Ring Ring: A History of LEGO Telephone Games
Source: Flickr
I didn’t play many playground games as a kid and certainly never played the Telephone Game. Like most things in my life, I learned about it through TV.
What is the Telephone Game? In a circle or line, one person whispers a phrase into another person’s ear and they must repeat it to the next person, continuing the sequence until everyone has heard the phrase and shared it. The final person in the sequence says aloud what they heard, which is often met with a hilarious result, as by the time the initial word or phrase is whispered to the entire group, it often changes completely. Now, what is the Starfighter Telephone Game?
The idea of the game is simple: someone builds a starfighter, gives the model to the next builder, and then they build a new iteration of it. Similar to the kid's game, as the build gets passed along, it will take on new design sensibilities, often barely resembling the original creation. To quote the official Rules of Engagement:
Specifics: There are no restrictions as far as the build goes, but homage must be paid to the inspiration MOC that you receive in the mail. You shouldn’t drastically alter the scale of the MOC; everyone should receive at least a reasonably similar amount of bricks for the ones they mail out.
The Starfighter Telephone Game: First Round
The first round of Starfighter Telephone Game (STG) began on March 25th, 2011. Eventually, the round and team of builders was dubbed “Team Neptunian Molasses.” The name of Starfighter Telephone Game - or more simply STG - is speed, or really the lack thereof.
The first team was given the name Neptunian Molasses because, well, they were slow. Contrary to the goal of having a month’s time to build an entry, the game was completed on April 23rd, 2014. It took 1,125 days for nine builders to collectively finish the game of telephone. In response to the lengthy timeline, jesting with other players about not meeting deadlines became a staple of STG.
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The game naturally diverges from the classic playground game. Instead of trying to preserve the original meaning of a sentence or phrase given, the primary goal of Starfighter Telephone is to honor previous builds by retaining key design features and colors while still making the newest iteration of the ship unique.
More Rounds, More Teams
Inspired by the slow process, Starfighter Telephone was a unique community event that builders wanted to participate in—and who wouldn’t? The first round was before my time in the community, but I was itching to jump in when a second round was announced before the first was even finished. Round two began on January 31st, 2012.
Unlike round one, there were to be two concurrent teams, each with a unique starting build. This added a race and rivalry between the teams that would get the game moving faster and maybe even get the slow pokes from round one to finish.
One of the two teams, Skin Suits, was able to finish in what was then a record time of 503 days. Skin Suits was also the first team to ever finish the game, beating out those in round one who had started nearly a year prior.
Source: Flickr
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STG: Legacy
STG continued for four years with a total of seven rounds started and 26 different teams. I finally was good enough to enter this unique community build, having built for three of the classic rounds. During one of these rounds I determined I could save on shipping if I simply built the starfighter last minute, the day before I drove off to Chicago.
Source: Flickr
A status board was designed to track the Starfighter Telephone Game's successes and failures. Twenty-six teams started, and ten have completed the game. (Shoutout to Team Don, which had the fastest completion time of 226 days.)
Below is a list of the teams that completed their rounds, as expressed in Days per Fighter (D/F). By these metrics, Pascal’s Pony Express beats out Team Don with the shortest number of Days per Fighter.
Pascal's Pony Express - 8 of 8, Completed Nov. 6, 2014; 290 days, 36.25 D/F
Team Don - 6 of 6, Completed July 2, 2013; 226 days, 37.6 D/F
The Empire - 7 of 7, Completed April 4, 2014; 285 days, 40.7 D/F
Da Galactic Mac Daddies - 6 of 6, Completed September 3, 2013; 289 days, 48.2 D/F
Skin Suits - 8 of 8, Completed June 16, 2013; 503 days, 63.5 D/F
Team Wolf Shipping Co. - 6 of 6, Completed November 29, 2015; 520 days, 86.6 D/F
Invaders from the Xth Dimension - Completed 8 of 8 November 18, 2016; 731 days, 91.38 D/F
Team Neptunian Molasses - Completed 10 of 10 April 23rd; 1125 Days, 112.5 D/F
T.E.L.E.R. - Completed 7 of 7 May 6, 2018; 1265 days, 180.7 D/F
Intergalactic Amazons - Completed 6 of 6 November 7, 2020; 2,244 days, 374 D/F
Monkey See, Monkey Do!
It wasn’t long before others caught on to the Telephone Game craze, and the Mecha Telephone Game was born! Much like the original game, it was full of amazing creators, builds and lengthy build times.
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The first and only round started in 2015 is still ongoing, but they’re on their last leg.
Building ASMR
One of the most interesting takes on the Telephone game was Symphony of Construction. Started by Paul Vermeesch, this game challenged players to listen to a piece of music and build a model inspired by the music.
Source: Paul Vermeesch
The next person in sequence would be a composer who’d see the build and compose a piece of music based on the MOC. There have been three rounds of Symphony of Construction, each working better than the last. Yours truly participated in the first round, and it’s fun to say that Symphony of Creation is the only game with a 100% success rate, as the completed challenge is published once the entire round is completed.
A deep dive article could be dedicated to Symphony of Creation, so you might see me write about it again later. Take a moment, grab a coffee, and check out round three as presented by Paul.
Speed Round
In response to the original STG’s lengthy build times, a speedy version of the telephone game was devised by Roanoke Handybuck. The base rules were the same. However builds wouldn’t be shipped off to the next player and a strict time frame of two weeks was given to complete a build.
While the new rules worked well, the new game arguably missed the heart of STG: the razzing of late players and, more importantly, the gifting of a build to a fellow creator.
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Telephone Home Game
Not all telephone games are organized group ventures. There’s actually a home version where one can build new iterations of their own work. It can be as simple as color swapping or maybe adding different weapons or accessories and calling it a day.
There have been some masterful attempts at the home version, like Brickworld Master Casey McCoy’s builds. McCoy built fully posable figures and made a series of creations representing aspects of the color wheel. While each build allows for individual interpretations, I like to think of the builds as colorful representations of emotions.
Secret photo snuck out of the Casey Mccoy Gugick labour camp
Telephone Homage Game
An even more tangential version of the telephone game is the accidental or homage version, in which participants don’t even realize they are playing a telephone game. I’m only aware of one such round where the seed build was provided by dasnewten who built the Prometheus and provided instructions for all.
Source: Flickr
The next particpant, ZachMoe, took these instructions and made his own variation on dasnewten’s design, adding upgrades and cleaning up some of the SNOT work to create the Epimetheus.
Source: Flickr
Zach bestowed to me the Epimetheus which got him out of his dark ages—it was one of the greatest builds I’ve ever received since I created SHIPtember.
I wasn’t purposefully trying to continue the telephone game, but I did end up using the Epimetheus to build a small diorama as an appropriate response to such an amazing gift.
Source: Flickr
It wasn’t until SHIPtember 2023 that I inadvertently played the next chapter of the Telephone Homage Game (which inspired this article). I used dasnewton and Zach’s builds and made my own, stretching it out to 100 studs.
ATLAS Class battle carrier - Source: Flickr
While a fun exercise, it didn’t really capture the right proportions and style, given the scale increase. As a result, I decided I needed one more iteration.
Source: Flickr
Call Return
The popularity of these LEGO telephone games has gone down a bit. Why was this so popular back then, even when it became evident there was a low chance of completing a round? Or when it was very likely that someone would not have the parts necessary to participate, or not receive a starfighter? I have an idea.
Starfighter Telephone Game harkens back to an age when LEGO conventions weren’t as big or well-known. I have been extremely blessed and privileged to be able to travel to many conventions across North America and beyond. But it wasn’t always this way, and not everyone is privileged enough to be able to experience it.
I can see how STG was a proxy convention, in a sense. Though it was through the mail, participants could physically interact with other builders’ creations. Participants conversed with one another, mainly through praise or jeers if one was slow. There was a clear community working effectively in a collaborative effort, much like what can be seen at LEGO conventions today.
So the next time you quote a builder in a MOC, you are playing the LEGO telephone game that started long ago, whether you know it or not.
Have you ever played the telephone game? Did you recognize that first MOC as a telephone? Let us know in the comments below.
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