By Jonathan Alexandratos
You look up at the New York City skyline and what do you see? The Empire State Building? One World Trade Center? Sure, but how about a T-Rex wearing a jetpack? Thanks to the May 22nd drone-powered light show LEGO put on, you could see all that and more from Jersey City’s Liberty State Park. The drone show capped off an evening of fun, filled with conversations with an astronaut, space-themed food, and, of course, BRICKS. Influencers young and young-at-heart were on hand to enjoy the celebration of LEGO’s vast interstellar sets, and I was lucky enough to be walked through it all by Dan Meehan, Creative Lead for LEGO Space.
We first took a look at some of the new LEGO sets that came out this year. While they are currently on the market, they were in development for two and a half years, pretty much the norm at LEGO.
Dan said that the creation of these sets all starts with kids. LEGO conducts focus groups with kids to learn what they want to see. Once they find out, LEGO’s creative team gets to work.
Dan, as Creative Lead, figures out how new ideas mesh with old. If, say, an idea from a focus group feels like a great narrative-based set, Dan might assign it to the LEGO Friends team. They’d be best suited for creating original LEGO sets that tell stories.
If an idea feels more scientific, Dan might delegate it to the Technic team. They craft intricate sets that often combine the mechanics of an object with the LEGO play pattern that has become so established over the course of almost 92 years.
As Dan said, “I want to make cool toys, and I want as many kids to play with those cool toys as possible.” From the looks of this event: mission accomplished. However, it also helps that LEGO reflects bigger human triumphs like our strides in space exploration.
To that end, Astronaut Kellie Gerardi gave a moving speech about the ways in which LEGO preserves our “shared past and our shared future” in space. Indeed, Dan and I talked about the astoundingly detailed Saturn V rocket set (1,969 pieces! Clever!) as a great nod to history, and LEGO’s current offerings point to what the future of space exploration may look like. After Gerardi spoke, we were ushered outside to see LED-equipped drones take flight in the night sky and animate LEGO models built by kids from all over the world. Below are pictures of those builds and their large-scale drone versions.
With the Statue of Liberty in the background, these drones faithfully replicated kids’ LEGO miniatures. The drones even managed to animate each model slightly (the dog space ship, above, was photographed mid-blink, something we can surely all relate to), which drew many oohs and aahs from the crowd. While this event didn’t announce any new LEGO products, it did serve to reinforce their current commitment to space and kids’ excitement for it. Hopefully, these events continue, as the children I saw seemed to enjoy exploring the modular world of LEGOs, feeling the same spark of creation many of us, myself included, have.
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