I’m going to Albury Brick Muster 2023 in October, hopefully for real this time!

Today I received notification that my application to exhibit Ice Station Icarus at Albury Brick Muster 2023 has been accepted.

Albury Brick Muster 2023 will run from the 21st to the 22nd of October in Albury NSW.

This will be my first time exhibiting in Albury and NSW, as last year the flooding across the state meant that we were sadly unable to attend. I am really looking forward to this year!

Tickets for the event are not available as yet, but when they are announced I will share the details here.

A few people have asked about the technique I haved used in my wrecked domes in my Ice Planet Badlands build, so I have just put together some instructions.

These instructions are for one panel of the dome, with the idea being that you would build as many as you need and join the open clips to the open clips od the next dome section to create the size of dome you desire. As with any of my instructions, please let me know if they are useful to you. I would love to see what you do with them!

I have built my own take on various classic LEGO themes in the past (Classic Space, Fabuland, Castle) and it is something I intend to keep doing, so I have for some time been aware that some AFOLs might not like my changes or adaptations, and this is okay.

With each of my builds I have made an effort to provide my reasoning and explain my stance or methods via blog posts, with the aim of bringing people on the journey with me in the hope that even if they don’t necessarily like the direction I am taking a beloved theme, they will at least understand the reasons behind my decisions.

For the most part this method has worked quite well. Most people have been supportive and positive, and in some cases even effectively cheered me on throughout the build. However recently with my current Ice Planet Badlands build I have experienced some shall-we-say frosty feedback and even some efforts at gatekeeping.

I find this particularly interesting as it is not really something that I have experienced with Classic/Neo-Classic Space fans, Castle fans or Fabufans. Is there something about Ice Planet 2002 that attracts these toxic fans?

I am not going to disclose where specifically each of the comments came from, though I am going to discuss what was actually said and how I would respond to the feedback.

“That colour scheme isn’t Ice Planet”

This statement would be quite factual if they added “2002” to the end of it, as it is true that the colour scheme I am using in my Ice Planet Badlands builds is not restricted to the four colours used in the original 1993 Ice Planet 2002 sets, but then again I have stated all along (even in the post this comment was responding to) that I am purposefully broadening the colour scheme, and I have given my reasoning for doing so.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand and appreciate why someone might want to restrict themselves to working with just four colours, and they have every right to do so, it is just not what I am doing in this project.

The idea that because they would personally prefer to only use the four colours of the original sets in their Ice Planet builds, that I am therefore somehow obliged to do the same lest I create something that is not Ice Planet is what I find the most offensive.

Where would they even get this idea? Whilst it is true that Ice Planet 2002 has a very limited four colour palette of blue, white, black and trans neon orange, what is also true is that when the LEGO group expand a theme into a second wave they invariably expand the colour palette, this can be seen in several examples that I can think of, but two examples are: Classic Space with it’s two colour schemes (light grey and trans yellow at first and then the addition of white, black and trans green) and with the different colour schemes for Blacktron I (yellow, black and trans yellow) and Blacktron II (black, white and trans neon green). If LEGO does not impose these restrictions on themselves, why are AFOLs trying to impose them on others?

“This doesn’t reflect the subject matter”

This one was written by someone who had no understanding of my aims for my project, and what they really meant – I can only assume – was “this doesn’t fit within my understanding of what Ice Planet can be”.

I would agree that my build does not represent Ice Planet 2002 (a missile and satellite research unit stationed on the Ice Planet of Krysto in the year 2002), but it does reflect Ice Planet Badlands (the remnants of the above research unit, 30 years after a great war has been fought on the planet).

To be fair to the person who made the comment (and I have taken an in depth look at what they like to build to try and understand what Ice Planet is to them) without reading my blog posts about my aims for Ice Planet Badlands, how could they understand what the subject matter of my builds was? I would posit to suggest that if I did not understand the aims or subject matter of someone else’s builds – and I genuinely wanted to find out –  I would ask.

The aims of their comment was, I believe, to gatekeep, to establish a boundary of what is a legitimate Ice Planet build and therefore exclude what is not. This kind of mentality serves no one. These types of boundaries and restrictions are a self-imposed confection, they do not represent the beliefs of The LEGO Group, which after all places no such restrictions on the correct way to appreciate their products and themes.

If we are to follow these imposed rules we could only feasibly build Ice Planet builds that are stuck in 1993, only use four colours as above, and restrict ourselves to builds that could inhabit the exact world and time period explored in the original sets. Sure, building within imposed limitations can be a great way to encourage creativity, however this does not seem to be the aim of these comments.

“Doesn’t match with Ice Planet 2002 …with the long ships and proud explorers”

This one is a little strange as it looks like they have misunderstood what was going on in the Ice Planet 2002 sets. The inhabitants in those original sets were not explorers, they were working on covert missile and satellite technology.

As far as ships go, in my build I have chosen to ground the inhabitants of Ice Planet Badlands, these are people who have been left stranded on Krysto. The additions of ships would entirely alter the premise and story behind my build.

“This is not Ice Planet 2002… leave it in the 90s with it’s own identity.”

I would agree with this one actually, my build is not Ice Planet 2002, it was never meant to be. Ice Planet 2002 is a theme comprised of eight sets from the 90s.

There does seem to be a suggestion in this person’s response that the act of building anything inspired by Ice Planet in a way other than just mimicking the 1993 sets in some way takes away from Ice Planet 2002. I believe the exact opposite to be true.

“What is this supposed to be?”

This one pretty much falls within the same category as the subject matter comment above, but it is particularly offensive as it implies that the build is so far beyond resembling the commenters understanding of Ice Planet as to be unrecognisable. I was reassured to see this comment receive a number of angry replies from other group members.

To play devil’s advocate this was commented on an early version of my build that was missing a lot of the trans neon orange and blue details, so the build is now a lot more representative of the Ice Planet colour scheme, and may not have garnered the same response if posted now, however I would suggest that this type of close minded response has no place in our LEGO communities.

I believe that gatekeeping in the LEGO building hobby pretty much amounts to people with no (or very limited) creativity trying to restrict the creative expression of others in an effort to make themselves feel better. In my opinion it should be called out for what it is.

I am pretty confident of my own abilities, and I have no problem with telling someone when their comments are unwarranted on my, or indeed anyone else’s posts, so these kinds of comments have little effect on me, however I did feel compelled enough to write a blog post.

I do find it interesting that this little space theme from 1993 seems to attract this type of fan, though don’t misunderstand me – these comments came from a vocal minority – by far the overwhelming majority of Ice Planet fans have been positive and welcoming to myself and other builders.

I would hope that AFOLs remember that the LEGO hobby is first and foremost about self expression and enjoyment and we all get something different out of it. I would certainly prefer to see people encouraging creativity in others rather than attempting to police some misguided adherence to a restrictive set of confected “standards”.

What do you think?

I don’t want people to think that my build is meant to be a reimagined Ice Station Odyssey itself  – because it isn’t – but I do like the idea that it might be seen as another as-yet-unseen Ice Station, now derelict.

So the next step was to come up with a name for the ice station that could be a companion to Ice Station Odyssey. I began by thinking about the word odyssey itself and looking for synonyms at Thesaurus.com but there was nothing that really worked.