UNCLE SCROOGE’S MONEY BIN This bold model, based on Donald Duck comics, hides a wealth of detail and character Words: Tim Johnson Photography: Andrew Tipping and Jacob Westerlund
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ou can’t miss Jacob Westerlund’s model; being a one-metre high grey cube with a huge yellow dollar sign emblazoned on the side, it really stands out at events. The Bricks team first saw it at Skærbæk Fan Weekend in 2015 and then in Halmstad, Sweden, in 2016, and it seems to be quite a simple build at first sight. Closer inspection proves this is not so; the model contains multiple floors and a vast vault full of golden coins. Welcome to the Money Bin: a twelve-storey skyscraper owned by Uncle Scrooge to store his “three cubic acres” of money. We caught up with Jacob to discover the secrets hidden within. Jacob, I think I remember the Money Bin from the opening credits of
DuckTales, the 1980s animated series - is that correct? That version is different. This one is from the comics, in particular the ones drawn by Don Rosa. He worked on the comics from the late 1980s to the end of the 2000s but he based all of his drawings on those of Carl Barks, who drew the Money Bin in many different ways to suit the stories. A definitive version of the Money Bin design doesn’t really exist. Why did you choose to build something from a Donald Duck print comic? Donald Duck is very big in Scandinavia. He always has been. We have a lot of the magazines, they come out every week. It’s funny because Don Rosa is American but he’s not as well known there. So for a lot of his comics, although he writes
them in English, when they subsequently get published, they get translated into Swedish. So a lot of his comics he has never seen published in his own language, possibly only in another language. What is it about Donald Duck comics that fascinates you? To me, Uncle Scrooge is the interesting character. Donald Duck is short-tempered but kind, he’s not that complicated, but Uncle Scrooge has this enormous wealth that he made by himself and yet he doesn’t really appreciate money. On a deeper level, he appreciates the ways to make money. I like all Donald Duck comics.
Donald says money doesn’t buy happiness. Scrooge says it does buy LEGO, which is the same thing
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