Making Rubber Ducks More Awesome (with Lego & Sugru)

Our hack space (Leicester Hackspace) has been given a batch of Sugru for us to improve anything and everything we see fit. I got inspired by the Sugru website to give one of my wife's many rubber ducks a bit of a makeover (give-rubber-ducks-a-little-extra-style) but for unlimited future versatility I thought I should add some Lego. Low profile bricks to be applied directly to the duck, such that other bricks, pieces, extensions can be simply pushed on, with the Sugru'ed parts remaining permanent.

As part of my Lego collection at I have a Hawkeye minifigure which came packed in a Marvel Super Heroes set (Lego part number 30165). This means I don't just have a minifigure, but also some additional bricks and parts which could be useful to Sugru directly onto the duck.

Step 1: Colour Matching Sugru

Sugru typically comes in red, yellow, blue, black and white. The rubber duck that I have is a pail blue/turquoise so I decided to mix some of the Sugru colours together. I started with the blue and slowly added yellow until the colour best matched the colour of the duck.

Matching to the colour of the duck rather than the colour of the bricks means that I can mix the colour once and use it on any colour of brick I choose to apply.

For the legs the bricks were very prominent so I decided to match the colour to the brick rather than the lego, so it is a combination of black with white and a little yellow.

Step 2: Star Wars Legs

Whilst looking for more Lego around the hackspace I came across a cool looking Revell easykit Star Wars AT-RT (All Terrain Recon Transport), and for this project I thought I could use the legs.

Step 3: Attaching the AT-RT Legs

To make the duck usable for other Lego projects, and also whilst the legs are not attached, I wanted to keep the low profile flat brick on the duck. I found natural grooves in the legs and placed two bricks in sensible locations so they stay essentially there by themselves.

To make sure it will fit with the flat (light grey) piece that will be on the duck I have intentionally assembled the complete leg assembly whilst Sugru'ing. That way when curing the legs will be perfectly separated so that the duck will fit directly on. The light gray Lego brick was removed once Sugru'ed so that it could be stuck to the duck.

Step 4: Seat for the Minifigure

Using the same philosophy as attaching the legs, I attached the Lego Hawkeye minifigure by placing flat bricks to the minifigure first. This means that when I then come to push this onto the duck all the pieces will be in the right place for the minifgure to be placed/removed/replaced in the future.

Step 5: Additional Trimmings

I had a few parts left, and because the Sugru sticks to pretty much anything, I stuck the Lego bricks anywhere on the duck I thought would look good. I tried to be a little strategic so that if I wanted to include any additional Lego in the future I still can without needing more sugru, but they are pretty much just random...

Step 6: Stabilising the Legs

The AT-RT legs are not very stable on their own and it takes quite a while to get it to balance just right. I have attached a few extra bits of Lego to the bottom of the feet to ensure that it is stable and will stand up now on it's own.