Affordable LEGO Alternatives - An In-Depth Look at GoBricks

[00:00:00] This is the Battlegorilla LEGO Podcast, Episode 42, Affordable LEGO Alternatives, An In-Depth Look at GoBricks.

[00:00:11] The secret title of today's episode is Debunking Claims of Blasphemy and Sacrilege. LEGO is very expensive.

[00:00:24] It used to just be expensive, but now it's very expensive.

[00:00:30] I fear it won't be too much longer before it's very, VERY expensive.

[00:00:37] It's getting more expensive all the time, but there's something that's even more expensive than LEGO.

[00:00:45] And that is trying to maintain brand loyalty to LEGO.

[00:00:53] Since LEGO sets, LEGO minifigures, and even individual LEGO parts for sale on Bricklink

[00:01:00] are all very expensive, then refusing to use anything that isn't official LEGO-branded elements in your MOCs

[00:01:10] makes the construction of those MOCs very expensive by default.

[00:01:17] But, you might be asking yourself, what other option is there?

[00:01:22] My answer to that question has always been, none!

[00:01:28] There is no other option.

[00:01:31] Unless you want to use low-quality materials in your MOCs.

[00:01:36] Because, for years and years, the alternatives to LEGO have been the bricks produced by

[00:01:43] Megablocks, or Leppin, Creo, Make-It blocks which are found in the aisles of the dollar store.

[00:01:54] There's never been a good quality substitute for LEGO.

[00:01:59] At least, not until recently.

[00:02:03] In this episode, I'll be talking about the clone bricks manufactured by a Chinese company called GoBricks.

[00:02:12] The disclaimer.

[00:02:14] LEGO is a trademark of the LEGO Group of Companies, which does not sponsor, authorize, or endorse this podcast.

[00:02:23] Are you ready to listen to the world's number one LEGO podcast, recorded in my apartment?

[00:02:38] Podcasting is awesome, and it's about the LEGO fan scene.

[00:02:44] Podcasting is awesome, hey, check out this audio stream.

[00:02:56] Welcome to the Battle Gorilla LEGO Podcast.

[00:02:59] My name is Mike Sneethan, I'm your host.

[00:03:01] Let's get right into it.

[00:03:04] A few moments ago, you heard the standard disclaimer that runs at the beginning of each one of these episodes.

[00:03:11] This time, I need to add in just a little bit more disclaiming than usual.

[00:03:18] Because this episode of the podcast is also not sponsored, authorized, or endorsed by GoBricks.

[00:03:29] This is actually one of the episodes that I was planning to do when the podcast unexpectedly went on hiatus back in May.

[00:03:38] Had I done it back then, it would probably have been a little different.

[00:03:44] My most recently crashed hard drive had contained a half-written script for an episode about Webrick.com and the clone bricks that they sell.

[00:03:55] I've made several purchases from Webrick with varying results.

[00:04:01] As near as I can tell, Webrick started out selling product from GoBricks,

[00:04:08] but then switched to less expensive brands from multiple manufacturers with the equivalent lesser quality.

[00:04:18] After a lot of outcry from their customer base, they started selling GoBrick elements again, but as premium bricks that they charge a little more for than their crappy non-premium bricks.

[00:04:32] Their premium bricks also have a longer processing and shipping time.

[00:04:39] I have made purchases from them during all three of the above-mentioned stages.

[00:04:45] My first order contained astonishingly high-quality bricks.

[00:04:50] My next order was filled with comparatively subpar elements, causing me to stop buying from them.

[00:04:58] Then I learned more about GoBricks and what Webrick was offering.

[00:05:03] When it started, I was looking at non-LEGO bricks on a case-by-case basis.

[00:05:11] My first use of a non-LEGO standard element, which, at the time, I thought was kind of scandalous, was in my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mechs.

[00:05:24] The design in my head required a green 4x4 radar dish to finish off the head of each mech suit.

[00:05:34] This part came in the Joker manner from the LEGO Batman movie theme,

[00:05:41] and only one of those parts in that $270 set from 2017.

[00:05:49] Rare, and as you'd expect, high-priced.

[00:05:55] Searching BrickLink, I discovered that this part was going for upwards of a dollar apiece used.

[00:06:03] The least expensive shop that had four of them in stock was in Australia,

[00:06:08] and was asking over $6 apiece for them.

[00:06:14] So going that route would mean paying upwards of $24 before adding in the cost of international shipping.

[00:06:22] I just couldn't do it.

[00:06:25] That's when I turned to Webrick.com and ordered the four pieces for $0.10 apiece.

[00:06:32] I ordered some other stuff as well, since I was placing an order anyway,

[00:06:37] and was curious to try out some of their product.

[00:06:42] Aside from the lack of the LEGO logo on the stud,

[00:06:46] I couldn't tell any difference between those pieces and legitimate LEGO 4x4 radar dishes.

[00:06:54] None of the Go Bricks manufactured pieces that I'd gotten in that order from Webricks seemed different from LEGO for me,

[00:07:02] except for the lack of the logo on the stud,

[00:07:05] and in some cases, their availability in a color that LEGO didn't even produce.

[00:07:13] They looked the same as LEGO.

[00:07:15] They felt the same between my fingertips.

[00:07:19] Their clutch power seemed to be the same.

[00:07:22] A handful of Go Bricks elements dropped onto my wooden build table

[00:07:27] even sounded the same as a similar amount of LEGO making that same trip.

[00:07:33] The Go Bricks colors matched the LEGO colors.

[00:07:40] I started to wonder if maybe there was a grand conspiracy,

[00:07:45] and these actually were manufactured by LEGO using molds without the stud logos.

[00:07:51] They were just that similar.

[00:07:55] So, I ordered them.

[00:07:58] They arrived.

[00:07:59] And still, I didn't quite feel right about using them.

[00:08:05] Why was that?

[00:08:08] Yes, I've always been a LEGO purist.

[00:08:12] Sure, there were exceptions made,

[00:08:15] primarily for third-party manufacturers of minifigure accessories.

[00:08:20] But as far as the actual LEGO brick or other basic elements?

[00:08:26] The purest.

[00:08:29] Using plastic building blocks that weren't made by LEGO just seemed wrong.

[00:08:39] Unnatural.

[00:08:41] And as for combining LEGO and non-LEGO pieces within the same mock?

[00:08:49] Ugh.

[00:08:52] I sat there at my build table,

[00:08:55] with a LEGO piece in one hand and a Go Brick piece in the other.

[00:09:01] And I snapped them together.

[00:09:05] I had two expectations.

[00:09:08] The first was that once those pieces joined together,

[00:09:12] I'd simply be hit with a bolt of lightning from out of the clear blue sky,

[00:09:17] struck down by the hand of God himself.

[00:09:22] But that didn't happen.

[00:09:25] My other expectation was that connecting those two pieces would result

[00:09:30] in a universe-destroying explosion,

[00:09:33] the same kind that happens in science fiction stories

[00:09:37] when you combine matter and antimatter.

[00:09:41] That didn't happen either.

[00:09:45] Which kind of shook my entire world view a little bit.

[00:09:51] I used those green 4x4 dishes in my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mechs.

[00:09:58] But I didn't tell anybody about it.

[00:10:00] I kept it secret.

[00:10:03] I hid that information.

[00:10:06] Because when I first did it,

[00:10:09] it felt wrong.

[00:10:13] And not just one kind of wrong,

[00:10:16] but every kind of wrong.

[00:10:20] It felt like I was committing blasphemy and sacrilege against God

[00:10:26] and treason against my country.

[00:10:29] I was stealing from the poor.

[00:10:32] I was cheering for the opposing team.

[00:10:34] I was cheating on the test,

[00:10:38] on my taxes,

[00:10:39] and even on my non-existent wife.

[00:10:44] I'd always condemned clone bricks,

[00:10:47] not simply because they weren't Lego,

[00:10:50] but because they were of inferior quality.

[00:10:55] But these weren't inferior.

[00:10:59] As I've said,

[00:11:01] I couldn't tell the difference between these elements

[00:11:04] and official Lego elements.

[00:11:08] The only possible difference I'm aware of,

[00:11:11] again, besides the absence of the Lego name on the studs,

[00:11:15] is the fact that Go Bricks doesn't have

[00:11:19] the tiny rainbow of brittle colors like Lego does.

[00:11:23] No brittle brown, no brittle dark red.

[00:11:27] What other colors had brittle batches?

[00:11:30] Pearl gold?

[00:11:32] I've heard that there's some brittle blue out there.

[00:11:36] This is a question that I specifically asked the people at Webrick

[00:11:40] when I was originally planning the episode prior to the hiatus.

[00:11:45] And in their three plus years of operation,

[00:11:48] they've had zero reports of broken bricks from customers.

[00:11:53] So if these were finally non-Lego produced blocks of comparable quality,

[00:12:02] why the hesitance to use them?

[00:12:06] This is something that I wondered about a lot,

[00:12:09] and for a long while.

[00:12:11] And I think it has less to do with the Lego product itself

[00:12:16] than a whole bunch of peripheral stuff.

[00:12:21] I'm a member of the Lego fan community.

[00:12:25] And I'm an adult fan of Lego.

[00:12:28] I build mocks for events like Bricks Gascade and BrickCon,

[00:12:33] which are classified as Lego conventions.

[00:12:37] This is the Battle Gorilla Lego podcast.

[00:12:42] Most of my bricks are kept in a place called the Lego room.

[00:12:49] Aside from that,

[00:12:51] it's mainly an ingrained notion of brand loyalty.

[00:12:55] I'm a Lego guy,

[00:12:57] so I use Lego products.

[00:12:59] But Lego is currently the number one toy company in the world.

[00:13:08] Even if I were to completely switch from Lego products

[00:13:13] to the Go Bricks clone product,

[00:13:15] which I'm obviously not about to do,

[00:13:18] the Lego group wouldn't notice.

[00:13:21] The effects that my buying Go Bricks has on Lego's financial bottom line

[00:13:30] is so infinitesimally small

[00:13:34] that it is about as noticeable to them

[00:13:38] as the physical distance between Lego Bricks and Go Bricks is to me.

[00:13:45] A few examples of some of the bricks I've gotten from Go Bricks.

[00:13:51] I've been collecting 2x4 Lego bricks

[00:13:54] to construct a row of buildings

[00:13:57] for a hopefully upcoming mock

[00:14:00] for a while now.

[00:14:02] I've gotten a bunch of them in lug bulk

[00:14:05] for the last five or six years,

[00:14:06] a different color each year.

[00:14:10] But the 2x4 brick that has thus far stubbornly eluded me

[00:14:15] is the dark orange one.

[00:14:19] I absolutely have to have a dark orange building on this street,

[00:14:25] as dark orange is my favorite Lego color.

[00:14:29] But it's a rare and expensive brick.

[00:14:35] The reason for its rarity

[00:14:38] is because between 2002 and 2018

[00:14:43] it appeared in only five sets.

[00:14:48] Fifteen of those 2x4 bricks

[00:14:51] were in the 2002 UCS Yoda sculpture,

[00:14:56] eleven of them in the 2018

[00:14:59] Minecraft Farm Cottage,

[00:15:03] two each in the 2004

[00:15:06] Blue Strata XXL Tub,

[00:15:09] and the 2018 Mission to Mars sets.

[00:15:14] And one very lonely dark orange 2x4 brick

[00:15:20] in the 2004 Creator Value Pack.

[00:15:25] Looking at the six month average price on BrickLink,

[00:15:28] a used dark orange 2x4 brick costs 71 cents.

[00:15:34] And a new one will set you back a dollar one.

[00:15:40] You can get the Goldbricks version

[00:15:43] for 21 cents through Webrick,

[00:15:46] ordering their premium version.

[00:15:48] I've seen it at 19 cents other places.

[00:15:53] What this means in this particular instance

[00:15:57] is that maintaining brand loyalty to Lego

[00:16:00] will cost me 82 cents per brick.

[00:16:04] Per brick.

[00:16:08] And if you estimate roughly a thousand bricks

[00:16:12] for a four or five story tall building,

[00:16:16] is being a Lego purist really worth

[00:16:20] an extra $820 to me.

[00:16:24] Now, I suspect that the Lego dark orange 2x4

[00:16:30] is going to become more readily available

[00:16:33] and therefore presumably cheaper

[00:16:35] in the near future.

[00:16:38] Because in addition to the five sets

[00:16:41] from 2002 to 2018

[00:16:44] that included the brick.

[00:16:46] We've had five additional sets

[00:16:50] use the brick just this year.

[00:16:53] Two Minecraft sets,

[00:16:55] Baby Pig's Birthday Celebration

[00:16:58] and the Badlands Mineshaft.

[00:17:00] Two Harry Potter sets,

[00:17:03] the collector's edition of The Burrow

[00:17:05] and the Triwizard Tournament, The Arrival.

[00:17:08] And Disney's The Magical Madrigal House.

[00:17:12] Four of those sets only include

[00:17:16] one or two of the dark orange brick.

[00:17:19] But the Badlands Mineshaft has 16 of them.

[00:17:23] That's not necessarily going to flood the market

[00:17:26] with dark orange 2x4 bricks.

[00:17:28] But it does seem like an indication

[00:17:30] that Lego is open to including

[00:17:32] some more dark orange in their sets.

[00:17:35] So we might see that 2x4

[00:17:37] popping up more frequently as time goes on.

[00:17:41] Interesting side note,

[00:17:46] 2025 will be the first year in a decade

[00:17:49] that I won't be participating in Lugbulk.

[00:17:54] And with the dark orange 2x4

[00:17:57] appearing in that many 2024 sets,

[00:18:01] what do you want to bet that the brick

[00:18:03] will finally be on the Lugbulk availability list?

[00:18:06] Go bricks are less expensive than

[00:18:11] purchasing Lego bricks on places like BrickLink.

[00:18:14] Because traditionally,

[00:18:16] Lego bricks are manufactured in specific quantities

[00:18:20] to go into Lego sets.

[00:18:23] If a certain color of a certain part

[00:18:26] hasn't been in a lot of sets,

[00:18:28] it's more expensive.

[00:18:31] That's just how the economic concept of scarcity works.

[00:18:35] And while Go Bricks does supply a number of

[00:18:39] non-Lego brick building companies

[00:18:41] like Mold King, Pantasy, Funhole, Pangu,

[00:18:47] Pro Bricks, Lucky Star and others,

[00:18:50] with the bricks to make their sets,

[00:18:53] the bricks that Go Bricks make to sell to consumers

[00:18:57] through their retail outlet,

[00:19:00] they just make.

[00:19:01] They aren't manufactured to justify scarcity.

[00:19:06] They're simply manufactured.

[00:19:10] And if a certain brick sells out,

[00:19:12] they'll manufacture more.

[00:19:17] Go Bricks also often produces elements

[00:19:20] in more colors than Lego does.

[00:19:24] Go Bricks elements come in 53 colors

[00:19:27] that match entries on Lego's current color palette.

[00:19:31] They also have an additional 9 unique colors.

[00:19:35] Orchid Pink

[00:19:38] Wheat

[00:19:40] Cookies and Cream

[00:19:41] Bright Gold

[00:19:43] Army Green

[00:19:44] Light Grayish Blue

[00:19:48] Langwood Lavender

[00:19:50] Milky White

[00:19:51] And Grayish White

[00:19:55] I've ordered some tiles in Army Green

[00:19:58] because I actually needed one more shade of green

[00:20:02] than was available through Lego.

[00:20:04] But I haven't yet experimented with any of the other

[00:20:07] unique Go Brick colors.

[00:20:11] Although I have to say,

[00:20:12] I question...

[00:20:14] I just question the name Langwood Lavender.

[00:20:19] I don't know.

[00:20:21] Seems weird to me.

[00:20:25] There's a popular Lego element that we usually get in a new color or two every year.

[00:20:30] And every year, I watch AFOLs go nuts trying to get their hands on them, in quantity.

[00:20:38] I'm talking about the 1x2 and 1x4 bricks with the masonry profile.

[00:20:45] Lego bricks that are molded to look like they're made of tiny little bricks and mortar.

[00:20:54] These will hit the pick-a-brick wall at the local Lego store,

[00:20:57] and it's suddenly like a school of piranha in a feeding frenzy.

[00:21:03] A chaotic aquatic whirling,

[00:21:06] blood in the water,

[00:21:07] and then...

[00:21:08] an empty container that had been overflowing with bricks for sale mere moments before.

[00:21:17] Right now, there are 17 different colors of the 1x2 Lego masonry profile brick.

[00:21:26] Their go bricks counterpart comes in 39,

[00:21:31] including a couple of the transparent colors.

[00:21:35] I've been somewhat tempted to pick up some trans light blue masonry profile bricks

[00:21:40] and experiment with igloo building.

[00:21:43] But that's a temptation that has so far gone unfulfilled.

[00:21:49] So far.

[00:21:51] Give it some time.

[00:21:52] The 1x4 masonry profile brick comes in 9 different colors from Lego,

[00:21:59] and the 36 different colors from Go bricks.

[00:22:05] I recently built a brick head smock of The Thing from the Fantastic Four,

[00:22:10] and that build includes 8 of the various masonry profile bricks in orange.

[00:22:17] Lego doesn't even make those in orange.

[00:22:20] They make them in dark orange.

[00:22:23] Not orange orange.

[00:22:26] What else?

[00:22:28] Gollum's Precious.

[00:22:31] That gold ring piece introduced in the Lord of the Rings sets back in 2012.

[00:22:37] The first time I saw that piece, I got very excited.

[00:22:42] Not for the ability to have a minifigure holding Tolkien's The One Ring,

[00:22:47] but for the other possibilities that that mold suggested.

[00:22:51] I started waiting for Lego to give us that piece in other colors,

[00:22:57] which, to date, they never have.

[00:23:02] I wanted that piece in tan, dark tan, reddish brown, white, and so on.

[00:23:11] Why?

[00:23:13] Because I wanted minifigure-scaled donuts.

[00:23:18] Tasty fried rings of dough.

[00:23:21] Wouldn't that piece have made the perfect Lego donut?

[00:23:28] When they announced they'd gotten the rights to do Simpsons sets,

[00:23:33] I thought,

[00:23:34] Here they come!

[00:23:35] Here come the donuts!

[00:23:38] But instead of the donuts I was picturing in my head,

[00:23:42] what we got was a kind of pseudo-donut.

[00:23:46] The image of a donut printed on a round one-by-one tile.

[00:23:52] Not at all what I was expecting or hoping for.

[00:23:57] Although, I suppose that it could have been worse.

[00:24:01] It could have been an unprinted one-by-one round tile

[00:24:05] that came with a donut sticker you had to apply yourself.

[00:24:09] Go Bricks, on the other hand,

[00:24:15] has given us that elusive donut piece I've been looking for.

[00:24:19] The one ring, but molded in solid colors other than metallic gold.

[00:24:25] Either singly or four on a sprue.

[00:24:30] And while I haven't yet bought any of them to fulfill their function as donuts,

[00:24:35] I have bought a bunch of the green ones to aid in some green lantern mock shenanigans.

[00:24:44] I bought those by the sprue, which cost me 39 cents for four rings.

[00:24:52] Basically a dime a piece.

[00:24:57] Go Bricks also makes mixel joints.

[00:25:01] Mixel joints is not the official name for those parts.

[00:25:05] On BrickLink, the terms used are

[00:25:09] Modified 1x2 plate width

[00:25:13] And then, either small toeball

[00:25:16] or small toeball socket

[00:25:19] either on end

[00:25:20] or on side.

[00:25:23] The two outliers there

[00:25:26] are the one with a toeball

[00:25:28] and a toeball socket on either end

[00:25:31] and the most recently added piece,

[00:25:34] which simply has a toeball on each end.

[00:25:39] We need better terminology for these pieces than mixel joints.

[00:25:44] The mixels line was discontinued over seven years ago now.

[00:25:50] People new to the hobby

[00:25:51] have no idea why the older fans call these pieces mixel joints.

[00:25:57] It's because the mixel line is where these ball joint pieces first appeared, by the way.

[00:26:03] There are five different mixel joints parts available from Go Bricks.

[00:26:09] They run between 4 and 16 cents a piece

[00:26:12] and depending on which particular part you're interested in

[00:26:16] they come in a range of 30 to 45 different colors.

[00:26:21] There's also a handful of parts that you can get from Go Brick

[00:26:28] that Lego hasn't gotten around to manufacturing yet.

[00:26:33] Double-sided plates

[00:26:36] Cheese slopes with a stud on top

[00:26:42] Lego has a popular piece commonly called a Travis brick

[00:26:45] which is a 1x1 brick with a stud on all four sides of the brick

[00:26:51] in addition to the one on top.

[00:26:53] Go Bricks has made a 1x1x1 and 2 3rds tall brick version of the Travis brick.

[00:27:02] Two vertical studs on each of the four sides of that brick.

[00:27:10] Go Bricks doesn't yet make the 2x2 corner brick version of the masonry profile brick

[00:27:17] but I know that some of the clone brick companies do

[00:27:21] and I'm hoping that either Lego,

[00:27:23] Go Bricks, or

[00:27:26] ideally both

[00:27:27] start making those sometime soon.

[00:27:32] The main problem that I have with Go Bricks

[00:27:36] is that they do not currently have an American reseller.

[00:27:41] Ordering Go Bricks means ordering from overseas.

[00:27:47] This can be done, as I've mentioned,

[00:27:50] through WeBricks.com

[00:27:53] making sure to order their premium parts.

[00:27:58] My experience has been

[00:28:00] you get your package about a month after you order them.

[00:28:07] I've bought Go Bricks that have arrived more quickly than that

[00:28:11] from MyGoBricks.com

[00:28:17] I've also spent money

[00:28:20] in an effort to obtain Go Brick products

[00:28:23] from Aliexpress.

[00:28:26] But I've discovered that ordering

[00:28:29] pretty much anything off of Aliexpress

[00:28:33] is kind of a crapshoot.

[00:28:37] Case in point,

[00:28:39] I got two emails from Aliexpress

[00:28:41] while I was typing up the script

[00:28:45] for this episode in the middle of the night.

[00:28:49] These emails were to inform me

[00:28:51] that a couple of packages of Go Bricks

[00:28:54] I'd ordered had now been stuck in transit

[00:28:57] for long enough

[00:28:58] that there was no longer a guarantee

[00:29:00] of them ever being delivered

[00:29:03] and these orders were now eligible

[00:29:06] for cancellation and refund.

[00:29:10] So, I sighed deeply

[00:29:12] and started that process

[00:29:14] not realizing the investment in time

[00:29:17] it was going to take me.

[00:29:20] Aliexpress wouldn't allow me

[00:29:22] to apply for a refund

[00:29:24] for either of the two orders

[00:29:26] as complete orders.

[00:29:28] No.

[00:29:30] Their system forces you to apply

[00:29:32] for a separate refund

[00:29:35] for each item

[00:29:37] that you ordered individually

[00:29:40] within that order.

[00:29:42] Or in my case, those orders.

[00:29:46] These two orders were for

[00:29:48] 14 different lots of bricks

[00:29:50] and 16 different lots of bricks, respectively.

[00:29:55] So, I sat there

[00:29:56] and submitted 30 individual refund requests.

[00:30:01] The next morning,

[00:30:02] the money was back in my account

[00:30:03] but, wow.

[00:30:07] A lot of work went into that.

[00:30:12] And I've been waiting

[00:30:15] on a couple of other packages from them

[00:30:17] that I ordered just a few days after

[00:30:21] I'd ordered those two.

[00:30:23] And so now I have this fear

[00:30:26] that I will be submitting

[00:30:28] an untold number of refund requests

[00:30:30] to Aliexpress

[00:30:33] in the very near future.

[00:30:34] As indicated earlier,

[00:30:39] I'm not abandoning Lego.

[00:30:41] I'm merely opening myself up

[00:30:43] to the possibilities

[00:30:44] of expanding into GoBrix.

[00:30:49] Partly as a financially necessitated replacement

[00:30:53] but largely as an augmentation.

[00:30:59] And as I've ventured into the realm of GoBrix,

[00:31:03] I've started making up a personal rulebook

[00:31:06] for myself as to what I can buy and why.

[00:31:12] For example,

[00:31:15] there is currently one GoBrix element

[00:31:19] in the mocks that make up the Lego Haiku project.

[00:31:23] It is a piece that Lego makes

[00:31:26] and it is in a color that Lego makes that piece in.

[00:31:30] The only reason I'm using GoBrix in this instance

[00:31:34] instead of Lego is cost.

[00:31:37] BrickLink has this part on average

[00:31:40] for about $6.50.

[00:31:44] GoBrix has it for about a nickel.

[00:31:49] And from here going forward,

[00:31:51] any part substitution that happens

[00:31:54] inside of the Lego Haiku project

[00:31:57] must be a part that Lego makes

[00:31:59] in a color that Lego makes it in.

[00:32:03] So you aren't going to find

[00:32:05] a languid lavender double-sided plate

[00:32:07] in one of the Haiku.

[00:32:09] We here at the Lego Haiku project

[00:32:11] have our standards after all.

[00:32:15] As I sit here recording this episode,

[00:32:18] it is two days before Christmas.

[00:32:21] Notable things occurring on December 23rd include

[00:32:25] the semi-fictional holiday of Festivus,

[00:32:29] the Night of the Radishes in Oaxaca City, Mexico,

[00:32:33] and a number of birthdays,

[00:32:36] including those of Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam,

[00:32:39] actress Joan Severance,

[00:32:41] who once guest starred on an episode of Max Headroom,

[00:32:45] Susan Lucci,

[00:32:46] soap opera superstar who portrayed Erica Cain

[00:32:49] on All My Children

[00:32:51] from 1970 to 2011,

[00:32:56] and Reinhold Ouija,

[00:32:59] creator of the 1984 sitcom Night Court,

[00:33:03] among a number of other notable people.

[00:33:07] It's also my birthday,

[00:33:09] and the birthday of former Emperor Akihito of Japan,

[00:33:13] which is why, for the first 49 years of my life,

[00:33:17] my birthday was a Japanese national holiday.

[00:33:22] If all goes well,

[00:33:23] this episode will drop early in the morning

[00:33:25] on Christmas Eve day.

[00:33:28] Hopefully, either that night or the next morning,

[00:33:32] many of you will find

[00:33:34] that Santa has placed gifts of Lego

[00:33:37] either under your tree or in your stocking.

[00:33:40] So,

[00:33:41] Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone!

[00:33:45] And be sure and catch next week's episode of the podcast

[00:33:48] Battle Gorilla Lego podcast,

[00:33:49] when I'll be talking about what I've been referring to as

[00:33:52] the Metal Beard Experience.

[00:33:57] Links to the podcast's social media and wish lists

[00:34:01] can be found at battlegorilla.com

[00:34:04] slash links.

[00:34:06] If you like this podcast,

[00:34:08] please tell all your friends about it.

[00:34:10] If you don't inform your friends about the existence

[00:34:13] of the Battle Gorilla Lego podcast,

[00:34:15] who will?

[00:34:17] And, as always,

[00:34:19] if you don't like the podcast,

[00:34:22] go ahead and tell your enemies.

[00:34:26] The podcast's intro and outro themes,

[00:34:29] Podcasting is Awesome,

[00:34:30] inspired by Tegan and Sarah's Everything is Awesome,

[00:34:32] and Ode to Gibberish,

[00:34:34] were created by Michael Reich.

[00:35:04] Good luck on the prayers for junk food.