Lite Brights Rule!!

Lite Bright was introduced by Hasbro in 1967 and was one of my favorite toys as a child. Turns out, it's one of Cole's favorite too! We were at my Mother's a while back, and she got out the old clunker. The picture to the left is the template Cole completed. He had a wonderful time doing it and was completely entranced until it was done. There's something mesmerizing about those brilliantly lit pegs!

Here's a little blurb about the toy from Wikipedia:

Lite-Brite allows the artist to create a "glowing" picture. The picture is created by placement of multi-colored translucent plastic pegs through opaque black paper. The light from an illuminated light bulb is blocked by the black paper except though where the pegs conduct the light. When lit, the pegs have an appearance similar to that of LEDs. Most Lite-Brite toys come with a series of pre-prepared patterns. Classic patterns include the "Wizard of Light" (a picture of a wizard with the "Lite-Brite" name above), and the clown.

Denver artist Lori Kanary created the World's Largest Lite-Brite in 1999 with her work "Giant Lite-Brite," setting a new Guinness World Record. It was shown in collaboration with the Redshift Gallery and the Denver Art Museum's Impressionism show that year. Kanary is responsible for establishing the Lite-Brite as art craze in 1996.

The world's former largest Lite-Brite object was certified by Guinness as a rendering of Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" by Malvern, Pennsylvania artist Mark Beekman. The picture took over 15 months to construct and measures 5'5" by 11'. It was constructed with 124,418 pegs, which was over double the previous record. Hasbro sent him the first 100,000 pegs. He had to purchase the rest of the pegs by purchasing individual Lite-Brites from his local area.[1] The picture was auctioned on Ebay[2] (auction no longer active) with the proceeds going to the Milton & Catherine Hershey Heritage Foundation.[3]

This record was beaten October 7, 2008 by ASICS America Corporation in collaboration with Vitrorobertson and artist Lori Kanary. The new sneaker design is 2.74 m (9 ft) by 4.27 m (14 ft) in size and was made with 347,004 original size pegs.

References can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lite-Brite