The little fox and the white reindeer

In Finland, where Thomas (thebrickdwarf) and his LEGO friends live, winter offers a chance to capture beautiful outdoor scenes in the snow. Here we see Fjallraven, the arctic fox, encountering the Ghost Reindeer of Greenland. It’s a haunting image, thanks to the creature design that takes inspiration from Salvador Dali for the reindeer’s spindly legs.

Thomas has a knack for using small builds in natural settings to make the tiny world of minifigures and LEGO animals feel epic. Fjallraven’s adventure continues with another spooky encounter, this time a face-to-face with the skeletal King of Greenland enthroned inside the remains of a whale. Wil we see more adventures of this little fox?

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Rush hour in Makuria

In recent years, the LEGO castle building community has seen an explosion of mocs looking beyond Europe for inspiration. Andreas Leander researched the medieval Nubian kingdom of Makuria for this amazing immersive scene in which a merchant transports Nile-grown grain with an ox-drawn cart. Everything on camera is built from LEGO, including the equatorial sky and cloth headwrap. The earthen road is a beautiful effect created from a mosaic of brick yellow between sloped nougat bricks (with no connection points, I would be terrified of bumping the table!). I’m impressed by the wheel, created mostly from 2×1 round ties. The driver’s headwear includes a few fun elements, like a pool ring and tutu. But the highlight (appropriately, as this was made for Brickscalibur’s “Beasts of Burden” category) is the ox, whose looks both strong and soft with that textured broad back.

Red Squadron Standing By

John (J.R. Snotly Builds) has a penchant for Star Wars ship builds, and it shows with this smooth recreation of one of the most iconic ships in Star Wars history. In a world full of white X-Wing builds, it’s refreshing to see a gray X-Wing with proportions that more closely resemble the original ILM miniatures. We’re specifically in love with the brick-build cockpit and the build technique to expertly capture the quad laser cannons.

With this model, John has made it easy to adjust the markings on the wings, nose, and sides of the X-Wing to convert it to Luke’s infamous Red 5. The dismembered hands used for the striping really give it that ‘Luke Skywalker’ feel.

A fantastic fanged monster with sprinkles on top

Is there anything sweeter than a fantastical creature built out of bricks? The Frosted Valley Viper, a confectionary creation from BigBrickStan, bares the sweetest teeth this side of Candyland. The serpentine shaping is incredible, especially with the use of pink quarter-circle tiles with sprinkles that cover the body, giving the beast the look of a frosted donut when coiled. Speaking of donuts, those glazed eyes are quite menacing! Icing aside, Stan works in a few other cleverly employed elements, like a raptor’s jaw for the tip of the mouth and an array of capes for the menacing head frills. The result is a sugary build that temps one too take a bite, if only the viper wouldn’t bite back!

This LEGO Monkey’s Gone to Heaven

Sun Wukong, aka the Monkey King, or just plain Monkey, is the most enduring mythological hero in the world, inspiring so many retellings, including LEGO’s own Monkey Kid franchise. Chinese Builder Jin Chen took on the legendary character at the height of his power, armed with the
Ruyi Jingu Bang staff and standing atop a fallen demon. Monkey’s white face markings are based on the traditional depiction seen in Chinese Opera.

Jin’s makes excellent use of the range of elements in pearl gold to sculpt Monkey’s ornate armor, tightly packing every surface with horns and shuriken. The tattered cape is especially dramatic with its mix of rounded tail elements and angular plates.

Take a peek at the making of Monkey after the break

Celebrating Bionicle’s 25th Anniversary with Minifigures

“The tales tell of six great heroes who will come to aid us in our darkest hour. A powerful toa of fire. A wise toa of water. A strong toa of earth. A mighty toa of stone. A courageous toa of air, A brave toa of ice.” Has it really been 25 years since LEGO introduced us to the heroes of Mata Nui?

I created this series of minifigs for a collaboration with @majestyminifigs where we reboot a cancelled LEGO theme with custom minifigures. Of course I chose Bionicle. It took me a hot minute to figure out how I wanted to convert the toa mata into minifigure form, but I overall, I’m proud of the result!

Jacob’s figs and story follows

This purple pod racer is anything but poodoo

Pod racing is back! Last year, we rounded up a slew of new pod racing mocs from AFOLs and LEGO designers, but now a new competitor zooms in courtesy of Kyle Collard, aka Lord of Vador, and this one’s a stunner. (Of course, we wouldn’t expect anything less from Kyle, whose Mustafar moc was one of our favorite builds of 2025.) The engines roar with greeble detail thanks to the larger scale. I didn’t appreciate just how big this build is until I saw the cables connecting the cockpit. This racer is huge! The size also allows for beautiful color blocking and smooth curves in the fins.

Kyle based the design on a piece of concept art from Alexander “Minze” Thümler, but the LEGO version incorporates purple as the primary accent color. As the builder explains: “The color scheme stays dark and aggressive: dark purple, dark blue, and light gray, layered with pearl dark gray and flat silver to give the engines weight and metallic depth. The white accents are decals—kept clean to cut through the darkness.”

Kyle’s racer has me pushing Galactic Racer to the top of my most anticipated game releases:

Catch ’em all? Taking a closer look at the first LEGO Pokémon wave [Editorial]

Resident Pokémon fan Jarrett (wilderland.builds) here to offer some early thoughts on the long-awaited official LEGO Pokémon sets! This week marked the reveal of the first wave, and like everyone else, I’ve already begun dissecting the promotional images to get a feel for what to expect from this release. Pokémon has long been a well-represented theme in the MOC community (you can view some highlights in The Brothers Brick Pokémon archive), but for the first time, we have official collaboration sets from these two industry titans. While I’m looking forward to seeing each of them in person before making any final judgements (which is something I always recommend), I’ll take a closer look at each set below and offer my Poké-fan take.

Should we catch ’em all?

TIE Striker in flight, afternoon delight

I saw this sweet LEGO TIE /sk X1 Striker by Auto’s Builds and somehow the chorus to a cheesy provocative tune popped into my head, hence the title. Now I’m making it your problem. But now that you’re hearing it too, you have to admit this Coruscant Air Guard checks all the right boxes: Star Wars, cool-ass spaceship, and striking design aesthetics. Auto tells us the TIE Striker is ideal for navigating Coruscant’s dense architecture and crowded skylanes. The Air Guard fitted their variant with precision weapons and under-wing guided missiles to minimize collateral damage. What’s the Earthly equivalent to this? An Apache helicopter maybe? I can’t speak for the Apache’s maneuverability within a city but seeing any of these gunships in your rear view means your days of doing that afternoon delight stuff are numbered.

These WALL-E x LEGO Space remixes are the nostalgia I need right now

WALL-E and LEGO Space will always share a special bond. After all, WALL-E’s lead animator Angus MacLane designed the winning Ideas set that became the first LEGO take on the character. There’s something about the big-eyed robot’s design that lends itself so well to bricks, and not just for screen-accurate interpretations. Curtis D Collins uses the basic WALL-E design as a springboard for a whole army of bots inspired by LEGO’s iconic space themes.

Of course, the series has to start with Classic Space colors. Curtis incorporates signature elements from each era into the WALL-E builds, like this fella’s positioning thrusters.

My favorite of the whole series is the M-Tron WALL-E, which might not incorporate actual magnet pieces, but does upgrade the bot’s hands with magnet-inspired manipulators. The design also incorporates theme-appropriate tires for retro authenticity.

The robot rollcall continues after the fold

LEGO Knights of the Square Table

I’m sure every one of us has an unusual LEGO part that they remember from their childhood. Perhaps it’s some of the original buildable LEGO figures, or something from the barely-LEGO Scala theme. What really activates my nostalgia is these fold-out racetracks from LEGO Racers sets. A racetrack that doubles as a box?! How cool is that! The flip-side of such unusual parts is that they can be difficult to incorporate into MOCs. Such trivialities don’t scare Mattia Careddu, though. Even then, of all the things to turn it into, I never would’ve thought of a rectangular knight!

But wait! It’s not just a knight and its minions. Mattia has stayed true to the unfolding nature of the racetrack, and this knight turns into a base of operations for the smaller ones! Weapons storage, siege lessons, tools and repairs – it’s all here. It harkens back to a different style of toy entirely. It’s even got its own superbly edited TV commercial!

Lumbering LEGO Sentinel mech is ready for action

While nimble humanoid mecha tend to steal the spotlight, I’ve always had a soft spot for clunky walkers, like this armored beast from Japanese LEGO builder Kattho. Built from a mix of sand green and gunmetal grey, the S05-A Sentinel is practically a one-vehicle army with its heavy complement of arms.

The builder makes great use of printed elements, like the forest design from last year’s Off Road Mountain Truck. Ingots, grilles, and turntable tops give the mostly studless build industrial texture.

While this mech is a quadruped for mobility, it also sports manipulator arms for precision jobs like defusing mines. The single stud lens also serves to give the mech a face so it’s not just a walking tank.

Kattho has shared many other equally impressive mecha of both the four and two-legged variety, that you can enjoy on their feed.