This Working Pinball Machine Is Made Entirely of LEGO Bricks

LEGO sets are fun when you're piecing them together, and significantly less fun when they're fully assembled and gathering dust in your closet. That's not the case with the latest masterwork from builder Bre Burns. Her functioning LEGO pinball machine provides hours of entertainment even after the last brick has been laid.

According to the LEGO fan site The Brothers Brick, Burns built the initial model of the machine for the BrickCon LEGO exhibition in October 2017 and debuted an improved version at the Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle in March. The 2.5-foot-tall machine consists of 15,000 blocks put together over the course of 200 to 300 hours. Even the castor steel balls, lights, motors, and sensors are official products from LEGO Mindstorms and Technic—collections originally designed for building and programming robots.

Burns dubbed her creation "Benny's Space Adventure" after the excitable classic blue spaceman minifigure from The Lego Movie (2014). The final design includes sound effects, a coin slot, a gumball dispenser, a mosaic of Benny, and a moving spaceship mounted on top of the machine.

Master builders have been using LEGO bricks for years to make items that work in the real world. In 2015, Italian carpenter Nicola Pavan used LEGO to build a fully functional guitar, and that same year a team of professional builders broke a world record with its 215,158-brick camper.