The Brothers Brick

Since I’m a sucker for Superman,  I’ve been really looking forward to 76003 Superman: Battle of Smallville ($49.99 USD / $59.99 CDN),  available now form the LEGO Shop and for pre-order on Amazon.com.

This is the biggest set in the line of licensed sets from Man of Steel, the new Superman movie due out in June.

The 418-piece set features a military jeep with missile launchers and the “Black Zero” drop ship, a Kryptonian fighter ship. There a 5 minifigs included: Superman, Colonel Hardy, General Zod, Faora and Tor-An.  At that price point, the set is fairly reasonable, given the part count.

The Build

The set comes with 5 polybags of parts, 2 instruction books, stickers and a comic.  The first part of the build is the military jeep.  It’s simple but nicely designed, employing clever SNOT (Studs Not On Top) techniques. The jeep comes equipped with a pair of flick-fire missiles for its play action. Flick fires are never that interesting in my opinion.  The first set of figures are Superman, sporting torso and leg prints based on the movie,  and Colonel Hardy, who sports a military-style torso print that might be of interest to military enthusiasts.

The second part of the build is the Black Zero Drop Ship, not to be confused with the Black Zero, which is a gigantic ship in the movie. The minfigures here are particularly noteworthy as they contain a number of new molds.  Zod and Faora each have their own styles of body armor, as well as new helmet pieces.  Faora appears to have a new hair mold as well. And finally, there is a new blaster weapon.

One particularly noteworthy element is the dark grey bubble canopy.  While it is not a new element, the color is new, and should lend itself to some creative uses.  Building the dropship is straightforward enough; it only took about 15 minutes to do it. The finished ship is definitely swooshable, and it comes with two spring-loaded missile launchers for its play action.  While I’m sure the set was designed to reflect the movie’s look, the end result is largely colorless –  it’s mostly dark grey with a few tiny green accents. I somehow get the sense that the designer’s hands are tied on this one, given the source material.

The Verdict

The set is a fair value.  If you are a fan of the movie, or a fan of Superman, then you would probably appreciate the set.  The set is not a standout in terms of the color design.  The predominantly grey palette is a little dull. But my kids, as I suspect with most kids, don’t care about design details.  They’ve been playing with the set non-stop ever since we finished building it.

I’ve been waiting a long time to blog this. Moko has been teasing us with work-in-progress images of his Neon Genesis Evangelion mecha for the last three years, and the finished model is finally revealed. The model stands 120 cm (nearly 4 feet) tall, and weighs 9.4 kg (20.7 pounds). I feel words will fail me in trying to encapsulate its awesomeness, but here goes. 

First off, the color is spectacular.  All that purple must have cost a pretty penny.  Second, the engineering is brilliant.  We’ve seen large-scale, articulated mechas before, most of them based on Brian Cooper’s Teknomeka design.  One of the limitations of that design was the bulk that resulted from all the gearing in the joints to support the weight of large scale mechas.  Moko was able to pull off a build that is similar in scale, but so much more elegant and slim, as befitting the source material, the Evangelion Unit-01.

Thirdly, Moko’s deft sense of style added to the equation results in probably one of the best LEGO mechas I’ve ever seen. Plus, he did not paint or modify any bricks, and it’s articulated!  Check out the second image for a sense of the scale of this marvel.

If you’re in Japan, you can see Moko’s Evangelion unit in person at the Osaka University LEGO Club’s upcoming display on May 2nd and 3rd, during Golden Week.

See even more photos in Moko’s photostream on Flickr and on his blog.

Flickr user legorobo:waka has posted his wa F8 Lanius, a truly sweet mecha that hits all the right notes.  It has classic anime styling, great details, articulation and best of all, houses a minfig pilot. In particular, the details I like best are the feet/ landing gear, the hands and guns, and the classic Japanese style mecha head with the Uruk-Hai sword on the back. The way he was able to tuck the pilot into the chest cavity without it looking too bulky, or sacrificing the styling detail is pretty sweet too.

I first saw Paul Meissner’s (legosamurai) creation in person at our most recent LUGOLA meeting. While I am flattered that he credits my Daedalus Drop Suit as an inspiration, his Emilia Starboarder is so much more elegant and downright sexy in comparison. He cleverly incorporates a Belville doll head and uses Prince of Persia claw weapons to great effect as hands. I’m thinking we need to start a group dedicated to using LEGO doll heads.

This is one of those “the thumbnail looked like the real thing” creations.  Chris Melby (ZeeMasterBrick) has deftly recreated a TREK hard tail “Superfly 29er” out of LEGO.  This build is packed full of wonderful little details like the alien blasters for brake levers to the droid bodies for the pedal clips.  The custom decal work  by custombricks is just icing on the cake.

….Your training is complete, bruceywan.  Bruce Lowell, Jedi Lego master, has made a 1:1 replica of Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber from A New Hope with a full length blade using 300+ 3×3 radar dishes  for MocAthalon 2013 on MOCPages. It’s not  as clumsy or as random as a blaster, but an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

The inimitable Iain Heath, (Ochre Jelly) haz has done it again. He deftly created this spot on model of Tard, the cat seen in the Grumpy Cat Meme. The likeness is really incredible, and not easy to pull off with bricks. Most notably, I like how he made the eyes using transparent light blue dishes.

Here’s a working Danger Button for your DEFCON 1 needs, complete with arming switch, protective dome (to avoid accidental launches), and light up indicator! Be careful, though!

A video to see it in action.

Of course your first thought would be, “A Bug’s Life,” but beyond that, this little creature by Riccardo Zangelmi is a beautifully delicate creation. It is elegant in its minmal use of elements. I can imagine a series of vignettes based on the adventures of Tom the Ant. I wonder if it’s inspired by Tom Sawyer?

Andrew Lee’s (onosendai2600) most recent offering in his Iron Builder Challenge with Simon Liu (Si-Mocs) is an amazing Bionicle version of the Silver Surfer. The challenge is for each builder to create models utilizing a “secret” ingredient, much like Food Network’s Iron Chef competition. In this case, they are using the Silver Bionicle Weapon Air Katana. Andrew has re-purposed them to make the Cosmic Surfboard of Galactus’s Herald. All that you know is at an end.

I just wanted to share a little doodle that I hope becomes a useful meme. Feel free to use and repost should the proper situation arise.

Ludgonious delivers a great vignette depicting a futuristic, dystopian prison in which “highly sedated prisoners pay their debt to society by continuously donating blood and plasma during their sentences.” This scene makes great use of elements, new and old, in all the little details.

Moko must have depleted his entire stash of chromed LEGO elements to make this bling-ed out mecha. All I can say is, “Oooo, shiny!” As a side note, I have heard that chromed elements cost 20 times their non-chromed counter parts. Pricey!

For a long time now, I wanted to do something with the Galidor head I had. My idea was to build a mecha or hardsuit around it. The result: Daedalus Zero G Drop Suit. As it was taking shape, it started feeling like a version of a Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger. It features the domed helmet, retractable wings and jetpack, big res chest button, communicator on the right gauntlet and a laser on the left gauntlet.

During my recent trip to Taiwan, I came across a new line of micro brick construction toys called TICO. It appears to be a Taiwan made clone brand of the Japanese brand Nanoblock at only half the price. I bought a set, #3010 Battle Robot (RxB) for NT$180, which comes out to a little more than $6 US for around 80 pieces.

The elements are very tiny and are rather difficult to handle, requiring a great deal of fine motor control. The instructions are straight forward, however, they use a technique of hi-lighting the pieces used in the current step by showing the pieces a shade lighter.  This is a problem when the set includes 2 shades of grey, creating confusion as to which shade of grey is needed at which step.  Secondly, the elements have no way of locking the studs of a connecting element on the long axis of an element, allowing the element on the underside to slide around.  This creates a lot of play in the construction, making it somewhat difficult to line pieces up correctly.

The final model is very loose and fragile as it has many one stud connections.  The overall construction is less the sturdy, lacking in overlapping elements to lock things in place.  If micro bricks are your thing, TICO Mini Bricks are an affordable alternative to the pricier Nanoblock.  According to their website, TICO appears to have licensed sets for Totoro, Angry Birds and One Piece, which are all very popular in Taiwan.