Lego select three new Master Builders

When I was 10, I would have given body parts (important body parts) to be a Lego Master Builder. I mean, how insanely cool a job could there be, than to build Lego models for a living.

Wired have been covering the competition to select a new Master Builder for the California Legoland at some length over the last few months, and on Friday the winners were announced. The article has also got a link to a picture that would have been my 10-year-old self’s idea of a dream fantasy come true - a wall of pick-n-mix dispensers stuffed full of Lego bricks of all sizes and shapes and colours.

I quite like the idea of Lego Mindstorms although I’ve never been able to bring myself to part with the frankly ludicrous amount of money that the things cost - we’re talking gadget-budget sized amounts here. But the rest of the Lego range seems to have gone badly downhill over recent years - instead of being a bunch of interchangeable bricks that needed imagination to bring to life, the kits now seem to be a movie-tiein-themed bunch of boxes full of parts with one specific function. It’s a scene from Harry Potter, which you can rebuild into… a scene from Harry Potter. A while back youngest offspring was given some Bionicles, and I just couldn’t see the point. If it wasn’t for the Lego logo on the jar that they came in, I’d have been hard-pressed to tell what they were - and he didn’t seem overly-impressed, either.

It’s not a toy that seems to have grabbed their attention at all, which is a crying shame - not least because it would give me the perfect excuse to spend hours playing with Lego again….

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