Things I Built for BrickCon 2022

Early tomorrow morning, my friend Kyle and I leave for Seattle, where BrickCon 2022 awaits us. 

Now while I have absolutely no plans to write about BrickCon once the event is over and I have arrived back home again, I do feel the need to show off the MOCs that I built for the event. 

I decided not to build anything big for this con (and the very first MOC I show you today will prove me to be a liar), for a couple of reasons.  One of which is that the venue that BrickCon takes place in is relatively tiny when compared to the convention hall where Bricks Cascade lives. 

The other reason is that there is a limited amount of space in the back of Kyle’s Prius, and with me already taking the new folding electric wheelchair, there’s not as much room for MOCs as there normally has been on these runs to Seattle. 

Everything that I did end up building was envisioned to be placed in particular categories at the convention.  These decisions were all in my head before learning that BrickCon had decided to ‘streamline’ their theme categories this year.  Going from twenty categories all the way down to seven.  (Yikes!) 

Anyway, on to the MOCs…

The Solar Skirmisher

[The SHIPtember Build I Said I Wasn’t Doing]

Toward the end of August, I posted a piece to the blog about the SHIPtember build challenge.  In that post, I stated that I would not be participating this year.  That was not a lie.  That was the truth as I knew it at the time, not yet being in possession of all the facts. 

What I didn’t know at the time I wrote that, was that while reorganizing the LEGO room, I was going to hold a box of parts in my hand that would trigger a SHIP design in the depths of my imagination that would slowly bubble up to the forefront of my mind during the course of that day. 

Once it was firmly lodged in my head, I had a rough idea of what the SHIP would look like, but that design changed several times before I sat down to actually start snapping pieces together.  There was one point, early on (when the SHIP was still going to be named The Solar Stilleto) that it was going to be not only 100+ studs wide, but 100+ studs long as well.  Fortunately, as a first time SHIP builder who was also trying to build other MOCs for the fast approaching BrickCon, I came to my senses relatively quickly. 

I went to Bricklink and started ordering parts.  With each order I included a note begging the store owner to send my order as quickly as possible, as I had waited way too long to start shopping for the components of MOCs I needed to have display-ready before September 29^th.  And with the exception of that one guy who waited for five days before putting my package in the mail, everyone got my stuff into the outboung mail the day after I’d ordered.   

The wings were fairly simple, if a little bit mind-numbingly repetitive to build.  If you notice that not all of the solar panels are in perfect alignment, well, that’s because zipping around through outer space (and in and out of planetary atmosphere) they wouldn’t be, would they?  It’s part of the design, and not a function of me being too lazy to meticulously reposition them all every time the wing gets moved or touched. 

The body of the ship I built in two sections.  Then when I went to connect them I discovered that I built the front half off by one stud.  That noise you all heard earlier this morning?  That was me screaming in frustration before tearing it all apart and starting that half over again. 

All in all, I don’t think it’s bad for being not only my first effort at SHIP building, but also being completed in basically three sessions sitting at the build table.  

The question is, will this actually be appearing at BrickCon?  The answer to this question depends entirely on whether or not it will fit into the back of Kyle’s Prius (along with my other MOCs, my suitcase, the electric wheelchair, and of course, whatever Kyle decides to bring.  It is his car, after all.) 

 

 

Cool and the Gang

[Work In Progress]

When I was at Bricks Cascade 2022 back in March, one of my goals was to locate and purchase two specific minifigures from the dealers’ area.  Sadly, nobody had the Bandmates Series 2 “Slime Singer” available for purchase.  The Bandmates Series 1 “Ice Cream Saxophonist”, however, multiple people had, and I was able to obtain. 

Then, while wandering around the dealers’ area a couple of days later, I found a copy of the LEGO Movie II set “Unikitty’s Sweetest Friends EVER!”, which included an anthropomorphic ice cream cone character that I’d never noticed before.  It was reasonably priced, so I bought it, too. 

On the ride home from the con, while deep in conversation with Kyle about things we had in the planning stages for next year’s Bricks Cascade, I suddenly remembered seeing a pair of sets on the LEGO website which – between them – had three minifigures with ice cream cone headpieces that went down to their waists.  And then I suddenly realized what all of the ice cream themed characters had in common:  They were all destined to be mech pilots in the MOC that was forming in my brain! 

I first decided that I would name all of these ice cream people.  (After discovering and ordering an additional anthropomorphic ice cream person – this one was smaller with painted on arms instead of physical ones – there were a total of six.) 

 

 

The Ice Cream Saxophonist was going to be the group’s leader, because he is the most awesome looking of the bunch.  I named him Cool Treat, primarily so that I could call the entire group Cool and the Gang.  (Yes, I realize how cheesy that is.  I just don’t care.) 

The two anthropomorphs are named Scoops and Soft Serve.  And as for the three humans decked out in ice cream wear, well they obviously had to be named Ben and Jerry (and Sprinkles). 

Now, the initial plan for these mechs was to have them built at some nebulous point between last April and next May.  But once it was decided that we were going to BrickCon, I moved up the timetable, and cut the number of immediately necessary mechs in half.  

 

 

This BrickCon MOC is a work-in-progress.  A preview for the full MOC that will be at next year's Bricks Cascade.  

And now for this post's cliffhanger...

(Yeah, I know.  But if I put the cliffhanger at the end like everybody else, then you’d be expecting it, and what fun would that be?) 

I needed to get this post up on the blog, and haven’t yet built the second and third mech of this trio.  Will I get it done before it’s time to leave in the morning?  Or will I leave my apartment tomorrow bound for Seattle as a miserable failure?  Stay tuned for an update on this shocking development! 

Miniland-Scale Max Headroom

When I blogged my Max Headroom post, I mentioned wanting to build the cast of the show in miniland scale, and when I started building MOCs for this con, I thought, “Hey, why not?”  Not the whole cast for this con, but at least Max himself.  

 

 

This is another one of these MOCs that I had completely designed in my head, only to discover that my head had allowed massive flaws to sneak into the design.  These flaws were immediately noticeable once I started building, but that didn’t happen until four days before the convention. 

I had ordered a bunch of trans-blue 3L bars (minifigure lightsaber blades) from Bricklink, but after building the back wall of the television, I discovered that you couldn’t really see them in front of all that black.  So I ended up using tile, but the only tile I had in quantity at a good length was orange for some reason.  So, that’s what I ended up using. 

I don’t think it looks too bad though.  I’m proud enough of it to bring it to the con for public display, at least. 

Return to Planet Koozebane

When I was planning what to build for BrickCon, there was not an actual decision to have half the MOCs be Muppet oriented.  And yet…

Having the Muppet minifigures in hand, I knew that I wanted to build (at least) one Muppet-themed MOC.  But I was having difficulty finding one that wasn’t redundant. 

Since the Muppet wave of minifigures has been released, my good close personal friend the Internet has shown me more pictures than I can be reasonably expected to count of the following MOCs:  The stage of the Muppet Theater.  Backstage at the Muppet Theater.  Muppet Labs.  The Swedish Chef’s Kitchen.  The set of Veterinarian’s Hospital.  And no doubt other ubiquitous MOCs that I’ve forgotten to list. 

Since everyone and their dog seems to have already built one or more of the above listed MOCs, I wanted to find something that yelled out ‘Muppet’ without just doing another retread of those particular models. 

And then, in the middle of the night as I sat in the sleeping chair cursing the very concept of insomnia, it hit me:  I needed to put Kermit in his classic reporter’s outfit, and place him back on familiar ground.  The planet Koozebane. 

My first thought was to try and build a MOC of the Galley-oh-hoop-hoop (the traditional Koozebanian mating ritual).  But I couldn’t figure out how to build those particular Koozebanians in minifig scale to match Kermit. 

Then I thought about modifying a Kermit minifig to recreate the shapeshifting Phoob from one of the classic interviews, but while the arthritis in my left hand still lets me snap bricks together, I suspect it wouldn’t allow me to carefully modify a minifig the way I’d need to. 

That’s when I decided that I would simply build the Koozebanian Gold-Fingered Trigark.  (What, you ask, is a Gold-Fingered Trigark?  Beats me.  I named the thing about halfway through building it.  Total spur of the moment creation, not to be found in any canon Muppet reference source.)  

 

I made the Trigark’s arms as spindly and Muppet-like as I could,  And tried to approximate the classic ‘magic triangle’ of Muppet eyes and nose to form a focal point for the viewer.  Did I do all of this as well as I’d hoped?  Who knows?

The Muppet Chungus

I’m sure that at least some of you are familiar with the Big Chungus meme.  But for those of you who aren’t…

In 1941 there was a Warner Brothers cartoon called “Wabbit Twouble” that starred Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny.  This took place during the time when the Elmer Fudd design was that of an obese man.  During the cartoon, Bugs Bunny is making fun of the off-screen Fudd, and is for a very short period, obese himself.  Big ol’ fat Bugs Bunny. 

Well, in 2018, internet meme culture appropriated that image of the rotund Bugs, and renamed it Big Chungus.  Why?  Who knows?  But type “Big Chungus” into a search engine, and there it will be.  As if it was waiting for you. 

About a month or so ago, I saw a picture online of an artist’s reinterpretation of Kermit the Frog as a ‘not-Kermit’.  The best way to describe this image is as if someone took Kermit’s head and arms, and grafted them onto the body of Ghostbusters character Slimer.  Bulbous, legless, somewhat deformed, Kermit the Frog-type thing. 

As soon as I saw the image, I commented on it.  “Holy crap, I think that’s the Muppet Chungus!”  The not-Kermit’s creator hit the like button on that comment, and you’d think that would be the end of it, but no, I now had the words “Muppet Chungus” burned into my brain. 

So, later on that night, I had the somewhat inevitable thought, “I wonder if I could build a true Muppet Chungus?”  And the next day I went into the LEGO room with horrible experimentation in mind. 

 

Big Chungus and his Muppet Counterpart

 

World Cookie-Eating Championship

[Final Appearance]

This was originally built for the 2021 Bricks Cascade “Bricknic” Event.  A work-in-progress photo of it was posted early on here in the blog. 

After it came back home, I built a new base under it (instead of just using the extra large grey baseplate that it started on.  Then I took it to the following year’s Bricks Cascade. 

I held off on disassembling it after it came back home from there, on the off chance that I’d be able to bring it to BrickCon this year.  And guess what?  I am! 

The Future of These MOCs

After assembling the SHIP on my apartment floor (my build table wasn’t big enough for its wingspan) and having to put parts of it back together three times during the process, I’m probably not going to hang onto it to take to next year’s Bricks Cascade.  So following BrickCon, the Solar Skirmisher gets disassembled. 

I plan to build the other three mechs for the Cool and the Gang MOC (or the other five, if I fail to get the last two of BrickCon’s mech trio complete in time) so that I can take them to Bricks Cascade next year. 

When I was building Max Headroom, I really did think I was just building Max Headroom, despite having stated the desire to build the full (main) cast of the show.  But then I found a piece while idly browsing on Bricklink that would be ideal for making a Blank Reg miniland scale figure.  And then I figured out how I’d build Breughel’s hair.  So I’m apparently going to be building more than just Max now. 

Max might need a little bit of redesign, though.  When I decided to build him, I didn’t realize that the television set he’s in would end up being nearly the height of a standard adult miniland scale figure.  And I think that I included too much torso in the figure.  But I needed that much torso to be able to incorporate the necktie.  Anyway, I’ll definitely be contemplating redesign. 

The Return to Planet Koozebane MOC.  I really like it, but I think that between BrickCon and Bricks Cascade I might try and add a few more Koozebanians into the mix.  Maybe.  Still pondering. 

Since building the Muppet Chungus, I’ve shown it to a couple of people, and in both cases I had to explain to them who Big Chungus was.  Which I found really weird, because these were fairly hip people, and I had thought that the Big Chungus meme was more well-known than it apparently is.  Nevertheless, I’m sure that the Muppet Chungus will see another convention in his time. 

Alas, this is the end of the road for the World Cookie-Eating Championship.  It’s post-BrickCon destiny is to be disassembled into its component bricks, which will then go on to build something else.  The cycle of life continues.