Newnan brothers Steven and Mark Erickson won the second season of “Lego Masters” Tuesday night on Fox.
“This has been the most inspiring thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Steven said on the show right after they won the $100,000 prize. (The season was taped at ATL Film Studios in Hiram earlier this year.)
“We spent our whole lives playing as kids and as young adults,” Mark said. “Being here on the stage is the crowning achievement.”
Their final creation was a gigantic Lego tree spirit man called “Warden of the Woods” holding little characters representing Steven and Mark.
“It’s a bit like Groot mixed in with Iron Giant and with a lot more color,” Steven added during a Zoom interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, during which the brothers wore the same shirts they wore during the finale. “It’s the size of a 9-year-old child. We wanted to carry that sense of wonder a kid has when he sees all this great stuff for the first time.”
Credit: FOX
Credit: FOX
Steven and Mark grew up hiking and camping in Tennessee, the Everglades, north Georgia and the Carolinas. “These are some of our best memories coming to life,” Steven said on the show.
The 24-hour build had to look different during the day vs. the night so the teams had to incorporate lights and movement as well as a compelling storyline.
Steven and Mark seemed to have a smooth build. Cameras did capture Steven tripping over a power supply as the table with the tree trembled a bit. “You nearly cost the game, bro,” Mark said on the show. “Watch your step!”
The brothers came into the finals as favorites to win after performing consistently over the 12-episode season.
“Unlike a lot of the teams going in, we knew we had what it took if things went right to win this thing,” Mark said. “At first it was a little shaky but we did pretty well in the end. Some of the technical motor stuff, we had to learn by fire.”
Both brothers have competed quite a bit in Lego competitions and knew some of the other contestants, including one of the winners from season one. “It’s a tight-knit community,” Steven said.
Rivals Zack and Wayne Macasaet built a massive pagoda showing moments of their lives with two dragons wrapped around the building. Caleb and Jacob Schilling created a huge hourglass with the night represented on top and the day on the bottom.
Mark said Caleb and Jacob’s hourglass was aesthetically beautiful but its size restricted their ability to build as detailed a world as they otherwise could have. “It was logistically a little off,” Steven said.
Zack and Wayne’s build was more than six feet tall but Mark felt it lacked motion, a strength they had used to their advantage in past challenges.
Steven, a welder, would like to use his share of the $100,000 prize money to start building his own house. Mark, who works in retail, is planning to buy a house soon and possibly a new automobile.
Steven expects “Lego Masters,” if it gets renewed for more seasons, will help “snowball more interest in Legos as a hobby and an art form” for adults.
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