Every year, someone from the BrickCon crew puts a build together tied to the convention theme and it is developed into a model from scratch. This includes sourcing all the pieces, putting all the pieces into bags, getting custom prints done, developing the packaging art and getting it printed, and putting together instructions. At 297 pieces, this is not a small feat for a group of unpaid volunteers.

This year, the set was titled “The Professor” and it shows a brick built figure in a classroom teaching chemistry. There is a table and a board with some atomic elements which happen to spell out BrickCon (very clever). There are some great pieces used and even some movement, but back to the review.

The box this year is modeled in the way boxes were done back in the early days with the yellow color and angled stripe with blue text on the front. The front shows the full model while the back gives some of the set details. My set was #218 as you can see from the side of the box and another side had some notes about the model.

The set contains two parts bags. What were you expecting? Professional packaging? Two plastic zipper bags works for me.

The instructions are small and pretty complicated. To keep them short, a lot of steps are crammed together. As the audience of the set is experienced builders, they expect people to understand builds and to be able to piece it together without obvious piece by piece steps. I’ll admit that I made mistakes along the way. Whoops!

Here is the final build. The dark green wall and sand green tiles are awesome! I like the addition of some of the random printed pieces and the custom prints are incredible. No stickers. Yay! There is a Technic axle to pull out and push in to make the figure spin, but I need to make some adjustments to the set to make that function work better. It shouldn’t be too hard to do. Also, there is a whip piece that is supposed to connect between the beaker and one of the flasks. I couldn’t get the whip piece to stay. I’ll have to mess with it. Other than that, it’s a great build with some great parts. Thanks Jessie R. and the whole BrickCon staff for putting this set together.

Happy building!