Phone it in Friday XXXIV: Obi-Wan’s Starfighter

17 March 202312 March 2023 The Portly Politico2 Comments

After my LEGO habit hit a fever-pitch in 2022, I’ve tried to cool off a bit. I’m a grown man with important things to do!

… but the appeal of building a good LEGO set is hard to ignore, and I can’t resist a good sale. So it was that I picked up LEGO Star Wars 75333: Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Jedi Starfighter:

I’m not doing very well at putting aside childish things.

This set appealed to me right away. The prequel trilogy is obviously inferior to the original trilogy (and both are vastly better than the execrable sequel trilogy), but I always loved Obi-Wan’s little Starfighter, and his trip to that planet with the long-necked aliens. I particularly liked that I’d get one of the long-necked aliens (Taun We) and a plucky astromech droid (R4-P17).

Phone it in Friday XXXIII: Bigfoot Build!

10 March 20237 March 2023 The Portly Politico3 Comments

Today’s post is a bit of a special surprise for Audre Myers, regular reader and contributor, and resident Bigfoot expert here at The Portly Politico. While visiting Myrtle Beach this past weekend, my brother and I stopped into The Gay Dolphin (not a gay nightclub, but a schlocky tchotchkes-and-bric-a-brac merchant) to poke around at the various beach-themed gifts.

Amid the poking, I found this guy, and knew it was destiny:

TBT: Getting Medieval… with LEGO

2 February 202329 January 2023 The Portly Politico10 Comments

Over the last year, my childhood (and childlike) passion for all things LEGO reignited with all the intensity of a nearly-middle-aged man with disposal income and no children. It all started with the Medieval Blacksmith (#21325) set, which I purchased for myself as a self-indulgent birthday present (and probably as a way to distract myself from a recent breakup… maybe there’s a connection there somewhere).

That splurge resulted in quite a few more, both for myself, friends, girlfriends, and family. I’ll soon be starting on a very cool build that I will detail here soon.

I haven’t documented every build over the last year, but I’ve tried to give readers a glimpse into a world in which it is increasingly socially acceptable for a grown man to play with toys.

Regardless, in casting about for a good throwback post for this week’s edition of TBT, I settled on this detailed retrospective of my build of the Medieval Blacksmith set. It was an incredibly engrossing and fun build, and I still admire the detail and craftsmanship that went into the design of the set. Eventually, it will be the centerpiece of a hodge-podge LEGO world I’m currently constructing and planning.

With that, here is 18 January 2022’s “Getting Medieval… with LEGO“:

Deposing Bib Fortuna… with LEGO

28 June 202226 June 2022 The Portly Politico2 Comments

Remember Bib Fortuna, Jabba the Hutt’s oily Twi’lek consigliere with the tentacles coming out of his head? Thanks to the power of imagination and LEGOs, you can now roleplay his downfall!

Like any self-respecting man-child, I’d been lusting after set #75326, Boba Fett’s Throne Room, for some time. To me, it’s Jabba the Hutt’s iconic throne room, just without the lovably disgusting, sluggish crime lord.

Unfortunately, this bad boy MSRPs for a whopping $100. Fortunately, my brother found it at Costco in an example of mercantile serendipity—he didn’t even know I wanted it—for $60. Finding any new LEGO set for 40% off is like, well, finding forty bucks on the ground—it doesn’t really happen.

I finally got around to building this bad boy over the weekend, and it was a pretty fun build. It wasn’t as deeply satisfying as some other sets I’ve done, but it also didn’t become tedious. All in all, it was pretty fun to put together, and I love the variety of mini-figures—especially the porcine Gamorrean Guard and the aquatic Quarren.

Bull Terrier Tuesday: Balody Bull Terrier Build

3 May 202225 April 2022 The Portly Politico6 Comments

Regular readers know of my boyish love for LEGO sets of any kind, and that I’ve been building more and more of them over the past year. Those same readers will know of my dog, Murphy, an eight-year old female bull terrier that I adopted last summer from The Bull Terrier Rescue Mission.

Apparently, there exists a bull terrier building set from Balody, an Asian (probably Chinese) company that makes a LEGO knock-off, with a twist: the pieces are extremely tiny. Indeed, they’re called “micro building blocks” on Amazon.

That’s where the inscrutable East gets that much more inscrutable: on Amazon, the company selling this set is called “Larcele.” I can only assume it’s a classy French rebranding to make the toy sound more European (LEGO is Danish). There’s also a site called mylozblocks.com that sells the sets.

I can’t find anything about Balody or Larcele online, other than the latter’s Amazon page. If any toy enthusiasts are reading this blog and can weight in, I’d appreciate it. Granted, I spent a grand total of maybe seven minutes searching the web, so who knows what I missed.

Regardless, a new lady friend gifted me this Balody/Larcelle bull terrier set for Easter, an incredibly thoughtful gift. It was also incredibly difficult to build, despite the box boasting a difficulty level of three out of five blocks (whatever that means).

Getting Medieval… with LEGO

18 January 202216 January 2022 The Portly Politico7 Comments

This weekend I embarked on the ultimate in childlike self-indulgence and built the largest, most detailed LEGO set I’ve ever encountered: The Medieval Blacksmith (#21325) set. This bad boy is part of the LEGO Ideas series, which allows LEGO fans to submit ideas for sets. If the set gets 10,000 votes, LEGO reviews the build and, if they like it, they turn it into an official LEGO set.

These are premiere sets, and are often quite expensive. I managed to pick it up on sale at Target and had a gift card, so against my better judgment, I treated myself to Medieval Blacksmith for the princely sum of roughly $145.

Readers must understand: that kind of splurge is very out of character for me. But sometimes a deal is too good to pass up, and I’ve been drooling over this set ever since it was announced some months ago on LEGO’s website.

I’d say I got my money’s worth with this one. Around 2 PM Saturday I set to work on the behemoth, taking breaks of varying lengths for meals and to walk Murphy. I stopped building around 12:15 AM Sunday morning, just before the first bits of icy sleet began to fall from the winter storm (which I dubbed “Winter Storm Randy”). I resumed building Sunday morning around 10 AM and wrapped up before noon.

In total, I’d say I spent a solid eight hours of actual construction time (that includes probably half-an-hour looking for a single missing piece on my hands and knees, which at the time of writing I still have not found). Normally I’d never have the time for such an endeavor, especially in one stretch, but with a gloriously open weekend and the Korean series Squid Game, I set about building the blacksmith’s shop and home—all 2164 pieces of it.

The Medieval Blacksmith Kit

The Back of the Box

Hoo, boy… that’s a lot of pieces!

Embracing the Dark Side… with LEGO

11 January 202210 January 2022 The Portly Politico16 Comments

Regular readers will have surmised that, in spite being thirty-seven-years old, I am very much a kid at heart. Often, I am also a kid in practice.

I was blessed to receive two incredible LEGO sets for Christmas: the Imperial Shuttle (#75302) and the Darth Vader Helmet (#75304). These sets are 660+ and 800+ pieces, respectively, and are probably the largest LEGO sets I’ve done. I did have the legendary Black Seas Barracuda (#10040) as a kid, which is nearly 900 pieces, but I never built it—my older brother did.

Both of these builds were deeply satisfying. I was sick with a low-grade fever and a sore throat (but tested negative for The Virus, no worries) the week after Christmas, and was generally enduring some low times besides the sickness, so I had plenty of time to dive into both of these kits—and was eager to do so.

Here, I’ll share some pictures of the builds, and discuss a bit of what it was like constructing them.

The Portly Politico

One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Tag: LEGOs