by Thita (admin)
on March 27, 2014
The very popular and long sold out LEGO CUUSOO set the #21104 LEGO NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover is now back in stock at the Online LEGO Shop! This set was released in January of this year, but sold out so fast a lot of LEGO fans who wanted it weren’t able to get one. So now is your second chance! 🙂
As far as LEGO CUUSOO sets go, I would say that this is one of the best, and most functional one. It was designed by real Curiosity Rover engineer Stephen Pakbaz, and features a 6-wheel rocker-bogie suspension, articulated robotic arm and multiple camera sets. The model also comes with a high-quality booklet with building instructions and information about the history of Mars exploration and the Curiosity Rover, plus a display plate complete with LEGO brick Martian rocks – perfect for testing out the rover’s go-anywhere suspension. The Rover measures over 3” (10cm) high, 5” (15cm) long and 4” (12cm) wide, and the robotic arm extends over 2” (7cm). A really nice set indeed! 😀
You can read more about the LEGO Curiosity Rover and its interesting history and details in our previous post; LEGO Mars Curiosity Rover Coming Soon! Also, check out the video below where Chad Collins from Your Creative Friends interviews Stephen about his LEGO Curiosity Rover design. Stephen also talks about working on the real Curiosity Rover, and shows off his LEGO studio with many more interesting LEGO models.
As I have mentioned, the LEGO Mars Curiosity Rover is available again at the Online LEGO Shop, so if you are interested in this set I would suggest you get it before it sells out again.
What do you think? How do you like the LEGO Mars Curiosity Rover? Are you one of the fortunate few who has the set already? How do you like the suspension system and other details? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below! 😉
And you might also like to check out the following related posts:
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by Thita (admin)
on March 26, 2014
As you probably know already, The LEGO Movie line of sets is full of interesting 2-in-1 builds; turn an ice-cream truck into an ice-cream shooting machine, a plumber’s van into a flying flusher, a garbage-truck into a scary chomper… All of this transforming fun is based on the story of The LEGO Movie and is really what LEGO is all about; let your imagination out of the box of what’s supposed to be possible, and build some creative and crazy contraptions! I would say that these are in fact some of the best LEGO sets that have come out in recent years. 🙂
From The LEGO Movie line-up there are a couple of sets however that are clearly transformations from their “normal” state to mechs and flying machines, instructions are not provided for the normal model. This includes the #70812 The LEGO Movie Creative Ambush set, and the #70813 The LEGO Movie Rescue Reinforcements. I guess the idea here is to allow LEGO fans to try to build the alternate models themselves, and there has been many attempts to do this – you can find them on various LEGO forums and picture-sharing sites.
One of the more challenging models to transform into it’s normal state is the fire-mech from the #70813 The LEGO Movie Rescue Reinforcements set. The mech itself is a large and complex model, and although it clearly looks like it was transformed from a fire-truck, it is not immediately obvious of how to make it into a truck again. It requires quite a bit of tinkering – which is of course fun and makes you think! 🙄
So far the best transformation I have seen for this model was done by JANG, who shares his transformed fire-truck on his YouTube channel. He actually took the challenge quite seriously and only used parts from the fire-mech itself, leaving the Micro Manager and the Windmill Helicopter intact. (The Windmill Helicopter in this set is another fun build that you can attempt to transfer back into a regular windmill.)
In the video above JANG shares the details on how he transformed the fire-mech and the challenges he ran into. His fire-truck looks good, isn’t it? The video should help you to visualize what the fire-truck could look like if you have this set already and decide to rebuild the fire-mech. I encourage you to give it a try and see what you can do. (If you don’t have this set yet, you can find it at the Online LEGO Shop.)
What do you think? Do you have any of The LEGO Movie 2-in-1 sets? Have you built both versions of the models? And have you tried building alternates for the sets where secondary instructions are not provided? Feel free to share your own experiences with these fun LEGO sets in the comment section below! 🙂
And you might also like to check out The LEGO Movie section or select from the following related posts:
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