Best of BrickNerd — Article originally published January 19, 2022.

The last time you opened a new LEGO set, did you pay much attention to the packaging, or did you rip through it as fast as you could before proceeding to toss it in the trash or recycling? I’m willing to bet that most of us relate more to the latter of those scenarios.

Today I’m here to propose that maybe LEGO packaging deserves a second chance. After all, it is a LEGO product—what’s to say you can’t use it in a MOC, the same as any other LEGO piece? The following builds are from people who asked this question and used these pieces of “trash” in brilliant and ingenious ways to make some incredible LEGO masterpieces.

We’ll start our journey into the far reaches of purism with this pair of rovers by F@bz. If you’re wondering what that giant piece used as tanks on the back of them is, it’s actually not a piece at all but the container from a LEGO Creator set! LEGO released several small sets using this type of container from 2007-2012, and F@bz puts them to great use here, even going so far as to take advantage of the labels on their sides!

LEGO has tried its hand at several other types of canisters over the years as well, and here ~Koschei~ uses a canister from the Adventurers theme to depict an Egyptian statue laying in the desert. Its large scale works surprisingly well next to minifigures, towering over them majestically.

Raoul Baldwin used several Bionicle Barraki containers to form the glowing alien river at the bottom of this sci-fi outpost. Their texture gives the water (or ooze, or whatever alien substance it is) a much more realistic texture than could be achieved with regular bricks.

Isaac Snyder built this cargo freighter for SHIPtember 2020, and while building a SHIP is an impressive enough undertaking in its own right, he also managed to incorporate four of the pods from set 4004914 Armour Pod into the vessel, giving the hull a unique and creative profile.

David Zambito used the plastic handle from a large creator box to form the tube in this scene from the Super Mario video game. He even posted a breakdown showing how he did it in case you are still in doubt!

This hermit crab by Redverse appears to have taken up residence in a Pick-a-Brick cup—who knew that they made such good homes?! It’s a clever twist on the idea of hermit crabs moving between shells that pays perfect homage to these well-loved LEGO containers!

This blender by Caleb Flutur also utilizes a Pick-a-Brick cup to form the pitcher and lid. While the lack of conventional connection points on the cup may seem like a bit of a problem, Caleb gets around this problem by using official LEGO magnets wedged on the sides to connect the handle.

While the large scale of pick-a-brick cups may make them hard to incorporate into most creations, our own Simon Liu built this massive CL4P-TP robot that makes the cup look small by comparison! While personally, I’m not familiar with the source material, I can certainly admire the insane engineering and workmanship that went into this, as well as the perfect use of a Pick-a-Brick cup lid as the eye!

We’ve got one last example of dark puristry before we head back for the surface and cap this off. This undersea base by Galaktek brilliantly uses the sorting trays from LEGO set 21050 Architecture Studio for the glass roofs! He also posted a breakdown which you can check out here.

And with that, we conclude our “Dark Arts of LEGO” series. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and were maybe even a little inspired by it! So next time you finish opening up a new set and are about to throw out the packaging or come across some weird piece of LEGO merchandise, I hope you’ll give it a second thought before disregarding it as “weird” or “nonpurist,” because there’s a whole world of amazing possibilities waiting for you when you embrace the dark arts of LEGO.

You can check out the previous articles in this series here:

Have you used LEGO packaging in your MOCs before? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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