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!

Set Review - #21315-1 - Pop-Up Book - LEGO Ideas

For those of you that have been into or at least have followed the LEGO Ideas series, #21315-1, Pop-Up Book is the 23rd in the series. Has it been that many already? It was released on 2 November 2018 in the US with a retail price of $69.99. It contains 859 pieces which works out to be $0.081 each. Not too bad in terms of price per piece and if you’re willing to wait until the end of it’s shelf life, it may go one sale at some of the retailers. Onto my review…

The front of the box shows the book along with some smaller pictures of the options for what can pop-up. The back shows some better details of the two pop-up options inside that can be placed inside the book.

This set contains six bags of bricks. Bag one contains a piece separator. It also contains the 2 large brown 8x16 tiles with one having the title “ONCE UPON A BRICK” printed on it. I was super thankful that I didn’t have to apply that as a sticker and that the set contains no stickers at all. YAY! The instruction booklet starts off with some introductory pages. The first two are about the sets creators (Jason Alleman and Grant Davis) otherwise known as JK Brickworks for Jason and Grant has a Flickr page showing his work. The second two pages are about the set’s designers from the LEGO Company. You can see their YouTube video here. The final few pages give a history of pop-up books and the stories portrayed in this set. After you read it in English, you can switch to French and Spanish.

The first bag starts the build of the book’s cover. This bag is almost all parts colored what I call forest green, but Brickset calls “Earth green.” Either way, I’m a big fan of this color and even if you don’t end up liking this set, you’ll at least have a whole bunch of really great parts to build other things with out of this set in the Earth green color.

The second bag completes the cover.

The third bag really turns the set into a pop-up book. The first picture (top left) shows the addition of the “pages” in what Brickset calls “Brick Yellow,” but I think is more of a light tan. You can also see the start of “Little Red Riding Hood” with Grandma’s bed on the right and a table with a pink tea pot and mug on the left. The second picture (top right) shows the front cover which has the 8x16 brown tile with the printed “ONCE UPON A BRICK” pop-up book title. It also has the names of the designers in 1x6 brown tiles underneath. How cool is that to have the LEGO Company printing parts that have your name on them and then having them sell a set with your name on it worldwide? Awesome!

The next two pictures (bottom left and right) show the detailing on the spine of the book and then the back cover. The back matches the front only the 8x16 tile is not printed.

Bag 3 includes the Grandma and Big Bad Wolf minifigures, but I’ll cover them next.

The fourth bag finishes up the “Little Red Riding Hood” scene. This bag includes Red with her bag of goodies to bring to Grandma. The pop up portion itself includes the house with a door that you can open. One could argue that there isn’t a ton of detail here, but I think between the original designers and LEGO designers, they got it right. It’s got a good amount of detail to portray the story, but it’s not over the top to the point where it loses functionality. You have to take the minifigures out to close the book, but the rest of the parts can remain when you close it.

The minifigures are great. The wolf with the tattered outfit that he stole from Grandma is very creative. I like that the wolf also has her glasses on. I never understood how Red didn’t immediately realize that it was a wolf. I guess you can tell the story how you want after you build it. Maybe it’s not a wolf, but a storm trooper or Emmet joins Red for some cookies.

The fifth bag starts on “Jack and the Beanstalk.” It includes a microscale build of the village with clouds on top. There’s a windmill and some tiny houses. A piece that probably isn’t new, but was new to me was the cheese sloped size roof tile used on the windmill and two of the houses. I think it’s a good addition to the LEGO parts catalog. This bag also includes the Giant and a microfigure of Jack. The set comes with 2 microfigures of Jack so just in case you lose one or if Jack and his twin want to go hang out with the Giant.

The sixth bag finishes up “Jack and the Beanstalk” with the actual beanstalk and the castle at the top. The functionality here is very creative with the use of Technic parts to make the beanstalk expand as you open up the book.

What struck me when building this set is that LEGO has left it open for builders. The title on the front cover does not say “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Jack and the Beanstalk.” It’s an open ended title. What’s been provided is a cover with a building space. The functionality for the pop-up portion of the book has been shown and there are studs on the top and bottom of the pages that you can use to insert your own stories. A quick Google search brings up results from a whole bunch of builders who have made pop up castles, pirates, and scenes from movies. At the writing of this post, LEGO Ideas is running a contest to see what kind of design you can come up with for the pop-up book. It’s definitely worth checking out some of the contest entries just to see how creative some people are when it comes to building.

Overall, this set is a win. I was a big fan. It’s a great build with a lot of great pieces and it opens up a new building technique to explore. If the price is too steep, wait a few months and keep checking on Amazon.com, Walmart, and other retailer sites to see if they have it for a discount.

Happy building!