Greebling part 2, my moc (the non professional)

 Recently I was sorting legos in my living room with limited pieces, mostly clips and bars.  

Someone asked what I was building so I greebled a creation.  It was in theory possibly an exhaust system for a spaceship...present here

Ok, I could be serious and do better in constructing a moc,  it was somewhat of a joke.  However. I quickly realized I plagiarized this idea from 3 places ha ha...

Multiple Dr. Seuss objects would match my moc!

From looper website,  paramount pictures, Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory, 1971...brass tubing with no purpose

Ideal brand game, note the pipes under the tub!

So I think it's time to go back to the drawing board.  I'll leave greebling to the professionals from now on!

Greebling part 1, the professionals

 I had never heard of greebling, but it puts a name to my favorite thing to do and look at on the internet.

The website tips and bricks summarizes the technique well...this site is so good and informative, recommend looking up the tips on greebling..there are 2 posts

Lego has used this technique and I never noticed it's even on newer set boxes..both star wars and city sets!

I never noticed the presesence of greebling on the box until I lifted the At-At to look closely at it. The box art was more visible up close

Additional examples are present in lego sets

The bigger the model, the more greebling is needed to add visual interest.

My favorite example of greebling is in the y-wing style star wars models.  Different versions of the y-wing ship are present, although I'm not sure that all the ships are actually y-wings.  Regardless, the style of the mid part of the ship is where I wanted to focus.  The more simple sets show details, but not "super" detail/greebling

In the example above, the 2x2 tile with center stud really adds complexity just with one piece! That piece is so good to use, when it came out, it was mostly in the heroica sets and city games so I tried to snatch them up!

Some of the greebling appearance above is created by decals on the lateral white cylinder pieces.  Although decals create the illusion of complexity, I wouldn't consider it to be actual greebling.

Above: Average detail present with use of brown pieces

Above 2 pictures: good detail and I never have seen brown pieces matched so well with gray!  I think this is great greebling 

Above: Very minimal greebling without much visual details, easier for smaller kids to build (or slow adults like myself!!!)

And the best greebling on this type of spaceship that I could find on Google photos (by pure luck) is a moc below from the site "Brick Vault" (2 pics below)

Source:brick vault

Excellent greebling...I love this esp the use of grey tubing that usually isnt seen, esp in space hangar dioramas where the greebling is in the wall parts.

Finally, the largest set of all time (at that time)  was the Millennium Falcon.  The detail from greebling is fantastic, love the bars on the top of the ship.

There are just so many good examples from official lego products and the internet...one only has to type greebling lego in the search bar and be amazed.  The final example of extreme greebling is the scene below

I don't think I've seen a bigger example of greebling, credit from both pinterest reprint from Flickr....original builder was Marco Bass.  Further info in pic above

Greebling has to be the most fun technique as it incorporates art.  Sometimes a trial of putting like color pieces together turns chaos into a great build/piece of art!!!

The price is right...except at the big box stores

 My favorite thing in the 80s was to leave my parents and look at the toy aisles....it was customary to look at each box of the same set to see if they made a mistake with the price tag...usually the ones in the back that had been put out earlier

My major find was a dollar off the spaceman set at gold circle...mom had to get me that!

I saved a dollar off the $3.99 price!!

Image from brick economy 

Flash forward to 2 years ago at a big box store 12/26.  The price for set was 20$ or so off.  The compassionate highly focused cashier rang up the set and said it wasn't on sale "because that's not what the computer said" I went and got the tag on the shelf and brought it back to her...she said "I cannot believe you took that off the shelf" to which I said" well it's not doing anybody any good!". I thought the big box store security was going To get me booted out but they were arguing at the register about getting their employee discount on legos! 

Hard work to get this set at big box store!!!

25$ vs 45$ ..I'm just lucky the computer didn't say $70 because thats what the wheel said

Image From datagenetics.com

Ha ha I thought the price is right ended with the showcase showdown, the price was right for me, but it ended in the cashier/register showdown

Foundational lego piece

 It seems like now days anyone who talks about legos has a certain style or theme of legos that they like and reference in their mind.  But I think there's a generation of builders that trace their lego memories back to one piece that wS the center and foundation of legos and that is the green baseplate.

It could be the foundation of a house, an uneven terrain for lego cars to manage, a massive car or wagon when 4 wheels were attached, or the balcony of a huge tower.  It was like kindergarten or a rite of passage where any lego collection started

Any model from lego or moc starts with pieces coming together in perfect order and sequence, the key is the solid foundation for all other blocks to build upon .

Excitement of mail order

 In this day and age it's so hard to think of having to wait for mail deliveries but thats how lego used to be even into the late 80s.  There were always service packs to order and here is examples of this...in reality I only ordered 1 time

Nowadays the catalogs are so different and wouldn't it be amazing to be able to buy these pieces again at the old prices!

Tribute to open lego buildings

 I touched on 493 set being the first open set in a prior post, but found some pics that really show this.  

I remember paying with the above sets, but the play was limited to bringing cars in and out of the bays for parking.  Then came the open bud concept started with set 493

The sets below really show how far this building concept has come

The word playability used to describe lego sets is sure enhanced with the open building concept!...also see the Disney castle and now the daily bugle set.

Manual labor!

No more room for my lego manuals... 

This weekend i finally confronted an issue I knew needed managed.  I have a huge collection of lego manuals that take up so much space in my already filled to the max lego room.  So I finally decided to let go.  Why we hold on to things thinking they'll triple in value the minute they're thrown out ill never know.  But I pared down 2/4 sterilite containers that can be used to store legos for better building  I found some manuals that I intend to give to someone at work so their kids can hopefully have fun building more of the generic models.  Here are some of the highlights of this weekend...

I loved the new gray 2x2 1 stud pieces new with heroica sets!!

Gray 2x2 1 stud tiles (pic from ebay)

Loved the star wars mini sets!

I gave up taking pics and just pitched 2 other garbage bags of lego manuals.  It just seems easier to be digital and get stuff online, but the old guy in ne wants something I can hold when I build!  Well for now I feel like i created more room to build!

If the way to put legos is infinite, the same model can have infinite instructions

 I miss the lego 4 wide cars from the 80s...while I stumbled on the instructions on google images, I found the same car with multiple steps to build the same model

I included screenshots from repubrik, suncentral inc., bricks and brickinstructions.com, worldbricks.com

Well, the important thing is the car gets built regardless of how many different steps are needed!!!

This was one of the best lego cars ever...essentially the model t of legos...the double windshields,  the headlight bricks...people in this day and age dont realize how hard these type of pieces were to get enough of...and how we had to walk to school up hill both ways!!!man I'm old!