Happy Hanukkah (with Nanoblock Menorahs)

Nanoblock menorahs (w LEGO minifig for scale)

Happy first night of Hanukkah!  I hope that by now, you have found a just-right menorah to light your holiday.

Our minifigs certainly have. They finally found “brick” menorahs smaller than their own bodies. Not made with LEGO bricks, but with Nanoblock, which are
so tiny they make the smallest LEGO look massive. Until now, our LEGO minifigures made do with menorahs that were 100% LEGO, yet were about 50% too big to fit inside their own doorway, let alone sit on a tray by a wee window.

Nanoblock was off my radar until my sister surprised me with a box of teensy Nanoblock nature kits—beetles, a butterfly, a mantis—which I loved (I’m a volunteer naturalist), and which I immediately rearranged into teensy Judaica.

BrickBlogger has a good comparison page showing the differences between LEGO and Nanoblock. The smallest Nanoblock is 4x4mm. Bigger than a chocolate ice cream sprinkle, but with a girth rather like short-grain brown rice. Or, can you imagine three flaxseeds glued together? Obviously, I’m still looking for a satisfactory food correlation. Food is usually easier to conceptualize than is a millimeter.

Nanoblocks are so tiny, they might not even hurt when stepped upon, unlike notoriously painful LEGO pieces. In fact, they can be a challenge to manipulate.  The manufacturer recommends them for kids 12 and up, which includes me, but I wish I’d found them before the onset of trifocals.

Here’s wishing you a bright holiday, however small or big.

Hanukkah Sameach / Happy Hanukkah!

Nanoblock hanukkiyot

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P.S. : One of my Nanoblock Menorahs made an cameo appearance at Bible Belt Balabusta last week, when I posted my LEGO tableaux riffs on the Mensch on a Bench product. The menorah spills from a crate in Schlemiel on a Wheel:

Schlemiel on a Wheel (clumsy pushcart seller)

LINKS

Nanoblock site (no Jewish kits, of course, but a nice range of kit sizes and themes, plus at least one box of random pieces. Watch out if you buy on eBay or Amazon: some of the vendors are in Japan and will take weeks and weeks to arrive.)  For fun, type #nanoblock into Twitter’s search box.

DIY LEGO menorahs here at BibleBeltBalabusta.com:

* LEGO Menorah made from 9 minifigures

* LEGO Menorah (DUPLO with candles, and a mini version with pegs)

* LEGO Menorah versions, flameless, various sizes