A Blast from the Past: Exploring 1980s Pop Culture Revival Through LEGO Designs

[00:00:00] This is the Battlegorilla LEGO Podcast, Episode 36, a blast from the past exploring 1980s pop culture revival through LEGO designs.

[00:00:13] The secret title of today's episode is 80s to the max.

[00:00:19] Don't make any loud noises or sudden movements.

[00:00:24] And whatever you do, keep your thoughts here in the present.

[00:00:30] Do not think about the past.

[00:00:34] That's how it gets you.

[00:00:37] I don't know who let it loose, but it's prowling around, looking for people to rake its claws across,

[00:00:45] people to sink its fangs into,

[00:00:49] people to infect.

[00:00:53] Do not allow yourself to become one of the infected.

[00:00:58] Modern science has not been able to come up with a cure.

[00:01:02] If you see it, your instinct will be to run.

[00:01:07] Do not run.

[00:01:09] Running from it will only trigger its instinct to chase you down.

[00:01:14] Just keep perfectly silent, perfectly still,

[00:01:20] perfectly focused on the present.

[00:01:24] If you're lucky, it will just sniff at you and then pass you by.

[00:01:31] What is it?

[00:01:33] It is 1980s nostalgia and it is coming for you.

[00:01:40] The disclaimer, Lego is a trademark of the Lego group of companies which does not sponsor,

[00:01:47] authorize or endorse this podcast.

[00:01:51] Are you ready to listen to the world's number one Lego podcast recorded in my apartment?

[00:02:09] That's what you and it's about the Lego fancy podcast thing is awesome.

[00:02:16] Hey, check out this audio stream.

[00:02:25] Welcome to the Battle Gorilla Lego podcast.

[00:02:28] My name is Mike Sneethan and I'm your host.

[00:02:30] Let's get right into it.

[00:02:32] In early March, I got an email from Lego Ideas announcing their newest challenge.

[00:02:39] I'm not sure how long Lego Ideas has been running these challenges slash contests,

[00:02:45] but they've had at least a dozen of them since I started the podcast back in August of last year.

[00:02:52] Usually I just ignore them.

[00:02:55] I haven't ever done a podcast episode about them before because they sneak up on you.

[00:03:01] I've been doing episodes about the A-Full community's month long build challenges because I know they're coming long before they actually get here,

[00:03:10] leaving me time for research and finding a place for them in my podcast schedule.

[00:03:17] But the Lego Ideas challenges just suddenly pop up out of nowhere.

[00:03:23] By the time I found a place in the schedule to put an episode about one,

[00:03:28] then research, write, record, edit and upload said episode, the contest would be over.

[00:03:35] Leaving me with the basic message of hey listeners, here's a contest. It's too late for you to enter.

[00:03:43] Doesn't seem like much of a point in covering them under those circumstances.

[00:03:48] I will now cover this recent one, despite the fact that it too has already closed its submission window.

[00:03:56] Had I gotten this episode out last week like originally planned,

[00:04:00] I would have mentioned that the deadline for entry was two and a half hours before that episode had been made available on the podcast distribution networks.

[00:04:12] But I had to take a skip week for health reasons and so now that deadline was a week and two and a half hours before this episode saw release.

[00:04:22] The challenge in question was titled, If We Could Turn Back Time and the introductory text was.

[00:04:30] We're talking about leg warmers and big hair. This challenge is all about the 80s.

[00:04:38] Regardless of if you were around in the 80s or not, there are so many iconic TV shows and films from that era.

[00:04:46] With a huge amount of nostalgia and the chance to become a Lego Ideas fan designer,

[00:04:53] could you build submissions that celebrate these shows and films using good old Lego bricks?

[00:04:59] There must be a retro show or film you love from that era that inspires you.

[00:05:04] A cult classic? Something from your childhood or an old school action packed adventure?

[00:05:12] The challenge would work like this.

[00:05:15] You pick a 1980s TV show or film to base a mock on.

[00:05:20] Build that mock, photograph it and submit it to the If We Could Turn Back Time Challenge on the Lego Ideas website between March 5th and April 9th.

[00:05:30] Then, members of the Lego Ideas Review Board select five of the submitted entries to move on to the crowd vote.

[00:05:39] On April 16th, those five entries will be up on the site for the general populace to vote on.

[00:05:45] The builders of those five entries will get three Lego sets for making it into the fan vote.

[00:05:52] Set number 21314, Tron Legacy.

[00:05:56] Set number 21328, Seinfeld.

[00:06:00] And set number 10300 back to the Future Time Machine.

[00:06:07] The fan vote runs from April 16th to April 23rd.

[00:06:12] The winner will be announced on June 14th.

[00:06:16] Why the nearly eight week wait from the end of the fan vote to the actual announcement of the winner?

[00:06:22] No idea.

[00:06:24] I know there will be paperwork to sign during that period based on the nature of the grand prize, but still, eight weeks.

[00:06:33] And just what is this grand prize I speak of?

[00:06:36] That winning mock gets turned into a Future Lego Ideas set.

[00:06:40] The builder of that mock will receive one percent of the total net sales of that set, ten complimentary copies of the set,

[00:06:49] and receive credit and a bio in that set's instruction book as the Lego Ideas fan designer responsible for its design.

[00:06:58] Not too shabby.

[00:07:01] When I read that email and saw what it was all about, my initial instinct was to stop the mock building I was doing for the

[00:07:08] then rapidly approaching Bricks Cascade, put the podcast on hiatus for a month,

[00:07:14] and then spend every waking moment from then until the submission deadline working to craft the best possible mock in an effort to win.

[00:07:25] That impulse lasted for a good 30 seconds or so.

[00:07:30] Then I remembered that I had committed to making some of the mocks for the con,

[00:07:34] and I didn't want to hit the pause button on the podcast,

[00:07:39] plus an honest self appraisal of my building skills told me I didn't have the chops to win a Lego Ideas challenge anyway.

[00:07:50] But if not for all of that, the competition sounded so good to me.

[00:07:55] I'm an 80s guy. I was a nine year old for most of 1980 and turned 19 just before 1989 came to a close.

[00:08:05] And was I watching lots of television and movies during that time? Yes, yes I was.

[00:08:12] With enough time and enough brick, there are a lot of different 80s properties that I'd love to build mocks for.

[00:08:20] But there are two that are very high up on that list.

[00:08:24] I've made no secret of the fact that there are two IPs that I would absolutely love to see Lego produce sets for,

[00:08:32] and both of those got their start during the 1980s.

[00:08:37] One of those was an independent comic book series called Nexus co-created by writer Mike Barron and artist Steve Rood.

[00:08:46] But the Lego Ideas challenge mentioned TV and movies several times with no indication that they were looking for properties from other mediums.

[00:08:55] So I assume Nexus wouldn't be what they were looking for.

[00:09:00] The other beloved 80s IP I really want to see in Lego form is Max Headroom.

[00:09:07] Max was an international 1980s sensation having multiple television shows on multiple continents,

[00:09:15] plus a position as the spokes head for new coke and more merchandise than you could possibly imagine.

[00:09:23] The Max Headroom character was created to be the host of a British music video program.

[00:09:29] But his first actual appearance was in a sci-fi made for TV movie that served as an origin story and answer to the inevitable questions,

[00:09:39] who is Max Headroom and where did he come from?

[00:09:44] Max Headroom was the world's first computer generated television personality.

[00:09:50] Except he wasn't.

[00:09:52] He looked computer generated enough to fool a large portion of his television audience,

[00:09:59] but that computer generated appearance was achieved by covering actor Matt Fruehr with heavy prosthetics

[00:10:07] and a custom built fiberglass suit along with special lighting and camera techniques.

[00:10:13] He started like I said with a sci-fi TV movie Max Headroom 20 minutes into the future.

[00:10:20] Followed quickly by a music video program, The Max Headroom Show on Britain's Channel 4.

[00:10:27] The music video show evolved over a couple of years becoming a talk show.

[00:10:33] Cinemax did an American version of that called the original Max Talking Headroom Show.

[00:10:40] But it was in 1987 when I became a huge fan of the ABC TV cyberpunk drama series Max Headroom.

[00:10:49] There were some countries where the show's title was The Adventures of Max Headroom.

[00:10:55] That last show had a very successful mid-season run of six episodes.

[00:11:01] ABC liked the ratings it got so they renewed it for a second season

[00:11:06] and then moved it from Tuesdays at 9 into the infamous Friday night death slot

[00:11:13] where it tried unsuccessfully to compete with 1980s television juggernauts Dallas and Miami Vice.

[00:11:22] ABC pulled the plug on the series with three episodes unerred and five scripts left unfilmed.

[00:11:31] That's the 80s universe that I wanted to build in.

[00:11:35] But as I said, I was working on Max for Bricks Cascade and busy with podcast stuff.

[00:11:43] There just wasn't time.

[00:11:45] And then of course I threw my back out which meant I couldn't sit at my build table for long enough to get anything finished anyway.

[00:11:54] My displays at this year's Bricks Cascade were, compared to what I had intended to send up to the convention, disappointing.

[00:12:03] My back is much better now by the way.

[00:12:07] I'm moving around better.

[00:12:09] I can sit at the build table for decent lengths of time now.

[00:12:12] Even though I don't have any skin in the game, I have been keeping an eye on the 80s challenge.

[00:12:19] When the window for submissions closed there were 309 mocks representing 113 different 80s properties listed as entries for the challenge.

[00:12:31] 64 of those 80s properties were represented by a single mock submission each.

[00:12:37] I'm not going to name all of those except to say that my favorite 80s TV property, Max Headroom did have a mock submitted in the challenge.

[00:12:47] Not by me but I was still very glad to see the show represented just the same.

[00:12:54] The following properties were represented by two mock submissions each.

[00:12:58] Anne of Green Gables, Batteries Not Included, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, Coming to America, Dark Crystal, Gem and the Holograms, The Land Before Time, Little House on the Prairie, Pee Wee's Playhouse, Red Dwarf, Say Anything, The Fall Guy, The Invincible Daitarn 3, which is apparently a giant robot anime series that I've never even heard of.

[00:13:29] Thomas and Friends and Willow.

[00:13:34] These properties received three mock submissions each.

[00:13:38] Fragile Rock, Mask, the two season animated series about the mobile armored strike command, not the 1985 film starring Cher and Eric Stoltz, MacGyver, The Last Starfighter and Thundercats.

[00:13:54] Properties receiving four mocks each were Tiki's Delivery Service, Little Shop of Horrors, Mobile Suit Gundam, Nassica and The Valley of the Wind, Short Circuit, The A-Team and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

[00:14:10] Membership of the five mock submission club is composed of Big, Bill and Ted, Care Bears, Full House, Gremlins, Honey Eye Shrunk the Kids, Magnum PI and Space Balls.

[00:14:27] Both Garfield and Smurfs had six mock submissions each.

[00:14:33] Alph, Inspector Gadget, The Karate Kid and Labyrinth were all represented by seven mocks each.

[00:14:42] The remaining properties all got a minimum of nine mocks each, and so I've arbitrarily decided that this is the point that separates the men from the boys.

[00:14:53] Huh, that phrase seems kind of outdated now doesn't it?

[00:14:58] This is the point that separates the men and women from the boys and girls?

[00:15:03] No.

[00:15:05] The point that separates the men, women and other-gendered from the boys, girls and younger other-gendered?

[00:15:15] Hmm, okay I give up. Moving on.

[00:15:20] My neighbor Totoro, the Blues Brothers and the Goonies each got nine mock submissions.

[00:15:27] The joy of painting with Bob Ross received a whopping ten mock submissions.

[00:15:34] Beetlejuice, E.T. the Extraterrestrial and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all had thirteen mock submissions each.

[00:15:45] And if this was simply a popularity contest, I'd have to declare the winner to be the Princess Bride with its sixteen mock submissions.

[00:15:55] Which of these mocks will be part of the five entries for the fan vote should be announced on April 16th?

[00:16:01] Which, if you're listening to this episode on Release Day, is today!

[00:16:06] I plan to cast my vote and then check back in later to see who won, and then move on to other things.

[00:16:13] I've been telling myself for a couple of months now that once Bricks Cascade had come and gone,

[00:16:18] I was going to put together a list of the mocks I wanted to get built prior to next year's Bricks Cascade.

[00:16:25] I want to start setting personal mock deadlines that are about a month earlier than their actual deadlines.

[00:16:33] Last year, around mid-November, I got the idea for a Christmas mock

[00:16:37] and made the somewhat impulsive decision that I was going to build it

[00:16:42] and have it displayed at a local show that Portlug participates in each year at the end of November.

[00:16:48] Fortunately, before I jumped in and started building, I continued thinking about it.

[00:16:55] I had an idea but no actual thoughts on design.

[00:17:00] No idea if I had the Bricks I'd need to build it,

[00:17:03] and less than two weeks to get it built and handed off to someone that could get it to the venue on Setup Day.

[00:17:10] And I realized that this incredibly rushed mock was simply going to suck.

[00:17:17] And that was when I decided that I'd wait until 2024, get it built before that year's November.

[00:17:24] I told myself that I wanted to have it done a month ahead of when it was needed, so late October in this case.

[00:17:32] Late October at the latest.

[00:17:37] Then I asked myself why this wasn't simply my standard operating procedure.

[00:17:43] I'm always trying to build like a madman as the conventions come closer and closer,

[00:17:49] either that or sinking into depression because I threw my back out with next to no mocks complete.

[00:17:54] Eventually, I realized that I needed to put together a list of not just mocks, but mock deadlines as well.

[00:18:03] A kind of mock calendar.

[00:18:06] So that's what I started working on after the convention was over.

[00:18:11] Next year's Bricks Cascade is happening in May again instead of its usual March.

[00:18:16] So I'm building this list for a 14 month long stretch of time.

[00:18:19] I've got quite the list of mocks I'd like to bring to next year's convention.

[00:18:25] And as I was starting to assign higher priorities to some of those mocks to make sure they made the list, something happened.

[00:18:35] Fate or destiny or whatever suddenly realized that I hadn't taken the bait laid out by the Lego Ideas 80s challenge

[00:18:44] and therefore wasn't in the process of building a max headroom based mock for the fast approaching contest deadline.

[00:18:52] And Fate or Destiny or whatever apparently wanted me working on a max headroom mock.

[00:19:00] Max's first appearance on television was the British sci-fi TV movie Max Headroom 20 Minutes Into The Future.

[00:19:07] That aired on April 4th 1985.

[00:19:11] So with that in mind, Fate or Destiny or whatever thought to itself if he's not going to build this with the 80s in general as bait, then let's hit him with 1985 specifically.

[00:19:29] A Portlog member named Drew Rosa had had the realization that there were a large number of iconic movies that were celebrating their 40th anniversary next year

[00:19:39] and had started a conversation about doing a 1985 pop culture collaborative build.

[00:19:47] This conversation was the very first thing I saw the next time I logged into Discord.

[00:19:53] I of course immediately posted the following.

[00:19:57] If we're willing to open the 1985 stuff to television as well, then I'm in and I'm staking claim right here and now to 80s mainstay Max Headroom.

[00:20:07] First appearance on British television April 4th 1985.

[00:20:12] I then added Max Headroom mock to the very top of the list of mocks I was compiling for my next 14 months worth of building.

[00:20:22] Although those three words, Max Headroom mock didn't really tell me exactly what it was I was building.

[00:20:32] It's not like I haven't given thought to this in the past.

[00:20:36] I've always said that if I ever got into mosaic building, one of those first mosaics would probably be Max Headroom.

[00:20:44] I've had the idea to build a bust of Max that I could finish by building a television cabinet around.

[00:20:52] Max was absolutely pre flat screen.

[00:20:57] Throughout the series, we get a lot of shots of the very distinctive city skyline dominated by the network 23 building where a lot of the stories happened.

[00:21:07] And I've always thought that would look incredible recreated in micro scale.

[00:21:14] I had promised myself that this would be the year that I cracked the Brickheads code and started building my own custom Brickheads.

[00:21:22] First, because I happen to like Brickheads, but also because I'd like to do a podcast episode about building Brickhead mocks at some point.

[00:21:31] So I've got a list of 10 characters from Nexus and 10 characters from Max Headroom that I plan to use for Brickheads experimentation.

[00:21:42] Mini land scale figures is another option I've considered for the Max Headroom cast.

[00:21:46] Brick built figures where the standard adult is about 11 bricks high, which is roughly four inches tall.

[00:21:54] Building vehicles that actually look like vehicles is not a skill I've mastered.

[00:22:01] To be perfectly honest, it's not even a skill that I've novice or beginner.

[00:22:07] So there's no real chance of me successfully trying to build either the big pink big time television bus or Broigle and Mahler's body snatching van.

[00:22:19] But after thinking through all of that, I was faced with the reality that I have pretty much always been a mini figure and mini figure scale kind of guy.

[00:22:30] I thought about several different locations that I could replicate, but the one that made the most sense to me was building a mini figure scale version of control.

[00:22:40] The Network 23 news division's day side control room.

[00:22:46] To get this built, I am going to have to develop some new mock building skills. This mock will represent a couple of firsts for me.

[00:22:54] This will be the first time that I'm building something that isn't at least partly based on my own imagination.

[00:23:02] This isn't going to be what I think it would be cool if the Network 23 control room looked like.

[00:23:08] This is going to be what the Network 23 control room actually looked like on the show.

[00:23:15] Never before have I attempted to build something that was meant to be directly representative of something that actually exists or existed at least on a TV screen.

[00:23:28] This is also the first mock I've attempted that makes sense for me to include lights.

[00:23:35] Not ever having lit a mock before, I'm probably going to have to find somebody more knowledgeable about it than I and have them take me to mock lighting school.

[00:23:46] I've already started rewatching the series on my computer and oh what a chore that is having to rewatch one of my all time favorite TV shows.

[00:23:56] Pausing repeatedly to take screenshots as I attempt to find visual reference for every inch of that room.

[00:24:02] But before I even started that, I managed to convince myself that there was one other very important piece of reference that I'd like to have.

[00:24:12] So I asked my good close personal friend the internet a few questions and then a few more questions.

[00:24:19] And after eventually getting a name and some contact information, I reached out to the production designer from the show who actually came up with the control room design, Richard B. Lewis.

[00:24:31] You know, as one does.

[00:24:34] I explained who I was and what I was doing and asked if he happened to have blueprints for control or really anything from the design process that might help me in this endeavor.

[00:24:46] This isn't the first time I've tracked down someone who worked on the series.

[00:24:51] I've had about a 65% success rate.

[00:24:55] For example, I've read three of the scripts for those five unfilmed episodes.

[00:25:00] I had no idea if contacting Mr. Lewis would go my way or not, but the next day he answered me, letting me know that he did have a bunch of old blueprints in his storage unit, but was unsure whether anything from Max Headroom was in that stack, but that he would go and take a look and let me know.

[00:25:20] And about a week later, he sent me a file containing a 3D model of the room and asked for a mailing address where he could send a copy of the actual blueprint, which according to the tracking number he sent a couple of days later should be arriving on my doorstep in a couple of days.

[00:25:40] I've started looking at who all I'm going to be populating the mock with once it gets to that stage.

[00:25:46] I'm starting with every named character from the show that has a legitimate reason to be there.

[00:25:52] Star reporter Edison Carter, his controller Theora Jones and producer Murray McKenzie for certain.

[00:25:59] Secondary reporters Angie Berry and Janie Crane, helicopter pilot Ramirez, producer Joel Dong-Po, and some guy with a mullet named David.

[00:26:11] I'll probably also find places for Bryce Lynch, teenage head of research and development, and network president Ben Chevy.

[00:26:20] Just because.

[00:26:23] And then I'll fill it out with any number of nameless background extras I find in screenshots that look like they can be made with easily obtained minifigure parts.

[00:26:33] I've spent some time over the past couple of weeks looking at minifigure parts on Bricklink, compiling a want list, saving images of parts into a folder labeled Max Headroom Cast Minifigure Recipe Book.

[00:26:48] Max himself won't be getting an actual minifigure.

[00:26:52] I've spent some time in the past thinking about ways to realize Max in minifigure form, but I think there are better options than just building him with standard minifigure parts.

[00:27:03] I'll be experimenting with some of those very soon.

[00:27:08] Thinking about the Max Headroom Mock and looking at the rest of this two-build list, it looks like it's going to be a very busy 14 months for me.

[00:27:17] Two weeks ago, I posted the second LEGO Haiku challenge on the podcast's Instagram account.

[00:27:25] It has been exactly as successful as the first one by which I mean nobody decided to play.

[00:27:32] I think that while a third LEGO Haiku challenge will eventually happen, it's not going to be happening today.

[00:27:40] Assuming that I remembered, my solution to that LEGO Haiku should have been posted to the Instagram last night.

[00:27:48] Okay, that's going to do it for this episode.

[00:27:52] Be here next week when I'll be talking about the AFL community's need for some new themed month-long build challenges to fill out the gap months in the calendar year.

[00:28:02] Links to the podcast's social media and wish lists can be found at www.BattleGorilla.com.

[00:28:09] If you're enjoying this podcast, please tell your friends about it.

[00:28:14] If, on the other hand, you hate this podcast, be sure and recommend it to your enemies.

[00:28:20] The podcast's intro and outro themes, podcasting is awesome, inspired by Tegan and Sarah's Everything is Awesome,

[00:28:27] and Ode to Gibberish were created by Michael Reinch.

[00:28:57] Wish me luck on the prayers for junk food.