I’m going to try to get this review schedule back in line. If I have any advice for any expectant fathers out there, it’s this – start your bicep workout now, work ahead on any special projects, and figure out how to do things with one hand. Baby Sam & I are enjoying our first few weeks together, but I have not yet perfected the art of one-handed toy photography.

I made a list of stuff I really wanted to get reviewed up on the site. Sam & I looked it over, trying to pick out an easy one that would only need a half dozen or so pictures. Then we came across the LEGO Back to the Future Time Machine. The next thing I know, the little Sam-bug was handed off to Mom and I was digging through my garage for my big green bin of loose LEGOs – the kid’s gonna love that bin someday – and ended up on a 20-picture project (two were edited into others for an 18-pic review). Oops.

It’s cool though because it was fun to setup & photograph. And I needed that. It’s a good reminder that as time consuming as IAT can be, it’s supposed to be fun. And gosh darn if a LEGO DeLorean isn’t pretty fun.

The Back to the Future set came to us by way of LEGO CUUSOO, now called LEGO ideas. It’s the same “theme” that brought us the fantastic LEGO Ecto-1 and a few other swanky sets including the LEGO Exo-Suit w/ Green Classic Astronauts (that I keep missing out on, ugh!). It’s a user-submitted & peer-reviewed system that takes fan’s builds and picks the cream of the crop to make sets. In both the case of Ecto-1 and the DeLorean, the popularity of the franchises helped them surge ahead and thanks to licensing agreements, both were able to become a possibility.

The Time Machine came out last summer (2013), but I didn’t jump on it right away. I’ve tried to stay away from LEGO, but only because they’re highly addictive to me. Once Ecto-1 came out and bundling it with the Time Machine just made sense, it unleashed a storm of Marvel & DC LEGO purchases (and not to mention some Kre-O sets too… blasphemy, I know). I just get carried away easily when it comes to cool toys and LEGOs, as we all know, are amazingly cool.

The Time Machine is no different. I have one big quibble with it, so let’s get that out of the way. The cab area is under-designed. It’s not really tall enough to fit the mini-figures comfortably and the lack of a windshield just isn’t cool. The good news is that since it’s a LEGO set, these can easily be fixed. I will eventually get around to giving it a windshield, but for now I just opted to make some modifications. I raised the roof by adding a flat brick where it connects to the rear of the car to give it some height and extended the struts to keep that “fake windshield” look going. Unfortunately, when I took the pics I forgot to lower the struts, so my attempts to showcase the Time Machine as intended are faulty. I’m sure someone who skips the text and goes right to the pictures will point that out below. Doh! Continue to Page 2…