Hasta La Gadget!

We see no reason why this Lego remote control shouldn’t become reality. In fact, quite the opposite. We don’t see why the world should be deprived of such a superlative setup.

Think about it. Not only can you, as designer fueledbycoffee intends, endlessly rearrange the switches to suit your tastes, much like icons on the iPhone screen, you can play around with this during more boring shows. Connecting the various components shouldn’t be too hard — the base could take care of power and actually beaming the info to the TV and the “buttons” simply contain switchable RFID tags.

Just don’t tell Sony. The company would probably bring out a licensed version missing the skip and fast-forward buttons to force you to watch ads.

Core-Toon:Dream Product – Lego Remote [Core77]

It’s almost impossible to decide what is best about the packaging of this toy gun. The West Bull-Puncher Sunset Riders is a celebration of international misunderstanding, an example of Chinglish at its very finest. That we found it on sale in the candy store at a multiplex cinema in Barcelona, Spain only adds to the absurdity of the product.

The first temptation is the promise of “unbelievable stimulation”, something obviously unsuited to the marketing of any children’s toy, let alone a death-spitting gun. Possibly put off, we are assured that we are “welcome to choose out product”, a blessed relief to be sure. Feeling more comfortable now, perhaps we should take a look at the back of the box?

Here we are shown the details, a set of features essential to any toy firearm: “Flash action”, of course, along with “trigger” and the innovative “turn”. Thankfully the box is open at the front so you can inspect the goods before purchase. Otherwise, who knows what might be inside, especially as the box warns “Specifications colours and contents may vary from illustrations.”?

Fantastic, I think you’ll all agree. In fact, almost as good as the movie we were on our way to see: Star Trek.

Photos: Jaume Muñoz

Brick by brick, Lego has been building its way out of the near bankruptcy it suffered around the turn of the century. It has done this by a seemingly simple strategy — making awesome product after awesome product. Now it is releasing the almost ridiculously fitting Architecture series, beginning with the Frank Lloyd Wright Collection, six planned sets including the Guggenheim in New York and Fallingwater, the iconic cantilevered waterfall-house outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This, we don’t need to tell you, is inspired. Real bricks turned into Lego bricks. The sets are as yet unpriced, but are unlikely to be cheap. The Lego Taj Mahal, for instance, is $300. What’s better is that this is just the beginning of Lego’s Architecture series, as we can see from the teaser on the product page. We’ll put in a vote for Le Corbusier right now (as a bonus, his buildings should be pretty easy to construct in Lego).

Available now, if you can make it to the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition at the Guggenheim.

UPDATE. The sets are priced at $45, plus shipping from $10 to $25 depending on how far way from the US you live. I have added a link to the online store below.

Fun Lego Facts:

• Worldwide, seven boxes of Lego are sold every second.
• Heo Young-Ho of South Korea left Lego on the top of Mount Everest in 1987.
• According to Lego, even just two bricks give 24 different combinations.
• All Legos are made equal. Every brick is compatible from the first brick made in 1958 (the year before the Guggenheim was completed and Wright died) to those made today.
• The Lego minifig was born in 1974, and it took another 30 years for them to get proper, skin-colored faces when licensed figures dropped yellow for flesh-tone.
• Kids waste around 5 billion hours a year playing with Lego.
• I once got a Lego brick stuck in my nose and it took almost half a day to sneeze it out.

Product page [Lego]

Online store [Brick Structures. Thanks, John!]

Frank Lloyd Wright LEGO Sets (and press release) [Prairie Mod via The Coolist]

Talk about a geek in training. This lucky baby has her very own iPhone! It’s made of wood, of course, but hey, it’s an iPhone! Plus, it won’t suffer any serious damage should she get the urge to chew on it. And that, my friend, is exactly the point.

Flickr-user cjonesgo, who carved the toy–which he has aptly named the iPhoney–by hand, explains:

Some good friends have a teething baby and there is nothing she wants
more than to get her hands on Dad’s iPhone. This is an attempt to find
an acceptable substitute…

All in all it took about 4 hours to
make. I probably could have done it in less, but I had a very
discerning client. Everything had to be perfect!

It’s all
natural, nearly indestructible, and just a neat thing to have around.
The best thing about this project is, of course, the smiling baby. The
worst thing is that I don’t even have a an iPhone of my own and this
has given me a serious case of iPhone envy!

Now I have to make one for myself, because I am jealous of a baby.

See the whole series of in-progress shots in cjonesgo’s iPhoney Flickr set.

[via Robots and Dinosaurs]

If you have ever ollied down a big flight of steps and had the skateboard snap when you land, you’ll know it’s pretty spectacular. You’ll also know that it’s going to take a while before you try such a big trick again.

And this is our concern about the Foldable Skate Deck Concept, from New York designer Jin-Seok Hwang. It’s cool looking, sure, and way more portable than a regular board, but that hinge in the center is a snap waiting to happen. We’d file this one under “dilettante”, and “poseur” — it’s certainly not going to be useful for the hardcore daily skater — you need to have confidence that your setup is going to stay together or you’re not going to try anything harder than a kickturn.

Also, what is it made of? That doesn’t look like plywood. Avoid.

Foldable Skate Deck Concept [NG Boards via Core77]