Queensland Museum reports pre-sale records for Brickman LEGO exhibition

The Queensland Museum has seen pre-sale records - 7,400 tickets sold in only two weeks - for its Brickman LEGO® exhibition featuring 50 displays and more than 1.3 million LEGO® bricks.

Queensland Minister for the Arts Leeanne Enoch notes “at a time when we cannot travel to see the wonders of the world ourselves, this exciting exhibition is the just the ticket to see international icons without leaving Brisbane.

“This exhibition promises to be a hands-on journey through history with these LEGO brick masterpieces, including Big Ben, The Titanic, The Space Shuttle, The Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza, the Arc de Triomphe and Queensland’s own natural wonder of the world, the Great Barrier Reef.

“So much work has gone into this exhibition. The 50 displays took the team 4,922 hours – or 205 days – to build.

“Visitors will also be able to get into the fun, as the exhibition will feature one million LEGO bricks for people to build their own creations.”

Queensland Museum Network Chief Executive Dr Jim Thompson added “It doesn’t matter what age you are, if you’re a master builder or just beginning your LEGO story, Brickman Wonders of the World will take you on a journey that will inspire your imagination.

“This is your chance to explore history’s greatest masterpieces, brought to life by LEGO professional and LEGO Master’s Australia judge, Ryan ‘Brickman’ McNaught.”

McNaught said he was excited to see the iconic LEGO Masters Australia Space Shuttle on display.

“This is such an iconic piece from season three in 2021 and it took the team 775 hours to build and is made with 167,891 LEGO bricks,” Mr McNaught said.

“Standing at 4.5 metres high – it certainly fits the criteria of a wonder of the world!”

Lego looks to sustainable alternative plastic
Lego is aware of the environmental issues surrounding its blocks which have been made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS since 1963 and, like many other manufacturers, is looking to fossil-free alternatives that are less polluting to the environment.

The hydrocarbon butadiene is derived from chemicals distilled from petroleum. Lego selected ABS as its material of choice for its structural strength and low chemical reactivity, its glossiness, its ability to incorporate vibrant colour pigments evenly within the material, and its capability to be extruded and moulded to create their interlocking shapes.

The robustness of ABS means that Lego bricks survive generations of play by both children and adults, with very little degradation or damage, even when you accidentally stand on them in the dark. While this indestructibility was one of the great selling points of plastics when they were first embraced as the future of manufacturing, we now better understand the issues that such persistent materials pose to our environment. It is for this reason that Lego, like many other manufacturers, is looking to fossil-free alternatives that are less polluting to the environment.

By researching plant-based plastics, Lego had hoped to join the likes of Vegware, with its compostable alternatives to plastic cutlery and food containers. Lego hopes to find a plant-based alternative that will not degrade over time, but will last for many generations of play.

Lego Facts

• More than 1.3 million LEGO Bricks were used on the display

• The 50 displays took Ryan McNaught and his team 4,922 hours to build (205 days)

• Altogether, the displays in the exhibition weigh more than tonne

• An additional 1 million LEGO bricks will be at the exhibition for visitors to build their own creations

• After the Space Shuttle the most time consuming display to create was Moscow’s St Basil the Blessed Church clocking up 320 hours in build time

• The next heaviest display is the RHS Titanic weighing in at 120 kilograms and taking the team 240 hours to build

• At 3.6 metres high the CN Tower is the second tallest build in the exhibition

• The Golden Gate Bridge stretches to 4.2 metres long, but is not the longest in the exhibition – that goes to the Tokyo Subway system map at 4.65 metres long

• The model with the second most bricks used is the Flying Scotsman, which is made up of 164,611 bricks

• Ryan McNaught and a team of seven Brickman builders worked together to create Brickman Wonders of the World

• The word LEGO was created by taking the first two letters of the Danish words LEG GODT, which means ‘play well’

• The humble LEGO brick is more than 50 years old - the bricks made in 1958, will still fit perfectly with those made today

• The moulds used to produce LEGO bricks are accurate to within two-thousandth of a millimetre (0.002 mm!). Because of this high degree of accuracy, there are only around 18 bricks in every million produced that fail to meet the company’s high quality standard

• There are over 4 billion LEGO Minifigures around the world

• Laid end to end, the number of LEGO bricks sold in a year would reach more than five times around the world

• On average there are 80 LEGO bricks for every person on earth

• LEGO is the world’s largest producer of car tyres (even if they are really small!)

Brickman Wonders of the World will open at Level 3 Queensland Museum on Friday 18th June and runs until 4th October.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit qm.qld.gov.au/brick