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This year marked the 25th anniversary of The Hobby
Show which takes place every first weekend in November, at the International
Center in Toronto, Ontario. This year was also the first time that the LEGO
hobby was represented at the show, which has for many years has featured plastic
model builders, RC boats and cars, Meccano models, train layouts etc.
For this year’s show a number of members of rtlToronto as well as other LEGO builders from across Ontario came together to
form Can-Brick Builders. While
not the largest display booth at the show, we managed to setup a display that
earned us the Best Club Booth of the year award. This was the first time in
the show’s history that such an award was given out. My personal thanks to
everyone who participated in the booth and whose efforts helped us to win this
acknowledgment.
The rtlToronto members setup a train layout at the front corner of our display.
The booth itself was basically two sides of a square (30 feet in length on each
side) with one side having an indented area that allowed us to include more
tables. This also enabled the crowds to spread out along different edges of the
booth. In all we filled about 70 feet of table space.
The builders helping to run the booth changed each day, with our highest number
being on Saturday when more people were able to be there. However, since some
of our members came Friday and Sunday only we were able to have enough people to
cover the booth successfully.
Over the course of 3 days we saw between 20,000 and 25,000 people come through
the doors. Once they found our booth (which was located across an aisle from the
Meccano display) it was wonderful to see all the eyes light up. You could
easily tell that young and old alike were happy to see the range of models that
we had set up.
Among the items that helped draw attention to our exhibit included:
- Derek’s 6+ foot tall working model of the Zipper ride
- rtlToronto’s trains, including Calum’s train station and Dave’s fire hall
- Jacub’s tall and thin but realistic crane
- The 12X space buggy by Derek (the rtl Derek, not the other Derek)
- Rodrigo’s sci-fi inspired space vehicles
- Ken’s Spybotics display
- John’s technic mountain bikes
- Calum’s high speed train
- Oliver’s very unusual prop driven locomotive
- A 9-foot tall CN Tower (which nearly met disaster twice on the final day!)
- Paul’s mecha creations
- Jeff’s truly inspired chess set
- Ben’s castle themed models
- Michael’s functioning Connect-4 bot (did a human ever win against it?)
- Dave’s modified Hailfire droid with avoidance sensors
There were, of course, other models large and small that helped to round out our
display. My apologies if I’ve missed someone else who brought models.
Like any good LEGO exhibit there had to be the destruction of at least one large
model. We certainly had that. Ironically, the weekend started out with a
crash. While unloading on Thursday around noon Derek and I watched helplessly
as the drive component of his Zipper model pitched out of the van and onto the ground. Time seemed to stand
still as the tinkling sound of loose bricks on pavement echoed through the air.
It was my fear that this was a bad omen for the Zipper.
Happily, I was wrong. The Zipper got set up and worked beautifully, once its
main motor was realigned. On Friday morning Derek was then able to finish
setting up the Flying Bobs
ride for which he is well-known. But dark clouds were on the horizon. During a
normal demo of the ride (which runs as quiet as you can imagine) the control
mechanism to the drive motor got stuck. The ride spun faster and faster until
centrifugal force took over and eventually gravity won out, as several of the
columns supporting the roof gave way. The rest, including that awful crumpling
sound, made all of us sad.
But out of disaster can come great things. It was amazing to see how fast the
rtlToronto guys set about gathering up the debris so that Derek could step aside
and collect his thoughts. And Derek (who could have yelled or worse) simply
carried on, demonstrating the working Zipper for the remainder of the weekend.
His efforts and his resilience were a delight to witness.
The rest of the weekend went remarkably well. We handed out stickers and
posters from the LEGO Event Kit and answered the “where can I buy LEGO for my
kid?” question time and again. My sincerest thanks to everyone who helped staff
the booth and took the time and effort to bring along your creations to show to
everyone. Thanks also to the spouses and significant others who stopped by,
including Marketa and her delicious oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. The group
effort was what made this event such a big success.
If you’re interested in seeing what our exhibit looked like, please stop by some
of these pages:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=62763
More of my pics are still to come.
http://sparky.i989.net/rtl0310a.htm
http://sparky.i989.net/rtl0310b.htm
http://sparky.i989.net/rtl0310c.htm
http://sparky.i989.net/rtl0310d.htm
Thanks Dave!
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=62785
Thanks Ben!
If you have any questions about the show, or think you might like to be involved
if we do this again next year, please email me at:
Can-Brick Builders@apotome.com
Thanks again everyone!
Allan B.
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