Crab

My kids have always loved Lego, and are always ready with their next request of something they want me to build. As they’ve grown, so too has the complexity of their requests: having watched a nature documentary on the red rock crab, I confess my heart did initially sink when I was asked to make one, particularly when I was told that it must have moving legs, claws and pincers which snap….

Despite being limited by the number of appropriate hinges in our lego box, managed to create eight legs and two arms, with two ball and socket joints per limb, and hinged pincers on each arm.

One thing our crab does have is durability – Lego models do tend to break relatively easily, especially in tiny hands, but this crab has taken a heavy workload and is still intact! My kids (and indeed visiting kids and their parents) love to snap things into the pincers, scuttle the crab across the table, and set up the crab in range of realistic (and silly!) positions, like a lego version of the artists wood manikin!

Through an unfortunate case of missing pieces, we’ve chatted for some months with the lovely folk at lego customer services, who always ask to see pictures of the requests I’ve built for my kids. when I sent in a picture of the crab, the customer services team told me about lego ideas and said I should submit it – so here I am!

My kids and I have been amazed by the range, brilliant standard and awesome designs on Lego IDEAS, and frankly we weren’t even sure if it was worth putting the crab up – I don’t have the time or money to build one using just one or two colours, and there are a few other bits I’d love to improve on the design with the right pieces, but hopefully lego could help if we got enough votes ;- )

We hope you like it!