We’ve been waiting with bated breath for the forthcoming LEGO Lord of the Rings sets for quite some time now, but it looks as if they’ve already been spotted in the wild. Apparently this image above was taken in the VIP area of LEGO’s booth at the Nuremberg Toy Fair and (allegedly) posted to this Slovenian forum. But are they the real deal?

And let’s be honest: That makes it awesome. What’s amazing to me is not only how many custom weapons are used, or how many custom minifigs are completely destroyed in showers of Play-Doh blood, but how fluidly the characters move. LEGO stop motion animation sure has come a long way.

Alex Jones recreated Hill Valley, the iconic town from Back to the Future, in LEGO, because this is what LEGO is for. Jones has been working on the build for quite some time, and cited endless hours of watching Back to the Future to be part of the build process in order to get everything correct. Not exactly the worst fact-checking scenario. He created each building separately, then lumped them into the whole scene, which measures in at 140 by 140 studs. More pictures after the jump.

Yes, it seems like those official LEGO Lord of the Rings sets are creeping closer and closer toward a reality. The latest announcement from the popular European construction toy features the Minifig population of Middle-Earth, with everyone’s favorite hobbits, wizards, dwarves, nazgul, elves, orcs, uruk-hai, and humans. Oh, and somebody else, but I just can’t remember his name. Creepy little dude, grey skin, you know the guy (gollum! gollum!). Oh, excuse this (gollum!) horrific wet hacking cough I’ve developed. Anyway, I’m sure his name will come back to me eventually.

When I was a kid, a friend of mine and I decided to build a raft out of Popsicle sticks and glue a LEGO guy to it. Then we set it free in a nearby creek. It was awesome. Now, many years later, two Canadian teenagers did basically the same thing, except they sent their LEGO minifig into the far reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere using only equipment found on Craigslist. To boot, they filmed the whole journey, POV-style. My Popsicle stick raft is suddenly even lamer than it was to begin with.

While the Enterprise is most iconic of the Star Trek vessels, I’ll always have a soft spot for the USS Reliant which appeared in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This amazing LEGO model of the Miranda class starship by Christer Nyberg captures the doomed ship in all its bricky glory. Nyberg writes that the model took him nearly two years to design and build, and used some 10-15 thousand LEGO pieces. It even has some sweet lighting effects. See more pictures, after the break.

The announcement of LEGO partnering to make Lord of the Rings themed products hasn’t stopped LEGO enthusiast Blake Baer from doing up scenes from The Hobbit with interlocking bricks. Highlighting pivotal scenes from the book, Baer’s models are all in the details — a moose head on the wall, the lived-in look of Lake-town, the immensity of Smaug’s hoard, and so on. While outstanding in its own right, it’s a bit of a cruel reminder how much longer we’ll have to wait for the movie.

We’ve written about some truly great, and large, LEGO models here on Geekosystem, but this enormous 19 foot tall Saturn V rocket from Ryan McNaught is definitely raising the bar. Of course, that’s not too surprising if you consider he has one of the coolest job titles in the world: Certified LEGO professional (one of only 13 in the world). His model lovingly recreates the American moon rocket in some 120,000 pieces, complete with the iconic red launch tower and the astrovan used to ferry astronauts to their rides. Even more amazing is the fact that McNaught also modeled the rocket’s internal fuel tanks. Truly, this is a wonder to behold.

Read on after the break for full-size images of this monster sized LEGO rocket.

It’s extremely difficult to describe what exactly YouTube user ctx0075 accomplished with his “LEGO awesome machine.” To say that it is merely an overly complicated device composed entirely out of mechanized LEGO blocks that moves a bunch of small plastic balls around in a circle does not do it justice. Over the course of their magical, circular journey, these plastic balls will ride on front loaders, trucks, trains, ferris wheels, mechanical claws, and many, many chutes. Simply put, the machine uses just about every way to move balls that you can imagine, and several that you can’t. Watch it. Be amazed. Be perplexed. See the video, after the break.

This huge bust of Albert Einstein, made out of LEGO, lives in Florida’s Legoland, located just outside of Orlando in Winter Haven. The park, which opened this past October, features around fifty million LEGO bricks used. The bust of Einstein took around four months to build and employed a team of around six to seven builders, and measures in at twenty feet tall and ten feet wide. Check out another picture after the jump.