Citations › Citation ID: 127

C127. BOOK: Daniel Konstanski, The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks: The Inside Story of a Design Icon (Unbound, 2022), p. 202-203.

The Cybots team wanted its proposed concept to stand out, so the designers set about creating a new type of LEGO element. Their objective was realistic, almost organic movement. Taking human limbs as inspiration, they used modelling clay to craft a ball at the end of an arm, which slotted into a receiving socket. Brick-built accessories supplemented this invention and the end result was something wholly different. It was clearly still a LEGO toy, but also very unusual.

The pitch went nowhere, but designers stored away the ‘ball joint’, as it was dubbed, into one of LEGO Futura many drawers. Nothing at the LEGO Group ever truly dies. Talk to any LEGO designer and you will hear stories of them developing a model believing it was a wholly original concept, only to be told upon showing it to a colleague that their idea had been fully developed years before, quite possibly multiple times. Fortunately, the ball joint’s story followed that script.

In 1999 Christian was brought in to assist with the launch of a new line called Slizer (or Throwbots in the US market). Designers had taken the earlier prototype components and developed them into a small collection of new LEGO® Technic elements which facilitated the construction of something completely original: buildable LEGO Technic figures. Each part was cast in exciting colours and, thanks to a special flexible arm, the Slizer robots could fling small disks. This balljoint concept also allowed the robots to pose and be moved in ways in which no previous LEGO product had been capable.

The larger Ball Joint popularized by Bionicle was originally created for a prototype LEGO theme called Cybots. The joint was created to allow figures with more realistic organic poses.