The Legoman Can

I've been a huge fan of Lego pretty much as far back as I can remember. I still have bins of it saved from when I was a kid, as well as my Star Wars Lego sets on full display in my home office. My son also shares a love of Lego because, well, Lego's awesome, and he's a kid with a fully-functioning imagination that hasn't yet been sapped dry by the cold, cynicism that life beats into you on a daily basis as an adult.

I've never been what you might consider a Master Builder. Especially as Lego sets have grown more advanced over the years and have incorporated more and more intellectual properties that show in in ever-increasing numbers in my Venn diagram of fandom, I tend to stick more to the instructions. That isn't to say that I never created anything whole cloth. Mostly, I created space ships as part of an ongoing story with a crew of intrepid adventurers not entirely unlike (but not similar enough to infringe on copyright) Star Trek.

My son, on the other hand, is fairly big into Pokémon, as most young men of his generation seem to be. (He also really, really likes Minecraft, which I'm not sure if I've mentioned before). He's one of the main reasons my copy of Pokémon Stadium for the N64 still gets so much play. He plays one of the new Pokémon games on his Nintendo DS, which doesn't really compare to my version of old school Pokémon Blue I whipped out on my Gameboy Advance to show him how awesome things were in the olden days of the '90s. He even had a Pokémon-themed birthday party a couple of years back.

It seemed only natural to combine his two passions of Lego and Pokémon. As the inspiration struck me one night as we were playing with Lego in his bedroom before he went to sleep, it suddenly occurred to me: surely it wouldn't be that hard to build a Pokéball. (And don't call me Shirley...) And so, much to my son's delight, I did exactly that:



Now, it's probably not winning any Lego awards, but I thought I did a pretty decent job. After that, my son got inspired.

"Now let's make an Ultra Ball."

Well, considering it was exactly like a Pokéball, just a different colour, It wasn't too much of a leap:



Again, not too shabby. Then, because we were really on a roll, my son suggested we also build a Great Ball, and voila:



Again, it's pretty obvious I'm no Lego savant over here, but I'll be damned if it wasn't satisfying as hell to figure these things out on the fly and create something (vaguely) recognizable from scratch without any instructions. My son was pretty into it as well, but as is the case with kids, he wanted even more. It wasn't enough just to have Pokéballs; he needed something to catch with them. He needed to create... Pokélife. And I'll admit, I was intrigued as to whether I could do complete a design more complex than a simple geometric shape. Plus, my son is still at the age where his dad is like some combination of Superman and Einstein. That kind of wide-eyed wonder doesn't last forever, and as a certain Batman once said, "Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded."

So, I gave it the old college try. My son suggested we start with Evee, which seemed like a simple enough design as far as Pokémon go. But, you can judge the results below for yourself.

The original Evee for reference:





And below, my Lego interpretation:









Now, I'll admit, it didn't turn out perhaps as well  as the Pokéballs, but considering it's my first go around designing Lego Pokémon, I don't think I did too badly. The only parameter I set for myself when designing Lego Pokémon is that they have to be as small as possible. Well, my son was impressed anyways. Now my son has a whole list of Pokémon he wants me to make for him. To appropriate an old saying, gotta build 'em all. Well, I now know what I'll be doing every night after school from now until the time they stop creating new Pokémon.