County fairs tend to have many categories of arts and crafts. Baking, canning, flower arrangement, photography, quilting, painting, and yes, often LEGO, too. Back in my youth, I took the risk of damaged models and missing pieces to enter a few times. I don't know if any photos exist. This was in the before-times, when photography required film, with development and printing handled by specialists. That is neither here nor there. I always entered a MOC (My Own Creation in LEGO lingo) and remember seeing only other MOCs. In my recent visit to the Bonner County Fair, I was saddened to see several lazy models obviously just bought and built.
One would hope the judges in charge of these competitions would have at least a cursory knowledge of the relatively recent LEGO catalogue, and be able to recognize brick colors and commercial designs from knockoff companies, right? I suspect, however, it's a bunch of boomers who are gullible enough to get tricked by A.I. slop images, and who look at these models and just think, "Wow, little Billy is so wonderfully creative, isn't he?" before slapping a blue ribbon on something bought from Temu.
Eevee? Just an official set. MineCraft Creeper? Just an official set. The farms and treehouses? Real MOC.
Let's look further down this display.
NASCAR Camaro? Just an official set. Bush plane? Just an official set. Camping diorama? Just an official set. Pink bird? Just an alternate build from an official 3-in-1 set. The green race car might be an MOC built from an official set, but I have a hunch someone could ID the set number. Only the farm is a legit MOC here.
Maybe the other side of this display area has something to offer?
I think that might actually be a genuine MOC. The entrant is 19, LEGO doesn't usually do monochrome, and at a glance, that looks like bricks which do not tend to appear together or be used in quite those ways in official designs. Bricklink is being s l o w, so I can't run a parts analysis right now, but I'll check later and update if necessary.
Oh, neat. Not just built from a kit, but it's not even genuine LEGO. @galenkp isn't a fan of knockoffs in this group, and I'm not that enthusiastic about them myself, but while I wouldn't want to dock someone points for using off-brand bricks in an event like this which isn't an officially-sanctioned LEGO-brand event, c'mon now. This is sad.
Built, not bought should be the first criteria. Would I deserve even a participation trophy for entering a paint-by-numbers painting into an art show? Heck no. What about joining a car show with a fresh-off-the-showroom-floor Corvette and expecting more admiration than the people who rebuilt a small block engine from scratch and hand-painted the racing stripes on their classic muscle car? Back in my day, LEGO builders had a code of ehtics, sonny-boy. We wanted to show off our creativity, and we didn't have a budget to buy a model just to enter it in a fair. $40 was real money back then, y'see.
END RANT
I think there should be a serious effort to weed out this kind of nonsense though. At least split the cases between MOC and set entries, with only the former earning anything. What do you think, though? I don't have a problem with people showing off neat official sets here as a review or even just an unbox-and-build, but if you tried to claim you designed something you bought in a box, or even passe doff a ReBrickable build as your own creation, you're a piece of garbage. What do you think?
If you're not on Hive yet, I invite you to join through InLeo or PeakD. If you use either of my referral links, I'll even try to delegate some Hive Power to help you get started.
