Leading a Lego Lifestyle

The Cosmic Prospector has launched National U.S. Lego Champion David Michon into the galaxy of world competition.

The 9-year-old Irvine boy, who won the U.S. finals of the Lego Star Wars Galactic Challenge in his age group last month, looks forward to stiffer competition at the world finals in the fall.

David’s winning model, the Cosmic Prospector, is a motorized spaceship that searches for mineral resources in the galaxy. While judges at the New York competition praised it for ingenuity and creativity, David attributed his win to seniority and experience.

“I was the oldest kid there in my age group and the only one who seemed to have experience building on site,” he confided.

But officials from Lego credited David with tireless practice of Lego techniques and unerring instincts as an engineer.

“He is outstanding as a builder,” said Shannon Hartnett, a Lego spokeswoman. “He and his brother Thomas have a real grasp of building with Lego bricks.”

Lego building has been a lifestyle for David and his 13-year-old brother Thomas, a two-time national champion, since they were toddlers, said their mother, Susan Michon.

Their father, Ted Michon, who enjoyed playing with construction toys as a child, passed on this love to his sons.

“From the moment I could communicate with the boys, we started playing Lego,” he said.

Thomas, who won his first championship at age 5, inspired his younger brother by spreading his Lego blocks around their home. Between the two of them, they have at least 100,000 blocks and special pieces.

Their models stand inside a room dominated by a wall lined with miniature filing drawers containing an array of Lego blocks.

The Lego World Championship, to be held at Legoland in Carlsbad in late September, will feature 15 children from around the world vying for the title of Most Imaginative Builder in the Galaxy.

The national competition last month required the children to design and build a futuristic invention. In that case, working with a plan in mind was a must, although challenging for David, who relies on spontaneous bursts of creativity.

At the U.S. competition, David had to be able to build right out of the box, and he had only two hours to do it.

“I had to work up, develop and devise a plan,” he said.

David plans to enlist the aid of his brother and father and will begin to devise his plan for the world challenge.

If David attains the world title, he and his family will receive a VIP trip to Lego headquarters in Denmark, where Legos originated in the 1930s. David also would have direct input into the design and theme of future Lego sets and, finally, would receive a life-size Lego Star Wars model of his choice, autographed by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas.

But he does not want to spend his entire summer building with Lego bricks.

“I’m not that enthusiastic about it,” he said. Instead, he wants to play computer games and spend time outdoors.