Undoubtedly one of the coolest things about yesterday’s Oscars were the life size Lego statuettes that were handed over to bemused members of the audience, during a performance of the song ‘Everything is awesome’ which was nominated for the ‘best song’ award. The alternative Oscars were built by Nathan Sawaya, a New York-based ‘officially sanctioned’ Lego artist, who was approached by the “Lego Movie” team who wanted to do something special for the “Best Song” performance at the award ceremony. [caption id=“attachment_2119475” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Screengrab from Twitter[/caption] NY Daily News quoted Sawaya as saying, “I spent a few days designing and building these statuettes in my art studio. Each one is glued together so that the Lego bricks won’t come apart.” The report added that each Oscar was built with 500 Lego bricks. Sawaya, who has created other popular Lego art installations, had already designed an statuette for the co-director of “The Lego Movie,” Phil Lord, who tweeted an image of it on 15 January when the Oscar nominees were announced. He had tweeted it out when The Lego Movie was inexplicably snubbed by the Academy of Motion Pictures and Performing Arts had inexplicably snubbed the movie:
And now I love you even more. #LegoMovie - @philiplord It's okay. Made my own! pic.twitter.com/ZKvwpfx9mT
— Jessica Nicholas (@JessicaNicholas) January 15, 2015
The statuettes were easily the hottest souvenir of the night. Oprah Winfrey who was one of the recipients, was extremely excited at getting one, as you can see in this picture of her reaction, tweeted out by Sawaya.
I loved @Oprah's face with my #LEGO Oscar! #Oscars pic.twitter.com/IdU4dnAHA7
— Nathan Sawaya (@NathanSawaya) February 23, 2015
Here are some other happy ‘winners’:
I mean come on. pic.twitter.com/tyKbak75Ql
— Christopher Miller (@chrizmillr) February 23, 2015
““I loved watching Emma Stone clutching hers during the show. The great thing about Lego is that it everyone connects to it, kids and adults”, Sawaya told the Daily News. Ad Week conducted an interview with Lego’s senior director of brand relations Michael McNally who said the idea had been “more about how to keep the whole performance as Lego as possible.”