AFOL Accoutrement

Early tomorrow morning I leave for Bricks Cascade 2022.  Whoo! 

Tonight I have to pack.  What does an Adult Fan of LEGO pack for a convention trip?  Man-oh-man, what doesn’t an AFOL pack for a convention trip?  Read on.

Miscellaneous Convention-Goer Stuff

It starts off with a bunch of boring stuff tossed into a suitcase. 

Several changes of clothing.  A clean empty garbage bag (for separating clean from dirty clothes for their suitcase ride home).  A bottle of Neutrogena body wash in a Ziploc bag.  (I know that hotel rooms come with their own supply of soap, but I have a nasty allergy to most soaps, and have to stick to Neutrogena products or risk a full body rash.  And the Ziploc bag?  You only need to learn a lesson about liquid soap coming open in your suitcase that one time.)  A box of plastic silverware.  Medications.  A cellphone charger.  Stuff like that. 

Then it’s some food packed into a grocery bag.  Snacks.  Sandwich fixings.  Instant oatmeal for breakfasts.  The usual. 

After that comes a final check of the already packed-and-ready-to-go MOCs.  Subtle paranoia makes me check (and recheck) that I’ve got everything I need.  (A couple years ago I spent two days opening up sealed The LEGO Batman Movie sets to harvest all of their Gotham police minifigures.  After I had them all, I put them into a small container which then sat forgotten on my build table as I traveled to the convention to set up my massive Batman MOC.  Whoops.)  

This year I’m bringing nine MOCs to Bricks Cascade.  Eight for display, and a ninth that’s definitely not for display, as it’s NSFW.  It’s relatively small, and I just plan on having it with me so that I can show it off to people I think would be interested in it. 

Once you get to the con, there are several things I like to actually have on my person as I wander through the exhibition hall.  Hydration is important, so carrying a water bottle is a smart move.  Having some of my snacks stashed under a table in a section where you’re displaying MOCs is also wise. 

In the past, whenever I was at a convention and needed to use a brick separator, I only had to ask.  Someone within earshot had one in his/her pocket to lend me.  This year, I think I’ll probably try to remember to bring one with me from the LEGO room because of, well, you know… Covid and germs and whatnot. 

Lots of people will bring their own chairs.  (Usually those foldable camp chairs.)  For the past few years I’ve just sat on my rollator.  This year I plan to perch my fat ass on the seat of a rental mobility scooter. 

And, of course, in this day and age everyone has the ubiquitous smartphone.  Which comes in handy for photographing other people’s MOCs, showing off your own MOCs from Flickr or Instagram, and searching for prices on Bricklink. 

T-Shirts

I’m not going to claim that most AFOLs have a LEGO-themed t-shirt collection, but I do seem to see a lot of LEGO-themed shirts being worn at cons. 

Some of them are convention shirts.  Two of my LEGO shirts are con shirts (one from BrickCon, and my Theme Coordinator shirt from Bricks Cascade).  Only two, because they very rarely go up into the 5-6x range I wear. 

The other LEGO shirts in my collection are almost all shirts that popped up for sale on my Facebook page.  Ah, the internet. 

(If you’re looking to start a LEGO t-shirt collection, I suggest typing “LEGO” into the search box at teepublic.com.) 

Brick Badges

One of the things that you start to accumulate when you attend LEGO conventions are 1x8 bricks with words on them.  Usually engraved, but sometimes pad printed.  These are commonly called ‘badge bricks’, and are customarily snapped together and worn (usually using an adhesive magnet backing) by attendees.  

I think that pretty much every LEGO convention does a special convention brick that’s given out to all the attendees.  The name of the con, the year, sometimes a logo.  At Bricks Cascade and BrickCon, they also offer a couple of bricks who’s engraving you choose when you register for the convention. 

And, you can pick up other badge bricks from vendors, and from AFOLs who have enough disposable income to have a bunch of bricks printed or engraved to give out to their fellow con goers. 

Custom Brick Engraving

In addition to just settling for whatever badge bricks you happen to pick up along the way, you can also add to your badge with custom bricks, acquired through custom engravers or printers. 

Several years ago, Jenn Canvin (thebrickchick.com) was set up with the vendors engraving bricks for the AFOLs (and the public, during the public days).  I think I bought about ten bricks from her. 

This year I discovered giftabrick.com (an Etsy store).  They offer an excellent price on engraved bricks, and I’ve ordered a handful of bricks from him. 

Bricks obtained from giftabrick.com

 

The Evolution of My Brick Badge

I never really liked the magnet attachment that is the most common means of affixing your brick badge to your shirt.  So my first brick badge (worn at my second convention) had a 1x8 technic brick at the top, with a long bootlace strung through and then tied behind my neck.  Fancy! 

As I added more and more bricks to the badge, it became less and less stable.  It started snapping in half at the slightest provocation, and dropping a chunk of bricks to the floor.  (I suspect that part of the problem is that instead of hanging straight down, it angled outward to accommodate my massive gut.) 

So, I started looking for a way to stabilize the darn thing.  People suggested taping it together on the back, but I didn’t really like that.  Every time I’ve used tape on LEGO bricks, they seem to be sticky forever after that. 

I ended up looking into technic parts as a solution.  I got some 1x8 technic bricks and 2x8 plates, and formed ‘sandwiches’ with all my badge bricks.  Technic brick behind badge brick, with a plate on top and a plate on the bottom.  I stuck these all together, and flipped the thing over.  Then I attached technic lift arms to the technic bricks with technic pins.  The end result of which was:  more stability!

I wore the badge like that for one convention, and it worked great.  But then I got more badge bricks, and making the technic-boosted badge longer made it less stable in the middle.  I wore the longer badge to a convention, and there was too much tension on the technic pins holding everything together.  They started snapping in half. 

So, I needed another solution.  I didn’t want to shorten it, but the length was a problem.  That’s when I hit upon the realization that what I needed several shorter sections instead of one long section.  What I needed was to turn my brick badge into a brick bandolier. 

The Brick Bandolier

The brick bandolier went through several stages of trial and error before I found a working concept.  Figuring out how long to make each brick segment, and things like that. 

Eventually I purchased 50 feet of purple parachute cord, and started stringing my brick segments together.  This version of the brick bandolier (v1.0?) made it’s debut at last year’s outdoor one day Bricks Cascade “Bricknic” event.  When I put it on, my friend Kyle called the bandolier “going the full Chewbacca”. 

The problem with v1.0 was that it looked like it might have fit Chewbacca.  It was too long.  There was too much space between each brick segment, and the construction looked sloppy. 

I got several more badge bricks at the event (and have gotten several more since), and I think that adding more bricks and having less space between them is a better solution.  Which brings us to v2.0, which I’ll be wearing at this year’s con. 

This time the connective medium was 1/8^th inch diamond-grip elastic bungee cord.  After assembling the whole thing, I find I like it much better than my previous effort.  Assuming, of course, that my knots hold.  But I’ll find that out this weekend.  

And Finally, the SigFig

SigFig stands for Signature Figure, and is a LEGO minifigure meant to represent it’s owner.  Usually there’s at least an attempt to match the look of the figure with the look of the individual.  Although sometimes not.  (I’ve seen people that look nothing like Batman using Batman as their sigfig.) 

I knew that if I had a sigfig I’d want it to visually represent me, so I didn’t even try to put one together until after merchandise for The LEGO Movie started to come out. 

When I first saw images of The LEGO Movie wave of collectable minifigures I freaked out a little bit, because the William Shakespeare figure had my hairstyle.  And Wiley Fusebot had my beard.  They were both reddish-brown instead of straight red, but except for that they were closer than I ever thought they’d come. 

Sadly, when I obtained my set of those figures, I discovered that the way they’re made, I could use either the hairpiece or the beard, but not both at once.  They just wouldn’t fit together.  Sad. 

So, I found a head with a printed beard, and combined that with the Shakespeare hair.  Later on at a Bricks Cascade, I got a torso with the convention’s logo on it in the same color as my theme coordinator’s t-shirt.  It had solid blue arms, but back in 2015 Target had an exclusive set of 4 minifigures, one of which was a City diver with dual-molded arms:  Short blue sleeves and LEGO yellow flesh.  I switched out the arms between those two figures, and suddenly, I had a near-perfect LEGO replica of myself. 

(Later on, presumably late one night when I was sleep-deprived, I made myself a second sigfig.  This one was of me naked.  I used the sumo wrestler torso to illustrate my massive stomach, and then brickbuilt some custom legs complete with ‘junk’.  And I’m pleased to announce that there will be no comparative photo for this version of my sigfig.)