Meet Bruce Cheung of Galactic BSwift Empire, HK's Top Lego Star Wars Maker

Bruce Cheung considers himself a true LEGO fanatic. Living in Hong Kong with his wife, Bruce, also known as Bruce Swift, a name dedicated to his love for singer Taylor Swift, is the city’s biggest LEGO influencer online.

The day-time manager trades his work hours for countless projects on his breaks and at night dedicated to building up his life goal: to create the largest collection of LEGO Star Wars troopers, measuring only 4cm, but numbering already 22,000 troops.

“My LEGO journey began when I went to Toys”R”Us as a kid in Hong Kong,” Bruce recounts in a Zoom interview. “I would buy tons of plastic LEGO soldiers and play with them. I got into LEGO Star Wars when I discovered the troopers, now my main theme in my LEGO collection.” 

Bruce describes his intent to focus on the LEGO Star Wars universe as a source for collection and creation, because of how expansive the space is. “I can build different models, create solo figures, and freely bring new elements of the Star Wars universe together.”

The Hong Konger charts the beginning of his collection days, when he arrived in Australia to study in high school in 2009. Living with one huge empty table in his room, he wanted to fill up the blank space.

After walking by a high street department store, he decided to randomly purchase a tank, two storm troopers, and two Star Wars battle droids.

He got hooked. Bruce sized up to getting a star fighter, another tank, a fleet, a cruiser, and more. He connected with local LEGO groups in the country and began financing a monthly budget out of his wage to purchase LEGO.

Creating a YouTube channel in 2015, Bruce began uploading videos of his new devotion: to create a large troop army. Naming himself “Galactic BSwift Empire” on all his social media platforms, Bruce sought to emulate Star Wars’ Darth Vader and his galactic empire, or army, of storm troopers.

Each year, since 2016, his collection has grown to cataclysmic sizes. “I treat this as a live project, growing my collections in a direction that I want. I don’t have any [official] connections with LEGO, but you could say I am a KOL, it’s my hobby.”

"Unlike dancing, running, photography, and skating, my other hobbies, LEGO is something I can do whenever, at 2 AM in my living room or sharing this hobby with my followers on Instagram.”

“LEGO doesn't take lots of stamina when you work full-time. You go for a run, and you become exhausted and return to work."

Bruce is part of a group in Hong Kong called Legend Breaks, the city’s main LEGO user group, gathering every quarter to chat about LEGO. He bemoans that in a commercial city like Hong Kong, “everything is still commercialised [with] LEGO. People want to resell everything.”

“When people see my collections, they don’t say, wow, amazing. They talk about how much money I have spent on this. You could get a car or an apartment with this money.”

In his plan to test the limits of mass LEGO building, it is evident, through his project cataloguing on Instagram, how determined Bruce is.

“I have a big plan in my life for LEGO. In my 20s to 30s, I go get my career and build up troopers, individuals. I have the largest size in Asia, possibly with 22,000 troopers. In my 30s to 40s, my goal is to focus on building vehicles, army building vehicles, a fleet, and larger scenes.”

"I want to get the world record of troops, reaching more than 36,000 troops.”

To see more of Bruce's creations, visit his Instagram page.