The Drinking Bird

Revisit the iconic toy from the 1950’s, that has been featured in countless films and series and sat on countless desks drinking water, now reimagined in Lego! True to the original, it also drinks water, turn the handle on the side and watch it go!

Wacht it here!

I have always thought the drinking bird was a very visually pleasing and aesthetic toy. With its simple mechanic, minimalistic design, and its eye-catching color scheme, it would be perfect to be built in Lego.

As the drinking bird has a very iconic design, my first focus was to design it as accurately as possible to the original. So, I started with the legs, which was surprisingly easy to make, just a couple different types of curved bricks, and the desired shape was achieved. Then it was time to design the body. I started with the head and worked my way down. The most difficult part was to make the head as round as possible while still having room for the eyes and beak. The roundness was achieved with a mix of flat and studded surfaces on top of center studded plates. After I achieved the desired shape, I worked my way down and copied the shape of the head to the bottom. But the original has a water droplet kind of shape at the bottom, so I extended the sphere a little bit to fit another row of bricks to get the right shape.

Now that the design was finished, the next step was to implement the mechanism to make it go back and forth. As of this point, everything I added to the design would not be accurate to the original, so I wanted it to be as small and hidden as possible. This is what I came up with.

I started with the easiest part first, implementing the handle and the wheel. Next, I worked with numerous different designs to get the movement right. In the end, I came up with two arms connected to a wheel. When turned, the first arm pushed the second arm up, rotating the body in one or the other way. When it comes back to the middle, the first arm is off-center, pushing the other arm to the other side, and the body is rotated the other way, so it continues.

So if you want to add the Iconic drinking bird to your Lego collection, support my project and share it with your friends and family so we can hit 10,000 supporters!