These guys built a boulder using five million Lego bricks, then sent it rolling down a hill in San Francisco chasing a guy dressed as Indiana Jones! The boulder met its match in a car parked along the way. See the video at Gizmodo. Link -via reddit
That was anti-climactic...
Still, anyone with 5 million LEGOs on hand to build a boulder gets a nod of approval from me.
That LEGO ball is impressive! The LEGO Pick-A-Brick retail cost of a 2x4 brick is 15-16 cents. That would put this ball at $750,000! Not including shipping and tax. They most likely bought these as bulk used bricks from Ebay and at garage sales.
Maybe I'm just saying it fresh off watching the Toyota commercial in the other post, but I think this one is fake too. Even if they got the bricks for half a penny each, which would be an incredible deal, these guys have 25 THOUSAND dollars worth of lego bricks? And they're willing to roll them down a hill? And the cops didn't throw them all in jail for potentially causing a LETHAL car accident? I hope, for their sake, that this was fake. And I'm including "really filmed a real brick but for an ad and on a closed-down street" in the term "fake."
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it were a viral ad. But if they were paid for it, they should have trucked it back up the hill and tried for a more exciting finish than rolling into a parked car.
According to this amazon page, 576 legos weigh 5 pounds. Which means that if that thing were really 5 million legos, it would weigh nearly 22 tons. Plus all the glue that would certainly be necessary to hold it together.
Ah! So that's what that strange thing was all about. A friend of mine who works in advertising sent a mysterious photo of the Lego ball (yes, made mostly of styrofoam) but no info as to what for ... Now I understand :)
Guys, I'm an AFOL (adult fan of LEGO) - and have built some big models with the stuff...and there's no way that this is real. As noted, it's almost certainly a viral marketing campaign.
That much lego would cost thousands of dollars, even for raw brics. Rolling such a heavy object down a San Francisco hill would be an act of criminal negligence - such a heavy object moving at speed would be incredibly dangerous.
Now perhaps, if the sphere were hollow, it just MIGHT be plausible - but hollow spheres are pretty unstable, and I'd expect the thing to shatter or crack on impact with that car...even if glued.
So, either these guys are incredibly stupid and incredibly well off, or it's a viral campaign using a mixture of AE, styrofoam, etc.
Still, anyone with 5 million LEGOs on hand to build a boulder gets a nod of approval from me.
Anyhoo, I'd like to see the face of the car insurance agent when reading the report ;)
The LEGO Pick-A-Brick retail cost of a 2x4 brick is 15-16 cents. That would put this ball at $750,000! Not including shipping and tax. They most likely bought these as bulk used bricks from Ebay and at garage sales.
http://indianajones.lego.com/en-US/default.aspx
ahh the guy with the red hat is annoying.
So yeah. Shenanigans.
576 legos / 5 pounds = 115.2 legos/pound
5000000 legos / 115.2 legos/pound = 43402.777777778 pounds = about 21.7 tons
But I can see why you'd believe that other guy instead. All I did was give a source for the lego weight value.
(Actually, he probably got the weight of the small lego sets. But we can't know that for sure, now can we?)
So fake.
That much lego would cost thousands of dollars, even for raw brics. Rolling such a heavy object down a San Francisco hill would be an act of criminal negligence - such a heavy object moving at speed would be incredibly dangerous.
Now perhaps, if the sphere were hollow, it just MIGHT be plausible - but hollow spheres are pretty unstable, and I'd expect the thing to shatter or crack on impact with that car...even if glued.
So, either these guys are incredibly stupid and incredibly well off, or it's a viral campaign using a mixture of AE, styrofoam, etc.