The Blocks Museum
Posted by FlagsNZ,
It seems like a lifetime ago, but back in March when life was normal, Huw and his wife Maria travelled to New Zealand to start an Australasian cruise. I had the opportunity to meet up and spend a full weekend with them before they boarded their cruise ship.
During their three-day stay in Auckland, Huw visited The Blocks Museum: a burgeoning LEGO and toy museum that has been set up by my good friend, Vaughan Blok.
My fellow LEGO blogger, Rich Miller, interviewed Huw as he viewed Vaughan's fantastic collection.
Read on if you'd like to find out more about a LEGO collection that has been described as one of New Zealand's largest. In fact, it could arguably be called the most complete collection of vintage LEGO in Australasia.
The Blocks Museum
The Blocks Museum contains LEGO sets throughout the ages. It particularly focuses on rare and historical sets from the 1950s, 60s and 70s although the collection includes examples of LEGO themes right through to modern-day releases.
The following selection of sets are the ones that caught Huw's eye during his short visit.
Weetabix Collection
Huw was surprised to find a complete display of the Weetabix sets from the 1970s. These sets were available in the UK using tokens found in Weetabix cereal packets.
Shell promotional sets
What caught Huw's eye was the complete collection of Shell promotional sets that were released in 1998.
It was these types of small sets that encouraged Huw to start cataloguing his collection which later evolved into the Brickset website that we all enjoy today.
Galidor
No LEGO collection could be complete if it didn't include some of the LEGO failures of the early 2000s.
The Galidor theme from 2002 epitomizes the systematic design failures present in the LEGO Group during those trying years.
The Vault
The Blocks Museum has its own 'Vault' that contains many rare LEGO sets of historical significance.
LEGO released set 1309 Church in 1957 throughout Scandinavia. It was re-released in 1958 as 309 Church and sold in Europe.
This set is unique in the LEGO system as being the only religious set released by the LEGO Group.
The church represents many of the Romanesque styled Lutheran churches found throughout Denmark.
8480 Space Shuttle
8480 Space Shuttle holds another special place in the history of the LEGO Group: the R&D cost of the electric fibre optic element and red micro motor exceeded the RRP of this set: The LEGO Group never made any profit from sales of it.
Town Plan
Vaughan's pride and joy is the Town Plan sets from the 1960s.
BrickScene
Back in March when Huw visited The Blocks Museum he was interviewed by Rich Miller from BrickScene.
Here is that eleven-minute interview.
If you are in Auckland, come and visit The Blocks Museum
The Blocks Museum is located in central Auckland, New Zealand, and will be open to the public from 15 to 18 July from 10 am to 4 pm. No booking will be necessary.
- Adults: NZD $10
- Children (5 to 12 years) $5
- Under 5 years old are free.
- Family pass (two adults + two children) $25
55a Station Road, Penrose Auckland (opposite the Penrose Train Station).
Parking is available on Station Road or at the Penrose Train Station.
Visiting The Blocks Museum at other times is by appointment. You can contact The Blocks Museum through Facebook and Instagram
COVID 19
It was great to catch up with Huw and Maria while they were in New Zealand. We managed to have a fantastic weekend holiday on Waiheke Island.
Unfortunately, their cruise was cut short due to COVID 19, and they never got to experience many of the sights that they had planned on seeing. They had to fly home early and did not reach Australia. They did, however, manage to experience many highlights around the New Zealand coast.
L to r: Me, Huw, Rich at the front, Vaughan.
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25 comments on this article
Looks lovely. I hope to get out there someday to see the museum and Middle Earth!
The Venice Architecture set features St. Mark's Basilica. Does that not qualify it as a second LEGO religious set?
Is his name really Blok? :)
@Stevutz said:
"The Venice Architecture set features St. Mark's Basilica. Does that not qualify it as a second LEGO religious set?"
Also Jabba's palace was actually a monastery that belonged to the B'omarr Order.
Huw, are you willing to share what part of the UK you are from? I am fascinated by the different accents. To me you sound quite a bit like Andrew fletcher from Depeche Mode—I know he’s from basildon.
Sussex, on the south coast, south of London.
@gunther_schnitzel
Yes.
I wonder why you call the church for the only religious set ever released by lego? What abot Thor and Loke? Those are my gods and I love the mini figs. What about all the egyptian stuff? And wasn’t there some incidents with polenisians being angry over something with their gods? I am sure there are more, this was just from the top of my head... it seems to me that what you ment was “the only christian set ever released”?
Great to see this. The Shell collection was mine that I sold to Vaughan. I spent days going around all the Shell service stations buying up multiples off all the sets when they came out. Shell also brought out larger sets too that I bought lots of. I have been an adult collector of LEGO since 1985 starting out by collecting all the Town and Train sets, then branching out to other themes.
I saw Huw! :)
What a fabulous collection! Those little Wheetabix sets are so cute. You could really spend a lot of time in that room. Good to know that Huw and his wife, Maria, got to enjoy a bit of the southern hemisphere before having to head back home. Thanks for posting the two interviews, too!
I had the good fortune to know David and Vaughan from my far-too-brief membership of the All Blocks LUG (Hi, guys! I hope everything's going well with the group) before I moved from Auckland to Hawke's Bay.
I had a few opportunities to see around Vaughan's collection and it's a bit of an overload - so many things to see!
Not just the sets - which are amazing - but also the peripheral memorabilia like promotional materials. Even something as apparently mundane as the evoution/variation of brick moulding over the years became a fascinating subject thanks to Vaughan's encyclopedic knowledge and unbridled enthusiasm!
I'm so glad the collection is getting some publicity through here. Definitely worth a visit if you're in Auckland!
@Stevutz:
Yes, that is unusual. The one tricky part is that it's not a set based on the building, but one based on the city, so the fact that it's only a component of the whole may be key to this apparent breach of their own rules.
@Theoderic:
Technically, the Jedi Order is a form of religion. But both are from a work of fiction. The palace itself was inspired by Hagia Sophia, but it is _not_ Hagia Sophia.
@Martin_S:
Those are Marvel's characters, which bear only a passing resemblance to their counterparts in Norse mythology. Likewise, Egyptian religion didn't really factor in mummies springing back to life and terrorizing pesky adventurers. This church set represents nothing else but a house of worship, which for several years they have had a moratorium on.
And it was the Maori of New Zealand that you're thinking of. When the Bionicle theme debuted, there were Toa warriors, Turaga priests, and Tohunga villagers. The primary problem arose from the fact that while "Toa" means "warrior" in the Maori language, and "Turaga" is a made-up word, "Tohunga" is actually their word for "priest". Maybe if they'd called the village priests Tohunga instead of the regular villagers, there would have been less of an uproar, but it's hard to say now. In the end, they changed "Tohunga" to "Matoran" (another made-up word), tweaked the spellings of a few character names, and agreed to cease adding any new Maori words to the Bionicle lexicon (though several such words remained in use for the duration of the property).
Did we really have to see that guys mug in the front...:)
I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand as I’m a big LotR fan, but I’ll put this on the list as well!
Me and my kids were one of the test families who went through last year, was an awesome, awesome collection, and just talking to VB about all the sets and their histories was good fun, I could've stayed there for hours.
I would recommend this 100% to any Lego fan, particularly if you're interested in the history of our great hobby.
Do my eyes deceive me? Is that the dragon from 4818 pouncing on one of the buildings in the wide shot of the Town Plan sets? ...But it's then missing in the close-up of the fire station in the very next photo?? It looks like its tail is directly behind the top of the latter so should be visible in that photo too.
@Dare_Wreck
What good eyes you have! :-)
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50106226521_b4bdba4ede_h.jpg
I still can't get over the fact that this guy's name is Blok.
I mean, what are the odds?
It's the perfect match.
If I ever get a chance to visit New Zealand, and that in itself has been an almost life-long dream of mine, I will definitely visit his museum.
Yeah Covid19 messed up many plans for 2020. I look forward to Skaerbaek 2020 if it still happens...
I could probably visit it under the current guidelines of denmark.
Interesting article there are more photos at https://www.facebook.com/pg/Blocks.Collection/photos/?ref=page_internal . In particular the wall of trains through the ages https://www.facebook.com/Blocks.Collection/photos/a.540365349430171/1894135150719844/?type=3&theater . There are also photos of a changing window display during lockdown, with the following promotional tradeshow creations https://www.facebook.com/Blocks.Collection/photos/a.540365349430171/1893003554166337/?type=3&theater . They seem to have more 1960's-70s toys on display than at the Lego House?
Huw or anyone else being to the other museums, e.g. Prague
https://www.muzeumlega.cz/en/ looks like worth a visit?
^ Yes I've been to the one in Prague: https://brickset.com/article/29468/review-lego-museum-prague . Vaughan's is much better.
Damn, I was in Auckland last week for a few days, that would've been a great addition to our holiday. The shop in Westfield was a huge disappointment so I need another excuse to go back :)
@Huw said:
"^ Yes I've been to the one in Prague: https://brickset.com/article/29468/review-lego-museum-prague . Vaughan's is much better."
That's high praise coming from you Hew. Thank you. It's improved even more since you were here. Much better sorted and now all illuminated and covered. Had the first public visits this week with lots of happy visitors. Thanks so much for your support. Regards Vb
Thanks everyone for the kind comments and support. I guess I took the collection for granted and didnt realise it warranted international acclaim. It's a long challenge to accumulate it all, especially as New Zealand has a very limited supply of the older and vintage items. So good to finally be able to share it with everyone else. Just need a much bigger building now so I can get the rest of it out and on display.