This area has a collection of many of the old sets by time period. I failed to get a picture or write it down, but I think it is by decade (please correct me if I’m wrong). Definitely a walk down memory lane for me. “I have that one!” “I always wanted that one!” “Wow! I’ve never actually seen that one.”

Sorry for the reflections on the glass covering the windows in my pictures.

Some of the very first sets.

More castle and Classic Space in there.

Duplo®, Pirates, Blacktron, and more!

Here’s a shot of what the wall looks like with the various sets.

Classic space, early CITY/Town, Castle

Technic, Space Police, Pirates, and more!

Can they bring back Classic Space and Castle please?

Some Technic sets in the center of the room.

The center of the room had the Technic display that I showed and then these trains. Please re-release the Super Chief and the BNSF diesel!

Also in the center of the room was a computer screen where you could go through each of the sets from every year and add them to your digital collection. When you are finished, the collection is loaded into your file that is attached to the wrist band. We did not build our digital collection. I’m not sure I could even remember it all. A cool idea though.

If you are an AFOL, definitely make some time to check out the History Collection. I regret that I didn’t get to read everything about the company, but I was glad that I got to see what I did. It’s not the best place for kids. My 5-year old got bored pretty quick and wanted to go back upstairs to do all of the fun stuff.

It will be curious to see how the History Collection changes over the years. How will they add another decade of sets in?

My next post will be about the Star Wars™ 20th anniversary display which was located with the History Collection.