You'll Put Someone's Eye Out

January 27, 2011 5:02 PM

Badass Lego Guns, a short YouTube video (1.55) showing five working guns built from instructions from the book of the same name by Martin Hudepohl.

From the bookstore site: "Badass LEGO Guns is packed with building instructions for five impressive looking "weapons" built entirely from LEGO Technic parts. In this heavily illustrated 4-color book, you learn how to use LEGO Technic pieces to build working model guns like the Warbeast, a sophisticated, fully-automatic submachine gun; Parabella, a semi-automatic pistol; Thriller, a slide action crossbow pistol with smooth cocking and chambering mechanisms; and the Magic Moth, a simple butterfly "knife" built with Technic pieces."

"Martin Hudepohl, a.k.a. Xubor, built his first LEGO guns in the early 1990s and has been developing ever-more sophisticated models since. He is a freelance programmer, who also composes original music. He lives in Germany."

posted by bwg (18 comments total)

Badass indeed.
posted by masters2010 at 5:04 PM on January 27, 2011

Well, there goes playing with Legos on the airplane. Sorry, kids.
posted by blaneyphoto at 5:10 PM on January 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'll see you and raise.

More seriously, thanks for the post. They make my childhood muzzle loading pirate ship cannons look pretty puny.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 5:11 PM on January 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

So this is basically just a ad to buy a book?
posted by Malor at 5:19 PM on January 27, 2011

This is just Pepsi Blue with bricks.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 5:22 PM on January 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, there goes playing with Legos on the airplane. Sorry, kids.ß
To go a step farther, would the TSA really wanna fuck with someone who would willingly smuggle one of those in a body cavity? Bad ass indeed.
posted by I love you more when I eat paint chips at 5:25 PM on January 27, 2011

I remember when Lego couldn't make any kind of gun.
posted by scruss at 5:28 PM on January 27, 2011

Malor: "So this is basically just a ad to buy a book"

Sure looks that way, but I posted it anyway because there have been lots of Lego gun mentions in the Blue, and despite the book appearance at the end of the video, the weapons themselves were fairly intricate.

You don't have to buy the book if you don't want to, but it does help to know where these came from.
posted by bwg at 5:34 PM on January 27, 2011

Introducing the young mind to the workings of automatic weapons at an early age is great for their confidence, and works wonders at avoiding those embarrassing mid massacre fumbles that can occur later in life.
posted by the noob at 5:37 PM on January 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

Heh, these are great. They are very pretty and clever and work very well compared to the ones my brother and I built when we were kids.

But as far as destructive power goes... the filter bag in certain models of workshop vacuum cleaners is held in place by a big, super-thick rubber band. If you build yourself a Lego cannon around such a rubber band, and you shoot heavy projectiles made of those long Lego Technic bricks with all the holes in them, you can punch right through wood panelling with it.

We still have the holes in the basement wall to prove it.
posted by FishBike at 5:42 PM on January 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

Bring it on, man. Let's see how good your aim is with a Tinkertoy stick jutting out of your eye socket.
posted by orme at 6:06 PM on January 27, 2011

Okay, must resist showing my boys this.
posted by Increase at 6:10 PM on January 27, 2011

The clicky-snappy-springy sound of the guns was delicious, as were the 8 bit graphics and voiceover.
posted by Scoo at 8:47 PM on January 27, 2011

LEGO?

Office Guns
posted by porpoise at 9:29 PM on January 27, 2011

In Scandinavia, a mercenary is called a "legosoldat".

Now I know why.
posted by three blind mice at 12:22 AM on January 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

First guy who points one of those at me is going to get a fistful of sparkle in his eyes followed by Barbie's legs jammed so far up his nostrils that he has little pink shoes embedded in his frontal lobe and Barbie's crotch riding his philtrum like a saddle.
Susie
Grade 2
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posted by pracowity at 3:56 AM on January 28, 2011

Things like this demonstrate better than nearly anything else where my affection for firearms comes from; the intricacy of the engineering and the cleverness of the design. It's also, more or less, the same reason I love mechanical watches.

Here though you have the added level of difficulty of working in a medium not known for strength or flexibility, so extra points to the designers for getting around those obstacles.

And while I'm deeply impressed with the end result, the fact that each projectile needs its own rubber band suggests to me that the Warbeast must suck to reload.
posted by quin at 7:30 AM on January 28, 2011

I used to make guns out of lego with elastic bands to provide the propulsion, and fire bricks at my sister. You could get a hell of a lot of force out of them.

Needless to say my parents were not impressed with my makeshift weapon making skills. There's always a critic.

I'm sad and delighted that I'm not the only one who thought of this.
posted by Stagger Lee at 7:51 AM on January 28, 2011