Construction: Helm's Deep

Many moons ago, when the toy shops were littered with Lord of the Rings toys, I bought a number of them. For reasons I can't quite remember (probably space) I decided to keep them all in the office when I was busily working on my PhD. Since no one complained about it to me directly I continued to add to them even when another research group started using the desks under the shelves (honestly, I'd have happily moved them if someone had complained. But they never did).

One of the toys I bought was the Eye of Sauron. This basically took the form of the top bit of Barad Dur, with an eye containing a little light that talked. I promised myself that I'd make the rest of the tower for the Eye to sit on.

Well, it took a while but finally, last Autumn, I got round to making it.

And I was happy. For a while.

So now I'm beginning to think I should make Helm's Deep. Helm's Deep. This, for the couple of people out there who don't know, is the big castle/fort thing that featured in The Two Towers. You may remember that it was quite big. Well you're wrong - it was very big. Far too big to make a version for 6" action figures.

But despite all sense and reason telling me it's a bad idea, I still want to make it.

I have no idea where I'm going to put it (3yo says there's plenty of space in the middle of the living room. Wife disagrees). So while making it as one great big lump of fort would have been relatively easy, I've got to figure out some way of making it collapse, or fold away for storage, or something.

As you may have guessed, I haven't got it all figured out yet.

I'll post (semi-)regular updates on how things are going. In the meantime if anyone happens to come across (cheap) Uruk Hai at car boots or similar I'd be very interested in getting hold of them. I currently have 3. There were 10,000 in the film. While 10,000 might be a few too many, I would like some more to make it a bit more like an army rather than a couple of guys who wandered the wrong way and thought 'Hey, let's attack this giant castle! That'd be awesome!'