The Brothers Brick

Gerard Joosten just posted a picture of a flyer he found packaged with the latest Bionicle movie. The flyer claims that “The Adventures of Clutch Powers” is coming to DVD in the spring of 2010. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the movie with which Warner is involved. There are Universal and Tinseltown Toons logos on there. What are your thoughts and feelings about this?

(Edit: Its looks like this is the first of several straight-to-DVD releases.)

Jarek (Jerrec) has built a cool looking tank. I especially like the use of upside-down grille tiles as detailing in the armor over the treads. Better, still, it’s remote controlled! Check out the video.

The life-sized LEGO house built by the British TV presenter James May faces imminent destruction after LEGOLAND Windsor withdrew their plans to purchase the massive structure due to expensive transportation costs. The house was built with about 3 million LEGO bricks supplied by the LEGO Group and took about 1000 volunteers who worked tirelessly for about a month to complete. It features a furnished bedroom, living room, kitchen, and a bathroom with a functional toilet – all made from LEGO bricks. Unfortunately, this architectual feat will not be enduring the times. According to the Daily Mail, “if no one collects it by 8am on Tuesday, it will be hacked to bits with chainsaws.”

Read more on BBC News or the Daily Mail.

UPDATE: There’s even a Save James May’s Lego House group on Facebook.

While browsing Bricklink today, I came across a store that specializes in custom chrome LEGO elements. Here, you can get a diverse array of industrially chromed parts from minifig helmets and accessories to car parts for pimping your ride. You can even ask the store to chrome your own LEGO element. Visit ChromeBricks.com and browse their offerings in the chrome gold and chrome silver color categories. You can also find out more by reading their FAQ page.

The following video showcases their products with some rather dramatic and suspenseful background music. After all, chrome is serious business.

If you’re making an order, feel free to drop a mention that you’re a reader of our blog. If many people show interest, we will be featuring a review of these products in the coming weeks.

UPDATE: High-res photos of LEGO Atlantis sets are now out.

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Alexander (Shurik) posted pictures of some of the 2010 sets that LEGO has displayed at a sponsored event in Russia called Festival Rossiyskogo Fan Forum Lego. The featured sets include samples from the following themes: Atlantis, Toy Story, Prince of Persia, Star Wars, Power Miners, City, Bionicle and more.

EDIT (TG): These pictures were uploaded due to a miscommunication and have been removed from Flickr at the request of TLG. The local Ambassador, Igor Makarov, asked me to remove the deeplink which I have done.

UPDATE: Target.com also has box art for one of the 2010 LEGO Power Miners sets, 8188 Fire Blaster:

Though vehicles by Mark Stafford (nabii) tend more toward the spacey, new creations from him are no less an event than ones from his LEGO coworker Adam.

The “Saddleback” is part of the Star Justice universe designed by Chris Giddens. The front-end greebles are gorgeous, as are the engines (encircled by skis).

See more photos on MOCpages and Flickr.

New vehicles from Adam Grabowski (MisterZumbi) are always a bit of an event. His latest is a Fendt Xylon, a German tractor.

Via Klocki, which has a great side-by-side comparison shot.

One of the themes we’ll be incorporating into the final Zombie Apocafest is “Victory!” If last year’s display represented the outbreak and chaos that would follow a zombie pandemic, we’ll arrange this year’s display to include the human counterattack, victory, and even reconstruction.

To that end, we’ve worked with BrickForge on a way to unify the organized human resistance. And what’s more iconic of multi-national military forces than the blue headgear of the United Nations?

BrickForge’s Military Helmet and Beret are now available in Medium Blue. The Brothers Brick will be handing out a bunch to those of you who bring military minifigs, but you can of course order more from BrickForge.com.

Through Tuesday, September 22 at 11 PM Eastern, if your order includes any medium blue headgear, BrickForge will automatically upgrade your shipping to USPS Priority (applies to domestic US orders only). This ensures that you get your helmets and berets in time for BrickCon 2009.

While you’re at it, you might want to include some of the great new colors and items BrickForge has just released. I’m particularly pleased to see that the mushrooms BrickForge teased us with at BrickFair are now available.

Shrooms are available in six colors, and don’t miss all the other items BrickForge has released in new colors.

In addition to the fantastic new creations coming out of Dan’s Mini Castle Contest V, we get to see immense creativity in micro-scale recreations of our favorite classic castle sets.

Griffon brings an excellent rendition of 6080 LEGOLand Castle, originally released in 1984:

It even opens up, just like the original! Check out the rest of the photos on Brickshelf.

This spiky spacecraft by Toby Heineman (tobyhein) looks like it could punch quite the hole in the hull of those flying saucers hovering over our city.

The texture on the engines is particularly nice.

• Arrrr!!! The LEGO Pirates theme will be going on hiatus starting in mid-2010.
• Flickr. Tim gave us some great guidelines for participating in LEGO groups on Flickr.
• Brick shirt. ThinkGeek gave us the Brick Construction Shirt. We eagerly await the ability to build on our chests.
• Sean Kenney. David Pagano interviewed Sean Kenney, the first LEGO Certified Professional, for the New York Geekcast podcast.
• BrickCon 2009. More than 300 people have registered so far to attend BrickCon, which starts in less than two weeks. If you’re still on the fence, there’s still time to register.

BrickCon 2009 starts October 1, the Thursday after next. Five of our seven contributors will be there (Josh, Dan, Thanel, Caylin, and me), making this year’s BrickCon the single highest risk to blog continuity should an alien robot invasion take place in Seattle. Fortunately, our other contributors stand ready to pick up the bricks and carry on.

Enough with the silliness, though there’s plenty of silly that goes on at LEGO cons.

If you didn’t register before the deadline for engraved badge bricks, you can still register right up until the day of the convention — you just won’t get the fancy bricks from Brick Engraver. With more than 300 LEGO fans registered so far, this year is gonna be awesome.

Finally, if you can’t take the time off from work Thursday and/or Friday, you can also register to attend private convention events with single-day passes on Saturday and Sunday.

Important notes for our younger readers: Like most other LEGO conventions, BrickCon is intended for adult fans of LEGO. Attendees under 18 must be accompanied by a parent, and children under 13 are discouraged from attending. Similarly, contributions from collaborative displays are only open to registered attendees. Unfortunately, we can’t accept contributions to displays like Zombie Apocafest 2009 and Operation Bricklord during the public display hours.

Marcos Bessa also built a scene from Megaman in 3D. The combination of studs in different directions works out well, but I think the waterfall would look better if it were built with plates placed sideways (at the same time costing much more). Overall, this is an interesting creation; check out the gallery to see the original screenshot.

This microscale castle scene by Marcos Bessa looks pretty nifty, especially the dock and the ship. Looking at this makes me want to see a full-blown medieval landscape that rivals the size of the famous Shannonia microcity.

A few days ago, Andrew reported that the Pirate Advent Calendar would not be available in North America. Now we find out that the entire Pirate line will be discontinued by the middle of 2010. This is not to say that it won’t be back, but there are currently no plans for new sets. This is especially frustrating given the fact that LEGO has repeatedly made comments that Pirates would now be a regular theme. In an interview with Gizmodo, LEGO said that Pirates would be an “evergreen” theme. Also, in the 2009 Company Profile, Pirates is called a “perpetual” theme, along with Town and Castle. However, Vikings is also listed and, as we all know, that theme had a very short lease on life. While I am not an avid Pirate collector, I have bought all the sets and I share the frustration of the Pirate fan community.

Ben Ellermann, on Forbidden Cove, has started a petition. You can also make your feelings known here and our resident Lego Ambassador will be able to forward that information onto LEGO.

There is also a thread on Classic Pirates discussing the same issue.

UPDATE: Steve Witt from The LEGO Group writes:

Pirates isn’t gone, its on hiatus like every other line that isn’t one of our primary themes:

CASTLE, SPACE, and CITY

Pirates isn’t going away, it’s just not going to be a constant theme. It’s going to phase in and out just like every other theme that isn’t one of those three… I just wanted to reassure you guys that pirates isn’t disappearing. Just taking a break. :-)

David Pagano has interviewed LEGO Certified Professional and MOCpages founder Sean Kenney.

Photo of Sean from Sean’s website

Head on over to the New York Geekcast to download the podcast.

Yes, yes, yes, we got your messages. For the four readers out there who haven’t sent us this suggestion, here’s the “Brick Construction Shirt” from ThinkGeek:

We’ll be reviewing this unique piece of apparel when it arrives in the mail.

That powerhouse of a builder, Michael Jasper, has been building choppers. In his usual fashion, he’s been building a lot of them and using all sorts of different pieces in unusual ways. Check out the whole gallery for some lovely eye-candy.

H Russel (TalonKarde) simply calls this a T-59 Snubnose. I call it cool. He’s done a great job of combining components at various different angles, to form a cohesive ship.

This was just too good to pass up. The Schubert family created this amazing Alpine Village, which was displayed at BrickFair. The only photos appear to be on Brickshelf from Abe (scrope), another attendee.

Thanks to Bruce, via Fascinating LEGO Model of the Day!

I’ve recently spent some time thinking about and subsequently altering some of the groups I’ve created on Flickr. In part this has come from me adapting to a new ‘user generated content’ internet but also in response to difficulties I’ve been having with new members in some of my groups. While I can deal with the former by wielding my administrator powers the latter is a bit more difficult.

As such I present the following loose guidelines to getting along in a Flickr group. These aren’t rules and they’re heavily biased to what I like to see but perhaps they’ll provide some food for thought. I welcome commentary on them as I’m keen to learn more about how to approach all this.

1. Always read the guidelines of the group before joining. Some groups are free-for-alls and might not have guidelines but other’s are quite strict about what should be posted or added.
2. Lurk for a bit. There’s no easier way to get a feel for a place than to see what the existing members do.
3. Don’t get upset. Maybe your offering to a group isn’t what it’s interested in but that’s not a personal attack.
4. Look for another group. If you don’t like how one group is run there might be a similar one with an atmosphere you prefer.
5. Make your own group. If there is nothing that suits your tastes go make your own. It’s easier than whingeing about something someone else has made.

Anyway, that’s my five step program to getting along in flickr groups. I await the comments.

Warning! This model is 100% LEGO.

Dmac has combined practicality and raw beauty into his DT-75 tractor making a truly impressive beast. That plush seat looks so comfy I’d like to shrink myself to scale and relax.

If ever there was an incentive to go to Brickcon this would be it. NB. There are plenty of other reasons to go, but winning this would be the icing on anyone’s cake.

Nick Dean has drawn inspiration from the game Bioshock moved art deco under the sea to create this excellent Art Deco inspired undersea hotel with full interior. There’s too many good details to describe so I’ll leave it to you to scour each picture for the things you like.

McBricker takes us on a journey into the hills of Crete, where this lovely little chapel nestles against the side of a cliff.

The tree, the goats, the sky, and the old nun walking with a cane all add depth to this scene.