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From the mind that brought you fourteenwings and LEGO Friends, comes fourteenwings' Major Constructs! I think I've rehased the MCX vs LEGO stuff enough by now, so let's just move on the builds.
I've had this idea in mind since the day I had Lanie's Camper in hand, building the Bratz Forever Diamondz Rollin' Runway out of Mega Construx. I didn't really have any idea of what that would look like, aside from that I'd need the MCX Wheels pack to do it. Well. I've done it now.
I didn't really have a major idea of how to well... truck. As you probably know, I'm not a vehicle person in any way, but I think the front cabin came out really well! I guess one major change is that the Forever Diamondz Rollin' Runway was red both in real life and the tie-in movie, but I felt red wouldn't give off a very "This thing transforms into a fashion show" vibe. There are a few coral options in MCX, but they weren't enough to do a full build.
Plus, look at how shiny the translucent pink pieces are! There's no way I'm passing that up!
These pictures look more intimidating than I intended...
Full side shot.
I wholly intended to do something about the mudguard situation (as in it has none), but it felt like it'd put the scale off entirely, so I left it as is.
Now, for the real magic!
The transforming feature is pretty simple, four hinges for the sides and two for the back. I could have probably dug in and made it look more seamless, but I don't think that would really improve too much.
On the inside, I used these big transparent yellow panels to give it a faux light effect. Like a real light up runway!
Lanie and Luciana aren't in scale, but they are MCX, so they gave it a test run anyways.
The top of the truck, with some detailing I thought was nice.
So, there you have it!
I should really quit all this building block stuff but I have quite a few ideas I'd like to try out before I retire them forever. Stay tuned!
Yeah, MCX figures are gi-ant versus LEGO. American Girl, Halo, Call of Duty, etc. On the bright side, that means wall building pieces are more prominent. I'll take some pictures of my American Girl sets sometime to show the overall size difference. Well, once I rebuild Lanie's set, which I scrapped for parts.
MCX did try to go smaller once with a line called World of Yootz!, but as you can tell from the name nobody cared for it.
There's been Mega Bloks/Construx a lot of things, since the line was really big on licensing (thanks Mattel! <_< >_>) before the current era. They went all in on Barbie a while back, but frankly those sets were an embarrassment to building blocks and the new (well, 2018-ish "new") ones are somehow even worse (I might be tempted to buy a figure or two though, despite the high resale markup on the new-in-box ones).
They do a lot of He-Man, but I've heard complaints about the newer figures' paint jobs. I kind of wanted to get one, because I did have a (good-looking, svelte, ie not the terrible normal scale) He-Man figure as a kid once. I didn't like him like, a lot or anything, but there's a bit of nostalgia there. Right now they're starting to license the Alien franchise bit by bit. There's even one or two The X Files figures.
Licenses that MCX has actually lost to LEGO include Despicable Me/Minions and TMNT. I don't know if the License Road will be more fruitful for LEGO than it was for MCX, but maybe this'll mean some new decent parts sets from MCX eventually. Inventions was brilliant, but it's been gone a long while now.
I have a few pictures I took a while ago. I built these sets before I actually owned any American Girl figurines, basing my design on Kanani's Shave Ice Treats.
Welcome to the Carnival! (rest of carnival sold separately <_<)
I'm kind of obsessed with this candy color palate: pink/white/black, with the possible addition of a chocolate brown. I like Mega Construx for these kinds of simple builds mainly, though lately I've lost my way and I'm back to building structures with two or more storeys.
Obviously the set-up on the left sells candy of some sort (cotton candy most likely), and the one on the right is so indistinct it might as well exclusively sell ketchup.
This is probably one of my favorite builds because it's really a bit out there: a makeup table! Probably in some sort of TV dressing room.
Lanie probably shouldn't bring her coffee into the make-up area but as you can she, she's not big on rules.
Right now I have two American Girl mini-dolls. As always, I have the urge to hoard more and more until I can barely remember any of their names. I wonder if I should stick to two or try and acquire at least one more. I find that, surprisingly enough, American Girl sets are full of really good pieces, so if I want to get one I'd go that way rather than getting the generic nameless ones.
I also wonder if I should get a mini He-Man so the AGs can have some male friends. However, there'd be a huge age/style difference. Alternatives include Agent Mulder from The X-Files and a Deuce minifigure in a really expensive/rare Mega Construx Monster High set, but I have no use for that set outside of Deuce.
I've been really into Pretty Rhythm lately (I wonder why...) and that's left me really interested in the franchise's two main stores; Prism Stone and Dear Crown.
So did a micro-build of Prism Stone the other day. I think I used too much pink and not enough black, but I think it came out okay.
Like GMH said recently, I'm trying to present a really large store in a miniature space (this is even smaller than the things I ever did in LEGO), so a lot of it is artistic license.
A look inside.
I'm actually not 100% sure what to call every piece in here, but I think the black cylinder with the transparent red cover is probably a perfume bottle. The white and black diamonds on the wall are art work, and those white studs on the table turn it into a combination table/music system.
I might want to do a full build of Prism Stone that American Girl figures can hang out in, but that sounds like an insane amount of work.
Another micro-build I did a few weeks ago, before I rebuilt Lanie's set.
It's a mini two-storey house with a fun, secret feature!
The colors obviously enough are from Lanie's set, and I appreciate them a lot. I think it looks nice and clean.
I think I could have done more with the front rather than the white squares...
A view from the top, you can see that the slanted glass sides are actually the windows from Lanie's camper. I think, somehow, they work better here!
You can also see the couch that's the main feature of this room.
*cue some mecha OP, probably by Tamaki Nami or TRUE*
Woah!!! The whole floor moved!
(14w is done patting himself on the back now)
This uses the same mechanism as the roof in Lanie's camper. Now you can see the bottom floor from the inside, and honestly it's just kind of cool.
View from the side. I think here you can see the wood elements on the top floor. I think that's a sort of modernity from like... the 90s?
Inside the bottom floor, you can see another couch, and a bookshelf. On the wall is an air conditioner vent made of Lanie's hot-plates.
Triple micro-build combo!
This build is really old, from when I first started experimenting with MCX. It's a food stall. I'm guessing it sells ramen.
The main feature is those seats. They spin around!
This build was inspired by a real-life office building I saw whilst driving once. At least, the roof style is. All I have to say about that is; thank you Inventions Camo for all those slanted 1x1s!!
Coming up with the color scheme for this set was hard, because I didn't want it to look too military. The majority of the bricks came from the camo set, and I'd have done the entire facade in those if I hadn't run out. Thankfully, the white bricks from Luciana's Lab came in very handy here. So did the transparent blue plates which I used as "blinds".
These "doors" are actually windows from Luciana's set too! I wanted to use the original purple holds on the doors, but I could only find 3/4. The doors and the holding pegs don't actually fit as well as you'd think, so there was a lot of re-jigging to make it seem like they did (the flat white plate at the bottom helped settle them in a lot).
Downstairs is a reception area, with a desk and seat. I don't know why it felt right placing a giant flower in the center, but I think it worked out.
Upstairs we have an office. A desk on one side, the overall style makes me think it's a graphic designers workspace.
On the other is a break-room area. I was planning to sew a curtain for the bar above the window and "terrarium" there, but I couldn't find any fabrics thin enough to work. I guess they just haven't ordered any curtains yet.
What happens when 14w doesn't really know what he's doing, but he keeps going anyways? Things get needlessly, garishly colorful.
Welcome to the Miamix Hotel!
Imagine you're playing some old video game. Leisure Suit Larry or a bad arcade ripoff of a popular racing game. Or maybe something that thinks it's an old video game, like Hotline Miami. This is where you'll find the Miamix Hotel.
When I started this build, I actually thought I could do a Chinese inspired hotel with the red and coral pieces, but I quickly ran out. However, I was only ten minutes in and I had an idea gosh darned it, so I kept going with whatever I could find that was garish enough.
I like the two signs on this build quite a lot. I guess the one on the very top looks kind of like a normal "this is not a motel you want to stay at" sign, and the one on the side, next to the window vaaaaguely looks like a planet with a neon green ring surrounding it. It does, right???
The interior! As you can see, I banked on my tried and tested "every ground floor requires a reception on the left and a seating area on the right with a fun artsy piece in the middle to give it balance" formula.
I may need to consult an actual interior design book at some point, but I rarely have enough space for more than this level of design.
Here we have the two side-views and the balcony. I think I really succeeded in terms of aesthetic on the balcony side, whereas the plain wall side reeks of "ten minutes of frantically creating an artsy environment that doubles as a functional wall".
I wish I had more on-theme pieces in this case, not just because I wanted the wall to look better, but because I did actually want to have a floor that had a bedroom and maybe a bathroom too. However, my piece-count did not comply.
Inside this top floor, a rest area before you head out onto the balcony dance floor -suddenly I sound like copy for an L.O.L. Surprise playset- there's a solid gold jukebox. Beat that, L.O.L. Surprise playsets.
Anyways, there you have it, the Miamix Hotel.
Small bonus:
A Prism Stone! This is actually a recommended built that came with the Inventions Candy set, though I've made a few modifications. I'll be using a variation of this in my upcoming Prism Stone set, which I intend to finish up today. I've actually already finished my Dear Crown build. All I need to do is take pictures.
There are two more builds I haven't posted about here that I finished a while ago, so expect even more frantic megaposts in the immediate future.
Due to various circumstances, 2020-Early 2022 was a non-LEGO time for me. This is about all the cool and amazing alt(ernative). bricks I discovered along the way before I became a full-on LEGOid again in late 2022 (right before my favorite line was killed and rebooted, as tends to happen).
Obviously, my first love, as documented in this thread and elsewhere, was Mega Construx. Mega Construx has a major advantage over LEGO in that it has Barbie as a sub-brand, and I really like Barbie, especially all the different incarnations that Barbie has in the land of MCX. I think I'll discuss those in detail some other time.
MCX has some other cool brands, which have mostly come and gone. There was once World of Yootz, and currently, Pokemon.
But today, I want to talk about Enlighten! From what I could gather (well, what they say on the official site, which I don't believe at all), Enlighten (also known as ENLI and Qman, yeah, weird alt. name) was started sometime in the 90s by a toymaker in Hong Kong.
ENLI exploded onto the international scene when they flooded the non-English speaking European market with LEGO line knockoffs some really cool products such as ENLI CITY (not trying very hard are we?), ENLI Kyanite Squad, ENLI Princess Leah, and ENLI Cherry.
Obviously, my favorite of these lines was Cherry, which was 100% not a ripoff of LEGO Friends in any way at all.
Cherry embraced the bright, ridiculous colors of early LEGO Friends, and combined it with insane Chinese designs that I really, really just ended up loving with all my heart. Also; all that pink. Do you see it? This is a level of pink I appreciate.
Obviously, Cherry sort of had a story, but mainly characters with names, which is as much as I need really.
Our red-headed protagonist is obviously called Cherry, and her friends are called Abby (blond), Emily (blue hair), Violet (...guess), Laien (boy with brown hair, not pictured here, and Cherry's presumed boyfriend) and Guys (blond boy, I had trouble placing this guy's name for a long while since I assumed they were saying "guys" in general).
Cherry was made up of several lines, most notably the 2017 Beach Vacation line this Beach Villa pictured here is from.
ENLI, unfortunately, was hit by various sales limits after LEGO realized what was happening to their markets, and this 2017 line was the last to be widely distributed in Europe.
The Cherry lines I know of;
Series 1: The Intro-Line, therefore made up of mostly normal sets
Series 2: Beach Villa. Most of the Cherry sets I had are from this line.
Series 3: Pop-Stars A smaller series due to the series needing to scale down after losing the European market. The mini-dolls also started going weird around here.
Series 3: Snowy Valley. A winter themed series.
Series 4: Duckling's Journey. This line made no sense to me, why are the Cherries helping a duckling anyways? As you can probably guess, every set was duck-themed, so at least it was cute (if overly yellow).
It turns out waiting several years before doing this report means tracking down proper pictures of all these lines will be a chore, but I really liked Cherry and I love ENLI in general. Sadly, Cherry is over now, but it was replaced with cooler (and licensed) themes such as Hello Kitty, Naruto, Doraemon, and Evangelion. Actually, all of these are part of the ENLI sub-series Keppley, which I will talk about in detail later.
Anyways, I'm surprised I could stay calm up till this point, because it turns out Cherry was replaced with a super-super cool new line with articulated dolls called Una! Actually, Una was around when Cherry was around, but it was just a minifigure dress-up line. I always wanted to get a set, but it was hard to without an AliExpress account (which I still don't have).
The original Una line's second series; Youth Campus. Not sure what was so Youthy about it. These were actually on sale on Amazon in 2-packs under some pseudonym but I'll never find that now.
However now Una got a serious glam-up and I am absolutely enthralled.
Sad that the fashion-change element was somewhat abandoned, and I can see that this set is a remake of the Princess Leah Music Box, but I'm really excited for it.
Obviously, it is now practically impossible to get hold of non-LEGO or non-MCX building sets, aside from Sembo I guess, but by George I am getting myself this new Una and I'm getting it soon.
Apparently, Russia replaced all of it's LEGO stores with "World of Bricks", which I thought would be an own-brand full of LEGO sort-of-knockoffs, but they just sell the typical alt. bricks like Loz (the smaller scale bricks, also known as 'Diamond Bricks'), Pantasy, Mould King and so on.
It motivated my sense of wanting something that's sort of like the cool thing, but not exactly like the cool popular thing. It reminds me of how basically all non-mainstream toys (ie Hong Kong fakes) nowadays are too terribly made to like.
Comments
Also TIL there are Mega Bloks of World of Warcraft.
MCX did try to go smaller once with a line called World of Yootz!, but as you can tell from the name nobody cared for it.
There's been Mega Bloks/Construx a lot of things, since the line was really big on licensing (thanks Mattel! <_< >_>) before the current era. They went all in on Barbie a while back, but frankly those sets were an embarrassment to building blocks and the new (well, 2018-ish "new") ones are somehow even worse (I might be tempted to buy a figure or two though, despite the high resale markup on the new-in-box ones).
They do a lot of He-Man, but I've heard complaints about the newer figures' paint jobs. I kind of wanted to get one, because I did have a (good-looking, svelte, ie not the terrible normal scale) He-Man figure as a kid once. I didn't like him like, a lot or anything, but there's a bit of nostalgia there. Right now they're starting to license the Alien franchise bit by bit. There's even one or two The X Files figures.
Licenses that MCX has actually lost to LEGO include Despicable Me/Minions and TMNT. I don't know if the License Road will be more fruitful for LEGO than it was for MCX, but maybe this'll mean some new decent parts sets from MCX eventually. Inventions was brilliant, but it's been gone a long while now.
Welcome to the Carnival! (rest of carnival sold separately <_<)
I'm kind of obsessed with this candy color palate: pink/white/black, with the possible addition of a chocolate brown. I like Mega Construx for these kinds of simple builds mainly, though lately I've lost my way and I'm back to building structures with two or more storeys.
Obviously the set-up on the left sells candy of some sort (cotton candy most likely), and the one on the right is so indistinct it might as well exclusively sell ketchup.
This is probably one of my favorite builds because it's really a bit out there: a makeup table! Probably in some sort of TV dressing room.
Lanie probably shouldn't bring her coffee into the make-up area but as you can she, she's not big on rules.
Right now I have two American Girl mini-dolls. As always, I have the urge to hoard more and more until I can barely remember any of their names. I wonder if I should stick to two or try and acquire at least one more. I find that, surprisingly enough, American Girl sets are full of really good pieces, so if I want to get one I'd go that way rather than getting the generic nameless ones.
I also wonder if I should get a mini He-Man so the AGs can have some male friends. However, there'd be a huge age/style difference. Alternatives include Agent Mulder from The X-Files and a Deuce minifigure in a really expensive/rare Mega Construx Monster High set, but I have no use for that set outside of Deuce.
So did a micro-build of Prism Stone the other day. I think I used too much pink and not enough black, but I think it came out okay.
Like GMH said recently, I'm trying to present a really large store in a miniature space (this is even smaller than the things I ever did in LEGO), so a lot of it is artistic license.
A look inside.
I'm actually not 100% sure what to call every piece in here, but I think the black cylinder with the transparent red cover is probably a perfume bottle. The white and black diamonds on the wall are art work, and those white studs on the table turn it into a combination table/music system.
I might want to do a full build of Prism Stone that American Girl figures can hang out in, but that sounds like an insane amount of work.
Another micro-build I did a few weeks ago, before I rebuilt Lanie's set.
It's a mini two-storey house with a fun, secret feature!
The colors obviously enough are from Lanie's set, and I appreciate them a lot. I think it looks nice and clean.
I think I could have done more with the front rather than the white squares...
A view from the top, you can see that the slanted glass sides are actually the windows from Lanie's camper. I think, somehow, they work better here!
You can also see the couch that's the main feature of this room.
*cue some mecha OP, probably by Tamaki Nami or TRUE*
Woah!!! The whole floor moved!
(14w is done patting himself on the back now)
This uses the same mechanism as the roof in Lanie's camper. Now you can see the bottom floor from the inside, and honestly it's just kind of cool.
View from the side. I think here you can see the wood elements on the top floor. I think that's a sort of modernity from like... the 90s?
Inside the bottom floor, you can see another couch, and a bookshelf. On the wall is an air conditioner vent made of Lanie's hot-plates.
Triple micro-build combo!
This build is really old, from when I first started experimenting with MCX. It's a food stall. I'm guessing it sells ramen.
The main feature is those seats. They spin around!
Coming up with the color scheme for this set was hard, because I didn't want it to look too military. The majority of the bricks came from the camo set, and I'd have done the entire facade in those if I hadn't run out. Thankfully, the white bricks from Luciana's Lab came in very handy here. So did the transparent blue plates which I used as "blinds".
These "doors" are actually windows from Luciana's set too! I wanted to use the original purple holds on the doors, but I could only find 3/4. The doors and the holding pegs don't actually fit as well as you'd think, so there was a lot of re-jigging to make it seem like they did (the flat white plate at the bottom helped settle them in a lot).
Downstairs is a reception area, with a desk and seat. I don't know why it felt right placing a giant flower in the center, but I think it worked out.
Upstairs we have an office. A desk on one side, the overall style makes me think it's a graphic designers workspace.
On the other is a break-room area. I was planning to sew a curtain for the bar above the window and "terrarium" there, but I couldn't find any fabrics thin enough to work. I guess they just haven't ordered any curtains yet.
And there you have it; Industrial Site 14!
Welcome to the Miamix Hotel!
Imagine you're playing some old video game. Leisure Suit Larry or a bad arcade ripoff of a popular racing game. Or maybe something that thinks it's an old video game, like Hotline Miami. This is where you'll find the Miamix Hotel.
When I started this build, I actually thought I could do a Chinese inspired hotel with the red and coral pieces, but I quickly ran out. However, I was only ten minutes in and I had an idea gosh darned it, so I kept going with whatever I could find that was garish enough.
I like the two signs on this build quite a lot. I guess the one on the very top looks kind of like a normal "this is not a motel you want to stay at" sign, and the one on the side, next to the window vaaaaguely looks like a planet with a neon green ring surrounding it. It does, right???
The interior! As you can see, I banked on my tried and tested "every ground floor requires a reception on the left and a seating area on the right with a fun artsy piece in the middle to give it balance" formula.
I may need to consult an actual interior design book at some point, but I rarely have enough space for more than this level of design.
Here we have the two side-views and the balcony. I think I really succeeded in terms of aesthetic on the balcony side, whereas the plain wall side reeks of "ten minutes of frantically creating an artsy environment that doubles as a functional wall".
I wish I had more on-theme pieces in this case, not just because I wanted the wall to look better, but because I did actually want to have a floor that had a bedroom and maybe a bathroom too. However, my piece-count did not comply.
Inside this top floor, a rest area before you head out onto the balcony dance floor -suddenly I sound like copy for an L.O.L. Surprise playset- there's a solid gold jukebox. Beat that, L.O.L. Surprise playsets.
Anyways, there you have it, the Miamix Hotel.
Small bonus:
A Prism Stone! This is actually a recommended built that came with the Inventions Candy set, though I've made a few modifications. I'll be using a variation of this in my upcoming Prism Stone set, which I intend to finish up today. I've actually already finished my Dear Crown build. All I need to do is take pictures.
There are two more builds I haven't posted about here that I finished a while ago, so expect even more frantic megaposts in the immediate future.
Obviously, my first love, as documented in this thread and elsewhere, was Mega Construx. Mega Construx has a major advantage over LEGO in that it has Barbie as a sub-brand, and I really like Barbie, especially all the different incarnations that Barbie has in the land of MCX. I think I'll discuss those in detail some other time.
MCX has some other cool brands, which have mostly come and gone. There was once World of Yootz, and currently, Pokemon.
But today, I want to talk about Enlighten! From what I could gather (well, what they say on the official site, which I don't believe at all), Enlighten (also known as ENLI and Qman, yeah, weird alt. name) was started sometime in the 90s by a toymaker in Hong Kong.
ENLI exploded onto the international scene when they flooded the non-English speaking European market with
LEGO line knockoffssome really cool products such as ENLI CITY (not trying very hard are we?), ENLI Kyanite Squad, ENLI Princess Leah, and ENLI Cherry.Obviously, my favorite of these lines was Cherry, which was 100% not a ripoff of LEGO Friends in any way at all.
Cherry embraced the bright, ridiculous colors of early LEGO Friends, and combined it with insane Chinese designs that I really, really just ended up loving with all my heart. Also; all that pink. Do you see it? This is a level of pink I appreciate.
Obviously, Cherry sort of had a story, but mainly characters with names, which is as much as I need really.
Our red-headed protagonist is obviously called Cherry, and her friends are called Abby (blond), Emily (blue hair), Violet (...guess), Laien (boy with brown hair, not pictured here, and Cherry's presumed boyfriend) and Guys (blond boy, I had trouble placing this guy's name for a long while since I assumed they were saying "guys" in general).
Cherry was made up of several lines, most notably the 2017 Beach Vacation line this Beach Villa pictured here is from.
ENLI, unfortunately, was hit by various sales limits after LEGO realized what was happening to their markets, and this 2017 line was the last to be widely distributed in Europe.
The Cherry lines I know of;
It turns out waiting several years before doing this report means tracking down proper pictures of all these lines will be a chore, but I really liked Cherry and I love ENLI in general. Sadly, Cherry is over now, but it was replaced with cooler (and licensed) themes such as Hello Kitty, Naruto, Doraemon, and Evangelion. Actually, all of these are part of the ENLI sub-series Keppley, which I will talk about in detail later.
Anyways, I'm surprised I could stay calm up till this point, because it turns out Cherry was replaced with a super-super cool new line with articulated dolls called Una! Actually, Una was around when Cherry was around, but it was just a minifigure dress-up line. I always wanted to get a set, but it was hard to without an AliExpress account (which I still don't have).
The original Una line's second series; Youth Campus. Not sure what was so Youthy about it. These were actually on sale on Amazon in 2-packs under some pseudonym but I'll never find that now.
However now Una got a serious glam-up and I am absolutely enthralled.
Sad that the fashion-change element was somewhat abandoned, and I can see that this set is a remake of the Princess Leah Music Box, but I'm really excited for it.
Obviously, it is now practically impossible to get hold of non-LEGO or non-MCX building sets, aside from Sembo I guess, but by George I am getting myself this new Una and I'm getting it soon.
It motivated my sense of wanting something that's sort of like the cool thing, but not exactly like the cool popular thing. It reminds me of how basically all non-mainstream toys (ie Hong Kong fakes) nowadays are too terribly made to like.