The Brothers Brick

The Associated Press is reporting that retailers may face shortages of LEGO during the upcoming holiday shopping season.

“Many of our most popular products are sold out,” Lego spokeswoman Charlotte Simonsen said. “As part of efforts to restructure the company and focus on our core business, we had to make some cuts and the company has not had time to readjust its production.”

While having strong demand for your product might be a good thing, the article continues:

Boersen, Denmark’s leading financial newspaper, estimated that Lego could lose 750 million kroner ($127 million) because of lost Christmas sales.

EDIT (11/1/06): News of LEGO shortages were apparently greatly exaggerated, as Steve Witt has posted on his blog:

The media reports of a LEGO shortage this holiday season stem from an interview given in Denmark with regard to a supply issue in Scandinavia, but remarks were misconstrued to represent a global issue. We are not experiencing a shortage of LEGO sets in the U.S. or Canada this holiday season. All of our key retailers are well stocked with what we believe will be the most popular LEGO sets, and have indicated they too are satisfied with their stock. It’s always best to get out early to be sure you get what you’re hoping to find.

Kinda sucks if you live in Scandinavia (sorry Linus!), but for those of us here in the States, this is great news!

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Moko recently posted a cool little vehicle Lukas called “bike-ish”:

What’s not in Moko’s Brickshelf caption is that this is based on a hover-bike currently featured in a Nissin Cup Noodles ad (in Japan, of course) that uses footage from a new project called FREEDOM by Akira director Katsuhiro Otomo. Here’s a six-minute clip from YouTube:

You can also watch more footage on the official FREEDOM site.

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Zombie Andrew, Zombie Josh, pumpkin-head Eddie (aka the disembodied head of Linus Bohman), and Necromancer Nathan join classic monsters to wish all of our readers a very happy Halloween! Be safe, and have fun!

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Got some time over? Then take a look at Daniel Major’s (ApophisV to most) very cool microscale helicarrier:

Now, as awesome as that is, I almost think I like the fleet it carries more. He says that he is planning on making minifig versions of some or all of these – and I just can’t wait to see that!

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FoxPrimus, who goes under the name of Todd in real life, brings us a fantastic craft by the name of Habrok. (Habrok was essentially the king of crows in norse mythology, and played various minor roles.)

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The Colossal Castle Contest IV has been announced on Classic-Castle.com! Looks like there are great categories and excellent prizes.

Check out the Announcement thread on CC.

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So how do you deal with dirty LEGO? German appliance maker Bosch has a solution — a special cycle in their new “LEGO Edition” dishwasher that gently cleans your plastic toys at 40° Celsius (104° Fahrenheit).

No, I’m not joking:

Link via Engadget, with thanks to Ben Ellerman for posting this on Classic-Castle.com.

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Izzo recently posted these cows on Brickshelf and I love ‘em. Check out the alien attack too!

Check out the whole bovine gallery here!

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I’m not entirely sure I like to blog my own stuff, but here it goes anyway. This is Gas Mask, a tactical smoke screen deployer:

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Lcwtony on flickr has only recently begun posting models, but those that are up are quite stunning – he can obviously build both mecha and other futuristic stuff. With a stunning presentation to boot, you’ve got a winner! Here is his F430 Spider:

Make sure to click on over and look at the rest of his stuff and comment.

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And while we’re on the subject of contests, Mike Yoder (fantastic builder, by the way) has recently announced that he is hosting a contest: to build your very own junker ship! The full thing can be read in a post on flickr, but here is the gist to get you hooked:

Nomadic thieves steal parts from unattended spacecraft in far-off spaceports to piece together their fighters. They scavange battle fields in deep space for debris to integrate into their fleet. Their ships are lumpy, mismatched, rusty, and lethal! Don’t be fooled by the chewing gum and paperclips that appear to hold them together! They prove to be more than a worthy adversary in battle, having pirated the best technologies of all the races and factions that explore space. If you see them in the skies above you, know that you are in the wrong part of town!

So get your mind set on junker bandits, and build people! The contest deadline is January the 2nd 2007, so you have plenty of time to make sure YOUR entry is the awesomest of all! :-)

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Just because I’m away people don’t stop building awesome space stuff! There has been a contest running over at classic-space (held by the by now familiar Lukas) that has just ended. It produced some spectacular models – check out Bram Lambrecht’s winning entry for instance:

First runner up, my fellow countryman Joel Larsson’s car, is also very interesting:

Make sure you see all the entrants and read the full story in the contest thread on classic-space!

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Today’s batch of “mechanimals” from Izzo (previous post) includes two marine animals.

Proving that Izzo can pun in at least two languages, behold the “whalicopter” (Izzo’s blog post):

As if a flying whale weren’t enough, how about a bird that doesn’t? Here’s Izzo’s multipurpose aquatic transportation device, the “Penguindive” (link):

The vignette above shows the Penguindive in underwater mode. Here it is at rest and on the surface:

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The LEGO Company wants to know from the adult LEGO collector community what car they should make as a set. Once again via the furiously typing fingers of LEGO Ambassador Nelson Yrizarry, the Brothers Brick has received the following message from LEGO:

The LEGO Design team is considering making a kind of collector’s car, and would like to hear from the AFOL community which car would like to be seen as an official LEGO set. The only restrictions are:- The car should be for display, which means with only few functions.
- The car should get a body build with System bricks.
- The car should be very iconic/well know in Europe and US.
- The car should be from the past 30 years.

Please suggest the Make and Model of the car you would like to see as a new LEGO set!

Nelson will collate responses you leave here on TBB and pass them along to LEGO. How cool is that? Thanks Nelson!

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Takeshi Itou has recently posted pictures of his latest masterpiece, “Fog Valley Castle.

Once again, this incredible builder has created some out of the ordinary. Perched on one of his trademark cliffs, the castle seems to floating on the three waterfalls pouring from its base.

Check it all out here!

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John Langrish has finally posted pics of his award-winning castle, “Stoneguard Hold”! Personally, I’ve been waiting for this since NWBrickCon. This castle is truly amazing!

This castle is packed full of incredible details! From the rounded walls and towers to the plethora of SNOT (Studs Not On Top) construction, from the impressive landscaping to the aggressive sea creatures, this creation has it all! Every picture shows yet another aspect of the castle that will blow your mind! But stop listening to me. Go look at the gallery…

Here’s the whole Kit and Kaboodle

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Wow, I’m still here. I’m sorry I haven’t contributed for the last month or so. I blame my new part-time job, college classes, and brickfilms.com, roughly in that order. Anyway, to jumpstart my comeback, I’m going to invade Linus’ domain (please forgive me!) and feature this extremely cool airship by Felix Greco:

I especially like the use of the Jabba’s Sailbarge sails and the bubble canopies as magical air balloons. I only wish there were more pictures.

I always love it when Izzo starts a new series! Whether it’s vignettes based on Japanese proverbs or industrial mecha, I know we all have something great to look forward to.

Izzo’s latest is a series of creature-inspired mecha he cleverly calls “mechanimals.”

The first is a rat-car with a detachable rat-bot (blog post):

That certainly looks fun to drive around the neighborhood, but Izzo’s second mechanimal is much more useful. The “Pelicargo” (wonderful name, Izzo!) is capable of transporting your cargo wherever it needs to go (blog post):

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Finally, I’ve gotten around to posting my lighthouse! So, I give you…The Dragon’s Tooth!

This is my tallest creation yet!

Here’s the whole illuminated Gallery

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These won’t be news for those of you who saw the work-in-progress pictures on Flickr or who saw them at NWBrickCon, but I finally took decent pictures of my three recent steampunk creations. Enjoy!

H.M.A.S. Fearless
The brave women of Her Majesty’s Royal Flying Corp pilot the steam-powered gunship Fearless into most certain danger!

Leftenant Cavendish’s Marvelous Amphibious Contraption
On a voyage of discovery in deepest uncharted Asia, Leftenent Henry Cavendish of Her Majesty’s 13th Expeditionary Forces improvises a means of vehicular transport, using a native canoe, wagon wheels, and a boiler of his own invention. His musket also spews Greek Fire.

Mr. Renoir’s Ornithopter
Unbeknownst to most modern historians, Pierre-Auguste Renoir followed in the footsteps of great artist-inventors of the past (including his hero Leonardo Da Vinci), fabricating fantastic winged contraptions and flying them throughout the French countryside.

And of course the full photoset on Flickr.

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Soren Roberts has updated his Galbady Gamma with a ballute system:

While we’re at it, here’s a bonus mecha, a Soren-original called Gravity:

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Editor Joe Meno has announced the release of BrickJournal issue 5. Click the image to download the “BIG” issue (10.9 MB):

Of particular note for long-time TBB readers are articles and photo essays by Mark Stafford, MisaQa, and Malle Hawking, among many others.

On a related note, LEGO Shop@Home will be donating 1% of all purchases to BrickJournal (up to $10,000) between now and December 31st — which of course includes Christmas shopping — if you start your shopping from the following page:

http://shop.lego.com/landingpages/brickjournal/

So, how does one pick up sponsorship from LEGO? Hmmm…

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Eurobricks reports that Amazon Germany has posted more pictures of the January-June 2007 LEGO sets. Check out the Ferrari, Technic, and Exo-Force sets in this post, and the Aqua Raiders, Star Wars, City, and Creator sets in this thread.

Here’s my favorite new Aqua Raiders set, the as-yet-unnamed 7776:

A shipwreck?! Unbelievably cool.

And check out the set Jamie Berard designed, 4953 Fast Flyers:

Finally, LEGO is releasing two official mosaic-building sets with some cute designs, 6162 and 6163:

For those of you who want to see all the 2007 set pictures from Amazon.de in one place, Brickshelfer HJR has them all in a set of conveniently organized galleries.

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Jehkay’s latest is an awesome ninja mecha:

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You’d be insane to not love multi-genre-builder Nelson Yrizarry’s latest floating rock. Featuring arctic landscape, polar bears AND a mashed orange ship, it is sure to be something special!

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