James Cameron’s Avatar has shaken the hi-tech film industry & (neo-shaman communities) with innovative 3D technology & anti-human humanistic storyline which is similar to District 9. While the storm of Avatar movie is calming, Mattel didn’t forget about the real Avatar fans.

The Avatar collectible figures consist of the heroes & heroines of the movie (sexy Neytiri, fate-victim Jake), monsters, vehicles and surely, the war-obsessive Colonel Miles Quatrich. The figures have some extra features as well which are uniquely thought by Mattel & designers of Avatar merchandise. The Navi characters are glowing in the dark with accentuates on their illustrious blue. And using a special i-Tag, it is possible to reanimate the 3D battle scenes from the movie on your computer.

I should add that all these Mattel Avatar figures & sets are currently for adult collectors and not suitable for children playing. Most figures are without joints & material doesn’t seem to be very hard. You know, children can easily break them apart in seconds.

Anyway, let’s look at some of these very detailed avatars figures.

Sexy Na’vi Neytiri figure is about 3 inch tall and bio-luminescence property.

In other words, Neytiri figure will glow in the dark. The famous Avatar character Neytiri also has a bow & arrow in the package.

Overall, a pretty attractive Avatar figurine. Some fans complaint that the scale was not observed very carefully by comparisons of human & navi people sizes.

Even this couldn’t stop that Neytiri became the bestseller in fantasy figures section of Amazon.

Avatar Na’vi Leonopteryx Figure:

The most savage creature of all Pandora fantasy world is much better detailed than other Avatar figures.

Notice the 20-inch wingspan, various points of joints, ability to carry other human or Navi figures.

This figure ships with a stand & iTag.

I would certainly put into a special list of display figures. Scaling matches to other Navi figures. It is also a favoring feature.

Thanator figure is also very appealing. Especially skin textures, wrinkles & muscles are cast in very detail.

Like many other figures in Pandora world, you will need to put together several pieces like body, head, tail, legs etc.

It is easy for adults surely. I would also add this one to my Avatar collectible figures.

Let’s not forget about the nasty side of Avatar movie. For example, RDA Scorpion Gunship: 24 points of articulation is nice.

The vehicle figure includes double firing missiles, fourfold gyrating blades, and revolving barrel.

Cuboro is a 3D wooden building and marble track system which is as creative and famous as Lego and Kapla toys.

There are individual wooden blocks which have holes and carved channels. The idea is to build a structure where the marbles will pass through the tunnels and holes by falling several levels with only help of the gravity.

After a simple start, children can challenge building more complicated structures. There are several sets varying on number of pieces, functionality and difficulty settings.

There is a youtube video below showing how a completed Cuboro structure works.

The wooden toy blocks are ecologically safe and suggested by experts for creativity stimulation of kids 3 years older. A high quality wooden Swiss made toy.

Cuboro Toys at Amazon

While I was considering buying a high quality Onyx Chess Set for playing and home decoration as well, I had noticed several interesting chess sets at Amazon online store. If you also enjoy small figures and chess, be sure to look at the following items.

Ottomans versus Hungarians Chess Set

It is actually a good choice for a war themed chess set since these empires fought the bloodiest open field battles in the middle of Europe. Hungarians kept Ottomans real busy invading Europe more. Anyway, it is written that each piece is 3 inch tall and made from handpainted cold cast resin. A 15 inch wooden chess board is shipped for free.

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Medieval Chess Set

It looks quite unique and attractive. If you are also an admirer of fantasy art, 32 pieces of medieval knights chessmen is waiting for you. The dragon themed case looks especially extraordinary and carved in detail. Material is polyresin and wood.

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Isle of Lewis Chess Set

Did you know that there are a few complete medieval chess sets survived until today? Isle of Lewis Chessmen (also known as Lewis or Uig Chessmen) is one of them discovered in 1831 in Scotland. They were made from beautiful walrus ivory (some pieces are made from even whale teeth !) and also featured in Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone.

These are the exact replika of Harry Potter’s chess set. The pieces are from ceramic and have antique ivory and chocolate finish. Set is made from composite resin and stone making it resembling more to a medieval original Lewismen chess set.

This set perfectly combines history, chess and Harry Potter magic !

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Who says that remote controlled cars are just toys for children? 46 year old Nic Case designed a R/C car which reaches the top speed of 161 mph (257 kmh approx.) Its name is Pocket Rocket and holds currently world record for a R/C car but I think it is really a competitive area amongst the fans and we can see faster cars.

Nic puts his next target as well. Achieving a speed of 200 mph. I think they should start a R/C Formula 1 car race.

Seen on GearFuse

It is a strange feeling to look at a strategy board game table which Vikings and other Northern European people actually played for centuries starting around 400 AD. A game of war where the sides are not even equal! The center king’s objective was to escape to the board’s periphery or corners, while the greater force’s objective was to capture him. There is no luck in the game, only strategy. The game rules are mostly known due to medieval sagas and adapted to modern world with addition a few rules to balance both sides. There are many variants of this ancient game.

I have found a handmade stone Hnefatafl (King’s table) board at Etsy.

Read more at Wikipedia about Hnefatafl

Amazon Top Rated Board Games

I am addicted to building blocks like Lego Bricks and Kapla toys. They provide limitless imagination possibilities for fans and hardworking artists. Nathan Sawaya is one of those talented guys who create art of the brick. This Lego Cello sculpture is one his works which couldn’t escape from the eyes of cool gadget lovers.

How does the Lego cello sound or sound at all? The answer is on the following DIY cello video.

I compiled also some other useful links about Lego Musical Instruments :

1. Flickr Lego Instruments Group : They built really small compared to this cello, but there is fun still.
2. Real Functioning Lego Guitar : All parts including bridges, pick-ups etc. are claimed to be functioning properly.
3. Strange Musical Instruments : There is a playable tiny Lego Harpsichord at the end of the article

I have decided to blog about surely the simplest, but most probably one the most creative building blocks of all times, LEGO. The aim of this article is to give information about some interesting facts about LEGO cool toys and company, and some world record holding figures created by hobbyists.

• Well first of all, it is a Danish creation. LEGO (LEg GOdt) means “Play Well” in Danish, later the founder of the company discovered that it can be translated as “I put together” in Latin. What to say more? Linguistics science were supporting them naturally to their big successful fate, luckily for inspirational toy lovers.
• Founded in 1932, Started as a carpenter’s small wooden toys shop. Named as LEGO in 1934. Currently, the third generation grandson Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen rules the LEGO empire. One of the richest in the world, owning $3.3 billion fortune. His parents used his child photos even on some LEGO products as you can see one of them on the left.
• The world famous LEGO automatic binding bricks are not invented by LEGO company itself. They were very closely inspired by KiddiCraft building blocks, near to copying, but with getting partial rights. Here is the first building blocks patent photo and 1949 first LEGO bricks. LEGO later bought all the rights in 1981. Unfortunately, the original patent owner, Hilary Harry Fisher Page committed suicide in 1957, not seeing the huge success of his creation.
• Some LEGO Records
  Tallest Lego Tower in Nasu Highland Park in Japan. Built using around 430,000 pieces and it is around 29 meters long. It is a very fast expiring record because hobbyist build almost each year taller Lego towers from the previous record holder. Surely, Japanese are tough rivals for beating on gadget records !
  
• Longest Lego, according to my research. This 1,5 kilometers long snake is in Italy. Around an impressive 2,900,000 bricks are used. Built in 2005. Link
• Fastest time to build LEGO Star Destroyer. Yeah, it is just one of the hundreds of funny LEGO object building records. 3,100 pieces Lego set was built in 50 minutes with a group of up to five people in 2005. Dare to build another monster, LEGO Star Wars Death Star ? Not easy, it needs a nice amount of money just to start your career as a LEGO builder.
  
• Smallest Lego Gun Ever (Fully functional)
  You will find on youtube many LEGO videos claiming that they have built the smallest hand trebuchets, crossbows etc. Here is one of them.

Strong enough to tear paper.

This gadget will give you certain advantage on your bloody snowball street fights. Just place your snowballs into the three chambers and close the lid. Aim your target and fire. It doesn’t need any battery because it uses an elastomer (a special kind of polymer which will return to its original state when the tension is removed) mechanism. And I have another good news for you. The range is 50 feet. So, it means that in short range it can really give some pain to the victim.

As a fast snowball maker and player, 3 chambers are just not enough for me. Anyway, it is a good start, we want more complicated snowball blasters for more fun. Hear us Hammacher Schlemmer

This is an exciting-to-play kaleidoscope animation construction game. Every single image you put on the area of this flash screen rotated and duplicated across regions to create beautiful moving effects reminding us cornflake shapes. Try it. Easy and fun software.

Are you interested in robots? This interest level can be from just simply playing with them using remote controls to amateur DIY efforts. There came to my mind several questions when I have read the features of latest Stephen Spielberg Jurassic Park style robo-toy, Roboreptile and needed to compare with the all-in-one robot creation gadget and software platform LEGO Mindstorms NXT.

This cold-blooded monster is interactive with the environment. It has moods like hungry (default), hooded or satisfied and behaves accordingly. Realistic movements including jumping, attacking, tail whipping etc. What kind of sensors do we have? Infra-red for obstacle avoidance, movement detection; sonic sensors to behave accordingly on voices, loud sounds and a touch sensor for human interaction. Pretty cool?

If you always thought that building a robot on such level is almost impossible and requires ultra engineering skills, please read further.

Actually you can create such amazing robo-creatures without any prior knowledge (eventhough a programming experience is useful) using Lego Mindstorms NXT. For example, as you can watch in the following video, this Rubik Cube solver was made completely using this set.

It is a complete system which consists of a brain (programmable module), 519 special Lego Technic elements, sensors (touch, sound, light, ultrasonic) and servo motors and drag&drop software to program.

After writing (or drag&dropping) your program (You can even write programs in well established languages like C++, .Net etc) you can run your robot using a usb or bluetooth from the computer.

There are lots of good books for Lego Mindstorms NXT in Amazon. So, no need to behave like a lonely crazy inventor fighting with the unknown. The creativity is the limit after learning to build several models.

Roboreptile is sold for $49.99 at the manufacturer webstore, Wowwee

Lego Mindstorms NXT is $249.99 at both Amazon and Lego Store. Check the best for free shipping or other discounts.