Our good friend Huw over at Brickset recently attended the UK Toy Fair in London. Huw writes, “Although photography was not allowed on the stand, there was nothing stopping photos being taken of the stand: the sides and, for that matter, from the balcony above. This picture was decorating the side of the stand and as you can see it shows the whole Fellowship of the Ring.”
Read all of Huw’s report about the LOTR sets over on Brickset, and be sure to check out the rest of his coverage.
Official photos of the latest addition to the modular building line surfaced recently. At 2766 pieces with 8 minifigs, 10224 Town Hall appears to be the largest modular building to date.
Here it is with the other recent modular buildings:
Our contacts at LEGO promise to share details about pricing and availability closer to the official announcement, but enjoy the photos for now.
Martin Latta’s (thire5) UCS scale ARC-170 starfighter is very easy on the eyes with its smooth sculpting on the nose, engines, and pretty much everywhere else.
Matt De Lanoy made a Lego version of the Reddit alien for the newly launched subreddit for Lego fans, r/afol. You don’t have to be an AFOL to join as the group seems to focus more on MOCs and building techniques.
Flickr user crises_crs portrays the new Collectible Minifig Series 6 Minotaur trying to put the mooves on a heifer in this beefed up vignette.
In this fourth installment of classic LEGO commercials by Advance, we have Black Monarch’s Castle, a journey through time and space and, lastly, an adventure in Egypt inspired by Indiana Jones.
LEGO System Black Monarch’s Castle – 1988
This was an extremely simple set-up — it was just the castle set depicted on the box transferred to a studio, just LEGO trees, a cardboard hill and a cardboard background. We made the background the same colour as the box to create the playful effect when the box appears. Notice the name of the play-theme 00:15 “LEGOLAND”, back then it was a LEGO category and now as you know its a world wide theme park.
LEGO SYSTEM Intergrator 1996
Still the most expensive commercial we’ve made at Advance, this was a huge project. The ad was inspired by LEGO Time Cruisers. We travel through the boxes into three different LEGO worlds but time stops in the ‘real’ world. When we return to the store, the cleaner hasn’t moved. Actually the cleaner also played the pirate in the striped top you see at 00:14. The casting for the pirates was hilarious, we had ten different guys show up with amazing costumes. We built the LEGO city in the desert at night and shot the next day, I slept in the truck that you see. The set almost blew away in a desert storm during that night.
LEGO SYSTEM Adventure 1998
Set in Egypt and heavily inspired by Indiana Jones. What looks like a huge set was built entirely in LEGO filmed with extreme close-up lenses. And the boy was shot on bluescreen. What’s interesting here is that in the boy’s room 00:26 we see lots of toys that aren’t LEGO – LEGO is almost taking a back seat and that would not happen today.
As OJ says over on The Living Brick, “The great thing about Japan and China using the same zodiacal chart but celebrating the New Year on different dates is that I get to do this twice!” Indeed.
Schneider Cheung celebrates the Year of the Dragon with the most wonderfully sculpted Chinese dragon I’ve ever seen.
Meanwhile, rack911 celebrates with a depiction of Cai Shen, the God of Wealth, complete with a golden dragon and a bowl for treasure.
And now for a train builder doing something very different, Cale Leiphart has provided us with a lovely Friends themed treehouse diorama. I’m sure it’s not the first Friends MOC out there, but it’s the first I’ve seen with real attention to detail.
I’ve recently been on a hiatus from TBB due to an excess of real life commitments (work, life and LEGO) and a need to have a bit of a break from blogging. But of course this didn’t stop people (particularly Polish people it seems) posting great models, nor me from filing them away for future use. Which brings me to this four model roundup, presented in the order I added them to my list.
First Maciej Drwięga has a fabulous rendition of the Polish PKP ST43 locomotive.
Second Bartosz Kacprzyk (the oneman) shows off an Alouette.
Third Karwik shows off a Kama3 5410 as driven by his late uncle.
And finally Chris Edwards (cjedwards) brings is an excellent train station.
Well detailed, lovely work by all four builders.
Forbidden Cove is running a multi-week Seed Part contest, where the entrants have one week to build a creation using that week’s Seed Part–and it can’t be whatever the part actually is. Week one was a classic flared helm; this week is a minifig’s chair piece.
Here are some of my favorite entries from week two, in no particular order:
Rapture of the Deep by Guy Himber
Once Cap’n Jack, Always Cap’n Jack by Bluesecrets
Enemy in Sight by Marco den Besten
I generally don’t blog customized stuff, as I generally take issue with cutting brick or going out of system. That said, I couldn’t pass this custom Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1 up. Nice work, Catsy.
