Nutcracker

Every year we see many holiday themed sets such as the advent calendars and the winter village scenes.  With this past holiday season I was inspired by my wife's love of nutcrackers to design a nutcracker set for Lego Ideas.  I feel these would make an excellent addition to the holiday sets and could become a yearly collectable if continued past the first model.

Nutcrackers carved into soldiers, kings, and other festive designs have been around since at least the 17th century. These nutcrackers portray a person with a large mouth which the opens by via a lever on the back of the figurine. Originally one could insert a nut in the mouth, press down and crack the nut open. However, most modern nutcrackers only serve as decoration, mainly during the Christmas season of which they have long been a traditional symbol. They are also quite a collectable among many people.

The nutcracker I have designed stands at roughly 11 inches high and has a fully functional jaw.  The arms are designed to be adjustable to allow different poses common to nutcrackers.  The legs are reinforced with technic axles to give them more strength.  The hands displayed in the rendered pictures use substitute pieces as the hands I wished to use are not available in LDD, but I have included a picture of the pieces that the arm should use.

Given the variety and collectability of nutcrackers I see this a very good candidate for a Lego Ideas model and potentially a future yearly collectable model.

Thank you for visiting my project and please support it if you like it.

P.S. You may also see more pics and lfx files of the nutcracker on my brickshelf at:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=544285