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Featured LEGO-fan: Nannan Zhang

Nannan became involved with the online LEGO community in late 2004. He has been a builder for as long as he can remember.

Nannan builds in a variety of themes that often overlap with the science fiction universe, other times they are purely made up ones. You can see his creations on Brickshelf, MOCpages, and Flickr.

In addition, Nannan is a key contributor to The Brother’s Brick, one of the most popular LEGO fan-sites, featuring the best creations from LEGO fans.

The Brothers Brick

Nannan is also one of the enhusiastic LEGO-fans behind Creations for Charity, a fundraiser where LEGO fans use their building creativity to help charity organizations. 100% of the funds raised goes towards various charity events, like buying LEGO sets for underprivileged children for Christmas.

Nannan funds his LEGO hobby by running a store on Bricklink: The Whimsical World. He often has the cheapest prices on LEGO Star Wars figs and other LEGO minifigs!

Nannan was recently featured in an article in The Dallas Morning News. Also, they have shot a video of Nannan talking about his LEGO creations in his own LEGO room. Who would not want to have a room like that? 😉

In real life Nannan graduated from college at Washington University in St. Louis in 2010. He is starting medical school in 2011.

Although Nannan is mainly immersed in building spaceships and post apocalyptic worlds, occasionally something pretty pops out of his creative mind, like these flowers made of octopus legs. 😮

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Quiver by Sidan Toys

As I mention in the review about the LEGO minifig compatible vest made by Sidan Toys, the vest has two small holes on the back to attach the Sidan Toys quiver. (You can read more about Sidan Toys here: Sidan Toys – Overview) In this review I will tell you more about this handy little piece!

First of all this is a very small part, but as you will see it has many uses. It also comes in several colors (3 of the available colors shown below) to mix and match with your other LEGO minifig accessories.

The quiver has a tiny pin to fit in the hole at the back of the vest. On Sidan figures the pin goes right in, however because of the different anatomy of LEGO figs, the pin cannot go all the way in when the vest is worn by LEGO minifigs. The quiver stick out a bit too much and it doesn’t stay in the hole well.

My solution is to snip off the tip of the pin to get it more flush with the vest. This also keeps the quiver in the hole more stable. However for best results, I would suggest using a tiny bit of glue to secure the quiver to the vest. You can use some simple crafts glue – this way you can remove the quiver quite easily – or you can use Superglue to crate a more permanent attachment.

The Sidan quiver has 3 clips. The two smaller ones on the sides are for attaching arrows. Arrows are available from Sidan Toys, and from other LEGO compatible brands like BrickTW and OXFORD. They all fit in the clips with no problems. (Read my Guide to LEGO-Compatible Arrows.)

The middle clip is for attaching a bow. Sidan Toys offers a nice bow, and you can also use bows by other customizers. (See Guide to Bows.) Above I have attached the Sidan Toys bow (black) and the longbow (brown) and recurve bow (gray) from BrickForge. They fit very nicely!

In fact, you can attach pretty much any minifig weapon, tool or accessory in the middle clip! If a minifig can hold it, it will fit! 😀

Also, since the Sidan Toys’ vest has two holes, you could actually attach two quivers at the same time! (They have to be in a little bit of an angle from each other to fit.) Yep, your minifig can carry all of his/her tools or weapons at once!

The quiver has some downside too though; because the piece is so small, and the plastic is quite thin, the pressure of snapping minifig accessories in and out of the clips can break them fairly easily. So, I would suggest picking up several at a time, and being gentle with them. They are not for rough play.

Other than the above issue I really like this piece! Together with the Sidan Toys vest it offers a lot of options for customizing your minifig samurai, ninjas, elves, knights, or residents of your own fantasy world! 😀

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