Mythbusters testing the LEGO Indy viral video!

[Solo]

Remember this video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFGVzt7c5bY

The Mythbusters are proving just how fake it was. RIGHT NOW!

[HoboBob1138]

Yeah i just watched that, and I figured that the Lego Indy viral was fake, but the sad part is i mostly was trying to see if the blocks were all LEGO or some were megablocks lol.

[yankeeken]

I was really disappointed that it fell apart. I really wanted to see what size dent the LEGO ball would make in the car.

[Solo]

I was just shocked, I was anticipating a nice smash - it never occurred to me a catastrophic failure would end the test halfway down the hill. Still looked awesome.

[Pepa Quin]

Video of the Lego part of the episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoh6OxakbiA

Click the HD button for best picture.

[meeotch]

Dear MythBusters,

please send all that extra Lego just taking up space in your warehouse to me.

Sincerely,

meeotch

[the dutch guy]

their proof just doesn't fit
1. they were able to come up with 500.000 excess bricks.
that doesn't mean that 5/6 seasoned lego builders can't come up with 5 million
2. their ball broke down, so they must have glued their bricks to a lightweight ball
they could just have been smart enough to glue the entire lego ball together.
3. the ball didn't even dent the car
this one i can't explain

i'd call this one probable

[Solo]

The point was it took half a million bricks to make a ball that size - five million would be substantially larger. Also, this one weighed only a ton and a half - 5 million bricks would weigh 15 tons. Two people can't roll something like that as easily as shown, it took the four of them to get their ball rolling. Glue might have helped keep the thing intact though, and it would have been hilariously evil if Adam and Jamie showed up and told them to do it again, but with glue this time...

Anyways, I've already seen images of the "real" one used for the viral vid - it was a foam ball covered with large gray baseplates, to which they stuck random bricks to make it look like it was built instead of faked. Even some of those broke off while filming, but they edited it out.

[Chief]

I thought the Mythbuster's ball was 1 million bricks: .5 mil from around the country, with another .5 just from Nathan Sawaya?

[Solo]

Ah, maybe I misheard them then. That would still make a five million brick ball weigh seven and a half tons...

[SkwerlJones]

I cried a little on the inside when it crumbled apart. It was kinda like watching your favorite football player recieve the ball from the otherside of the field and run all the way to the opposite end, only to have him spontaneously explode right before he reached the endzone.

The keyword being kinda.

[Robzula]

I cried at the part where they had the boxes of bricks and were pulling them out by the armloads... Tears of jealousy, that is.

[onions]

I cried a little on the inside when it crumbled apart. It was kinda like watching your favorite football player recieve the ball from the otherside of the field and run all the way to the opposite end, only to have him spontaneously explode right before he reached the endzone.

The keyword being kinda.

that disintegration scene was my favorite part. i thought it was cool how it just spilled out like a chocolate with a liquid filling being cracked open. best part i say.

well that and seeing jesus leonidas GARY on camera. that was cool too.

[meeotch]

BTW, when Kari says that they've "cleared North America of all the excess Lego," I'm wondering exactly what excess means.

[Solo]

I think it was donated/volunteered... I seem to remember a call a while ago for FOLs to send all their unwanted 2x4s for this. I could just be completely making that up though, I don't trust my memory at all.

[Puddleglum]

The slow-motion disintegration of the ball in HD was epic! I couldn't believe how quickly it fell apart.

I think it was donated/volunteered... I seem to remember a call a while ago for FOLs to send all their unwanted 2x4s for this. I could just be completely making that up though, I don't trust my memory at all.

I'm thinking that seems like too many bricks to drum up that way. I just added up the totals for all new & used 2x4 bricks for sale on BrickLink in black, blue, white, red, yellow, green, and dark & light bley & grey, (The most common colors) and it came up to just about 270,000.

[ThinkingImpaired]

I don't know why Mythbusters had to test this...anyone can see that the colors on the boulder do not match up on two sides of a corner, therefore not being real bricks...just pieces on baseplates glued on. Cool to watch them test it anyway though!

As far as getting the bricks....it looks like they're opening up bags of bricks directly from Lego.

[Gingerbeard Man]

I'm on a slow dial-up line at the moment, so the video was rather jerky and I didn't catch most of what was said by the presenters. Was there any discussion of brick size vs. quantity / weight ? When they opened the boxes it looked like mostly 2x4s, but after the ball broke up there were all sorts of other size and shape bricks on the ground.

If you're only counting bricks then a ball made of one million 2x4 bricks is obviously going to be twice as big as one made of one million 2x2 bricks.

[Joedward]

I haven't really seen any Mythbusters after season 1 or 2, so I don't know how much, if at all, it's changed.

But what exactly is the "Myth" here??? Just that the youtube vid was a fake? Or seeing if it would damage the car? Or what?

[Puddleglum]

^I guess the myth was a) that a ball the size of what is seen in the video would require 5 million bricks to construct, and b) that if such a ball were constructed, it would roll lightly down a hill, and come to a dead stop when hitting a car, not causing any damage.

The value of the segment wasn't so much corroborating the idea that the original was faked. It was more to see, could what they claimed to do in the original video actually be done? But it turns out that the idea that a 7-foot tall LEGO ball can roll down a hill for any appreciable distance is a myth!