LEGO customizer BrickStuff is known for making very high-quality light-kits for LEGO sets and custom creations. Many of the lighted LEGO displays you find online and at LEGO conventions are powered by BrickStuff lights. The uniqueness of BrickStuff is that their lights are so tiny and their wires so thin that they can fit inside and run between the smallest LEGO elements. Besides offering starter-kits and individual modules to power your LEGO creations, BrickStuff also offers already preassembled kits to light up some of the most popular LEGO sets. We discussed BrickStuff’s products in detail previously (see: Light Up Your LEGO Models with BrickStuff), and today, I wanted to bring your attention to their newest product: illuminated and animated billboards! 🙂
I first became aware of BrickStuff’s new billboards through Twitter, and I was immediately impressed. No other LEGO customizer produces such a product, so this is totally unique. The billboards are 5″ long by 2.5″ tall (126mm x 64mm) and feature a custom, full-color image, printed on top of flexible electroluminescent (EL) material that has been divided into sections based on the graphic design. Each billboard has a total of five sections, and when connected to the included power supply, the sections animate in sequence, creating a non-stop light show you can mount just about anywhere in your LEGO city.
Each kit includes one billboard with 7-wire connecting cable, one power supply/lighting animation driver, and one strip of sticky squares. The power supply can operate on either four AAA batteries, or a connecting cable is also included that works with the standard BrickStuff power supplies. You can either use batteries to power the billboard or connect it to the rest of your BrickStuff lights to power everything centrally.
These illuminated and animated billboards are the same size as an 8×16 LEGO plate, so you can use the included sticky squares to attach the billboard to a plate to design your own billboard frame, or attach to the side of a building or any other flat surface.
There are currently eight different billboard designs, advertising Brickville Airlines, a diner, a barbershop, a coffee house, the BrickTrak metro-liner, the Octan Racing team, the Brickville power company, and Ace Brickman’s private investigator services. You can see how each of the billboards is illuminated and animated at BrickStuff’s website. Below is just one example so you can see how awesome it looks.
As mentioned above, each of the billboard kits includes everything to set up your billboard, except for batteries and LEGO pieces that you might want to use to build a custom frame. The billboard kits are $43 each, which is not cheap, however even just one of these billboards is enough to add something very unique to your LEGO city or LEGO Modular Building layout.
I also really like that the artwork on the billboards is LEGO-ized. The diner billboard even features the #10260 LEGO Creator Downtown Diner, and the barbershop and private investigator billboards are references to the #10246 LEGO Creator Detective’s Office. The other billboards also refer to iconic characters/vehicles/scenes from official LEGO sets, like the Octan racing team, and Larry the barista from The LEGO Movie.
These billboards fit perfectly on top of the #10246 LEGO Creator Detective’s Office, but of course, they can be placed at other locations as well. They are basically like billboards in a real city; some of them are placed on top or the sides of buildings, others sit on top of a pole, or in a train station, bus stop, or shop window. So, if you want to try something unique, and add a little excitement to your LEGO city, you might want to try out one (or more) of these illuminated and animated billboards by BrickStuff.
What do you think? How do you like these LEGO compatible billboards? Are you considering adding them to your LEGO city? What other illuminated and animated billboard designs would you like to see? Feel free to share your thoughts and discuss in the comment section below! 😉
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