Anthony still really enjoys his LEGOs, making “mockups” like the Clones vs. Droids Battle I posted last year. It's been fun to see his play progress from simple add-ons to toys when he was three years old, to mimicking airport security after some flights when he was four, to car repair and advanced flight design and intergalactic speeders to a full cityscape to complex combinations of Lord knows what.
Now at nine years old, he still enjoys his LEGO and saves almost all his allowance for it.
A month or so ago he was very happy to find Swedish retailer Warehouse19. They sell small LEGO sets, as well as custom pieces not made by LEGO but designed to fit into the Legoverse. They have all kinds of hats, helmets, guns, armor... all stuff to whet a 9-year-old boy's imagination.
Anthony ordered three tough-looking minifigures and enough kit to deck them out in an appropriately “cool” style, as well as a bazillion flowers and other plant pieces. He had a specific mockup in his mind that he intended to make for them, involving the overgrown grounds of an abandoned castle. (Because it's abandoned and overgrown, he needed a lot of plants to sprinkle around, so a large portion of his allowance went toward that.)
He was so excited about it that he built most of the mockup just after we ordered, so all that remained was to insert everything from the order once it arrived. However, when it came less than a week later, Anthony was crushed because I had mistakenly forgotten to order a light-colored helmet, and that one missing piece caused everything to grind to a halt. (His imagination was pretty well fixed on what he wanted, so the missing piece was a show stopper.)
There was another problem with the order... Warehouse19 had sent too many of the flowers. But since I was going to place another order for the helmet, I thought I'd just pay for the flowers rather than go to the hassle of returning them, so I wrote Warehouse19 a note about the helmet (please send) and flowers (I'll pay; just send the five needed stems) and immediately got a reply that they'd be happy to just send it all For free.
And they did.
They merely asked that we tell our friends about them... good word of mouth, you know... so I let them known that I'd certainly be doing a blog post about it because I like to capture Anthony's creativity.
However, I'm still my lazy self, so it took a month before getting around to taking the pictures. I suppose it's a testament to Anthony's happiness with the result that the mockup has lasted that long. I'm prompted to make this post now because he's ready to place another order with Warehouse19, and I feel we should give this public thanks for their kindness before we move on to another order.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — 1/160 sec, f/9, ISO 6400 — full exif
( you should see the castle in your imagination )
photo by Anthony
I had taken a bunch of photos for this post, but then Anthony wanted to as well, and his were just great, so I used them instead. Of mine, I'll just show two wide views....
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2000 — full exif
I really should have used a polarizing filter
As a toy designer and inventor it’s great to hear about children and how they enjoy playing with their toys.
The world of Lego and the hugely popular mini figures is about to change since it was deemed Lego no longer has IP on the “brick”, with many companies now offering accessories and their own take on “Lego”. Lego’s view on this is to work even more closely with licensors to develop ever increasing ranges such as Star Wars – great product!
Chris – Hong Kong
That skeleton touch was sweet.
The “vegetation” on the steps, and now everywhere else, look more like proximity sensitive explosives/booby traps.
Thanks for introducing me to Warehouse19!
Thank you Jeffrey for a nice post. I like it! Will see as well the Warehouse19 site, my kids play with Lego as well…