Ah, Legos. For the last 70 years, these interlocking bricks have been amongst the most widely sold toys in the world. They’re fun to play with because they utilize your imagination: you can construct anything you can think of, and then tear it apart so you can build something else. Of course, it doesn’t always work out. Most people when they start construction believe they’re putting together something like this:
But what they’ll actually end up with will look more along the lines of this:
But it’s still great fun to build nonetheless. However, there are some people who take it to amazing and awe-inspiring extremes. These people build things like this:
1. LEGO USS Harry S. Truman
The USS Harry S. Truman is a nuclear power aircraft carrier and one of the largest ships in the fleet. So it would make sense then, that any LEGO model of her would also be enormous. But, damn:
That guy standing next to the monstrosity is Malle Hawking, the man behind the model. This guy watched a documentary about aircraft carriers and thought “Eh, I can do that.” Working from Internet photos of the real thing, Hawking put in tons of free time, not to mention spending 10,000 dollars of his own money to buy all the Legos himself. After a year, he was finally finished. This bad boy is 15 feet long, weighs 325 pounds, and is made up of over 300,000 Legos. Every detail of the original is replicated, from the planes on the flight deck:
To the electrically lit hangar bay:
Right down to its seaworthiness:
Not too shabby for an IT consultant who had to buy all the parts himself and used trial and error from Internet photographs to recreate one of the most lethal weapons afloat. And he managed to do it while living in Germany, where it is hard to avoid all the beer and fast driving cars that living there offers. Impressive Herr Hawking. Most impressive.
2. LEGO Wrigley Field
Wrigley Field is the second oldest park in the major leagues, opening its doors in 1916, and has been the home of the Chicago Cubs for almost 100 years. Sadly, the stadium has not as of yet helped them win a World Series, but you know, stuff happens. Stuff like this guy building a model of it out of Legos:
He first started building in April of 2009, and two years later, it still isn’t finished. The project has already cost him 5 grand in parts, and countless hours hunched over in his basement, putting this thing together one piece at a time, over 90,000 pieces so far. It’s incredibly detailed. It has the famous rooftop seats on Sheffield Avenue and Addison Street:
The center field scoreboard:
Appropriate billboards:
Even the Ivy covering the outfield wall:
You can follow his progress on his Facebook page as his construction project gets closer to completion. Hopefully he won’t look back on this and think “I just wasted two years of my life playing with Legos! I need professional help!”
3. LEGO Battleship Yamato
Not to be outdone by an American warship, a Japanese lad set out on a mission to recreate the largest warship in the history of the world: the Japanese Battleship Yamato:
Weighing in at 330 pounds, it is 22 feet long and 3 feet wide at its widest point. Containing over 200,000 Legos, it took almost 6 and a half years to construct. Everything about this bad boy from the rising sun battleflag:
To the bow anchor:
Is to scale, which is impressive considering that few photos of the WWII battleship were taken before it sank in 1945, and the ones that were are all in black and white and weren’t of a very good quality. Also, he started building this thing when he was in elementary school. What were you doing besides picking your nose and running away from cooties when you were a 5th grader. Nothing this awesome, I bet.
4. LEGO Church
You know those really big churches you see on those Sunday morning preacher shows, that seat like a thousand? Odds are most of you have never been in a megachurch, much less attend services there regularly. But obviously someone did:
Holy crap. There’s LEGO Jesus on the Cross, in all his Lego glory. This massive homage to our Savior is made up of over 75,000 pieces, including 4,000 windows and 1,300 LEGO worshippers:
And it isn’t even full. Also, check out the set of pipes that organist has to work with:
And for size reference, look at the size of the crucifix compared with the little LEGO preacher in his LEGO pulpit:
Praise the Lord, indeed.
5. LEGO Tower
Compared to this, the rest of these models are, well, child’s play. The tallest building made of Legos was completed last month in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It stands 102 feet high. That’s not a typo. Look for yourself:
It took top LEGO architects (it’s really sad that that’s a job qualification someone can have) 4 days to complete this tower, which beat a previous record by one whole foot. Really overachieving there, Brazilians. Still, This:
thing
is
really
really
TALL
By Ben Adelman
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