[Lego] LEGO® with Black light?

Set #70785 Pohatu under a UV black light.

A technique that most people don't know that you can do with LEGO® parts...
Several transparent colours from the LEGO® colour palette can glow under UV black light. Some of them glow brightly, but some just little. The plastic that is used for transparent colours is not ABS, but polycarbonate.


From left to right: Yeti, Vitruvius, Ice Planet 2002 Astronaut, Gypsy Moth, Ultimate Ultron,
Electro, Green Lantern, Blacktron II Astronaut.

I'm aware that Gypsy Moth has the wrong colour shoulderpad, a small assembly mistake... (I have the correct one on stock though!)

One of the most common colours to be used with UV black light is Transparent Neon-Green, a colour that was mainly introduced with the M-Tron theme in 1990. Other colours like Transparent Neon-Orange and Transparent Neon-Yellow, mostly used on the older Space themes (such as Blacktron I and Ice Planet 2002) would glow brightly as well. Unfortunately most newer sets have regular Transparent Yellow and Transparent Orange, both of which glow faintly under UV black light or not at all.

Under the jump break you can find more examples of UV black light in combination with LEGO® sets. Some of them change dramatically by UV influence, some of them look better because of the subtle use of the colours. Consider my set up was limited in space, I haven't been able to make pictures of larger sets yet. Perhaps for a different moment I might be able to do the larger Ice Planet 2002 and UFO sets (consider I own all of those), but I also own the Mega Core Magnetizer and Monorail Transport Base. Trust me, those look astonishing with black light...

Set #70785 Pohatu under a UV black light again, but without armour pieces. In this image you can see more clear what glows and what not. The brain stock glows brightly, but when the mask is put on, you'll need to have the black light shining from the back instead (which, as you can see clearly, isn't the way how I photographed it). However, when I equip the body with a transparent Gali mask, while keeping the UV light on front, things do change...

Not really that notable on camera (although a bit slightly more in person), the UV light goes slightly through the transparent blue.

Remember Ehlek from the original Bionicle's Barraki theme? In his appearance during the official Barraki trailer, you could see that he glows when charging up electricity. Unfortunately, as you can see in the image below, you can't mimic that effect because translucent pieces cannot be lighten up with UV - this includes most Hero Factory weapons...

I would love to get Nocturn in the future. I know his translucent parts can't glow from UV light, but those parts are a double injection moulding - having a combination made out of Glow In The Dark and translucent blue... I can confirm that UV light charges up Glow In The Dark pieces incredibly fast - a few seconds for full charge!

=================================

Enough CCBS-based models for now. I assume you probably want to see some regular sets, so here you have a few.

Ice Planet 2002. On the left, Blizzard Baron and on the right, Ice-Sat V. Mainly uses Transparent Neon-Orange.

It seems that one of the ways to improve such bright colours is because of the "hard" lines in parts, also known as wall thickness. Several (older) canopy pieces like these have sharp corners or have different structural borders from the inside to increase the part's strength. Note that the larger parts glow more brightly on those edges than the full surface does.

UFO. Warp Wing Fighter. Mainly uses Transparent Neon-Green. Note how several Transparent Neon-Green pieces tend to glow brighter and a bit more blue - I noticed this with all the UFO sets.

Similar to the Ice Planet 2002 sets, the large canopy has some stronger glow on the edges.

=================================

Now actually going for more recent sets, which use less black light-sensitive parts. However, this actually gives better accents to the model itself, even though I love to have those kind of "radioactive" spaceships, it does overwhelm the entire picture slightly.

Toy Story. Buzz's Star Command Spaceship. A smaller set, only having two Transparent Neon-Green antenna's on the front. It's a shame that Buzz Lightyear's shoulderpad isn't Glow In The Dark (or black light-sensitive) like in the movies, but I admire the minifigure for sure.

However, looking from the front, it does look kind of limited doesn't it? What if we turn around the model?

Ah yes, that looks more like it. I've opened the small door on the back so that you can see the rover (it's on the left in the first picture) glowing as well.

Having those huge thrusters glowing like that should be enough to reach infinity and beyond...

=================================

Changing to something entirely else, Batman. Although it might sound odd for using a Batman set, it's also the reason why I want to show this example.

The only Batman I (2006~2008; Batman II is part of the Super Heroes line) set I currently own for now, The Bat-Tank: The Riddler and Bane's Hideout. Having just a hand full of Transparent Neon-Green pieces - turning on the black light gives something extra that I can't really describe. It gives more brightness to specific parts of importance: the searching light and turret at the gate, the jetpack from The Riddler and the tips of Bane's firearms on his bike.

It keeps the Bat-Tank stealthy, although it does has several transparent pieces that acts as (head)lights. Similar to the gate, there's also a few more lights - which are transparent red and are not affected by UV black light at all.

I think that The-Batcopter: The Chase for Scarecrow is a much more suitable set in the Batman series to use with black light, consider there's some Transparent Neon-Green canisters used to hold Scarecrow's Fear Gas. Next to that, Scarecrow's head is Glow In The Dark - which suits the situation. I prefer the newer design of Scarecrow (the one from Arkham Asylum Breakout) however.

Staying in the DC Universe, I can confirm that the Green Lantern vs Sinestro and the Brainiac Attack sets are a feast to the eyes under black light. However Sinestro's weapon doesn't glow while Green Lantern's does, because it uses regular Transparent Yellow.

=================================

I don't have this on picture for now, but I can confirm I noticed something strange with my Attack on Avengers Tower. Yes, I know that the entire tower doesn't glow because it's Transparent Light Blue, that Ultron Mark 1 doesn't glow because he thrusts Transparent Blue, that Iron Man Mark 45 doesn't glow because he thrusts Transparent Light Blue, or that the Iron Legion heads do glow because they're Transparent Neon-Orange (while their thrust doesn't because it's Transparent Red)... even if you would expect them to glow because of the arc reactor.

That aside, I noticed that even if the tower doesn't glow, the stickers do. All the white lines and the digital text on the stickers for the heads up displays glow slightly under black light... That's interesting to know to be honest. Having the tower from the outside, the Avengers logo and the Iron Legion stickers glow. While opening the tower and exposing the inside, the heads up displays glow.

That's it for now guys! I'll probably photograph the larger sets on a different day on a different blogpost, but I don't expect that to be soon. In order to make these pictures, I would have to bring every set to the same room as where I made my older space display images. It would be interesting to see if I could create a picture with more several sets together, instead of just one large set...

Until next post!