The First LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special

For the past couple of years new content has been created to celebrate the holiday season, but many probably don’t know that a LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special goes back further than 2020. In fact we have to go back an entire decade (to the date) to learn more.

While last year’s festive focus was the celebration of Life Day and this year’s looked at spooky stories for Halloween, the first LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special was just in time for Christmas.

ENFIELD, CT (November 21, 2011 ) – LEGO Systems, Inc. today announced www.LEGOSantaYoda.com, a fun, holiday-themed LEGO^® Star Wars™ micro site featuring shareable stop-motion animation e-greetings, a contest featuring weekly prizes , holiday-themed polls and a wish list of the galaxy’s hottest LEGO Star Wars products. Beginning today through December 24, 2011, LEGO Systems will donate one new LEGO toy to the U.S. Marine Corps’ Toys for Tots program for each LEGO Star Wars e-greeting shared, up to one million toys.

To kick-off the countdown, thousands of residents and visitors of the San Francisco Bay Area helped LEGO Master Builders to construct the world’s largest LEGO Santa Yoda this past weekend. Perched alongside the Union Square ice rink and weighing nearly 4,000 pounds, LEGO Santa Yoda stood 12-feet tall with an ear span of 10-feet.

“Inspired by the collectible Santa Yoda minifigure found in our LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar, we’re excited to encourage anyone who loves the LEGO or Star Wars brands to spread holiday cheer for such a timely and deserving organization,” said Michael McNally, brand relations director, LEGO Systems. “There’s no doubt that the LEGO and Star Wars communities will be energized to help give back, especially with the fun, one-of-a-kind video greetings we’ve developed that feature the characters and humor that they anticipate and enjoy.”

Video greetings you say? The three short clips below could be sent to family and friends which in turn counted as one toy donated to Toys for Tots. Each person was limited in how many could be sent, but a total of 688,257 greetings were shared with an equal number of toys donated that year!

“Not So Silent Night.”	“Making a List, I am; Checking it Twice, I Must.”	“To Town, LEGO Santa Yoda is Coming.”

While the first two videos are stop motion creations, the third video is a time-lapse of the giant LEGO Santa Yoda build. Over the November 18-20 weekend, certified Master Builders Steve Gerling and Erik Varszegi worked from 10am – 6 pm to get the nearly 250,000 brick model completed in San Francisco’s Union Square. With a height of 12 feet, an ear span of 10 feet, and created from more than 6,000 oversized LEGO blocks it truly was a Master Builder creation. The model was intended to kickstart the LEGOSantaYoda.com campaign, but it also served to raise money for the Bay Area Boys and Girls Club. The event was short-lived though with Yoda being promptly dismantled on Monday.

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Although not related to this campaign, another brick-built Santa Yoda was on display on the other side of the country throughout December 2011. This Yoda was featured at the WhiteBox Art Gallery in New York City as part of the Gizmodo Gallery, but he was quite a bit smaller than his West Coast counterpart! As you can see this model looks identical to the smaller one also used in San Francisco.

For these large brick-built displays, LEGO Master Builders will scale-up the design using oversized 2×4 bricks. These bricks are hollow in the center and are comprised of 39 elements consisting of 2×4, 2×8, and 1×8 standard bricks. Following the diagram below thousands of these oversized bricks are built and then used for the final model.