Robot Love: Hamleys and Model Zone

Positronic brains of R Giskard, the sheer annoying attitude of Optimus Prime, the dustiness of Wall-E and the T series of terminator, Robots are as robot does. We the creators, watch in amazement as our electro-mechanical children take over the world….
Ok technophobes, your fix for the day is done, You can go home now.

For the others, the slightly more IC inclined, robotics conjures up memories of metallic benevolence or steel fisted terror. The drive to built the next robot Jeeves, is enough to gallivanting across the city, looking for the perfect stepper motors and the associated gear arrangements. For me, London harboured one distinct Robot safe house (if they need one that is): Hamley’s. With its fantastic red colours and the floor upon floor of boxes shining with mechanical creatures waiting to pounce, Hamley’s doesn’t give the felling of a robot builders paradise. And its not. Period. It’s a frustrating and fruitless exercise. When a store doesn’t have Lego Mindstorms, it should be closed down. This should be a law: ‘Toy Stores without Lego Mindstorms will be burnt and the owners will be made to put out the flame with a can of Petrol’ .

So it was with total disgust, that I walked out of Hamley’s, just itching to send one of my robot buddies to tear the store down. Then I came across Model Zone in High Holborn. Sure it isn’t as flashy as Hamleys, but it is a builders paradise. This store has model planes, full miniature railways and a wide selection of Meccano robots. While the prices of the Meccano are the same in almost every store, I feel that the Model Zone was slightly cheaper than Hamleys. The catch is that this store has no Lego, what so ever. Hold back the riots, they never claimed to have any Lego either.

Stores aside, I think I have fallen in love with the Meccano Spykees. the fact that they are WiFi compatible just makes them more appealing. The price tag, seems a bit prohibitive though. Yes, I would like to know about any builder’s con that happens in the city.. so if you know, just lemme know through the link on the bottom left corner.

Coming back to Legos, I think I’ll just have to go to Lego Land!

Both these stores have their own sites (the Hamley’s site sucks even more than the store):
www.hamleys.com
http://www.modelzone.co.uk/
Directions to both the stores are on the maps:


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