Lego

If I were a kid, I would probably have the date May 7, 2013 memorized like a video game cheat code. That's when the Legoland hotel in San Diego opens its brick-adorned doors, ushering in the first Lego-themed auberge on the continent.

Similar to the already-running Legoland hotel in Windsor, U.K., the entire façade and interior of the hotel features Lego elements from head to toe. Upon arriving, kids will surely gasp at a Lego dragon near the entrance that emits real smoke when irritated. Another example of Lego flair can be found in the lobby, where 6,000 Lego minifigures stand neatly lined up behind the concierge desk. … Read more

When the Curiosity rover landed on Mars earlier this month, the world couldn't get enough of the six-wheeled dynamo.

Mass adoration for the roving Martian also successfully propelled a pet project by mechanical engineer Stephen Pakbaz, who submitted a miniature version of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover last November to Cuusoo, a site officially created by Lego that lets fans vote on brick-based concepts (similar to Kickstarter). If a proposition gets 10,000 votes, then "a Lego jury evaluates the idea's feasibility as a product and makes a decision." … Read more

Looking at Lego's most impressive creations -- its giant "Star Wars" sets, its Master Builder Academy initiative, its programmable Mindstorms system -- it's easy to forget that it was 80 years ago that the global behemoth had much more humble beginnings when Ole Kirk Christiansen started a little wooden toy company in Billund, Denmark.

Today, Lego is celebrating its 80th birthday, and touting its growth from a tiny outfit in a single building in Billund to the world's third-largest "producer of play materials," employing 10,000 people, many in its variety of production facilities in Europe and beyond.

As the company is fond of pointing out, "Lego" comes from the combination of two Danish words, "leg" and "godt," meaning "play well." And in the early years, when it was focusing its energies on wooden toys, it was by no means a world-changer. … Read more

Nearly 10 years after the debut of the sci-fi television show "Firefly" (and the follow-up 2005 movie "Serenity"), fans still express great interest in the series despite its short run.

Mild-mannered "Firefly" fan (and mechanical engineer) Adrian Drake decided to build the ultimate homage to the fallen show: a 70,000-piece Lego replica of the Serenity spaceship. … Read more

In our twisted pop geek culture, it's not cutting-edge technology until it's been replicated with the most simplistic of child's toys. With that in mind, congrats are due to NASA's Curiosity rover, which has finally been reduced to a scale model made of Legos. Oh yea, the full-size rover also landed on Mars yesterday. … Read more

Somebody contemplated the Olympics and thought, "Sure, this is exciting and all, but what it really needs is to be re-enacted with interlocking pieces of plastic." The Lego Olympics were born.

The stop-motion videos from The Guardian range from memorable moments like Usain Bolt's victory in the Fastest Man Alive competition to Shin Lam's sit-down fencing protest.

The women's fencing semi-final takes place with Lego Storm Trooper helmets as fencing masks, a feature I would like to see applied to the real-life sport. … Read more

We've seen some impressive Lego creations recently, including a robotic arm and a giant jet engine. We can now add a working motorized wheelchair to the list.

The Lego wheelchair is a prototype capable of moving a nearly 200-pound person around. The wheelchair uses quite a few bits from the Lego Mindstorms line. There are 12 Rotacaster multi-directional wheels providing the rolling.… Read more

Gentlemen, start your Lego jet engine. Created by Rolls-Royce and unveiled at the Farnborough International Airshow in England yesterday, the engine uses 152,455 bricks and reaches an overall size of 4.9 feet long and 6.5 feet wide. All of those Legos together stack up to an astounding 676 pounds. … Read more

Before giant Lego trees and flowers popped up in the Australian Outback, a honking huge Lego bridge made an appearance in Germany.

Late last year, street artist Megx pulled out the primary colors to transform the underside of a bridge into an optical illusion. Clever use of color and shading makes the bridge in Wuppertal look like it's built from an interlocking set of massive Lego bricks.… Read more