I’ve never made it a secret that I love Lego a lot. I grew up in what was possibly the golden age of Lego in the early and mid-1980s when it was all bricks, few special parts and lots and lots of fun sets from big houses and castles to little inexpensive things that were perfect in-between gifts. I must have had some Duplo when I was very little, but there is no trace of that anymore – although there was also the short-lived Fabuland series that still exists in my posession. I had a lot of Lego back then, which was mixed with Playmobil too… and as I got older, sometime in the late 1980s when the first computers came around, I naturally lost interest and everything was packed up and put into storage. Fortunately, we never got rid of most of my childhood toys, especially the Lego – it was just boxed up and put into the cellar.
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I always wanted to write something about Lego here. Last year I missed the 55th anniversary of the Lego brick, a half-finished article written in German is still around somewhere in the blog drafts – but somehow I never got around to finish it. But now I actually have a reason to write about Lego, because today my first Lego set since about 1987 arrived today. It’s, of course, the Lego Cuusoo model of the Mars Curiosity Rover, which had fascinated me since its designer Steven Pakbaz, a real Curiosity engineer, had first unveiled a prototype back in autumn 2012. Now it’s available as a real Lego set and since it wasn’t too expensive, I just could not resist and ordered it. I didn’t expect it to arrive until mid-February, but surprisingy it came today.
I haven’t even begun to build it yet – I haven’t touched a real-life lego bricks in more than 25 years and I hope I can still work it all out! But what I have done is occasionally build with digital tools like the Lego Digital Designer. So, this post is basically an announcement that there will be Lego in the future of this website – I was originally thinking about writing a little of the Lego I knew in the 1980s, and that’s what I’m going to do soon. But first I have to build a Mars rover! :-)
[Update: Well, I got about half of it built in about an hour. It’s one of the most complex Lego models I’ve ever built, and I had some Technic ones back in the days. But it’s certainly worth the price and it has lots of incredible detail!]
[Update 1.2.: Final result below! That wasn’t actually too complicated, but nevertheless one of the more challenging models because of all the small fiddly bits. The wheel suspension works surprisingly well, this model can really roll over boulders! I’ll take some better photos soon. Update 20.2.: I replaced the first photo with a better shot now!]