Robo Kiwi wins comp for Jesse
When it comes to Lego, 7-year-old Jesse Larsen is as solid as a brick.
Jesse, who is home schooled by parents Brent and Dianne at their Chartwell home, has been chosen as the nation’s best Lego builder after creating Robo Kiwi from scratch.
The part-robot, part- Star Wars walking machine took Jesse two weeks to build with the help of his dad.
He used pieces from four Lego Star Wars sets – The Twilight, a spice freighter used by Anakin Skywalker in The Clones Wars TV series, an ARC-170 Starfighter, from Episode III of the film series, and two Y-wing Starfighters, from The Clone Wars and Episodes IV to VI.
At first Jesse didn’t know what to build.
‘‘I could not decide, but dad asked me if I was going to build a moa or a kiwi.’’
Research included a trip to the Auckland Zoo Kiwi House.
‘‘It was pretty slow the first week, trying to figure things out, and then it was pretty frantic in the second week,’’ Mr Larsen said.
On the day the entry had to be in at Toyworld, Hamilton, Jesse was up at 5am to finish the project and managed to get the entry into the store 10 minutes before the 5pm deadline.
The finished model, propped up by a Lego brick stand, has an articulated head, beak, legs and toes and is piloted by none other than a Lego figurine of archaeologist Indiana Jones and a Soviet soldier from Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Debbie Gray, owner of Hamilton’s two Toyworld stores, had a feeling Jesse’s entry would win the national competition when it arrived at her shop.
It was one of 3500 entries in the national competition which has been running nearly 10 years. Every store also had a winner. Jesse got a call on Saturday – his birthday – to say he had won.
Hugh Campbell, Lego’s New Zealand manager, presented Jesse with his prize – a Lego trophy and tickets for an allexpenses paid trip with his family to Legoland in California – at the Te Awa branch of Toyworld yesterday.
Mr Campbell said other entries had included Kiwi designs but nothing as sophisticated as Jesse’s model.