Watch This Lego Device Build (and Launch) a Paper Airplane

Lego bricks have evolved from children's toy to artist's tool. But Brazilian designer Arthur Sacek took the interlocking pieces to new heights when he built an autonomous paper-airplane-folding machine.

Commissioned by Elevation Digital Media and Arrow Electronics for a Super Bowl 50 commercial, the contraption was built over five days, using 4,000 pieces (including Lego Mindstorms intelligent bricks) and lots of paper.

The Arrow Aerospace & Defense ad features Sacek's streamlined device, which even launches the plane at the end of the Lego assembly line. Part of Arrow's Five Years Out V Series innovation program, the video aims to "help open your mind to what is truly viable."

"We all know that people often limit their ideas based on what they believe to be viable," the campaign website said. "However, viability is an organic construct, constantly evolving as new ideas are introduced, new possibilities considered—and it's rarely the starting point for true world-changing innovation."

To add a bit of flight-time nostalgia, the one-minute commercial (above) is backed by the soundtrack of quotes from President John F. Kennedy, American aviator Charles Lindbergh, and first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong.

Among Sacek's other Lego-based projects: An automated pin-art toy that can draw faces, a 3D milling machine to carve images into foam, a spinning replicator that copies art via a light sensor, and the Lego Danc3r, which is fairly self-explanatory.

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As Gizmodo pointed out, Sacek is not the first Lego paper airplane maker, but it certainly appears to be the most reliable.

Watch the video below for a behind-the-scenes look at Sacek's Paper Plane Machine.