It's hard to walk through a toy shop and not feel a little nostalgic. The home of anime, Japan has more than its fair share of figurine shops and trinket stores. Even the ガシャポン (gashapon, vending machine capsule toys) are pretty impressive and worth collecting. Browsing toy stores or aisles of the machines, I can't help but feel a tinge of that awe and abandonment from my childhood.

Others in Japan likely feel the same. Judging by the resell value of figurines and the countless vendors, collectors can live the good life in the land of the rising sun. Most recently, fans have gushed—or held their noses—over kawaii poop capsule toys from the うんこ, poop, and museum.

YouTuber Munimunibetsukan gets it. While I don’t know his stance on poo squeeze toys, he has uploaded an interesting LEGO series on his channel. The videos detail the robotic toy creations that he has engineered. English subtitles are available, push the cc button if not displayed.

LEGO coffee grinder

The first LEGO automaton is a godsend in the morning.

Munimuni's video starts by underlining the mild hassle of grinding coffee. It would be much nicer if the process could be automated. To do so, the engineer designs an automated base with a plate for holding the grinder. Flip the switch, and the rig begins rotating nicely, kind of like a type of LEGO display stand.

However, it's far from finished—the grinder clearly needs more support. Munimuni goes back to the drawing board and brainstorms on a sturdier design. He puts together a type of chassis for the grinder and inverts the frame of his design. The motor is suspended above the grinder, and an arm is attached to help rotate the grinder's arm. He also juices up the whole rig by adding some more motors.

Sure enough, the new design works like a dream—freshly ground coffee with very little effort involved. Hopefully, a few precious minutes can be saved in the morning.

LEGO 3D Printer

Catching up with the ages, Munimuni has managed to put together a LEGO 3D printer. As you can see, it's a relatively straightforward design. It does, however, involve a computer interface, LEGO's EV3 Mind Storm. After connecting the device to a computer via USB, it's ready to go. The EV3 API guides the robotic arm by moving the chassis in 2D space and adjusting the robotic arm to move along the z-axis.

Munimuni gets started, but immediately runs into trouble—the robotic arm barely makes a dent in the clay it's molding. He changes the tip for a drill bit; however, that setup proves to be irresponsive to the clay's consistency, although it does chip some away.

Finally, the YouTuber switches the clay for something softer and returns to the original robot arm. Success! Over a period of four hours, the robot slowly molds the clay girl from Munimuni's computer model.

Missile Launcher

You can't be a male with toys and not occasionally play war. Along those lines, Munimuni puts together a LEGO missile launcher that can dish out some heavy duty fire power.

The weapon aims by swiveling on its base and adjusting its angle. As a mechanical arm lifts, spring-powered shells are decompressed and launched at a target, say a fleet of enemy aircraft. As you can see, the shells launch with some actual velocity and can knock down the enemy model.

Finally, like some fantasy military parade, the vlogger puts some of his other "arms" on display. He has fast-punching robots that punch impressively quickly and some type of anti-aircraft weapon guided by a train track. Overall, Munimuni seems a lot like a maniacal warlord.