Baby Scale and Beyond: The Guardians of LEGO Space Babies
It's fairly well known that I have an affinity with frogs—LEGO frogs—and love building with them. What’s generally less known (and less posted) is that I’m also quite fond of playing with babies. Again, LEGO babies.
Throw in the fact that I’m one of BrickNerd’s resident LEGO Space posers (sorry for missing you, UniTron), and it was probably a good bet that I’d be the one to talk about the LEGO’s gift with purchase 40712 Micro Rocket Lanchpad, or as everyone calls it “BABY SPACE.”
set provided by LEGO
To answer your question of “How do I get this!?” the GWP is available with a purchase of at least 200 EUR/ 200 USD/ 320 AUD at your respective LEGO Store or Shop at Home.
The promotion is available to Insiders (free to join) through Feb. 18th and then to everyone until Feb. 25th or until supplies are gone.
Building Babies?
While I'm probably not the best AFOL to rate the building experience of sets (I don't often get to build them since I build MOCs most of the time), I can report a high correlation of giggling and amusement while building this particular GWP. The not-quite-micro/not-quite-minifigure scale of the set made it a unique building experience for me.
So much so, that I had to do a fun little build to commemorate this report. This set needs a mech!
rawr baby space yayyyyyyy!!!!
That said, as an occasionally reputable LEGO Fan Media, we must report that babies in the much-fabled Space Baby GWP… aren’t babies at all! That’s right, dear reader—while they may look the part, they are, in fact, not babies.
Left: new GWP Baby shaped figure, Right: CMF Baby Figure
A close-up examination of these faux babies shows that they do not have the distinctive and lovable baby smiles and sparkles of life in their eyes, but rather the classic LEGO smiley face… which makes these not Space Babies but Space Man-Babies! Or Space Woman-Babies! Ohhhh the horror!
While I couldn’t get a quote by press time about this babifying of space, I did some background research with some of the best (LEGO) baby-building experts in the community.
Baby Expert #1: Baby Space
One notable baby maker is Dana Knudson aka troublesbricking who has actually built the entire Classic Space line in Baby-scale which you can read up more on in BrickJournal #83.
I asked Mr Knudson how it feel’s to steal Simon’s thunder:
Dana: [Loud laughter.]
I quickly asked my next question: Why Babies, and why recreate every classic space set?
Dana: [Still laughing...] The short answer, I'm obsessive. When I saw the space baby, I thought it would be cute to make just a few classic sets in Baby-scale. Then I thought, "What about just all the sets from the first wave?" Then my brain kicked into "Well, why not all of them?" and once I started, I owed it to myself to build them all. In truth, it just became fun and a challenge. Taking something I'm already passionate about and giving it a fresh look.
Which begged this Reporter’s very serious question: How do you make Baby Space? How did you approach building around the Baby-scale?
Dana: [Awkward pause.] Well, it’s about the scale comparison to a regular minifig. I know how I would build something to minifig scale, so I scaled everything down to half. But that’s just a starting point because LEGO math doesn’t always work out that nicely. Sometimes you have to find the right balance. Shrinking a build from 4-stude-wide down to 2-wide doesn’t leave enough room to fit the details sometimes, so I made it 3-wide. Bricks are three plates high so you can’t half it. Sometimes, two plates work; other times, it’s just one. Again, you have to find a balance for the desired look instead of keeping with an exact scale.
Scaling and building seems actually like the easy part, the hard part is how did you even GET that many babies? I can feel my parent’s disappointment at my lack of baby collection.
Dana: Persistence, friendships and luck. I spent several months regularly checking the stores near me every week for the CMF they came in. The key was finding a store that got restocked before they got picked over. I had a buddy who was looking for Orcs. When I would find a fresh case, I’d grab him Orcs and he traded me the figs I was looking for. It also helped to be on good terms with the employees at my local LEGO store. If I showed up at the right time they’d bring out a fresh case that I could pull figs from. And a few of my LUG mates would also hook me up with a few. I was happy when I finally got the number I needed for my project.
I count almost 50 space babies in those three photos, so yeah, that’s a lot of CMF collecting… but Baby-scale doesn’t only pertain to space.
Baby Expert #2: Baby Castle
Joining our LEGO Baby Panel is Martin Harris aka bricksnaps / The Beautiful Brick who has a slightly different reason for starting on the Baby-scale theme:
Martin: I started building babies when hanging with Mark and Stephen Erickson (of LEGO Masters US Season 2 fame) at BrickFair Alabama years ago. My daughter had been collecting babies and the baby dragon elves, and I told them I would build a LEGO baby castle for them.
Interesting! So, while Dana’s motivation was obsession, yours was wanting to beat the Ericksons! I can approve of that. You’re traditionally known for making these wonderfully large Disney creations—how was it to suddenly shift scales and sizes so dramatically?
Martin: It was fun to scale down and use fewer parts for greater effect, wanting to keep a level of detail that’s defined by the pieces.
Dana: Right! And not all elements have a smaller counterpart. You have to start looking at parts in a different way. It forces you to find creative ways of using parts to represent something it is not, such as a bucket handle to represent two antenna levers or a 1x1 inverted bracket as a chair.
Martin: Also, the added joy of building at this scale is that builds are finished a lot quicker; most of the builds were 1-2 days of piddling. And you can photograph a scene better when it’s smaller.
Well we have Baby Space, Baby Castle, and Baby City… what other major Baby theme are we missing?
Baby Expert #3: Baby Pirates
One of the real trailblazers of the baby-building movement is BrickNerd’s own Geneva Durand, who was one of the first to really dive into Baby-scale builds (even publishing instructions for a Baby-scale build long before the official Space Baby was produced). So I had to ask her, how did you go down the baby path?
Geneva: The idea came from just thinking the LEGO baby was adorable and wanting to find a way to include it in MOCs as something other than, well, a baby. It seemed so logical to put a hat on it (and it looked really cute! ). It started off with a knight as an entry to the Colossal Castle Contest or maybe Summer Joust.
After that, I found that they made great small gifts, so I built babies in themes that I thought family and friends would like. What comes next... boy, I don't know. I love the concept, but I find it hard to build babies on a larger scale. I've tried one larger Baby-scale MOC (20x20 studs, I think), and while I loved it, it wasn't a particularly popular MOC. I still have a dozen ideas or so for smaller ones and have even thought of writing a kids book and illustrating it with LEGO babies (which I still think would be terribly cute), but it's been on the back burner for more ambitious projects.
Ah, so the motivation here is cuteness, which differs from our first two Baby Panelists. So then I ask you as well, how do you approach building Baby MOCs?
Geneva: Pick your very favorite thing, scale it down, and put a baby in it! Baby builds are great because they're small enough to be fast builds and not take up a ton of bricks, but they still have personality—and, of course, loads of cuteness!
I like the simplicity of your approach, the other two panelists felt kinda technical for me. Plus, this way is more cute!
Babies Expert #4: Baby Scala
Okay, we finally have our last Panelist in our investigative Baby report, Micah B (Hacimbricks), who started his journey in a more unconventional way by building with Scala Babies.
Which, as this reporter must be honest about, are slightly more horrifying than Space Man-Baby faces... Fair warning.
So I asked him what’s with the babies:
Micah: Babies provide a very diverse set of possibilities. They can be used in some of the cutest MOCs… and in some of the weirdest. I think they provoke a stronger emotional response than regular minifigures could, and they also just provide a fun scale to build around. I also greatly appreciate children.
So we have... Obsession, Rivalry, Cuteness and now Weirdness as the core motivations of our Baby builders! Given your particular expertise on babies, what’s your approach to making Baby MOCs?
Micah: The others said the good points, but I think the biggest difficulty is usually giving the babies accessories. Hats are easy, but if you want your baby to be holding or wearing something, it's pretty hard to find parts that scale well. But the bar connections for the head and hands also provide a lot of interesting possibilities:
Micah: And then Scala babies are a whole different level, seeing as they have no connection points. But rubbery parts can come in handy to accommodate that:
Um... thank you for that… detailed photographic answer. I’m sure I’ll sleep peacefully tonight…
Having done multiple Baby Collabs including Scala Baby (2017), Baby Mechs (2018), Sewer Babies (2019), and Bellville Baby Wars (2022), which is your favorite baby?
Micah: I think the regular baby is more broadly usable, and it's what you'll see more of from me in the future. The Scala baby is probably my favorite though, just because of its uniqueness and the great memories of the collab we were able to pull off with it.
That wraps up our romp through Baby scale. Thank you all to our panelists for proverbially dipping our baby toe into the waters of such an interesting topic!
Big Babies
But dear reader, with the recent Up-Scaled Minifigure sets, I should note that there is another baby scale permutation that we haven't discussed… that of the Up-Scaled Baby! Now, not much is known about this secret brick-built baby cabal, but these teal-coloured babies were spotted at Brickworld Chicago 2023 worshiping some idol:
If I find out more about this baby mystery, I'll report back. This is Simon Liu reporting!
DISCLAIMER: This set was provided to BrickNerd by The LEGO Group. Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
What other baby builds would you like to see built out of LEGO? Let us know in the comments below.
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