8-year-old Lego builder advances to international competition
Legoland Discovery Center Bay Area in Milpitas just crowned 8-year-old
By Sooji Nam
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MILPITAS, California (KPIX) — Legoland Discovery Center Bay Area in Milpitas just crowned the winner of the Bay Area’s 2025 Mini Master Model Builder, and one talented eight-year-old inventor is moving forward to compete on a global scale.
“You really can release your imagination through Legos, you can like build anything you want,” Samuel Nudelman, the winner of the Bay Area competition, told CBS News Bay Area.
He began building Lego sets when he was just about two years old. And now, he is the proud winner of this year’s competition. Nudelman built a truck, with some innovative moving features.
“It had like, some storage space. It was pretty good, though I only spent like two days building it,” Nudelman said.
He competed against about 60 other young Bay Area inventors.
“He would talk about the names of the pieces, he was talking about the different sizes. And then we were talking history! I wasn’t expecting history… he was talking about what the first Lego sets were,” Lester Mendaros, Lego Master Model Builder at Legoland Discovery Center Bay Area, told CBS News Bay Area.
Mendaros was one of the judges, and said he was impressed with Nudelman’s expertise with Lego sets.
Mendaros is now mentoring the eight-year-old inventor as he is now tasked with building a Lego that represents where he is from.
“I’m building something even bigger than the truck,” Nudelman said.
For Mendaros, he said competitions like these help spark that creativity in the next generation of innovators.
“It’s really intuitive when you’re putting things together, you don’t have to really think too hard to put things together. There is a little bit of engineering, but your ideas can come in really quickly. There are so many colors, there are so many pieces,” Mendaros said.
Nudelman needs to submit his Lego creation for the global contest in June, and there will be at least 30 other submissions from Legoland Discovery Centers from around the world.
He also shared that when he grows up, he wants to be a master model builder.
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