The Stuff of Nightmarezzz: Exploring the Darker Side of LEGO Dreamzzz
When LEGO offered the entire LEGO Dreamzzz lineup to BrickNerd, we knew we wanted to do something different with them. To celebrate the boundless creativity of the sets available now, we shipped them to various talented AFOLs to play with and dream about.
What would they do with the sets? Would they dream or have a nightmare? (If you’ve read yesterday’s article you already know the answer…) Let’s embrace the dark!
Aiden Rexroad’s Dream Dragon
Aiden Rexroad is from Florida and is a character and creature builder. They can be found online on BrickNerd, Flickr and Instagram. BrickNerd sent them sets 71457 Pegasus Flying Horse and 71459 Stable of Dream Creatures to see what they would dream about.
75413 Pegasus Flying Horse
When building this Pegasus, my first impression was that I love this set! As someone who builds creature MOCs, I was very happy to see some wonderful animal builds in LEGO Dreamzzz. My eyes were immediately drawn to the wing pieces that havn't been in a set in a few years. It also has three sets of printed eyepieces and a multitude of smooth curved pieces, all of which lend themselves kindly to creating your own animals.
The build itself was very enjoyable, especially seeing the creative way of positioning the front legs and the SNOT math on them. I will say that I'm not a huge fan of it not having knee or ankle joints—I know there are limitations that have to be followed for designing sets, but the set is greatly restricted from fun poses without those key joints. Lastly unrelated to the build itself, I am a huge fan of the colors of this model. Magenta, turquoise, coral, spring green, and purple are all very pretty colors that work wonderfully together.
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Flying Dream Dragon
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To keep with the fantasy animal theming of the original model, I decided to rebuild the Pegasus into a dragon. After seeing all my pieces, the wings stood out the most, but also the number of magenta rock plates instantly read in my mind as fur/spikes on a spine. That's where the whole idea started, and the rest fell into place as I built. I did lean into many parts of the set, mostly in the form of color blocking but also sharing building techniques for the legs and feet.
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I haven't done an alt build for a set in a very long time so this was a super fun refresher and really got my creative juices flowing. The set does offer great parts when staying in theme with the original build, such as the “maxaroni” that I used as the tail and as legs, and all the claw and spike pieces as horns, claws, and the end of the tail. My favorite part is probably the mouth which uses anti-studs as teeth. I thought this look completed the head and added a lot to the build in a way I otherwise wasn't able to achieve.
Placed next to my non-nightmare build, who do you think is going to win the coming fight?
Will Halfner’s Eldritch Horror
Will Hafner is from Seattle and is a psychopath fan of all wacky LEGO themes, especially Galidor, Clikits and Bionicle. He's usually making odd creations on BrickNerd, around Instagram, and occasionally on his Flickr. BrickNerd sent him 71453 Izzie and Bunchu the Bunny and 71454 Mateo and Z-Blob the Robot.
71453 Izzie and Bunchu the Bunny
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What can I say besides the fact that this really is a fantastic set. A giant bunny with rocket skates? You can't go wrong here. It has fun colors, and I love me some medium azure. The face is a tad creepy, but gosh do I love it. There is so much potential with those click-joint connections… But I still wish the Mixel joints came in the appropriate color rather than just the greys…
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I dove deep into nightmare territory and turned the bunny into… whatever this is. A space tentacle bunny? The Fantastic Beast head came in clutch here. Dreamzzz lore indicates that any of the main characters can Dream Craft, which lets them create and modify things within their dreams. When Izzy is really in a pinch, I imagine she could transform her fluffy friend into anything to suit her needs, even an eldritch horror…
71454 Mateo and Z-Blob the Robot
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Don’t we all wish we could turn dream our own characters into reality? That’s precisely what Mateo did here! With awesome colors and cool new Galidor-adjacent joint elements… You can see where this is going, can’t you? The set’s even got a goofy little dream spider—creepy. It’s nice to see those giant “maxaroni” pieces in a transparent color—I must now horde them… And did you know the limbs can be exchanged between sets?
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Z-Blob’s transparent elements inspired me to make something wacky. Say hello to the Progenitor Slime! This is what I’d imagine a corrupted version of Z-Blob would look like. Most of the villains we know of so far in the Dreamzzz sets are primarily in black colors with bits of magenta mixed in.
Gorm, the main Galidor villain, is mostly black with some purple details; not dissimilar to the Nightmare King’s minions! And don’t those new Ninjago orbs look stunning? But every villain needs an inspirational hero like…
Super Z-Blob! Well, super meaning if he had a fuzzy suit instead of his mechanical armor, he'd look something like this! Unfortunately, the new joints don’t mesh super well directly into Galidor sockets as they are a tad deeper than other joints, but if I can Galidorize something, I will. Sleep well tonight!
Casey McCoy’s Nightmare Guardian
Casey McCoy is from the Chicago-land area and is an avid AFOL. You can find him online on Flickr and Instagram. BrickNerd sent him set 71469 Nightmare Shark Ship to see what he would dream about.
Set 71469 Nightmare Shark Ship might look like a bedtime horror, but it is quite the dream for builders! In a great change of pace from typical building instructions, the manual follows a narrative with illustrations of our heroes and villains as the set slowly comes to life. The build itself relies on a lot more SNOT construction than most sets, particularly in the hull, while still blending a variety of building techniques.
The visual components may at first glance appear disparate (the mouth of a shark, wings, giant engines), but they come together to form a zany whole! This kind of imaginative building and fun is the kind of wacky, out-of-the-box fun that brings back some of the late-90s spunk of the Time Cruisers/Twisters that we’ve been missing!
Some great standout pieces I noticed included a plethora of dino tails (my favorite!), similar pieces from the tooth/barb family, lots of big wings, printed eye tiles, unique minifig designs, funky satin cylinders, and lots of curves. Most importantly: the set has plenty of swooshability (if you choose the ship version—though maybe don’t swoosh it around the airport like Joey did!)
The Nightmare Guardian
Inspired by the Dreamzzz line's alternate build instructions for finished models, I decided to springboard into an alternate build. Confined to only using the 1,389 pieces that come with the set (plus the extra tiny pieces), I tried to dream up a whole new character that would fit within the Dreamzzz world and lore. What resulted: The Nightmare Guardian. A subservient creature of the Nightmare King that acts as a mid-tier boss for our adventurers Mateo and Izzie. He may look formidable, but don’t worry—he is extremely fragile (because I made it)!
A few key pieces stood out while building the set that I knew I had to use—mainly the 1x1 and 2x2 printed yellow eyes. A head naturally followed, but early drafts had a much closer resemblance to The Mouth of Sauron (if you could see his eyes). A course correction was made by adding the snout and ears to give a more dragon-like appearance. That won’t give you nightmares, right?
As its body filled out, the build was planned to be a bipedal humanoid with stubby legs, sitting on an awe-inspiring throne—approximating something like The Goblin King depicted in The Hobbit. However, I decided to give him a more monstrous appearance in keeping with the Dreamzzz spirit of trying to be as zany as possible. About half to a third of the set’s pieces were left over which means you could build even more nightmares but I ran out of time. I’m really happy with this creature, although I wouldn’t like to run into it in the dream world!
We’ve seen what a few builders’ nightmares are, but what would a daydream bring? Check out the lighter side of LEGO Dreamzzz…
DISCLAIMER: These sets were provided to BrickNerd by LEGO. Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors.
What kind of nightmares will you build with LEGO Dreamzzz? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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