Yearly Archives: 2015

75827 LEGO Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters [Review]

Happy New Year! LEGO sent us 75827 Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters, and I am pleased to end the year by giving you this review. This set, available January 1, 2016, has 4,634 pieces and retails for $349.99. It features the Firehouse and eight minifigures and four small ghost figures, including Slimer.

75827 Firehouse Headquarters

Read the full review after the jump!

It’s good to go out with a bang

Sometimes it’s scary and/or heart-wrenching going into a new year and another big step in time. And then sometimes we’re just thrilled to be done with it and move on. Chris maddison recently shared one rather hilarious perspective on the new year. I’ve got to admit, I laughed way too hard at these delightfully detailed numbers. Happy new year!

2016 Comes in with a Bang

Charing Cross station, in Victorian times, built with LEGO bricks

Seattle builder Dave Sterling has built a LEGO version of London’s Charing Cross Railway Station as it appeared in the late-Victorian period. Dave’s creation formed part of an international collaboration entitled Around the World in 80 days which was displayed at Brickworld Chigaco. Dave has really captured the intricate details and elaborate exterior features representative of Victorian architecture.

Charing Cross

A replica of the 70ft high Eleanor Cross was built in the forecourt of the station in 1865, and this is very nicely depicted in Dave’s build by the ornate tall ‘cross’ complete with tan microfigs, masonry bricks and arches.

Click here to learn more about this creation and hear from the builder

Carving a castle

Innovative is not a word I often attribute to builds of the ever popular Castle theme. With decades under its belt and endless great builders at its beck and call, one can often feel a sense of déjà vu towards even the most stunning of towers. But this latest piece by ‘Sergeant Chipmunk’ gives the Castle theme something truly innovative and awe-inspiring:

Hailstone Point by 'Sergeant Chipmunk'

Focused on the peaceful side of medieval life, ‘Sergeant Chipmunk’ depicts in one scene the complete construction of Hailstone Point, a unique tower sculpted entirely from frozen blocks. Surveying the land, extracting the ice, transporting the bricks, and carving the castle–all eloquently done in one beautiful motion. Truly, Castle has never seen this before.

LEGO teams up with ESPN for College Football Playoffs [News]

LEGO just announced a partnership with ESPN to cross-promote the upcoming College Football Playoffs. LEGO has created brick-built helmets for each of the four playoff teams, as well as some smaller football-related models for which they’ve released instructions to build your own.

ESPN & LEGO

The LEGO® team and ESPN are teaming up to build even more excitement and family fun for this season’s College Football Playoff!
To help get you ready, check back for more exciting updates through January 11th to see:

Cool college football models – tiny and life-sized! – built using LEGO bricks
Awesome videos about the four semifinal teams and the LEGO
models that have been built to celebrate the playoff season
Mini-models that you can build to decorate your New Year’s Eve game viewing party
A chance to win the LEGO version of the National Championship
Trophy signed by the ESPN College GameDay crew to show off to your friends!

Click the helmets to watch a time-lapse video of them being constructed.
OklahomaMichiganClemsonAlabama

ESPN & LEGO

Check out LEGO.com for more information.

Calvin and Hobbes – a LEGO Retrospective

Today, as many LEGO builders look back at their builds and accomplishments for the year, I’d like to go back a few more decades to December 31st 1995. The last published Calvin and Hobbes comic strip was published 20 years ago today, and I thought it would be appropriate to take a look back at Calvin and Hobbes through the eyes of the LEGO Community, and why we love them so much.

Calvin and Hobbes always held a very special place in my heart. It was the first English ‘book’ I ever actually wanted to read. But what surprises me is that – despite it being 20 years since the last printing – we still see LEGO builders from around the world regularly paying tribute to this wonderful comic strip. In fact, just over a month ago marked the 30th anniversary of the first Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, and I built a little scene to commemorate the occasion. I was quite shocked when I had someone message me to say “thank you” for reminding them of Calvin and Hobbes, and all the good memories.

Spaceman Spiff

Click through to see more LEGO Calvin & Hobbes creations!

That’s the way I like it baby, I don’t wanna live forever

Today we present a pair of builds paying tribute to the late Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister (1945-2015), a man who truly kept rocking so long as he was breathing. Eero Okkonen built a mini bust capturing the rock-n-roll legend’s likeness well.

Lemmy Kilmister 1945-2015

A simple scene of Lemmy’s hat, bass, and whiskey, the only thing missing from Jonas Obermaier‘s scene is the ace of spades!

Dead Men Tell No Tales - R.I.P. Legend

Rock in peace, Lemmy.

Minifig-scale Ewok Village

Have you ever thought about how tall the trees on Endor would be if they were scaled to minifigs? Check out KW Vauban‘s Ewok village with its gargantuan trees that rise over 3 feet; then head over to MOCpages for more photos on and see how many scenes from the movie you can spot.

The Wizards’ Guildhall

Only a fool builds his house upon sand. Well, fools and very powerful wizards. This Guildhall sits atop a mountain of sand where the desert meets the ocean. For hundreds of years, the giant sand dune that serves as the foundation to the hall has been buffeted by violent waves. Though erosion would have toppled a non-magical structure long ago, the Guildhall still stands firm. So long as there is a wizard standing guard in one of the tower rooms and warding the hall from nature, the Wizards’ Guildhall shall never crumble into the water.

CCC XIII: House built upon sand

This is my humble attempt to squeeze in a last-minute entry to the Colossal Castle Contest. The competition is fierce this year with tons of outstanding entries and more than one builder gunning for the coveted Master Builder title. Shake a leg if you’re still scrambling to finish those masterpieces in time for the deadline because it’s tomorrow (December 31st) at 11:59 pm U.S. Eastern Time!

SD Gundam Superior Dragon by Moko

For my stocking this Christmas, my wife included two adorable little SD Gundam figures she picked up at Uwajimaya here in Seattle. They were all the rage back in Japan in the 80’s, and I have fond memories of playing in the schoolyard dirt with adorably chibi versions of Guntank, Dom, Zaku, and of course the titular Gundam RX-78-2. There are about as many variations on Mobile Suits in the Gundam canon as there are stars in the galaxy, and Moko has built the “SUPERIOR DRAGON” character from the Gaiden storyline.

SD Gundam SUPERIOR DRAGON

Notably, Moko has used nothing but stock chrome-gold parts for his build — mostly the rare 1×2 gold-chrome tiles that only came in three City sets back in 2003. Rather shockingly, I think I see several chrome-gold C-3PO arms for Gundam’s fingers! The dual lances can combine with part of the shield to form a bow, and the wings spread out like many of the stock toys and plastic model kits.

SD Gundam SUPERIOR DRAGON

Moko says on his blog (where you can see more photos) that he’d been putting off building this because he thought getting the shape right with the very limited parts selection would be too hard. But he also says he wanted to end 2015 with flair, and I think he’s certainly done so!

Top 10 LEGO news stories on TBB in 2015 [News]

Did you know that a new Star Wars movie came out in 2015, with accompanying LEGO sets? If you’ve been living in your basement working on your LEGO masterpiece and weren’t aware, one glance at TBB’s top LEGO news stories would provide a clear picture of just how much excitement has preceded what turned out to be a rather excellent movie. Like our round-up of most popular LEGO models of 2015, LEGO Star Wars stories have dominated news coverage this year — especially since the sets were first revealed in September.

The actual Top 10 list is heavily dominated by set announcements, so hit the jump to check it out.

75139 Battle on Takodana

But some interesting and important news doesn’t necessarily show up in this top 10 list. Back in July, TBB celebrated its tenth anniversary, and I reflected on what it’s been like running a LEGO blog for 10 years. I promised we would be making some changes to improve the experience for our readers, and we’ve done exactly that. After BrickCon in October, we added eight new contributors, who’ve all helped us improve our coverage of both LEGO models and LEGO news. We’ve significantly broadened our geographic diversity, with two new contributors from the UK (both Scottish, coincidentally) and one each from Russia and South Africa — adding to our existing team from the US, Canada, and the Netherlands. Our new contributors have helped to free up our editorial staff to focus more on time-consuming content like LEGO set reviews.

In other news, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s LEGO project generated some interesting discussion in the comments, and several of our contributors participated in the annual Creations for Charity event.

Meanwhile, TBB staff were also a strong presence at LEGO conventions such as Brickworld in Chicago and BrickCon in Seattle, where readers and contributors built a rather epic American Civil War display in LEGO, featuring help from a corps of volunteer dinosaur cavalry.

First Illinois Volunteer Dinosaur Cavalry

And in the UK at BRICK, Elspeth took on LEGO Wonder Woman.

Elspeth

Click through to see all of the top LEGO news stories of 2015!

Speeding in style

As LEGO car builders know, creating a small vehicle with lots of features is a difficult task. This slick racer by Wave Noiz hits all the right notes though, with butterfly doors, great driver visibility, and dual-exhaust all packaged into a tiny sports car body just big enough to fit a minifig. In my opinion, it all comes together like a fantastic new concept for a Batmobile.

06 KOKURYU
03 KOKURYU