18 Jun – "Star Wars" fans, the world's biggest Death Star model is all set to be displayed in Legoland Malaysia theme park! The Death Star is a fictional moon-sized military battle station capable of destroying a planet with a single destructive energy beam. The completed form of the original Death Star first appeared in "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope". The Lego replica model will consist of 723,150 pieces of Lego bricks and stand at 6m tall and about 2.3m in diameter. According to Stefan Bentivoglio, Legoland Malaysia's model shop manager and Death Star's project coordinator, they will try to replicate the model as close to the original as possible, even enabling it to shoot laser beams accompanied with sound effects and would light up at night using about 10,000 glow-in-the dark Lego tiles. He explained, "Hopefully, the models will be able to convert those who do not know much about Star Wars into fans," and added that "it took a gruelling 200 hours to design and will take another 1,800 hours to build and assemble the structure."
Coincidentally, Legoland California celebrated their annual LEGO Star Wars Day last week by unveiling a life-sized LEGO Star Wars X-wing Starfighter. The massive replica weighed more than 45,000 pounds and stands at 11 feet tall by 43 feet long. More than 5 million LEGO bricks were used by Master Model Builders' team to complete the sculpture. The structure will make its debut on 26 July for a limited period of time before it is disassembled to be displayed at other Legoland theme parks in Denmark, Germany, Britain, California and Florida.