The latest buzz in the Japanese LEGO blogosphere is a TV show called “TV Champion.” Recent episodes have included a LEGO championship, in which AFOLs build on-camera. It’s a Japanese show, but it’s filmed at LEGOLAND Billund. The studio audience (about 100 people) judges the creations, and the winner is crowned the “LEGO King.” Ironically (I guess), a woman named Sachiko Akinaga walked away with the title.

The theme for this the champioinship round was to build “LEGO surprises” — creations that open up to reveal an interesting interior. Here are some screen captures from last night’s show, the championship round:

Pics from Sachiko’s building process:

And the finished creation:

EDIT (12/3/05): TV Tokyo keeps reusing its existing directory structure and file names for new TV Champion shows. This makes it impossible to link to some of the images and pages. (Haven’t they ever heard of perma-links?!) If I’d known this, I would have downloaded all of the screen captures and posted them on Brickshelf (copyright issues aside). As it is, I have to take down Sachiko’s picture (now replaced with an old guy who was the Champion Tuna Fisherman) and the links to the other creations. Oh well…

EDIT (5/28/06): And of course the images themselves are broken at this point. Typical.