SPW Communications MB Post 1

I like Brickmania. They are a company that produces lego sets and books, and sells specialised parts and lego kits dealing with military history, modern military equipment, and some stuff from science fiction.

My favourite stuff of theirs is the WWII military vehicles and weapons. I especially like their instruction books for kits they have made or sell. These instruction books give you step by step instructions on how to build different things from whatever the topic of the book is, like airplanes, tanks, artillary, and other vehicles. If you're interested in these kinds of instruction books, here is a link to the book, Rats & Foxes, which is all about the North African Campaign. 

One of my favourite designs from the Rats and Foxes instruction book, is that for the GMC 30 CWT Truck of the British LRDG.

Another interesting fact about these books is they give you the history or details about the set you will build. Here is the information about the 30 CWT of the LRDG.

"The long distances of the patrols required special vehicles for which civilian trucks were acquired and customised to the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) needs. Each patrol contained several heavily modified GMC 30 CWT (imperial hundredweight) trucks, each carrying a three man crew and a variety of heavy weapons and supplies. Special equipment included sand channels attached to the side of each truck, which were also outfitted with extra large radiators connected by a hose to a specially designed condenser canister. This allowed the LRDG trucks to operate over long distances in the extremely hot desert environment."

This is a picture of the kit for the Opel Blitz lightweight truck, which is also an instruction set in the book Rats and Foxes.

Finally, if you'd like to learn more about the North African Campaign during WWII, Wikipedia has a nice informative article to get the basics.

British Crusader tank passes a destroyed and smoking German Panzer IV tank during Operation Crusader, November 1941

Italian Empire in November of 1942

A British Matilda Mk II named "Glenorchy" of Major K.P. Harris, MC, commander of 'D' Squadron, 7th Royal Tank Regiment during Operation Compass displaying an Italian flag captured at Tobruk, 24 January 1941

I hope you found this interesting and have fun learning more about the North Africa Campaign and Brickmania.

SPW Communications MB Brickmania Part 2

 For this post I would like to tell you about something else Brickmania does that is really fun.

They have a YouTube channel called Brickmania TV which tells you about all their products, stores, and places where you can see their displays.

Here is the link to Brickmania TV. They also do videos about new releases.

One of the things I really like about Brickmania TV is that they do reviews of the sets they sell, and also the instruction books, like this one from the book Great War Bricks. Although, technically this is more of a drama of the kits from the book not a straight review.

This is a video on Brickmania TV that is all about a game they came up with called Microbrick Battles. This video is a D-Day battle from World War II. Microbrick Battles are intended to be a a board game played with LEGOs. 

Finally, Brickmania has made one 3+ minute video portraying the Capture of the Amiens Gun from World War I. This video is not only fun, but also educational. In it they give you facts about the real events from this battle using LEGO brick animation. You can check on Wikipedia to see how accurate this video is.

I hope you enjoy exploring Brickmania TV