IT TURNS out all that time spent playing with Lego was time well spent for a costume and prop company.

Plunge creations, based in Portslade, was enlisted by Argos to create a Lego van to promote the launch of the new Super Mario-themed Lego.

The talented team built a rig around a van and applied approximately 130,00 Lego bricks by hand to cover its entirety.

The result was an eye-catching, red-bricked vehicle that would not look out of place in Legoland itself.

The Argus:

Tim Simpson, managing director at Plunge Creations, said that while the job was incredibly “fiddly”, he was proud of the outcome.

He told The Argus: “It’s one of those jobs where you think it might end up looking pretty cool so you take on the job even though you know it’s going to be a real headache.

“But we are really proud of it – it looks stunning and kids just go bonkers for it.”

Once the project was complete, the company was left with the small matter of tens of thousands of left-over Lego bricks.

After seeing the way children reacted to the van, the team decided to donate the remaining Lego to schools in the surrounding areas, including Peter Gladwin School in Drove Road, Brighton, and Brackenbury Primary School in Locks Hill, Portslade.

Tim said: “Kids and grown-ups alike have grown up with Lego and have enjoyed it and it just sort of appeals to you.

The Argus:

“It really made sense to take some of the Lego to a few of the local schools and also park it outside the school, and you can see them touching it and turning to their mates saying ‘it’s really Lego’ and that’s exciting.

“We’ve dropped off boxes of a few thousand Lego bricks to these schools, so that they might be able to use them for building constructions, learning about engineering or just having fun.”

And there will soon be more blocks to go around as the van has now been stripped of its Lego exterior.

Tim said: “It was somewhat heartbreaking, but the van did have to go back to being just a van.

“It was kind of fun but at the same time we were all a bit sad that we had to say goodbye to our Lego van.”

Plunge Creations has also designed the costumes behind the ITV hit TV series The Masked Singer.

The company recently finished working on the second series of the celebrity talent contest.