Monthly Archives: July 2010

Mid-year 2010 LEGO Star Wars sets now available [News]

The summer/winter (depending on where you live) 2010 LEGO Star Wars sets are now available from the LEGO Shop.

8128 Cad Bane’s Speedericon has five minifigs, including some dude with a really funky hat.

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The big additions are the 8098 Clone Turbo Tankicon (again with the funky hat) and new 8129 AT-AT Walkericon

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Personally, I’m most excited about 8089 Hoth Wampa Caveicon.

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Shipping is free for orders over $75 through the end of July, and remember, the LEGO VIP Program now works for Web orders — two more reasons to support the LEGO fan sites you visit (even if it’s not this one) by buying your LEGO online.

I’m not going to tell him he’s second best to Achilles.

You’re more than welcome to do that, thanks. Any hero who’s story survives the millennium in written and oral tradition to be immortalized in classic Greek potter and Lino‘s work of LEGO certainly doesn’t need to be reminded there’s someone better than him. Especially when he’s holding a spear, shield, and quite clearly knows how to use them.

I, along with everyone else, await your response, Guy.

Hispabrick Magazine 008 is here [News]

Hispabrick Magazine issue 008 is now available for download in both Spanish and English.

HispaBrick Magazine issue 008

This issue features:

  • Interviews with LEGO owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, Jumpei Mitsui, and many more
  • A minifig-scale paddlewheeler
  • A brief history of LEGO Space
  • How to build a tree
  • Event coverage from all over Europe
  • Lots and lots of Technic and MINDSTORMS

Click the image above for links to the PDF download.

Kowe’on Sanctuary

Edit: Apparently the name is “No Ewok” backwards, which makes sense, because there is an Ewok in there. :)

The tree itself is a knockout, but the action and whimsy that surrounds it makes this creation something special. I Scream Clone has it going on.

Lego Forestmen Treehouse Kowe'on Sanctuary

Mister Clone was nice enough to humor me when I asked for a new overall shot. Thank you!

A Warrior Born

I admit…I don’t look at a lot of custom minifigures. But there are, on occasion, those that give me pause. This is one of them:

Created by geoshift, the detail work is impressive and the paint itself is very clean. It’s stunning. Of course, looking at the rest of the photostream, I realize I’ve clearly been missing out. Take a look. You won’t regret it.

Crown Royale Infinity Rifle

Our old friends at V&A Steamworks have gone into the small arms business in a big way. If your steampunk army needs a shootie/zappy thing, this is it. 100% Lego too….

Lego Steampunk Gun Blaster Rifle

Micro StarCraft multiplayer map celebrates release of StarCraft II

This stop-motion video by Alex Kobbs captures so many classic moments from StarCraft that I don’t know which is my favorite.

My copy of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is in the mail, and Alex’s video just heightens the anticipation.

High on a Hill

Dillon has hit a home run with his rendition of the Inventor’s house from 9. What a spindly beauty! I would be afraid to move it…

Lego 9 Inventors House

Thanks to Chris Malloy for the heads up.

The Yodeling Cowgirl

Here is one that I missed. TKH did a superb job of capturing the saucy awesomeness that is Jessie.

Lego Toy Story Jessie

Thanks to The Living Brick for catching this.

Beautiful Bentley

Jordan Schwartz hits the road in this gorgeous Bentley. Well played, Jordan, well played.

Lego Bentley Car

Show some backbone!

I was going to delay posting this to leave the 5th birthday post at the top of the page for longer but decided that we are here because we highlight cool LEGO models. Marco Tagliaferri (Tagl) demonstrates a lovely addition to the popular moonbase standard in the form of this transit spine standard. It feels so real.

And he has instructions to boot.

Five years of The Brothers Brick

The Brothers Brick turns five years old today!

Rather than focusing on changes within the LEGO fan community over this past year, I thought it would be more interesting to explore some of the differences between 2005 and 2010.

Half a decade in the LEGO fan community

When I started The Brothers Brick back on July 25, 2005, the world of LEGO fandom was a very different place. Though LEGO fans had begun to carve out spaces of their own throughout the Internet — mostly on forums like FBTB and Classic-Castle.com — we all posted our photos on Brickshelf and at minimum lurked on LUGNET. BrickCon drew a mere 45 attendees in 2004, while BrickFest ruled the convention scene with 250 attendees in 2004 and 330 in 2005.

How times have changed.

I asked several people what differences they’ve observed over the past five years, and here’s what they had to say.

  • LEGO fandom goes mainstream. The “big boys” at Boing Boing, Gizmodo, MAKE, and other tech/geek sites have shown remarkably steady interest in LEGO, and have even begun crediting builders by name, rather than just throwing up a gallery accompanied by backhanded complements like “This guy must have way too much time on his hands!”
  • Conventions go big. BrickFest was pretty much the only game in town back in 2005. Since then, about half a dozen other conventions have sprung up in the US alone (if I’m counting correctly), ranging from newcomers like BrickMagic to conventions that carry on the name or spirit of BrickFest itself. And then there’s Brickworld, which this year drew 800 attendees. Though I can’t write in detail about events outside the U.S., there’s now a fan convention in just about every major market for LEGO — especially in Europe.
  • More LEGO sets for advanced builders. For at least the past 35 years, LEGO has produced sets for “advanced” builders, ranging from sets like 956 Auto Chassis (which my father had) to UCS Star Wars models. But beginning with 10182 Cafe Corner, LEGO incorporated the type of detailed design aesthetic used by builders like the “rest of us.” In fact, The LEGO Group has started employing more and more designers who started first as fans.
  • The rise of blogs. I was only aware of a couple LEGO blogs when I first started TBB, but there are now more than I can count. Tim says, “With the division of the community into smaller units blogs have filled the place of overarching narratives of the community.” Some blogs have come and gone, but the ease with which sites like Blogger and WordPress.com enable LEGO fans to start their own blog means we’re probably years from seeing this proliferation die down.
  • LEGO video games. Yes, there were plenty of rather horrible PC games throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s, but TT Games has since created an entire genre of games centered around little plastic bricks, while LEGO themselves will be releasing LEGO Universe later this year.
  • LEGO stores everywhere. Okay, not everywhere, as our Canadian and European readers will quickly remind us, but the U.S. is now full of brick-and-mortar LEGO Stores, while Japan has a dedicated chain of LEGO stores in clickbrick.
  • Diversity. LEGO is still very much a hobby dominated by men. But as the hobby itself goes mainstream, more women have begun to contribute to the community. Writes Caylin, “I remember being able to count the amount of women hobbyists (especially online) on one hand. Now there are many, and they’re damn good builders, too. More of them are coming to the hobby because they want to — not because their partner or kids are into it.”

With a few exceptions, the overarching theme among these changes is decentralization and greater choice for LEGO fans. We’ve all worried about the fragmentation of the LEGO fan community, but so far what we seem to be experiencing is growth — with the specialization that comes with that growth.

Let’s hope we see even more growth over the next five years.

All about you, by the numbers

As always, here are some stats for this past year.

  • 2,500 registered readers
  • 8,000 subscribers to the RSS feed
  • 5,122,594 visits
  • 9,702,180 page views
  • 1,537,027 unique visitors
  • 1,100 new posts

We’re still waiting for our first reader in North Korea…

The Brothers Brick Year 5

The top 30 countries from which people visit The Brothers Brick didn’t change much, though New Zealand jumps quite a few places (up 73%), while the Czech Republic (up 64%) and Croatia (up 172%) edge out Malaysia and South Korea.

  1. United States
  2. United Kingdom
  3. Canada
  4. Germany
  5. Australia
  6. Netherlands
  7. France
  8. Italy
  9. Spain
  10. Poland
  1. Japan
  2. Sweden
  3. Belgium
  4. Denmark
  5. Hungary
  6. Singapore
  7. New Zealand
  8. Hong Kong
  9. Switzerland
  10. Norway
  1. Brazil
  2. Finland
  3. Portugal
  4. Taiwan
  5. Ireland
  6. Mexico
  7. Austria
  8. Russia
  9. Czech Republic
  10. Croatia

Like last year, search engine keywords seem to be mostly about news items, while more and more of our traffic comes from fellow LEGO sites rather than sites outside the LEGO fan community.

Top Keywords* Top Categories Referring Sites
  1. LEGO blog
  2. LEGO news
  3. LEGO Atlantis
  4. LEGO Fire Brigade
  5. 2010 LEGO sets
  6. LEGO 8683
  7. LEGO 2010
  8. LEGO blogs
  9. LEGO
  10. LEGO 10210
  1. Star Wars
  2. Military
  3. Mecha
  4. ApocaLEGO
  5. Minifigs
  6. Steampunk
  7. Castle
  8. Building Techniques
  9. Space
  10. Dioramas
  11. Bionicle
  1. StumbleUpon
  2. Flickr
  3. Gizmodo
  4. Eurobricks
  5. Facebook
  6. BrickArms
  7. From Bricks to Bothans
  8. BZ Power
  9. Brickset
  10. MAKE Online

* Excluding variations on “The Brothers Brick”.

Most of the top 10 posts over this past year were again news items — the most devastating among them the loss of a prominent member of the LEGO fan community.

  1. Pictures of 2010 LEGO sets – Atlantis, Toy Story, & more – at Festival RFFL
  2. Howl’s Moving LEGO Castle
  3. LEGO 8683 Collectible minifigures coming June 2010
  4. Farewell to a Legend: Mourning the passing of Nate “nnenn” Nielson
  5. Announcing LEGO Pirates 10210 Imperial Flagship, available Jan 1, 2010
  6. Dalí + Halsman + Balakov
  7. Stefan’s micro Star Trek fleet is ready to make first contact with the Borg
  8. Should LEGO release modern military sets?
  9. LEGO Atlantis – first high-res pics of 2010 sets
  10. 10213 Shuttle Adventure blasts off in June

Finally, stuff for the historically minded: