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C-3PO: The odds of successfully surviving an attack on an Imperial Star Destroyer are approximately… Leia: Shut up!

Ever wanted to re-make the opening shot of Star Wars Episode IV in Lego, but could never find a Star Destroyer big enough? If you’d really wanted to do it, you probably would have just bought a whole lot of gray Legos and gotten on with it. But for the lazier film makers, we have just the thing: The Lego Star Wars Super Star Destroyer.

This thing is huge. In fact, I have a feeling the minifigs were Photoshopped into the image above because it doesn’t show the scale: the assembled kit is 124.5 cm long, or just shy of 50 inches, and weighs 3.5 kilos, or almost eight pounds. Lets just say your kids probably won’t be playing with this very often.

The kit has more than 3,000 (mostly gray) pieces, and comes with Vader, Admiral Piett, Dengar, Bossk and IG-88. It also comes with a tiny, cute regular Star Destroyer. I bet you never thought you’d hear the words “tiny” and “cute” used to describe such a hulking death machine.

Predictably, it isn’t cheap. The kit will sell for $400 when it launches in September. That’s a lot for a toy, but still not enough to stop me considering it.

Lego Star Wars Super Star Destroyer [Lego via Uncrate]

See Also:

• Transformers: Star Wars in Disguise
• Lego Millennium Falcon: You Know You Want One
• Lego Star Wars III 3DS

This Lego-clad room would be the ultimate den — if it weren’t filled with screaming kids

[UPDATE May 27th 2011. As pointed out in the comments by Joel P, the café closed a while back. A shame, but I guess that Joel, who lives two blocks away, no longer has to put up with strollers crowding the sidewalk outside.]

Café Boobah on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn is probably a place you want to avoid if you don’t have kids: it’s the kind of child-friendly café where the rugrats can run free while the parents take a break from their nightmarish, brat-dominated lives and wonder why the hell they had kids in the first place. Also, it’s for hippies. Sample menu items: Macaroni and no cheese and tofu hotdogs.

Still, the kids’ room is actually pretty sweet. Children are screened partially by a giant abacus, perfect for those little ‘uns that feel a sudden urge to do math. But the standout feature is the Lego walls. They are completely covered with plates of oversized Lego Duplo, and there are boxes and boxes of Legos for the kids to stick up there. I’m totally going to start working on the Lady to let me convert my bedroom to something similar.

I have a dream, and that dream is that some enterprising individual would open up a bar decorated just like this one. It would of course be way better, as kids would be banned, the mac and cheese would contain cheese, and the hotdogs would… Actually, tofu dogs probably have about as much meat in them as real hotdogs, so they can stay.

Café Boo Bah [i-Beam Design via Oh Gizmo]

See Also:

• Video: Super 8 Projector Made From Lego
• Modular Furniture 'Inspired by Lego'
• Ohio State Professor Builds Massive Lego Stadium

Projecting Super8 film is a largely unnecessary hassle these days, but those words are clearly meaningless to camera nut Friedemann Wachsmuth. His painstakingly constructed Lego projector runs at a rickety 24fps without mangling celluloid, and with only the most minor use of non-Lego components (lens, lamp, spindles, bah who’s counting?). The contraption serves no purpose other than to hurl photons of pure geek passion at white-ish walls, and previous Lego viewfinders and shutter releases are mere pecks on the cheek by comparison. Turn up your volume before you hit the video because the rattliness of this thing is all part of the love.

Continue reading Fully working Super8 film projector built totally out of Lego, well almost (video)

Fully working Super8 film projector built totally out of Lego, well almost (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 May 2011 09:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gypsy Modular furniture can be easily built, unbuilt, moved and intermingled

Clark Davis describes his Gypsy Modular furniture as “inspired by Legos.” I can buy that, but I’d say it feels more like a giant kids’ jigsaw puzzle. Whatever you call it, though, it looks like fun to play with.

The furniture is certainly as easy to put together as Lego, and makes IKEA gear look like a mind-bending puzzle (some would say it is a mind-bending puzzle). The example shown in the demo video has Clark putting a desk together in a matter of seconds, complete with a drawer.

Gypsy Modular isn’t just fast — it’s reconfigurable. There are several standard parts so that you can, say, pull a few shelves from a bookcase and use them to turn a chair into a bench. It also has a unique aesthetic, which will probably draw instant love/hate reactions: Something like Antoni Gaudí mixed with Swedish minimalism.

The pieces can be had in two materials. Melamine-covered MDF or baltic birch plywood.

Right now you can’t buy any Gypsy furniture. The project is ongoing, and is being hosted at — where else? — Kickstarter. The prices are good, though, starting at $25 for a kids’ stool, with chairs, benches and shelves running from $45 up to $100, and the students desk a slightly more expensive $350.

Gypsy Modular product page [Gypsy Modular]

Gypsy Modular [Kickstarter]

See Also:

• Tack Beach Furniture Screws Into Sand
• Origami-Like Floor-Covering Folds into Furniture
• Kickit: Brush-Lined Furniture Catches Flying Footwear

Wouter Scheublin’s Construction Toy is a vehicle construction kit for kids. It is also — if the concept design ever becomes a real product — a lawsuit waiting to happen.

The kit is a lot like Lego Technic, featuring modular splined tubes, bolts, cogs and wheels that can be put together in almost limitless ways. The difference is that Scheublin’s kit results in life-sized toys that can be driven and ridden by kids. Bikes, karts, trikes and (shudder) recumbents can all be put together with some imagination and a little hard work.

I think it’s fantastic — but you knew that, as I’m a bike nut and a DIY fan. I would have loved this thing so hard when I was a kid, and I’d be still be pretty happy to play with one today.

But without parental supervision, little Danny will likely put something together, take it to the top of the steepest, twistiest hill in town and launch himself down it. The amazing machine will lose a wheel at the first corner and poor Danny will be thrown to his doom, ending up broken at the foot of the slope surrounded by Scheublin’s tubes and connections.

But lawyer-bait aside, this oversized construction kit could — with the right parental help — be every nerdy kid’s dream. Note to Mr. Scheublin: If you ever get this into stores, sell it in Europe, or anywhere but the U.S. Over here people like to take responsibility for their own actions.

Construction Toy [Wouter Scheublin]

Pictures: Wouter Scheublin

See Also:

• It's a Wind Up: Gorgeous Spring-Powered Toy Car Not for Kids …
• Makedo Connects Junk Together. The Best Kid's Toy Ever?
• Wheels