Lego becoming recursive

[major_clanger]

I recently bought a copy of Great LEGO Sets - A Visual History, a very nicely produced coffee-table book of the history of lego from the early days until 2014 or so. It's chock-full of pictures of a selection of what Lego fans and designers consider to be the pick of the sets over the years, including the Space Lego LL928 Galaxy Explorer - as I posted about recently, I found my one of these not long ago and rebuilt it.

If you buy the slipcase version of the book, not only do you get a very nice picture of the Galaxy Explorer kit on the case, but there's an extra treat - a mini Galaxy Explorer. Yes, Lego have done a kit of one of their kits.

It's a very nice looking little model, too.




Even better, it does a pretty good job of being a scale model of the original kit.





It even replicates the opening rear cargo bay of the Galaxy Explorer, with a tiny representation of the moon buggy from the original!





As you'll notice I took this on some green background, because it felt too good an opportunity to pass up to do some green-screen work. You can even use the different sizes of the kits to have a go at forced perspective:



As an aside, I noticed one area where the new mini kit is not only different from the original, but arguably slightly better-designed than it. Anyone spot it?

Comments

[simont]

The port and starboard lights?

[gwendraith]

The book sounds great, I shall invest in it for elder son for his birthday! :)

[major_clanger]

Yes, for the new mini version someone evidently realised that they should be different side-to-side.

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

It's got a green light.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Yes. Specifically it has a red port navigation light and a green starboard one, whereas the original had two red lights on the wings (and two green ones on the tail).

Perhaps someone noticed that as real spacecraft have red/green nav lights, Lego ones should too - see the picture of the SpaceX Dragon capsule approaching the space station:

[fanf]

One of the things that greatly amused me about the Lego Movie was when they used models of models to do the long distance shots :-)

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

That's great, thanks for posting this.

And I feel pleased with myself for spotting the nav lights too. Although I note there's nothing stopping you from fixing it on the full size model by swapping the starboard red light with the port green light from the top of the manoeuvering jets on top of the cargo bay doors.

I had LL928 back in the day, and extended it to make an even bigger version. I picked it up again from years in the loft a few months ago, and keep meaning to take some photos and post 'em.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

there's nothing stopping you from fixing it on the full size model

Amend the instructions? You rebel!

(Yes, that occurred to me, but I left the original as per the instructions to illustrate the point.)