The Royal Tennenbaums and 19 More of Our Favorite Pop-Cultural Legos

Published at 3:00 PM on August 13, 2010

By Caroline Klibanoff

In 2008, Lego designer and kindergarten teacher Dave Kaleta posted an inspired creation to MocPages, a Lego design sharing site: the iconic characters of Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, in teeny-tiny plastic lego form. An inexplicable two years later, his intricate set (including Margot Tenenbaum’s wooden finger and Richie Tenenbaum’s bird-handling right-hand glove) has been picked up and highlighted all over the internet, in places such as Hipster Runoff and Craziest Gadgets, drawing attention to Kaleta’s work and the whole genre of character Legos.

Lo and behold, there is an entire subculture of these folks who painstakingly create imitations of pop-culture figures, (mostly) unsanctioned by the Lego Group but amusing and kitschy in their own right. Below are some of our favorites, with captions.

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