Tag Archives: Telephone

LEGO Ideas 21347 Red London Telephone Box now available, plus an interview with the designers [News]

2024 is flying by – we’re already in February! A new month does mean new LEGO sets, though. And one of the headline releases for February is LEGO Ideas 21347 Red London Telephone Box, which is available starting today for LEGO Insiders. You’ll find it on the LEGO website where it retails for US $114.99 | CAN $149.99 | UK £99.99. We already talked about the set back when it first debuted. But since then, The Brothers Brick was afforded an opportunity to sit down with the team behind the set and ask some questions. We’ve got a summary below.

Details on our Q&A with the designers below!

LEGO Ideas announces the next set in the theme as 21347 Red London Telephone Box [News]

LEGO Ideas has been on a roll lately, springboarding off the release of 21344 Orient Express Train back in December into a wave of set announcements including 21345 Polaroid OneStep SX-70 Camera and 21346 Family Tree so far this year. And we can now tack one more onto the list as well. Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the K2 Telephone Box, LEGO will release LEGO Ideas 21347 Red London Telephone Box next month. Based on the original submission by John Cramp, this model stands nearly a foot tall (30 cm), and has the iconic crimson booth stood along the fictional English street of Buildmore Road. The set also has a built-in stand to hold your cell phone for all the Anglophiles looking to add this to their collections. LEGO Ideas 21347 Red London Telephone Box, 1460 pieces large, will be available from LEGO.com on February 1st for LEGO Insiders (February 4th for everyone else) and will retail for US $114.99 | CAN $149.99 | UK £99.99.

Answer the call on this new set below!

Phoning in a solar sailor

One of my all-time favorite games doesn’t have a name but its variations are known by many. The “telephone” game, in its many forms, gravitates around the idea of altering a phrase, image, or item slightly as it’s passed around to each participant. While most of us played it as kids, some adult fans of LEGO like to play a version of their own that is often out of this world. Builder Eli Willsea created the STG-2 Sailer as the 4th iteration in the latest telephone series. The small, rockhopper-style craft somewhat reminds me of the starter ship in No Man’s Sky (NMS) with its compact body and raised back portion. More NMS parallels arise with the solar sail sections with boosters firing off behind them. The sails creatively use the balloon sections from Friends sets and Sweet Mayhem’s Systar Starship along with some golden rigging for deployment and retraction. The coloration and parts usage give this ship lots of curves and angles that really catch the eye, an essential part of good spaceship building. Greeble, or detail, all you want but if your ship doesn’t visually swoop it’ll probably end up resembling a flying, mechanical potato. Thankfully, Eli knows how to avoid the spud fate and instead made a fantastic little puddle jumper that the next builder will have fun emulating.

STG-2 Sailer

Ringing up some nostalgia on this Japanese pay phone

Bright green pay phones that supported the new prepaid phone cards began replacing the old pink rotary pay phones in Japan just as my family left for the States in the late 80’s. With public telephones a rare sight today in the US, I was shocked to see that the same phones were still everywhere when I finally went home to visit last summer. nobu_tary has captured the shapes and colors of the real thing perfectly in LEGO, with a detailed black face — complete with digital readout screen and card slot — and iconic lime green body. The black panel incorporates three ammunition pouches from the Rogue One Death Trooper buildable figure, which Tary did not use in his larger, more detailed LEGO Death Trooper figure a few years ago.

Japanese Pay Phone

A bit of trivia on why pay phones are still everywhere in Japan: When a disaster such as an earthquake or typhoon strikes that affects cell phone coverage, all pay phones can be activated for free use so that people can call emergency services or even just to contact loved ones.

This lovely little green box doesn’t just take me back to my last few years in Japan, it also takes me back a year to what may be my last international trip in a long time…

LEGO rotary phone

Chris McVeigh’s telephone takes me back to my childhood. We had one that looked just like this. I haven’t missed rotary phones until now. Thanks, Chris!

Rotary Telephone