The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks author Daniel Konstanski is unboxing and playing with a brand new 8316 Kek Powerizer from the much ridiculed 2002 Galidor theme – is this the most ambitious LEGO set ever or just the weirdest LEGO set ever?
How few pieces can a LEGO set have? 8316 Kek Powerizer, from Galidor, definitely tried answering that question when it launched in 2002. It has just nine pieces in the box and does not take long to assemble!
In this video, Daniel Konstanski, author of The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks, unboxes a brand new 8316 Kek Powerizer, puts it together, turns it on and tried out the games that the electronic product features. There’s fun, there’s frustration and there’s a grown man waving a giant plastic toy around.
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Galidor was an unusual theme for the LEGO Group, launched at a time when the company was in real difficulty and looking to find a new way forward. It was a line of action figures in which you could swap the limbs between characters, supported by a live action television show. The flagship set was 8316 Kek Powerizer.
Here is what the LEGO website promised about the set back in 2002:
The Kek Powerizer is Gorm’s most awesome creation – armour that can magnify glinching energy and make its wearer all-powerful! The Kek Powerizer comes complete with 23 special missions that you can play – 7 are activated when you first place Jens’ head on the Powerizer, and you unlock the rest as you play. You can even access more missions by interacting with the Galidor TV show and web site!
“The idea with this was that it has technology embedded in it that the LEGO Group developed – a way to turn sound into a digital input,” Daniel explains. “So this thing could listen for cues that were broadcast at a frequency that humans can’t hear and it would have been able to interact, it could have listened to the Galidor TV show and it would have heard these signals that would have triggered a response.
“So the idea was that it would interact with the TV show, with the various games, so it was a really ambitious bit of technology that they were planning on using in a wider array of products, but this ended up being the only one that they ever put it into.”
If you want to learn more about how the technology and concept was developed, get a copy of the monthly LEGO magazine Issue 127, which includes a feature on Project Genesis – the massive scheme that spawned Galidor.
Daniel plays the different games that 8316 Kek Powerizer offers to see how they work then shares some reflections on whether this toy delivers what you might hope for from what was – when it was released – a rather pricey LEGO product.
If you’re interested in picking up the new set, consider doing so via our affiliate links to help support the work we do at Blocks, online and in print. The set is up for preorder now, with release scheduled for September 12.
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