Tiny Red Telephone

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Derek put me on to this. It’s a tiny red telephone you can build that looks very like the real thing.

This is not Lego, but my goodness it looks like it

It’s a Zuru Max Retro kit. There are a bunch of them for sale in our local Aldi for knock down prices. They also have a tiny computer, ghetto blaster, instant camera, TV and games machine. They also have some rather fetching food and flower models too. They are very close to Lego in every way. The bricks even fit together with Lego bricks (although they lack their heft). The instructions have the same step by step sequence and sometimes hard to see colours. If you want some cheap construction fun they worth a look.

Lego Ghetto Blaster

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It’s become a kind of ritual. When we go up town in Leeds we visit the Lego store and fill a plastic cup with bricks from their “pick and mix”. I like doing this because you can get a huge number of one particular Lego piece. On a previous visit I got an enormous number of Lego gear levers and we used them to make a brush, among other things. This time we got some funky angled pieces and I used them to make a Lego Ghetto Blaster with six speakers and a sub-woofer. Great fun.

Hull is Awesome

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Culinary innovations at Ferens Art Gallery cafe. We call it the “shot sandwich”.

What do you do if you have a five year old that you want to impress. Why, you take them to Hull of course. We started with a coffee (we had coffee - she had juice) at the amazing café in Ferens Art Gallery. Then on to the next room, where they had a fantastic Lego exhibition. Then down to the Museums Quarter to scoot round searching for robots and dragons. Then back for lunch in Ferens, a look at the fountains and then back home for a rest.

Hull is awesome.

Lego Vidiyo is a good value at knockdown prices

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Lego Vidiyo.jpg

Not everything that Lego touches turns to gold. Lego Vidiyo has not been the success that Lego hoped and figures and sets are now on the market at temptingly low prices.

The idea of the product is very good. Place animated mini-figures in augmented reality pop videos and control the action using collectable tiles that you scan with your phone or tablet camera. Add in some stage sets that can be incorporated into the videos, tie in with the music publishers so that there’s a good range of 1 minute music clips and you’d think they would be on to a winner.

And I think they would have been, if the application that underpins the whole thing had been a bit better. As it is, the program ls clunky to use, insists on downloading stuff when you start it up and has a confusing interface. The videos are great fun, the sharing element is well implemented and safe for kids, but the whole thing is just that bit too painful to enjoy using.

This has of course not stopped me from picking up a bunch of figures and sets at knock down prices. After all, Lego is Lego. Although I’ve not managed to pick up the party llama yet.

Lego say that they are only resting the project for now. I hope this is true. I think it has massive potential once they’ve sorted out the software side.