Photo courtesy ATAS International
Canstruction is a unique community event that combines creativity, engineering, and philanthropy as teams design and build large-scale structures entirely out of canned goods. On October 10, 2025, four teams in the Canstruction Greater Lehigh Valley competition designed and built sculptures around this year’s video games theme. A total of 20,197 cans were used to create the sculptures, and all were donated to the local Second Harvest Food Bank in the Lehigh Valley when they were disassembled two weeks later.
With the restrictions of can sizes and labels, competing teams had to find creative solutions to their designs. They successfully worked within their restrictions to create visually appealing sculptures that meet the theme requirements and optimize their metal resources for the best results.
Photo courtesy ATAS International
One team won half of this year’s awards: ATAS International’s Monsters of Metal team. With the leadership of co-captains Kevin Klersy and Patrick Reinhart, the team took home three of the six awards. This is the sixth consecutive year the team has participated in this competition, having taken part in the contest since its inception. The Monsters of Metal chose Sonic the hedgehog as their subject matter for this year. The speedy blue hero was featured on the front of the display, and on the backside, evil Dr. Eggman was depicted. The sculpture consisted of 3,000 cans, including black, green, garbanzo, and cannellini beans, yams, Manwich, blueberries, tomato sauce, pork and beans, and unsweetened coconut.
The awards the Monsters of Metal team received included:
- Best Original Design
- Best Use of Labels
- Structural Integrity
