The Adventures of Clutch Powers – LEGO Movies

Yes, you have ever watched LEGO movies. LEGO has launched before the LEGO Bionicles Movies, but this will be the first time ever LEGO movies with minifigs as the actors.

From Universal Studio, for the first time ever, the LEGO® toy brand will be coming to life in an all-new feature-length DVD movie tomorrow entitled LEGO®: The Adventures of Clutch Powers.

You may watch the trailer here.
Meet Clutch Powers, the best builder and explorer in the LEGO® universe as he heads off on his most dangerous mission yet. Join Clutch and his team of LEGO® experts as their adventure leads them from LEGO® City to the Space Police prison planet to the medieval world of Ashlar where they must help the rightful heir to the King’s throne find the courage to regain the kingdom from the evil wizard Mallock the Malign.

Their brick-building skills will be put to the ultimate test as they face off against Mallock’s skeleton army. Get ready for an action-packed adventure like nothing you have ever seen before, The Adventures of Clutch Powers!.

Kids Suspended From School For LEGO Toy

Nine-year-old Patrick Timoney brought a gun to school at PS 52 in Staten Island, N.Y., Tuesday and almost got suspended. The problem? It was a two-inch LEGO toy gun.

The fourth grader brought some of his LEGOs to school to show his friends during lunch. The LEGO police officer toy was holding a small gun. (Patrick’s dad is a retired police officer.)

When the principal saw it, she pulled the kid out of class and called Patrick’s parents. She says the school has a “no tolerance” policy and does not allow any weapons on campus.

Laura Timoney, Patrick’s mom, told CBS News: “This isn’t a safety issue. This is a judgment issue. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? It could poke you in the eye?”

We’re all for keeping kids safe, but we’d say the school took this way too far this time. What about you?

Discuss it in the forum.

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Hero Factory Replaces Bionicle

LEGO HERO FACTORY

Wizard World Magazine has revealed the pictures of HERO Factory, the successor of Bionicles.

The plot of the new line describes certain Heroes who fight evil across space and time, which pretty much sets the stage for an infinite possibility of expansion.

These new sets will be available on August 2010. Still no clue when it will arrive Indonesia. You can take a glance now.

7164 Preston Stormer
He’s the Hero Factory Alpha Team leader, having completed more missions than any other hero. Brave and tough, yet proud and competitive, he is armed with a built-in multi-functional ice weapon, featuring an ice saw, bolt shooter, and harpoon to stop anyone in their tracks.

7165 Natalie Breez
A Hero Factory rookie, training alongside Blaze, she is agile, a natural diplomat and always ready to give it everything she’s got. Armed with energized dual boomerangs and harpoon for climbing, she’s always ready to tackle any mission.

7167 William Blaze
A Hero Factory rookie on his final training mission, Blaze is smart, highly competitive and very confident. Armed with a dual fire shooter, he always has everyone’s back.

7168 Duncan Bulk
The toughest, strongest hero on the Hero Factory Alpha Team, Duncan has built-in heavy multifunctional metal weapons which shoot metal spheres, helping to protect everyone from danger.

7169 Mark Surge
The youngest rookie on the Hero Factory team, Surge is a little clumsy, yet highly competitive. He tends to have problems landing his hero pod, but his skill in manipulating his electrical shield, armor and lightning weapon makes up for it.

7170 Jimi Stringer
The most highly advanced hero on the Factory’s Alpha Team, Stringer is armed with a built-in multi-functional sonic weapon.

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Indonesia BrickFest 2010

DUNIA BRICKS INDONESIA, is a new event organized by LEGO distributor in Indonesia. It is some sort of brickfest.

This is the first DUNIA BRICKS INDONESIA event and will be held on 13-14 March 2010 at Indoor Tennis Stadium, Senayan, Jakarta.

What you expect to see :
- Largest LEGO exhibition ever in Indonesia
- MOC Building Competition
- LEGO Collection on Sale
- Souvenir from DUNIA BRICKS INDONESIA

LEGO Craziest Sale – Last 2 Days

There is only 2 days left for the LEGO Craziest Sale. If you haven’t get your LEGO, you can go to StarKidz at Cambridge City Square, Medan now.

Up to 50 % discount available with additional 30% discount if you are using BII credit card.

Go now while it last.

Happy New Year!

LEGO Bionicles Discontinued

LEGO Bionicles Discontinued !

After hearing it for some time, LEGO has made this official by announcing that 2010 will be the last year for new Bionicle sets; starting summer 2010 a new line of similar buildable figures will be released. This will mark the end of nine years since the arrival of the first Toa in 2001.

Below is the official announcement from LEGO:

Dear BIONICLE Fans,

In reviewing the business across all of its play patterns and properties, the LEGO Group faced a tough question: should we take on a new creative challenge in the world of buildable figures that we pioneered in 2001?

BIONICLE re-invented the way consumers think of and play with the LEGO system. Through many chapters of compelling story and innovative product development, BIONICLE became a very strong property and an important part of The LEGO Group’s business. We think there is a significant opportunity to grow the buildable figure category, but it will take a more flexible platform that appeals to a wider range of ages through a variety of different entry points than BIONICLE has proven to deliver.

The easy decision would be to stick with a known entity in BIONICLE; but as history has proven, The LEGO Group achieves its greatest success by embracing the uncertainty that innovation brings. After all, BIONICLE almost never launched because it was such a big risk to the company’s way of doing business.

Because you have been such an important part of building the BIONICLE franchise and have been among its most valued fans, we are writing to tell you that the six BIONICLE Stars launching in January will be the last BIONICLE sets for the foreseeable future. Beginning in summer 2010, The LEGO Group will debut a new, more flexible buildable figure property created by the same people who brought you BIONICLE. At the same time, we are also expanding the category to appeal to a younger audience through an established third-party property, starting in January.

Since its beginning, BIONICLE has reflected the union of great product and a compelling story. Although there presently are no plans for more sets, the BIONICLE story is not ending. BIONICLEstory.com will remain an active site, with new story content updated by long-time BIONICLE writer Greg Farshtey. In addition, LEGO Group hopes to work with you, the fans, to continue to grow and expand the BIONICLE story universe.

This was an extremely difficult decision for all involved. But as seen in the tales of the Toa, striving for success in any mission requires imagination, new ways of thinking, and the willingness to take risks. We hope you will share the same level of enthusiasm we have for our plans for the buildable figure category.

We invite you to remain a part of the BIONICLE universe—a universe you have helped to build, and that we are confident that you will continue to build—in the future. Thank you for your continued support and dedication to the BIONICLE and LEGO brands.

With our very best regards,
Jan Faltum, Global BIONICLE Director
Lincoln Armstrong, Senior Brand Manager, BIONICLE Team Member since 2002

LEGO Welcoming Christmas

Christmas is coming! LEGO has launched its Christmas themed mini models.
You won’t find it in Medan. However, LEGO.com made the building instruction available at their site.

There are so many cool instructions for snowmen, Christmas trees, angels and so on. You can find it at the Christmas Gift shop.

One example is the reindeer design :

An early Merry Christmas to you.

Brief History Of LEGO

If you are browsing this site, I’m sure that you have known what LEGO is. LEGO is one of the best building and construction toys and most preferred construction toys in the world.

LEGO toys are originated in Billund, Denmark in the year 1932. By than, the LEGO pieces were designed out of a €˜wooden building blocks by a carpenter called, Ole Christiansen.

He earned his living by constructing houses and furniture for farmers in the region, with the help of a small staff of apprentices. His workshop burned down in 1924 when a fire, lit by two of his young sons, ignited some wood shavings. Undaunted, Ole Kirk took the disaster as an opportunity to construct a larger workshop, and worked towards expanding his business even further; however, the Great Depression would soon have an impact on his livelihood. In finding ways to minimize production costs, Ole Kirk began producing miniature versions of his products as design aids. It was these miniature stepladders and ironing boards that inspired him to begin producing toys.

In 1932, Ole Kirk’s shop started making wooden pull toys, piggy banks, cars and trucks. He enjoyed a modest amount of success, but families were poor and often unable to afford such toys. Farmers in the area sometimes traded food in exchange for his toys; Ole Kirk found he had to continue producing practical furniture in addition to toys in order to stay in business. In the mid-1930s, the yo-yo toy fad gave him a brief period of activity, until it suddenly collapsed. Once again, Ole Kirk turned disadvantage to his favor, turning the disused yo-yo parts into wheels for a toy truck. His son Godtfred began working for him, taking an active role in the company.

The word lego is an abbreviation for two Danish words leg and godt meaning play well.

It was in 1934 that the company name Lego was coined. Ole Kirk held a contest amongst his staff to see who could come up with the best name for the company, offering a bottle of homemade wine as a prize. Christiansen was considering two names himself, “Legio” (with the implication of a “Legion of toys”) and “Lego”, a self-made contraction from the Danish phrase leg godt, meaning “play well.” Later the Lego Group discovered that “Lego” can be loosely interpreted as “I put together” or “I assemble” in Latin.

When plastic came into widespread use, Ole Kirk kept with the times and began producing plastic toys. One of the first modular toys to be produced was a truck that could be taken apart and re-assembled. In 1947, Ole Kirk and Godtfred obtained samples of interlocking plastic bricks produced by the company Kiddicraft. These “Kiddicraft Self-Locking Building Bricks” were designed and patented by Mr. Hilary Harry Fisher Page, a British citizen In 1949 the Lego Group began producing similar bricks, calling them “Automatic Binding Bricks.” Lego bricks, manufactured from cellulose acetate, were developed in the spirit of traditional wooden blocks that could be stacked upon one another; however, these plastic bricks could be “locked” together. They had several round “studs” on top, and a hollow rectangular bottom. They would stick together, but not so tightly that they could not be pulled apart. In 1953, the bricks were given a new name: Lego Mursten, or “Lego Bricks.”

At that time, most of the dealers didn’€™t trust a plastic toy, resulting in insufficient sales.Many of the Lego Group’s shipments were returned, following poor sales; it was thought that plastic toys could never replace wooden ones. In the year 1954, the business actually picked up. The €˜modern day LEGO bricks which came with an €˜interlocking stud mechanisms were finalized in 1958, and these pieces unbelievably are till date compatible with the Lego pieces of today.

Lego toy bricks add pieces have been designed to be an element of a collective system of parts where freedom of expression, creative thought and variation can join together to produce fabulous contraptions. Toys like these were an enormous improvement over the usual toys that are being produced today, which muffled individual thought with specific movements and designs. With the Lego toys, you could always and still can create whatever you want. Lego has developed from the splendidly simple and creative blocks to Axles, Cogs, joints and several electronic components that assist in the radio controlled movement.

The Lego brand is very widespread, having crossed over into every well known genre, both TV and film. SpongeBob Squarepants, Harry Potter, Star Wars and Indiana Jones are all a part of the famous Lego Toy sets that the Lego focus groups determine to target. This entire process takes an upwards of six months to get done. The cycle goes as follows: Identifying the ongoing trends of the market, carrying out the designing and development part, and then creating a model Lego toy for the purpose of testing. These days, all of the Lego toy sets are crafted on the computer with CAD, becoming a much easier task for the designers to contribute to their creative effort.

Source : Wikipedia and the web

LEGO Plates – The History

Using a LEGO plate when you play with LEGO is not just to attach the bricks. It also makes the lego built looks nicer and more attractive.
In the long history of LEGO, there have been many plates produced by the LEGO company. Let’s take a look at the history of LEGO plate.

We can trace back to the very beginning of Lego sets (circa 1956). The plates were only produced in white in sizes 2×8, 4×8, 6×8, and 4×8 – right curve, and 4×8 – left curve by then. It was like that until 1963. These early plates had those interesting “square holed” bottoms, and were made of Cellulose Acetate (as were all the other Lego bricks). The 1950’s and 1960’s Esso Service Station (#310) were an early user of all of these plates, especially the curved plates. In fact the Esso Service set had red “hand painted” edges on some of these plates to give that “Art Deco Moderne” red stripe that this set had. Horst Lehner’s excellent website of early Lego Catalogs shows (in the 1958 catalog) the red striped plates in the Esso Service set:

This red stripe (the Esso Service station) was also found in the early Samsonite Town Plan set (#725), as well as the European Town Plan set (#810).

The first small Lego plates came out in a big way in 1963. That year several very interesting thing happened:

1) small plates (1×1, 1×2, 2×2, 2×3, 2×4) came out for the first time in parts packs.
2) small plates were used for the first time in a set – the unique continental European Architectural Sets.
3) small plates did not have the “square hole” bottom common to the larger white plates, but the circular holes like we know them today.
4) Samsonite produced small plates in different colors (white, red, black, grey, clear, green) than were available in Europe (white, red, yellow, blue, black, grey, clear). Green was only produced by Samsonite, and blue & yellow were only produced by TLG Europe.
5) TLG (Europe) produced plates from the very beginning (1963) in ABS Plastic, while Samsonite (USA/Canada) produced small plates (also starting in 1963) in Cellulose Acetate! Figure that one out!

The first plates parts pack that came out in 1963 came out in several very interesting variations. The regular European parts packs of 1963 were colorful boxes slightly larger than USA cigarette boxes, and had flapped ends for opening the box (as opposed to the earlier sliding open box, similar to match boxes – which were used for parts packs from  1956-62). The new plate boxes were the same as other Lego brick boxes. They were #518 (2×4 plates), #519, (2×3 plates), #520 (2×2 plates), and #521 (1×1 & 1×2 plates).

A 1963 German catalog (from  Horst Lehner’s ) showing the small plates for the first time:

These 4 parts packs was the Architectural series of parts packs that had the same set number (and the same number of pieces) as the regular plates parts packs. The major difference for these Architectural parts packs was that they were encased not in cardboard, but in a clear plastic box that had a 8×11 grey plate as the bottom of the box, with a cardboard sleeve (showing “architects” and young adults building modern houses and buildings). This 8×11 grey plate was the very first large Lego plate produced in a color other than white. It is also, believed, the only time an 8×11 rectangular plate was ever produced by Lego.

These Architectural parts packs were produced for the short lived (and not too popular) Architectural Series of sets – #750, #751, #752. This entire Architectural series (plus their parts packs) were only produced
for the continental European countries (not Britain), and were produced from 1963-65.

By that time, Samsonite was only using  Cellulose Acetate bricks for the material, then it  must have switched to ABS plastic after  TLG Europe (which started switching in 1961 – according to “The World of Lego Toys”).

Plates in other sizes that those listed above would come later, and by the 1990’s plates would come in all shapes and sizes.

This LEGO plate history was a write up by Gary R Istoc

What is Samsonite to do with LEGO?

We all know that LEGO was founded in Denmark.  By the mid 1950’s, it was sold throughout the Scandanavian countries of Europe.  In 1956 it started selling in West Germany, Europes largest market.  By the early 1960’s The LEGO Group (TLG) wanted to expand to the USA and Canada.  However, the market was to big for them and had them formed a licensing partnership with the Samsonite Corporation of Denver Colorado.  The license (as was just stated by Anders Isaksson of Sweden) was for 99 years, although TLG purchased back the license in 1972.  So between 1961 and 1972 all US Lego boxes said “LEGO by Samsonite”.

LEGO Pirates Event – Building The Pirate

This is to continue the previous post on LEGO Pirates Event in Sun Plaza, Medan, Indonesia from 22 June – 12 July 2008

In this post, I will try to describe the process of building the giant pirate.
The pirate was divided into several parts :
- The pirate hat
- The pirate head
- The pirate body
- The pirate legs
- The parrot

In this LEGO Pirate Events, we invited kids from Kingston School, Medan to help the process of building this giant pirate. Due to its complexity (for kids), the pirate body was built by the employee of LEGO sub distributor in Medan, while the head and parrot were already glued.

Take a look at the picture below for the process of building by the Kingston School students guided by our team member.
- Building the pirate hat.

- Building the pirate legs

Attaching the complete parts :
- First the leg

- Than the pirate body

- The pirate head

- The pirate hat

- And of course the parrot

Below is the picture of the Kingston School students with the pirate

The next part was moving the giant lego pirate built to the big showcase in the mall atrium.

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