KZ: Hi Ryan! What’s your favourite set recently released by LEGO? 

R: There have been really cool LEGO, they have had a resurgence with unusual things, not traditional LEGO set concepts. I’ll give you an example, LEGO have released flower bouquets – things like that, which weren't normally LEGO sets over the last few years. LEGO release a lot of cars, planes, trucks, you know, normal LEGO things. When they released those flower LEGO sets, I was putting them together thinking, ‘This is really cool!’ It's very different. I do love building LEGO Technic sets too.

KZ: Do you have any advice or tips for K-Zoners using LEGO Technic?

R: The cool thing about LEGO Technic is that you can make stuff happen. You can make a claw that opens and closes, or an animal's mouth, - you can actually get movement. There are motors so you can make all sorts of stuff happen. Why don’t you try and make a robot that cleans your clothes off the floor, so you don't have to do it. You can try to do all sorts of stuff with LEGO Technic! I tried once when I was a kid – it wasn't very good, but I tried it anyway. I tried to make a robot turn the light switch off, so I didn't have to get out of bed to turn the light switch off!

KZ: Have you done many LEGO builds that involve slime?

R: We've done a couple challenges on LEGO Masters where we were blowing something up with slime, but we've never actually built in a pit of slime. So no, I haven't done much - a little bit, but not too much.

KZ: In your new book, The Bricktionary, the Watcher idea in the ‘W’ section uses an optical illusion to make it seem like the monster is watching you as you move around. What is the weirdest thing you have ever built?  

R: I’ve built a few wacky things over the years. I've done events, like at a convention - it was ‘follow the yellow brick road’, and I had to make a big ruby slipper. I've had to do some really strange things, like a giant four-metre-sized love heart. That was a bit out there. I've done lots of weird builds actually. Depends what you consider weird! I had to do a giant Darth Vader, about a six-metre-high Darth Vader – absolutely massive. So I thought I'd make a little brain to put on the inside, and I made some little pink LEGO bricks into Darth Vader’s brain on the inside!

KZ: Are your builds ever inspired by events, like Star Wars Day, or holidays?

R: Yeah, I'm inspired a lot by travel. Whenever I've been traveling somewhere in Australia, or around the world. Agood example was when we went to Japan on a family holiday. When we got off the plane, we went to hop on the subway, and we saw the map of the subway system in Tokyo. We were like, 'This is the most bonkers thing ever!' So I had to make that.

KZ: LEGO really opens up a world of creative possibilities. One unique thing that many people like about LEGO is the satisfying sound of bricks clicking together. Do you think you could tell what a brick is by the sound?

R: I actually like the sound. I can tell by the sound when a LEGO brick clicks together properly, or it's not clicked together properly. Does that make any sense? LEGO has a thing called ‘clutch power’ and what it's actually the strength of two LEGO bricks together, so the force it takes to pull them apart is the clutch power – the clutch strength of those particular parts. The sounds are so unique, and because I've been doing LEGO for such a long time and do it so often, I know what all those sounds are. Even the sound of LEGO bricks in a bucket – I can roughly tell what sort of blocks you're dealing with by the sound, whether they are kind of a thin sound or deep sound or whatever.

The Bricktionary: The Ultimate LEGO A-Z is out now!

Want to read more of our interview with Ryan 'Brickman' McNaught? Grab the May 2022 'Trailblazers and Rebels' issue, out now!