LEGO has been doing these “Yoda build events” all around the country as promotions for their retail stores. We finally got a chance to participate in one!
Members of BayLUG spent most of the weekend of July 20 and 21 helping out with this project. A Master Builder from LEGO, Stephen Gerling, was on hand to construct the giant LEGO sculpture of Yoda from Star Wars. It was based on a smaller model built almost entirely out of 2×4 bricks in brown, tan, and sand green colors.
To build the giant sculpture, kids were invited to come and construct giant LEGO bricks. Each brick was 8x16x4, or exactly 4x in each dimension the size of a standard 2×4 brick. Lots of 2×4 and 2×8 bricks in each of the three colors were on hand, and laminated instruction cards were set out for the kids to follow. We ended up with many many bins full of the giant bricks, which were used to construct the Yoda sculpture. In fact we had plenty of bricks left over, so at the end we took the instructions away and just let the kids build whatever they wanted.
The event was a lot of fun. We didn’t get paid, but we got some very special deals on bricks from the store to compensate for our time :-)
Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or view a slideshow of the photos.