Yodeller

Sometimes you encounter a problem that you don't seem to have a solution. Searching for an answer doesn't bring any help either. You just need to figure it out somehow.

It often helps to step back and take some distance to the problem. Keeping hitting your head against the wall doesn't help. It's hard to come up with new possible solutions when your mind is fixed trying to solve the issue in certain way. Giving it some time. This can give some new perspective and getting back to the problem with new angle can help solve it. Try again the next day.

Even if you stop thinking about the problem for a while it doesn't truly go put of your mind. Yes, it can bother you, but tour mind can also work on it in the background without you even noticing. Then, when you get back to the task it can seem like it almost magically solved itself.

Over the weekend my wife's cats were staying with me as she was away. My own cat usually doesn't interfere with my LEGO building, she just comes there to hang out on the table. But my wife's vats are different. Especially the other one was constantly trying to play with the pieces I had laid on the table so I had to keep an eye on her not to lose any bricks.

Eventually she was able to sneak in and drop one of the minifigs to the ground, instantly jumping after it to chase it down. As soon as I realized what has happened I yelled "hey, it's not a toy". As soon as those words had left my mouth I then realized that it is in fact a toy, although not one for the cats.

Yes, they are toys, but I believe toys in general are the most popular collectible items in the world. They might not be for playing, but they still cater our inner child. On the other hand I wouldn't mind if a child would want to play with my precious collection. That's what they are meant and it would be nice if they could get a nice core memory from it. Just like I did back when I was kid.

Sure, there are a few sets that I want to keep safe and in pristine conditions, but the rest are used and old anyway. Save for the few rare pieces I could always easily replace the lost ones. And if needed, I can always rebuild the sets. That's the fun part for me anyway.

Since I started collecting all those LEGO sets my plan has been to make a display of epic battlefield between the two classic castle factions the Lion Knights and the Black Falcons. The rest of the themes were just going to sit there on the side without too much thought on the scenery.

Over the weekend, when I was reorganizing my display to better fit all the newly built sets I got a new idea - what about if I combine the castle and space themes in a new way? The colour schemes of different castle- and space themes I have been collecting align quite nicely. Lion knights are dominantly red as are the M: Tron ships. Black Falcons are blue, just like many of the classic space sets. And the Black Knights are, well black, as is the Blacktron fleet. I wasn't originally planning to collect Black knights, but with all the lots I have acquired have contained many of those sets as well.

It could be fun to combine these themes and have those knights sport some cosmic fleet to elevate the battle between factions. That just leaves the poor Forestmen limited ro ground operations to distribute the wealth of those pesky nobles. Although there are some interesting looking ships in the newer Ninjago theme. Perhaps those could be MOC'd into Spelljammer style steampunk spaceships...

Building those older LEGO sets reminds me how bad things were back in the eighties. The instructions were quite challenging to follow. Not because they weren't detailed enough, but was sometimes hard to figure put those details.

The basic idea was to just figure out the difference between two consecutive pictures of a build step. But there were no idea how many differences you were supposed to spot. When you finally figured out all the parts to add there were still some challenges figuring out the exact right position and sometimes even colour. Some darker colours also made it difficult to actually distinguish the parts in the pictures.

Since then there has been two major improvements to the overall instructions. First, they added the list of parts needed in esch step and then later highlighting of the new parts in this step. Even though the newer models are usually more complex than the older ones this makes them more easy to build. At least on the part where you tey to figure out what to do next.

The colours though are still a challenge. Not the least because the ever increasing amount of different colours, but the fact the printed colours don't always match the real world ones due to printing quality restrictions related to colours. This hasn't even gotten any better in the digital world.

Today I finished building the Stellar recon voyager, the biggest spaceship in the nineties LEGO M:Tron fleet. I always wanted that one, but back then could only afford the smaller Particle ionizer model.

I really like the M:Tron design of red, black and neon green. It really stands out from other LEGO space themes with their boring blues, grays and black. Another nice feature of the M:Tron line is the magnetic connectors that added a new dimension to the building.

Unfortunately (or luckily) there were only 8 M:Tron models released. At least it should be easy to collect them all now. I'm already halfway there. Of course there is also another interesting feature LEGO used in this theme (along only a few others): there is a super secret model!

The secret model uses parts from 3 of the official sets ro build even bigger spaceship. So in addition to collecting all 8 sets I need to get those three ones twice. Luckily they are not the biggest, most expensive ones.

Oh, and I actually now have (almost) two of those Stellar recon voyagers as there was one in both of the last two lots I have acquired. Too bad it's not one of those three needed to build the super model.