Continuing his obsession for stud-free minifig-scale builds of iconic movie vehicles, ER0L brings us the classic Aston Martin DB5, made famous by its appearance in the earlier James Bond movies.
Much as I love this rendition, I’m still hoping that <cough> that he is going to produce a modified version featuring revolving license plates, tire slashers, bullet-proof rear screen, front mounted machine guns and – of course – an ejector seat!
As a group of pioneers roam the universe, they uncover secrets of their war-torn past.
With the right lighting conditions, a good camera angle, and a bit of photoshop magic, Cam M has created a fantastic futuristic relic. I think the extra time spent really turns this from a cool model into a really really cool model that is just begging to become my desktop background.
One of the unfortunate side effects of being an “old timer” in the LEGO community is the increasing list of people you have met, or would have liked to meet, who have passed away. It is thus with regret that I share the news that Heiner Berg, one of the big figures in the German AFOL community, is with us no more. I believe I met Heiner only once in 2007, but I knew his name from my early days on LUGNET. He was one of the first LEGO Ambassadors, which indicates the esteem he was held in Germany.
I will pass over to Holger Matthes (HoMa), another “old timer”, and someone who knew Heiner well to share their thoughts.
I knew Heiner for more then 10 years and he was one of the early guys forming the German AFOL scene.
Heiner is well known for his neverending hunt for yet another color variation of the iconic Blue Hopper. His website mentions more then 25 variants:
http://www.heinerberg.homepage.t-online.de/index-e.html
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=HeinerBergLately he concentrated on rare colors for roofs and he knew all the existing slope elements in fancy colors and came up with a really colorful and detailed layout to present his trains and other building.
Rest in peace Heiner!
If you remember Heiner, please feel free to write down your memories below. For those of you who feel more comfortable writing in German, 1000Steine have a memorial thread.
While Josh, Caylin, Ian, and I were all off having a little TBB BBQ last night (thus the delay, sorry readers), 10245 Santa’s Workshop was unveiled at Bricks by the Bay in California.
Designed by Marcos Bessa (another pug lover, by the way), Santa’s Workshop includes 883 pieces and 6 minifigs, and will retail for $70 in the US. The set features the workshop itself, Santa and Mrs. Claus, elves, a sleigh with brick-built reindeer, and toy-making machinery. 10245 Santa’s Workshop will be out this October.
See more photos in our Flickr photoset. Here’s the full press release from LEGO:
10245 Santa’s Workshop
Ages 12+ | 883 Pieces
US $69.99 – CA $89.99 – AU $119.99 – DE 69.99€ – UK £59.99 – DK 649.00 DKK
*Euro pricing varies by country. Please visit shop.LEGO.com for regional pricing.Have festive family fun building Santa’s Workshop!
Enjoy the magic of Christmas with Santa’s Workshop, a festive addition to the LEGO® Winter Village Series! Gather your family around the Christmas tree to build this enchanting winter wonderland. Help the elves make the toys, feed the reindeer and help Santa load up his magical sleigh. Santa’s wife has baked cookies and the clock tower shows it’s nearly time for Santa to deliver the presents—all at the most wonderful time of the year! Includes 6 minifigures: Santa with red gift sack, Mrs. Claus with cookie tray and 4 elves with pointy ears and hats.
The enchanting LEGO® Creator Santa’s Workshop model is full of festive magic and includes a beautiful sleigh, reindeer and a Christmas tree.
- Includes 6 minifigures: Santa with red gift sack, Mrs. Claus with cookie tray and 4 elves with pointy ears and hats
- Features beautiful sleigh with red and gold detail and dark green padding, 4 reindeer and a baby reindeer, building with detailed interior, clock tower and Christmas tree
- Building features stained glass window and Christmas lights on roof
- Accessories include: 4 wrapped presents in assorted sizes and 4 toys including a blue classic spaceship, yellow car and a pink wand
- Also includes North Pole sign, Santa’s Workshop sign and a summer holiday picture of Santa and his wife
- Gather everyone around the Christmas tree!
- Help Santa take off in his sleigh!
- Family dual-building experience: includes separate brick sets with instructions for adults and children aged 8 and over
- Santa’s Workshop measures over 6” (16cm) high, 3” (8cm) deep and 9” (24cm) wide
Available for sale directly through LEGO® beginning
October 2014 via shop.LEGO.com, LEGO® Stores or via phone
And here’s the designer video:
There’s been an argument circulating recently on the web that Gandalf’s original plan to get the One Ring into Mordor was via Air Eagle. It’s an interesting textual analysis, though unsupported by Tolkien’s copious notes and background information. The latest hilarious video by Brotherhood Workshop illustrates the counter-argument.
The video features the massive Barad-dûr by Kevin Walter that we featured a few years ago.
It’s been about a week since LEGO released the new Exo Suit, and there’s been quite a lot of rumor and conjecture circulating about how many will be available, and whether backorders placed after last Thursday night will be fulfilled. I had a conference call with LEGO staff in Enfield and Billund yesterday, and they all reassured me that the “limited run” rumors (especially the rumored number of “10,000”) are completely false.
If LEGO’s own word isn’t enough, here’s Oliver Twist the Pug to inspire confidence.
We’ll be closing down the LEGO Exo Suit raffle next Friday morning so that we can ship out the set in a timely manner, so head on over to that post and leave a comment if you want to win one.
But the important update here is that our raffle isn’t the only way for you to get an Exo Suit — go ahead and order your Exo Suits (and click through from The Brothers Brick if you’d like to support what we do), and LEGO will fulfill those orders once their supply chain catches up with this initial burst of demand. The LEGO Shop online currently lists the set as either “Temporarily Out of Stock” or “Sold Out”, but this is more of a website status issue than a predictor of future availability. Once they become available on each site, LEGO reassures me that you can go ahead and order them with confidence:
And since I’ve included a photo of my pug Ollie with my own Exo Suit that arrived last Thursday, let’s totally make pugs + Exo Suits a meme. Here’s a completely different pug who is also named Oliver (!!!) with an Exo Suit from Ilia. Post those pug + Exo Suit photos and share them here in the comments, on Facebook, and on Twitter! Bonus points if your pug is also named Oliver.
Welcome back fight fans, to Sin City Nevada for another round of Friday Night Fights. After seeing some mighty Mecha last weekend, I felt the need to scale down to some nice mini mecha. These little guy pack the same awesome punch as some of the bigger boys that usually get all the attention. Let’s go to the tale of the tape.
In the dark red corner we have LEGOLIZE IT MAN with his Silurus mech:
In the white corner we have crowandrats and his SN-LRMC
As usual, constant reader, you are tasked with deciding, by way of comment, which of these Bionicle Brutes will win the battle. On the last edition of Friday Night Fights, Bionicle Brutes, Pate-keetongu won 4-1. Tune in next week for another action packed edition of Friday Night Fights!
It’s funny how your perspective changes with age. As a kid I was tortured annually with the BBC’s Christmas airing of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music. But as an adult I find it absolutely captivating – all three hours of it. I mean, it’s got everything… Nuns. Yodeling. Christopher Plummer. Some Nazis.
In the film adaptation, the The Lonely Goatherd number was performed as a marionette show (by Bil Baird and Cora Eisenberg-Baird). And now half a century later, VirtualLUG die-hard Millie McKenzie has perfectly recreated the entire theater and its distinctive puppets for our enjoyment:
If all this looks vaguely familiar, but you need your memory jogging, here’s the original scene:
Clearly the goats were too lifelike, as sadly Millie’s cat later went on to destroy the entire setup…
…naughty kittie, over the Alps into Switzerland with you!
OK, so I’m pretty sure that spaceships shouldn’t be just regular sea-going ships with space engines strapped to them, but it sure does look cool, even if it is asking for a space-sized environmental disaster. This Octan Supertanker by Evan (Lego Junkie) weighs in at 120 studs long, and comes with a space tugboat to boot.
Adam Dodge brings us this instantly recognizable brickified version of the dynamic childhood duo Calvin and Hobbes.
The Vertibird is one of the more recognizable pieces of industrial design from the Fallout universe (and practically the only aircraft in the games). Justin Stebbins (Saber-Scorpion) has done a great job of capturing the shape of the original. While a trans blue cockpit may not match the appearance in the game, it matches the shape well, and still feels right.
A few months ago Kenneth Vaessen unveiled his 1/36 scale model of a Russian Tu-22M3. The reason why I didn’t blog it back then is that his pictures were taken against a fairly dark background. However, he has now posted this newly edited version.
The Tu-22M3, named the Backfire-C by NATO, is a supersonic bomber developed in Soviet times. The Russian military went through rough times after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Backfires are getting long in the tooth, but they are still impressive-looking machines. Kenneth has done a fine job recreating the sleek look. His model is 1.17 m long (almost 4 ft), is beautifully shaped and has many working features such as working variable geometry wings, a retractable undercarriage, opening cockpit canopies and an internal weapons bay. There don’t seem to be all that many LEGO builders willing to tackle scale models of military aircraft, certainly not compared to, say, Star Wars models or mecha, so it is always a great pleasure to welcome a new member to the flock, certainly one who produces models this good.