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I’ve always been a big fan of LEGO. It was my favorite toy when growing
up. I had a pretty good collection - two good size boxes full. As I got older
they received less and less “playtime”. I did hold on to them, but they sat in the
back of my closet.
It was in the Fall of last year that I wanted more models of the Spinner. Knowing
there wasn’t a lot made, I was able to get the Ertl diecast collection of matchbox
cars. I own the box set of four (still sealed and unopened), along with 2 sets of
them individually carded (also unopened). I was able to find about 20 or so resin
models ranging from about 1.25” to about 18”. But I wanted more.
While doing some house cleaning I came across my LEGO boxes. That's when the idea hit me!
I took them out and started sort through to see what pieces I had. It took a few attempts, but
finally I came up with a LEGO Spinner design that I really liked. I used whatever pieces I had to create it which made it
rather colorful!
The next step was to replace the odd-colored LEGO bricks with ones of the right colors.
I didn’t have an abundance of required colors so I visited Ebay to purchase some
more. I was able to get enough to make several LEGO Spinners, but there were two pieces I found
that don’t come in the color I want – one was the wheels, and the other was the
front wheel covers (when in flying mode). So I painted the wheels gray and the wheel covers with the closest blue color I could match it to.
It looked good once I had put all the correctly colored pieces together although now it did appear to be “naked”. I decided
to remedy this by creating all the numbers and decals as displayed on a 'real' Spinner. So, referring to a photo of a Spinner, I went to my Macintosh computer and
recreated all the numbers and decals. It took a few printouts to get the size right in relation to the LEGO size and required a steady hand to
stick some of the decals to the model.
| Pictures of the LEGO Spinner |
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Satisfied with the overall look of the newly detailed LEGO Spinner, I decided to take the project even further and create a box for it, as if it had
come right off the shelf at your local toy store. I first chose some of the background
scenes from the Blade Runner movie that I liked. Then I went and took about 20 or so pictures
of the LEGO Spinner at different angles to go with the background shots. I then combined the two separate images on my Macintosh using Adobe Photoshop.
Fortunately I had saved some of the original LEGO boxes while I was growing up. I took one that was in pretty
bad shape and recreated the basic layout of it. From there I started to create my new
box with the same measurements as the old LEGO box, recreating it panel by panel. Once the panels were complete the construction of box was pretty straightforward.
Overall I am very pleased with end result.
Jeff Peabody
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