Last weekend I flew to Manchester to participate in Bricktastic, one of the most important British LEGO events that was finally back this year—not just after the two-year forced pause most of us had to endure because of the pandemic, but for the first time since July 2018! The weather that last time didn’t really help (it was a very sunny weekend in Manchester, would you believe that?) and many people chose to enjoy the sun elsewhere.

Welcome to Bricktastic! By Warren and Kitty Elsmore.

This time, it was a completely different world! Tickets were sold only online (because of COVID, I would assume, but probably also for general security reasons) and it was sold-out weeks before the event took place, which is just a great thing for an event like this, for obvious reasons.

So, we descended on Manchester, knowing that the event would be a success in any case, no matter what the weather would decide to do (and it was still sunny… but it was February, so it wasn’t a big deal)—7.000 tickets were sold and 7.000 people would show up!

The event is organized by Fairy Bricks. We’ve written about them before and I’m pretty most of you all know what Fairy Bricks is, but, to summarize it very quickly, Fairy Bricks is a British registered charity that brings LEGO sets to sick children in hospitals all over the world. The proceeds from the event will fund Fairy Bricks, so that’s another reason it was so great that it sold out.

The venue is amazing. It’s Manchester Central Convention Complex, an old station built in 1880, turned convention center. The event is not in the center’s iconic Central Hall (which is 10.000 square meters), but in the side “Exchange Hall” that’s about 2.000 square meters. It’s pretty big anyway, but of course, it would be awesome to be able to move to Central Hall in the future!

The Exchange Hall, before the crowds arrived.

Being in this venue also means that the event takes place in the heart of the city, which doesn’t really happen that often here in Europe. That’s a big plus because you’re two minutes away from everything (for example on Friday I visited the magnificent Manchester Science and Industry Museum that’s just around the corner from the event.) The hotel where we stayed was also five minutes away and the train station is 10 minutes away from the hotel. Which is 15 minutes away (by train) from the airport. You get the gist, it’s really easy to get there and you can just walk around when you’re there. And the food places! The first time I visited Manchester the first thing I noticed was that it was filled with places where you could eat and drink. You won’t starve in this city.

The event was open to the public during the weekend; an additional “AFOL only” day on Friday is being considered for the future, but this year Friday was simply the day to set up our MOCs. The Exchange Hall looks really very nice with its dark curtains and floor and also the tables had black cloth to cover them. The general feeling is certainly of a cozy and professional environment… almost warm (and it sure was warm when filled with people during the weekend.)

Most of the space was taken up by the MOCs but we also had a few traders, a great GBC run by Brickset’s one and only Huw Millington, a Blocks Magazine booth, the Fairy Bricks mosaic and tombola (raffle) and tons of parts for kids to play, including a big pool of sand green 2x4 bricks.

On Saturday and Sunday the public came… and boy, did they come! In the morning the venue was really very crowded (even too crowded for my current taste), but luckily in the afternoon it got a lot better.

The mosaic, as usual, was built by the public, one baseplate (with “instructions”) per person. (It’s the same exact way we do that here in Italy, I wonder who started with this format, many years ago…) The complete mosaic was a great celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Friends theme.

Moving on to the MOCs, there were a lot of very cool things. I'll try to mention the things I liked the most (no offense to the others, everything was really awesome!) First of all, I think the mosaics were really very cool, this year. There were many of them built by many people with many different techniques, from the classic 1x1 plates to the modern “Dots” rounded tiles. And they all looked fantastic.

There was a special room for Technic models, where, you could see a life-size(!) Jeep—that’s not something you see every day. Another thing you don’t see every day is a life-size LEGO Jeep getting smashed by someone getting on it (or, technically, off it.) You can find the video of that on Beyond the Brick or below if you think your heart can sustain that! (No, I wasn’t there when it happened…)

The tragic destruction begins around 2:25.

Another extremely cool thing was the Technic dinosaurs. I’m not into Technic at all, but these guys were just fantastic.

But probably my favorite MOC was “The Ark” by Ben Smith. You can read about what when into it and how it moves in Ben’s guest article on BrickNerd.

You can see more about it on his Flickr page.

Definitely worth mentioning is the impressive collaborative project by the British national LUG, Brickish. They build fifty-eight “Big Figs”, all in the same scale (a big one) and mostly the same style (some are a little different!) Really something to see!

And to close the MOCs topic, here are a few more of my favorites!

Besides the exhibition, during the weekend there were also a few talks, hosted by Rod Gillies and a Norwegian guy you might have heard of on these pages… Are M. Heiseldal. These were held in a separate room and were open to the public too, not just AFOLs.

Saturday schedule:

“Sarah MacShane”—an interview with LEGO UK’s Manager, Social Impact & Partnership.
“Women of LEGO”—a talk with Sonia Hudson, Kerry Barrass and Jessica Farrell.
“Steve Guinness - The LEGO Master Champ” (and also the fan designer of the typewriter, that he exhibited in the hall)

Sunday schedule:

“Steve Guinness - The LEGO Master Champ” (again!)
“Women of LEGO”—a talk with (our own!) Kitty Elsmore, Fairy Bricks’s Leanne Davies and Caz Mockett, whose mono-colour minifigures habitats we’ve featured here.
“Kev - The Hairy Fairy”—an interview with Kevin Gascoigne, the Head (and Hairy) Fairy at Fairy Bricks and main organizer of the event.

For AFOLs only we had our lounge room with tea (it’s England, y’all), coffee, snacks, and a few AFOL games, like the speed building tournament (that Are’s team won. Of course.). Also, available for everyone who needed them to complete their collections, tons and tons of Vidiyo 2x2 printed tiles!

On Saturday night the wall between the lounge room and the interview room was removed and the AFOL dinner was served. To help pass the time between courses, every table was given a bunch of old Mixel polybags and we were supposed to build a single big Mixel with them. Let’s just say our table built… something. I doubt it would have won had there been something to win. (But there wasn’t! So we didn’t lose, either.)

The dinner was followed by a hilarious auction hosted by AFOL Michael Le Count, —if you’ve never witnessed one of these… they can’t be told, only lived.

The event was an incredible success, and it was great to see so many known faces that I hadn’t seen in a while.

The MOCs are great, the people are friendly, the food is… British (no, I’m joking, especially breakfast at the hotel was awesome—if I had that every day I’d be dead in a month), the venue is fantastic, the city is incredible… yes, I’m strongly suggesting you take a trip to sunny Manchester, next year. Who knows, we could make it to the Central Hall…

AFOLs, Volunteers and Traders at the end of the show — Everyone at the end of the show!

Have you been to Bricktastic? Leave your memories in the comments below.

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