Building blocks designed for fun

Inside were six friends intent on having some Hallowe'en fun at the weekend: Mark Doherty, from Stoneypath, who was the lead designer; Rudy Moore, from Kilfennan; Paul Doherty, also from Stoneypath; Ryan Campbell, from Gobnascale, Craig Logan, from Irish Street and Fermanagh funster Kenny Loane, from Kesh, who was visiting the City for Hallowe'en.

The Lego Men were the brainchild of Mark Doherty, who enlisted an army of family members to help his vision come to life, and with all the enthusiasm of a Blue Peter presenter armed with some coloured paper, cardboard, glue and polystyrene sheeting, he let his imagination run riot for eight weeks until his monster-sized toy figures took shape.

"I was working on the costumes for eight weeks. The majority of them is cardboard, but there's a bit of wood and polystyrene sheet in them, and a lot of gripfill, which is an industrial strength glue," said Mark with a chuckle.

Asked why he felt possessed to put so much effort in to the Hallowe'en outfits, Mark said: "It was a bit of an endeavour. We did Oompa Loompas last year, so we tried to top that off this year.

"I don't really know why I chose Lego Men. We just looked on the Internet and just saw Lego Men and thought it was just right. It ticked all the boxes."

Construction was a bit of a conundrum, but the decorating was sorted with coloured paper and they did a cut and paste job to create the clothing and a big black marker for all the definition, including the faces.

"I made them in the kitchen in mum and dad's house. To be honest we took over the house. Mum and dad were very supportive and gave us a hand. My granny, Tilly Molloy from Kilfennan also helped us out."

The result was six very professional looking outfits right down to the weird circular hans made from three layers of poly-board glued together, sanded and painted.

"It wasn't about the prizes, we just did it for personal effort. Money is not what we were after," said Mark.

Parts of the design posed more problems than others and because the guys knew they could not take the outfits off once they went out, Mark came up with an inspired way off answering nature's call adapting some milking equipment and lengths of hosepipe.

"Overall it worked very well, but the hands were three layers of polystyrene sheet and we tried to spray paint them, but the spray paint dissolved the polystyrene, and water-based paint wasn't working, so we had to source acrylic paint," he said, adding: "We looked the part but I did get a bit stressed about it."

Although he has the name of being inventive when it comes to his designs, Mark confessed that next year he was thinking of having a bit of a rest. We shall see...