Out of piles of Lego came helicopters, birds, jets, a space ship, a dragon, and a hot air balloon built by youngsters at Bower Place shopping centre on Saturday.
Bower Place’s Wild West Club for Kids kickoff event featured Canada’s only Lego-certified builder and attracted enthusiastic Lego fans on Friday and Saturday.
Thomas Puzey, 11, of Red Deer, took home one of three prizes awarded following one of Saturday’s Lego building contests. Twenty contestants were given 30 minutes to build something for the theme ‘it flies.’
“At first I was going to build a duck, but changed it to a chicken because there wasn’t enough pieces,” said Puzey who decided to make both a chicken and a chick.
“The chick just hatched so the chicken was teaching the chick how to fly,” said Puzey who has been building with Lego for years.
Lego-certified professional Robin Sather said the fear was that video games and the digital world would finish tactile toys. But Lego is more popular than ever.
“There’s nothing that beats having those little plastic bricks, those little creations that you made with your own hands. Nothing really replaces that,” said Sather who offered encouraging words to contestants on Saturday as they pieced together Lego bricks.
“People sometimes talk about the demise of creativity and imagination. No, it’s alive and well. With some kids, you need to scrape off a few layers to get them to access it. But once they’ve started, they’re good to go.”
The small, plastic bricks bounced and clattered together as little hands sorted through Lego piles to find just the right pieces.
When the last bricks were in place, some children couldn’t help but play with their flying machines by waiving them in the air.
“I always encourage story building. Not just build a truck — tell a story. It helps them add detail and more interest to a creation,” said Sather, 50, of Abbotsford, B.C.
Sather heads Brickville Designworks and has specialized in creating amazing LEGO models and running Lego-based events full-time for seven years.
“I’ve been playing with Lego since I was a little kid. Professionally, I’m been doing it for almost for 12 years.”
He’s known for creating a giant Lego Egyptian sphinx, about 2.5-metre tall.
On Friday and Saturday, Sather spent about 10 hours building a 1.2-metre tall Lego wall with the Bower Place horse logo that a few Wild West Club for Kids members got to demolish Saturday night.
“I think of them as sandcastles. You enjoy our sandcastle for the day. The tide is going to come in and wash it away and you’re going to have fresh sand the next day. A whole new castle. A whole new adventure,” Sather said.
For more Lego information visit www.brickville.ca and for Wild West Club for Kids go to www.bowerplace.com.
szielinski@www.reddeeradvocate.com