The creations on display at Wasatch County Library’s annual LEGO Build Contest on Friday proved that anything is possible for a master builder. 

Some builders thought outside of the box, using cotton balls to imitate smoke or wrapping scraps of an old blanket around a LEGO sword to create an elephant’s trunk.

Highlights included dinosaur sanctuaries, war scenes and a concert featuring minifigures of music’s greatest icons: Elvis Presley, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, Michael Bublé, Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, Luke Combs and Eminem. 

There was even a build of the library itself, which earned the honor of being Young Adult librarian Brittnie Hecht’s favorite entry.

Nine-year-old Carl Johan (CJ) Löfving won first place in the kids’ category for a deadly labyrinth he’s been working on since Halloween, complete with spiders, wolves and a skeletal guard. 

CJ’s only advice to anyone who dared enter the maze was, “You should know that there is a big chance that you will die.”

The proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was a treasure chest full of enough dynamite to make a miner blush.

Aside from drawing, building LEGO is one of CJ’s favorite hobbies.

“We built LEGO when I was pregnant with him, and when he was born, we had all the DUPLOs,” explained his mom, Erica. 

Erica explained that her family is Scandinavian and that CJ was born in Sweden.

Erica, who is a freelance sustainability consultant, appreciates LEGO for its environmental initiatives. She provided LEGO’s introduction of paper-based bags instead of plastic as an example.

“LEGO is actually really good at sustainability. They do a lot of big, high-level work, and they do a lot of testing, too,” she explained. 

Erica also appreciates LEGO for the way it sparks creativity in children and adults. 

She was far from the only one who’s been convinced by LEGO’s “Adults Welcome” marketing campaign. It seems to have worked on 49-year-old Paul McAllister, who won in the adult category for the fourth time — “not that there are a lot of entrants,” he said.

McAllister’s blue ribbon build was a transportable field lab for two scientists. The lab has a hook on top, allowing it to be picked up by LEGO’s Technic VTOL Heavy Cargo Spaceship LT81 set. A product of careful tinkering, the laboratory pod’s lid opens and closes smoothly, and a crank on the side extends and retracts its legs.

“That was a couple of Sundays’ worth of engineering, just sweating there, sitting uncomfortably, figuring out how I was going to do it,” McAllister said.

He even engaged in some illegal building techniques, anarchic methods not sanctioned by the powers that be. McAllister’s greatest sin was drilling a hole into a lunar base plate from a 1983 Base Supply Station set he’s had since he was 8 years old.

It was a necessary sacrifice so he could thread lights from six AAA batteries taped to the bottom of the plate into LEGO gems, making them glow.

McAllister’s father was an electronics engineer, and McAllister works in cybersecurity. For him, the engineering side of LEGO, particularly in their Technic line, is the best part.

“You get to mix imagination with real motion, motors, lights,” McAllister said.

With his kids, McAllister has created around seven “BattleBots.” BattleBots is an online community that uses Technic LEGO parts and miniature motors to create robots that duke it out. 

“We’ve got real damage on our kitchen floor over the past two months,” McAllister said. 

He is thinking about creating and coaching a league of neighborhood kids whom he’s gotten to know through annual “LEGO parties.” Every summer, he’ll invite the whole neighborhood to join him in building a gigantic set.

“We literally will cut the instruction book, the spine of it, and hand it out to the different teams,” McAllister explained. “It’ll still take four hours with 12 or 15 kids to build a huge set.”

According to McAllister, the key to becoming a master builder is organization.

“(My family) spent all of last General Conference, 10 hours and in between, during the breaks, sorting LEGOs,” McAllister said. “All the building happens on the floor because the floor is the natural place to build LEGOs. But it’s clean. We’re building all on trays now. We moved from a terrible situation where you’re stepping on LEGOs right and left to a tidy system.”

McAllister wasn’t always into LEGO. He “fell out of love” with the company around the turn of the millennium, when the sets didn’t excite him. Then, the LEGO Exo-Force series came out. 

“(They’re) giant, Japanese-style robots, and I could not resist,” McAllister said. 

It’s been a steady spiral ever since.

“It’s kind of like skiing. I wasn’t really into skiing, and then I became really into skiing,” he said. “LEGOs, if you just keep buying them, it turns out you end up with a lot of them. … And with a lot of LEGOs, you can do a lot of things.”

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Every first Tuesday of the month, the Summit County Library hosts the Lego Club — a free session from 3:30-5 p.m. for kids. Some of the Legos were donated and children also have the option to play with Duplos. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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