The last few years have been an education for Hamish Blake: being host of Lego Masters has exponentially increased his knowledge of the world-conquering Danish building blocks. “I would say enormous,” he says, of the difference between his Lego savvy at the outset of his Lego Masters journey and now.

“Even if I hadn’t been paying attention, which I like to think I’ve tried to do, I think just by osmosis. I remember in season one, I was calling the top of the Lego the little circles, which I just thought everyone called them, but that’s not what they’re called. They’re called studs. And that’s a real basic one. In the Lego community, that would be like if you’re a tradie turning up to build a house, going, what’s the name of the hard cubes we use to build a house?”

Both Blake and Lego Masters have come a long way since then: the show that seemed like a gamble in 2019 – betting that viewers would want to watch people playing with toys – has become such a juggernaut, not just here but around the world, that the Australian version is this year debuting the first international Lego Masters championship, neatly timed ahead of the Paris Olympics. (Lego Masters airs on Nine, publisher of this website and broadcaster of the Paris 2024 Olympics.)

The host is proud to see Australia once more taking the lead, Blake noting that several international versions are based around the Australian one. “So if you choose, you know, Italy or China or Japan or Spain or America, you’d be like, oh yeah, I recognise that show. So I’m really glad we got to do this. We were like, someone’s going to do this somewhere... it should be us.”

In this international competition, Australian Lego geniuses will face off against master builders from Germany, France, Denmark and the US. However, the playing field is not exactly even: while each foreign country is represented by one team, there are four pairs of local heroes fronting up.

“We had the idea to bring forward four international teams and then, let’s be honest, stack the deck with four Aussie teams, to give Australia the best chance of winning because we’d all love to see an Aussie win,” says Blake. Which is only reasonable, given that it’s our home turf – after all at the Sydney Olympics, Australia had the most athletes. On the other hand, at least one of the visitors would seem to start at a natural advantage: as the country that invented Lego, surely the Danish competitors have bricks in their blood, so to speak.

Blake agrees. “I actually did go to Denmark last year. I went to the Lego HQ and saw the home of Lego. And yes, Denmark is very aware of Lego. The kids know about it. It’s like how kids in Brazil and Italy have a soccer ball at their feet before they can walk and you get a population that’s very good at the game. I think that will give Denmark a natural advantage.”

Of course, besides the numerical advantage and the comforts of home, the Australian builders will also have a secret weapon: Hamish Blake himself. Non-Aussies will be getting their first taste of the distinctive Blake hosting style, and that can take some getting used to. It’s a blend of improvisational comedy, childlike curiosity and a persistent desire to play that has proven irresistible to millions, even if it can divide opinion closer to home.