Editorial Review
It just may be impossible to exhaust the creative potential of LEGO bricks. With an active imagination as your guide, there are endless possibilities-provided you follow the LEGO Company's official (and sensible) rules. This means no cutting or tampering with bricks, creating models that shoot unapproved projectiles, or using non-standard parts with any LEGO product. After all, those little precision-molded ABS bricks can be dangerous in the wrong hands! Well, toss those rules out the window.
Forbidden Lego introduces you to the type of free-style building that LEGO's master builders do for fun in the back room. Using LEGO bricks in combination with common household materials (from rubber bands and glue to plastic spoons and ping-pong balls) along with some very unorthodox building techniques, you'll learn to create working models that LEGO would never endorse. Try your hand at a toy gun that shoots LEGO plates, a candy catapult, a high voltage LEGO vehicle, a continuous-fire ping-pong ball launcher, and other useless but incredibly fun inventions.
Once you get into the spirit, you'll want to try inventing your own rule-breaking models. Forbidden Lego's authors, share tips and tricks that will inspire you and help you turn your visions into reality. Nothing's against the rules in this book!
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Customer Reviews
Forbidden but FUN lego 
2008-04-05
Great book, as soon as my four sons saw the word FORBIDDEN the wanted to read it right away.
Hopefully the first of a long series 
2008-04-04
This is a great book for LEGO aficionados wanting to push the boundaries of this wonderful Danish product.
Personal favourites include the full-functioning ground-to-air missile - built from the Fire Rescue set - and the life-size girlfriend with realistic hair that can be cobbled together from combining the Star Wars: Clone Trooper with various Bionicle sets.
My life would be complete if they were to publish a second book showing how to make a working distillery.
Forbidden Lego 2008-03-27
I use Lego to experiment with mechanisms for engineering students and so I was interested to see some of the authors designs. The book is well presented with building steps illustrated with excellent colour diagrams. The introduction and the explanation of the "Lego Rules" was a surprising but interesting addition. The only limitation of the book is that some of the parts were special parts, which come from a Lego Technics kit, which might be difficult to source for people without the Technic Kits.
I would still recommend the book as it still has great ideas.
Interesting Book for LEGO builders 2008-02-19
I've been a LEGO builder for my whole life, starting with the original castle series. This book has instructions for all those sets you wish you could've bought, and then used to torment your siblings and parents.
Some highlights include:
Ping pong ball catapult
LEGO plate gun
and so forth...
I havent built them yet, but each set has a description of why its not allowed as an "official" set (for instance, one requires you to wire two lego power packs together, making one more powerful power pack). There are also some stories about desigining official lego sets, and other interesting lego trivia.
Its a fun book to read, and I cant wait to build some "Forbidden Lego"
Flawed but cool 2008-02-15
There are a number of cool projects in this book, including a ping pong ball shooter and a paper airplane launcher. The instructions are purely pictorial, in keeping with other Lego instruction manuals. Definitely not for the inexperienced builder.
My main criticism: the authors should have included a list of resources, places online where we can purchase some of these pieces. NAMING some of the more exotic-looking pieces would be helpful, too, since it can be a challenge to find some of these items online if you don't know their names.
fun to read but frustrating to do 
2008-07-21
We bought this book for our 8 year old lego-fantatic son. He really enjoyed reading the book and looking at the designs. But as for doing the projects...as others have said, there aren't that many actual projects in there, and most of those require specialized pieces my son doesn't have. In order to get the right pieces, he must either buy a kit that includes those pieces (such as a motor) or go to one of the sites that will sell individual pieces...but the prices are high for a kid.
So, although he was excited to get this as a gift, it hasn't worked out so well for him.
I'd rather a book that gave more projects with more standard pieces.
not impressed ... 2008-06-24
the boook is fine, but you only get five "projects". for $17 dollars new, you'd think there would be more ... guess i should have reviewed the table of contents before purchasing. also, the pieces aren't identified well enough for me. a name, or piece number would work MUCH better because i don't have some of the pieces and would need to purchase them, so now, i have to order them, blah, blah, blah. anyway, the book is nice, slick and well bound. there, i said something positive.
No parts = waste of money 
2008-06-20
I was very excited to get this book for my LEGO-crazed son, and the included projects are great...EXCEPT for the fact, as others have pointed out, that many required parts are, to say the least, non-typical. To require the book purchaser to spend hours searching for parts online, then spending multiples of the book price to get them, is deceptive to say the least. Bad form. It's like writing a cookbook with recipes requiring ingredients only available in ancient Mesopotamia or on modern-day Madagascar.
More than just designs 2008-06-02
You've always wanted to make that medieval catapult hurl things at your siblings. You've always wanted to gear down that racer and try to take it into the sandbox. Now here are designs that can help you do it. Not only do you get a ton of cool designs, but included are a ton of ideas on changing up the designs or switching pieces in case you're missing a few of the bits recommended. The designs all work very well, and are of the top quality that you'd expect from the former LEGO employees who made this book.
The real fun is that you get so much more than that. The book opens with exposition on how the LEGO design process works, and gives you a ton of excellent trivia (yes, the designers really have hugs bins of every part ever made so they can build any design they can dream). The insights into the LEGO design process not only show you the incredible quality that LEGO puts into every product, but give you excellent ideas on better building for your own models as well. Even when the book's models are presented, they've given multi-page stories detailing their history, and why the designs would never make it at LEGO headquarters, as well as the little technical aspects down to exactly why the model uses the gearing solution it does.
I definitely recommend this book for the LEGO fanatic in your life- they'll thank you for it. And, with help from the designers, they'll likely expand on the models presented and dream up all-new creations that will allow the design hints from this book to remain in use for a long time to come.
The only thing I'd note in closing is that this isn't really a book for kids, though you should be able to figure that out from the gun modeled on the front. This is a book for grownups, or at least kids with proper supervision.
Great Book- Great Instructions 2008-04-15
This book has step-by-step instructions that are fun to build and use. My Jr High students really enjoyed making the projects.
