Tara Ward gazes into the brick crystal ball to predict who’ll take home the coveted Lego Masters NZ trophy.
Good news, mates: Lego Masters NZ is back. From tonight, Monday April 10, the wholesome reality competition that encourages adults to embrace their inner child returns to TVNZ2 as six new Kiwi teams compete for the Lego Masters NZ trophy. Over the next few weeks, these teams will showcase their building expertise and creative thinking in a variety of inspirational Lego challenges, while host Dai Henwood and Brick Master Robin Sather encourage the competitors to use every single one of the 2.5 million blocks in the LMNZ brick pit.
In readiness for the new season, we’ve scoured the LMNZ press kit and studied the official photos to guess which team will impress the judges the most. Who will show the most originality? Who will take the biggest risks? Who can throw Lego into the air the highest? We’ve made our predictions, even though the teams are yet to set foot inside the LMNZ warehouse, which makes our ranking more wonky than a brick tower without vertical bracing. Let’s make like a Lego car and hoon straight into the rankings.
6. Carsten and Angus
These lads are beginning their LMNZ journey as strangers, having been paired up after each of their LMNZ teammates withdrew from the competition. Fate (or the show’s producers) intervened and joined them together like a pair of 6×4 bricks, and after meeting a few times on Zoom, this new team is raring to go. “We have very different building styles and techniques,” Angus says, which should be… fine? Don’t panic. Carsten actually grew up in Denmark, where everything is made of Lego, so this is bound to work out.
5. Amy and Llewe
This pair live in Lower Hutt, and they’re coming to LMNZ to win. Amy really hopes they’ll get to do the exploding glitter challenge while Llewe wants to unleash his inner five-year-old in the iconic Lego destruction challenge. “Smashing things up is fun,” Llewe says, and never a truer word was spoken.
4. Rachel and Jason
Look at those bricks fly high, just like Rachel and Jason’s LMNZ hopes and dreams. This Christchurch couple first met 19 years ago while ice skating, a sport that would definitely be better if Lego was involved. Rachel’s first Lego creation was a scale model of her house, while Jason’s most proud of his mechanical Lego water lily. They’re absolutely fizzing to compete on LMNZ, and if they don’t win, you know they’ll have a bloody lovely time trying.
3. Andrew and Harry
Andrew and Harry are both from Auckland, both 25 years old, and both mechanical engineers. Will they both win LMNZ? Only the Lego Master knows the truth. It’s a good sign that Andrew reckons his favourite Lego acronym is SNOT (Studs Not On Top), because “without SNOT we couldn’t hold anything interesting together”. That’s exactly the sort of messy smack talk we need more of in this competition, so good luck to them both.
2. Henny and Pieter
Who doesn’t want to see some tense parent-child dynamics play out on national television? Say hello to Henny and Pieter, a mother and son team from Dunedin. Competing on LMNZ is Pieter’s dream, but Henny admits it took some persuading for her to join the show. Perhaps Henny is just playing things cool, because she also says she once built a sewing machine out of Lego. What is this, the future? Plus, Pieter once spent five years building a Lego Dunedin railway station, so please just give them the trophy right now.
1. Oli and Charlie
These siblings hail from Wellington and Palmerston North, and the long-time Lego fans counted down the days until they could apply for the show. Oli has been building a Lego underwater kingdom for 10 years and doesn’t think it will ever be finished, while Charlie once built a rideable motorbike out of Lego and – wait for it – DROVE IT AROUND HIS SCHOOL. Do they get that sort of thinking on Lego Masters Australia? They heck they do. Stand down, we have our winners.
Lego Masters NZ screens Monday-Wednesday on TVNZ 2 at 7.30pm from Monday 10 April, and streams on TVNZ+.
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