Happy Birthday to me
At my recent 36th birthday, I got one of the coolest presents of my life. My LovelyWife & excellent kids surprised me with the Lego Death Star that I raved about at the start of the year. OH. MY. GOODNESS!!! Thoroughly impressed with the fact that Mr4 & Miss2 kept it a secret – I didn’t know about it until I unwrapped it – since they were with LovelyWife when she purchased it nearly 6 months ago (I seriously gotta find these hiding places being used for presents in our house).
The box is huge. Over my 36 years (yes, I am a large child) I’ve made many a Lego set. The biggest one I’ve ever got was a Lego Castle set I got after our local Big W had a “post-fire-goods-water-damaged” sale, but I digress. It was cool, & where previously all the instructions were folded paper, the Lego Castle came with a small stapled book. The Lego Death Star comes with a ring-bound, A2 sized monster book. Step by step instructions on how to build your very own Death Star. Must have been what the Emperor used. Twice.
Over 3800 bits. I touched all of them at least once, many twice, a fair few three times, a bunch four times, and so on. The stupidest thing I did was at the start: Opening all the bags of parts into one big pile. The smartest thing I did happened at the same time: I ensured all the very small parts were put into a small plastic container that I could use to keep the bits away from the big bits & at least allow me to only search through 200-odd little bits when I needed that clear plastic size one bit to use as the accent on a light. After the first hour of frustration when looking for a specific bit I relented & sorted at least the colours into separate piles. That made it easier. With two shades of grey & lots of black accent, it still made it tough to read the manual & discern what colour block to use sometimes.
While Miss2 was keen to be involved in helping Daddy build his “Def Stah”, her two year-old attention span paid dividends for once. She helped in spurts. Mr4, however, wanted to be involved in every little bit. Now while his cognitive growth is far more advanced than mine at his age, the identification of specific bits & then using the patented Lego “add to your construction what’s missing compared to this picture” instruction process is a little above him. He did help a lot, & that was fun, but Daddy was taking too long completing all that messy & unnecessary detail. So while he was waiting he built his first (of many) and very own Star Wars ship.
The process how the Lego Death Star came together was pretty impressive. It was pretty modular – build this floor, add some bits, do the next floor, add some bits, once all the floor bits are together add more detail & build the supporting walls/pillars/structure, etc. You never focused on one section for too long. This made the entire build process engaging, with the continuing accent of “I wonder what section I’ll build next?” or “What is this going to develop into?” or “I wonder when I get to build the Emperor’s throne room?”. Tres cool.
So, when it’s built, there’s almost too much to look at. A benefit of it being a globe – some things are hidden, others are obscured in part by other bits, it’s multi-layer approach means you don’t really take it all in with one glance. That's a big part of it's fascinaction - so much to see, so much to do...
Each of the segments of the Lego Death Star represents a separate scene from either Star Wars or Return of the Jedi (conveniently, in the latter, almost all the Death Star work happens in the Emperor’s throne room, so no big deal in having to find more spaces). All the key locations from Star Wars are there – the Cell Block, the Landing Bay, the Tractor Beam Control Tower, the bridge space where Luke & Leia swing across the gap to escape the Stormtroopers, the Control Room from where they fire the Death Star at Alderran, the Trash Compactor (complete with trash compactor monster!) - & then a favourite ‘extra’ – the Stormtrooper’s lunch room. There had to be one.
If you click here you can got to the gallery of the build & associated birthday fun-ness.
It was a really fun build. A couple of really long days/late nights got it completed, & that was mainly because I didn’t have a space to spread out & take my time (I took over the end of our dining table). Additionally pressure from Mr4 who was constantly studying the box & suggesting “when we play with it, I’m gonna be Luke Skywalker” or asking “who’s this guy” pointing at the minifig line up on the box. Love it. 4 years old, missed the original by 30 years, & he’s as addicted as I am . ;)
Now for that minifig scale Lego Millennium Falcon (hint, hint)...
