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The Machines Are Taking Over

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Finally Back In Billund

The last time I went to The LEGO House was quite some time ago.
Back in March, I went to Billund to pick up my copy of the Tree of Creativity.
I had planned to return just two months later in May.
And guess what. Covid-19 made me change my plans.

Yesterday, a good six months later I finally was able to stop by the Home Of The Brick on my way further north for some holidays.
And lucky me it was.
It turned out that yesterday was only the second day of a new attraction at the store inside Ole Kirks Plads 1. A brand new Minifigure Factory. Open to the public. And yours truly.

Your reporter in the field …

Here’s the original press release by the LEGO House:

The LEGO Minifigure Factory to be revealed in the LEGO® House store in Billund

At the LEGO Store in LEGO® House a big secret has been hidden behind decorative cardboard boxes for a while with the text “coming soon” written outside it. From Friday guests will be met by the brand new LEGO Minifigure Factory when they enter the retail store.

The unboxing

The LEGO Minifigure Factory lets you customise and personalise your own minifigure torso by adding text, decorations and even drawings on it. All done on a computer and a few minutes later – a freshly printed personal minifigure is ready just for you!

Guests will be able to pick between a few pre-selected designs to start with, but it is also possible to create a new design by drawing and adding text to the minifigure torso.

Furthermore guests will be able to pick among approximately 20 exclusive LEGO House prints like the LEGO House logo, a Play Agent torso, the house drawn in drone perspective, the dinosaurs and many more iconic illustrations from the house.

The printing machinery

Store Manager, Thomas Jensen is super excited about the new retail experience and especially the exclusive LEGO House decorations are dear to him: “The most fantastic part of having this new retail experience is the possibility for our guests to personalise and create their unique LEGO minifigure. With the exclusive LEGO House decorations they get the possibility to create their very own piece of souvenir from their visit and in that way bring home a little piece of LEGO House.

Exclusive LEGO House Prints

Exclusive LEGO House Prints

In the store we look very much forward to creating lots of minifigures together with our guests and feel the creative and playful atmosphere even more.” 

This unique experience is available in LEGO Stores in Berlin, Orlando and Amsterdam, and now also in LEGO House, Billund.

New Shirts Galore

And of course I had to try it out myself. Luckily there were no massive queues so without waiting time I gave it a go.

First I had to go to the cash desk to pay for my own printed minifigure. After paying 89 DKK (12 €) I was handed out a box. This box had to be scanned at the designing station. On screen instructions guided me through the entire (simple) process: I typed in my name, chose a front and a backside for the torso and clicked on “OK”. While my personal design was transferred to the printing unit I got to choose a head, a headpiece, legs and an extra accessory (like with a regular Build A Mini).

Happy Me

After only five minutes the store agent happily handed me over my brand new, freshly printed and uniquely customized minifigure torso, along with a white 1×3 brick which had my name on one side and “LEGO House” on the other.

That is me … in my box.

The result not only made me happy. It also made me spend a significant amount of my holiday pocket money on more torsos t-shirt.

And remember we were only on our first day of our holidays, just on the way to our destination!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CFC8zvsKxOp/

Conclusion

Yes, 12€ is a lot of money for only one minifigure but… I will definitely get back and choose more designs to be printed. They are simply too adorable not to.
And the possibilities are almost endless.
You can not only choose from several designs, but you can also decide on the size of the print or you can paint your own ideas with your fingers.
And last but not least the designs from LEGO House are exclusively available in Billund (while I noticed that some/all designs from the store in Berlin are available, too).

More Minifigure Factories will surely come to stores across the globe.

Meanwhile Somewhere In Northern Denmark

After this exciting experience we left Billund heavy-hearted and proceeded to our holiday destination.
Now I’m sitting in our summer house.
Outside the winds from the North Sea are blowing heavily and it’s raining cats and dogs.
But I don’t mind.
I’ve got a cup of tea and am happily waiting for the sun to come out again so I can rock my new shirts on the beaches of the Danish westcoast!

Stefan.

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Laughing desired

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But Wait

Oh my, this isn’t what we had in mind when we greeted the new year roughly six months ago, right? I guess it’s safe to say that we all had different plans for twenty-twenty. Plans of travelling, of meeting old friends and new ones. Instead life threw some event cards our ways. Here, take Covid-19. Here, deal with a lockdown. And hey, let’s not forget about the climate either, let’s change that, too.

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who helped dealing with this year so far and making it a little easier for all of us. Thank you to those who stayed at home in order to decrease the risk of spreading the virus. Thank you to all those who worked to their limits- and beyond- to keep society going. I’m not going to applaud because that won’t pay the rent or buy any food but I do bow before every one of you. You people rule.

SiPgoesTT and July

The more serious the times, the bigger the necessity to laugh. You may (or may not) disagree on that sentence but it pretty much sums up my feelings these days. All that required discipline needs a counterpart where one can let go off tension and remember that there´s more to life than this. Maybe a good moment to talk about comedy.

Comedy as in…

I have to admit that it took some time for me to remember some movie titles from that genre. Movies like The Hangover, There’s Something About Mary or the brilliant Snatch.

Seasonal comedies like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation or Elf.

Comedies mostly known in their country of origin like The Art Of Negative Thinking (Norway), Kopps (Sweden), Bang Boom Bang (Germany) or In China They Eat Dogs (Denmark).

A tribute to Tati’s Jour de fête

And thinking a little longer I came across great actors like Charlie Chaplin, Louis de Funès, Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, Jacques Tati, Peter Sellers and the Monty Python troupe. This list could hardly ever be complete. I’m sure every one has their own favourites here.

A bowler, maybe left there by The Tramp?

Mission? What mission?

As this genre is meant to give the audience a happy, carefree time we`ll keep it simple this month: Think of comedies you’ve seen and enjoyed. Pick just one or as many funny scenes that still crack you up every time you see them. Get out your camera and favourite building system (or any other toy) and recreate this scene and shoot it. Then post it on IG using the hashtags #sipgoesTT and #sipgoesTT_comedy. At the end of the month yours truly crew will browse all these entries and select their favourite image. This one will then be rewarded with a little LEGO gift of our choice.

Until then please share with us in the comments below your favourite comedy(ies) that you think everyone should see. Or maybe some memories you have of a certain comedy?

Ready? Set! Go building and shooting, stay safe and have some well deserved fun.

One of my favourite movies ever! Chicken Teriyaki And Piggie Man On The Loose– ok, I may have made this up…

P.s.:

When thinking of the importance of laughing I remember going to the cinema with a friend to see Four Lions several years ago. The moment we met my friend told me that his father had just died the day before. I was shocked and said we’d better not go and see a comedy then but he insisted. We ended up laughing tears of joy. After the show he told me that he felt relieved and soothed at the same time. Laughing may not always be able to wipe away pain or sorrow, but to me it is an essential ingredient in life. Don’t you agree?

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Notes From The Road- A Reminder

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My oh my, so many new LEGO sets and awesomness has been released recently or is just about to. 

Got A Camera Close At Hand?

Two weeks ago we told you of our first hands keys-on of the new 10271 Creator Expert FIAT nuova 500, remember? We told you how much we fell in love. And we also told you that we´re giving away two copies of this yellow Italian marvel of engineering art straight from Billund. 

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A Taste Of The Sweet Life

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Yes!

Yes. The new LEGO Creator Expert car has been released into the wild. The 10271 FIAT Nuova 500 hit the shelves on March 1st.
Of course, we couldn’t wait to take this vehicle out for a test drive.

Out test driver Ken Belville with the brand new nuova500

The Cinquecento

The Cinquecento (also known as the FIAT Nuova 500) is the next vehicle in the Creator Expert series, following legendary cars like the Ford Mustang, the Volkswagen Beetle or the Aston Martin DB5, to name just a few.

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Timber!

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Last week we from SiP (as well as many others) received an email by Trine Nissen, Senior Communication & PR Manager at the LEGO House. In case you haven´t heard of it yet, here´s what she wrote: 

“LEGO House Tree of Creativity” to discontinue 

Since the opening of LEGO House it has been an important milestone to create exclusive products that relate to LEGO House and adds to the LEGO House experience for the guests. The first exclusive product launched was the LEGO House Architecture (21037) in 2017, followed by the LEGO House Tree of Creativity (4000026) in 2018, and then the LEGO House Dinosaurs (40366) in 2019. 

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“This will all end in tears. I just know it.”

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Let me tell you of a man

Some years ago I stumbled across a feed on Instagram. The name of the feed pointed out clearly that most of the content was about hotdogs and burgers. Clearly something I was interested in. I followed that account and saw that its owner was visiting my hometown. I texted him and we met in person. That’s a long story short of how I met Lasse.

Find the passion

It took us quite some time to find out that we shared another passion (other than just eating out at Havnen’s Perle in Aarhus, for those who remember our last safari). It’s the passion for a construction toy, a system or plain and easy: the brick. Lasse and his wife even received LEGO as a wedding gift from their friends! What a base to start a marriage from!

From idea to reality

The other day when I showed Lasse one of our SiP custom minifigures, he seemed instantly hooked. I’m supposing that an idea instantly took shape. Not much later he came up with the idea of a custom minifigure of his company’s mascot. Some designing and fine-tuning later he had a draft. Lasse contacted a printer (great work, Lars!) and got his vision printed on a mini torso. He was so happy (and maybe also a little inspired by the first postcards he received from our Xmas card exchange) that he took his creation out and about and took his first toy photo (with his phone)! (Let’s see if we can get him into LEGOgraphy as well…)

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Week 25 – Eric Clapton

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Our Guest This Week

The person in focus of this week´s edition of SiPgoes53 is British musician Eric Clapton. Rumour has it that there are people who haven´t heard of him before (as for myself: my first tattoo showed a cover of my favourite Clapton albums, but that’s a completely different story). Still most everyone will recognize some of his famous tunes like “Layla” or “Tears In Heaven”, as well as his versions of other artists’ songs like “Knocking On Heaven´s Door”(by Bob Dylan), “I Shot The Sheriff”(by Bob Marley) or “Cocaine”(by J.J.Cale).

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Week 21 – Anton Corbijn

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A Photographer From The Netherlands

It is my very pleasure to introduce you to this week’s person in focus of our #SiPgoes53 series. Let’s have a closer look at the works of Dutch photographer, music video- and film director Anton Corbijn. Should you not instantly recognise his name but have a love for music, you will most probably have seen one or more of his 80+ music videos. Included are clips from bands like Metallica, Bryan Adams, Front242, Johnny Cash and Coldplay, to name a few.

Born in 1955, for more than thirty years now he has been the creative director of visual album design and stage designer for the tours of both U2 and Depeche Mode. He also made the last music video for Nirvana in 1994.

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