The Loop
This drivable Bugatti Chiron is the latest example of absurdly large Legos
Here is a functional Bugatti Chiron sports car that drives, looks cool and is made entirely of Lego Technic pieces, and if that sentence doesn’t trigger some form of childlike glee in your central nervous system, you are excused to get back to protesting Nike. Everything about this car hits the precise midpoint between formative-year nerdery and Italian-design opulence; it’s a sports car made out of a toy that works and — if we were to guess — is currently being used to hunt down spies. Lego spies, mainly, and probably little tiny ones whose hands don’t move and whose arms only go up and down, but still.
Readers of a certain demographic — pretty much anyone between the ages of 3 and 98 — can probably agree that Legos remain the best toy ever produced, with the obvious exception of the automatic water-balloon filler (NOBEL PRIZE) and the time G.I. Joe made an action figure out of The Fridge. (PROBABLY NOT A NOBEL PRIZE)
Happily, thanks to technology we can now merge Lego Nerds with Internet Nerds and create an overlapping Venn diagram of Grown Adults Who Are Far Too Into Lego and Yet Still Bring Us All Joy Anyway, as illustrated by the following examples. YO JOE!
Seriously, Look at This Car
Bulit from more than one million Lego Technic pieces. Powered by Lego’s own Power Function technology, which you previously just used to scoot little trains around your basement floor. The car weighs 1.5 tons, generates 5.3 horsepower and has currently replaced Bubba Watson’s cart as the Thing Golf Digest People Want to Drive Most This Year. This is the world’s fastest production car, rebuilt using 90% Lego parts. (sadly, they had to use real tires so the car didn’t, you know, fall to pieces.) Tragically, unless you are Idris Elba you cannot buy the drivable version — or the regular, built-from-metal $2.6 million version (sorry). But the 1:8 scale model in cobalt blue is still pretty sweet.
When it comes to selecting the model for the Largest Lego Toy Ever Built, there is really only one choice (assuming The Fridge is off-limits): The Millennium Falcon, iconic spaceship from the movies that defined your childhood, then the prequels that destroyed it, then the comeback movie that restored it, then the movie that pulverized it anew, mostly by giving Luke Skywalker feelings. This bucket of bolts came out in 2017, but remains Lego’s biggest-ever build. But it costs $799 and commands 7,541 pieces, so do not buy it if your home contains a dog, some children, a vacuum, any holes in the baseboard or doors that lead outside. Otherwise, quit your job and build away, because this thing is a monster.
In comparison to the Falcon, this absurdly large and detailed Hogwarts clocks in at a measly 6,020 pieces and, at just $399, is basically more of a stocking stuffer. But for that money, you get what is basically the most life-sized castle you’ll ever encounter. You will also get all of the following objects, which are no-joke included in this monster: a Great Hall with buildable stained glass windows, a gramophone, a potion jar, a chess board, a Goblet of Fire, 27 minifigs and a buildable Hungarian Horntail dragon, which for all we know is a living breathing thing that will take over your basement. Do you remember when playing with Lego meant assembling a crappy block-cube spaceship out of whatever parts your friends’ older brother left in the bottom of a tub? We don’t either.
Lego’s 5,922-piece Taj Mahal clocks in at 20 inches wide and 16 inches tall, meaning that you will almost certainly accidentally smash it to pieces in the dark.
Honorable Mention
Some sports failures have become so iconic that fans don’t dream of watching them again — the Buckner grounder, the Bartman foul ball, JR Smith bravely not worrying about a basketball game’s “score.” If you’re a fan of Jean van de Velde, by which we mean you are Jean van de Velde, you probably don’t go back to watch his 1999 collapse at the Open Championship all that much, because it’s fairly awful to relive in human form. But what if you relived it in Lego form? Now it’s a party! Here’s a much more adorable van de Velde as an inch-tall plastic man, which someone makes his failure look far more human. (Tragically you can’t buy this set, which is OK, because it wouldn’t be remotely fun to play with.) Incidentally, this same artist made the Auburn/Alabama “Kick Six” recreation that we enjoyed very much.