Ask A Lemur – LUGBULK, LEGO Price Differences & The Lemur’s Favorite Piece

Hello Dear Friends!

I recently found a camera and was able to sneak some time to shoot a video. Check it out!

If you aren’t into video, you can read my normal write-up below.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am the lemur intern here at the Brothers Brick compound. I run errands, get coffee, clean the pool and basically do whatever the contributors need me to do. I also have been tasked with answering any and all of your questions about the LEGO hobby or anything pertaining to The Brothers Brick.

Today is the perfect day for me to try out this camera because most of the crew is out of the office today. Andrew is in meetings to rebrand a major theme park in southern California and Iain is parasailing in the Bering Sea. The rest of the contributors are on a snipe-hunting safari in Chile. Except for Ralph and Josh that is. Ralph is attending MadSciCon and Josh is tagging along. Josh had a bad snipe hunting experience when he was a child, so he bailed on the Chile trip. He figured a bunch of mad scientists would make for a safer week than a horde of enraged snipe.

Enough about us…on to your questions.

What is LUGBULK?

LUGBULK is an official LEGO program in which registered LEGO User Groups (LUGs) can get pieces in large quantities directly from LEGO. The requirements change from year to year but generally each participating LUG needs to have a certain number of members and display in a specified number of public displays. The pieces acquired in LUGBULK are meant to be used to create public displays. There are a lot of hoops to jump through but many LUGs consider is a very worthwhile perk. Personally, I wouldn’t know. LemurLUG doesn’t have enough members and I heard that you can’t eat the brick. What’s the point?!

Why is there such a big difference in LEGO prices from one country to another?

Honestly, I don’t know. Naturally transportation costs contribute to that, as does varying tariffs and importation fees. But there seems to be large price differences that aren’t related to those issues. Perhaps one or more of our readers can weigh in who is more of an expert in International Trade than I am.

What is your favorite piece?

My favorite piece? Oh, there are so many good ones! Soft pieces, hard pieces, large and small. Plastic, cloth or rubber, so many different textures! I can’t get enough. But my number one, favorite piece is probably the 1×1 brick with studs on four sides. It’s commonly known as the “Travis” brick, in memory of Travis Kunce. This brick is not just crunchy and tasty, it is very useful for all sorts of cool builds. I also prefer it in dark red.

Thank you all for your questions and keep them coming in! I really enjoy them!

Lemur Hugs to you all,
A. Lemur

24 comments on “Ask A Lemur – LUGBULK, LEGO Price Differences & The Lemur’s Favorite Piece

  1. Legonardo

    Question one: I noticed you changed the color of your eyes from green to pink, Do you do other colours, and how long does it take to change?
    Question two: do you do accents?
    In all seriousness though, I’d love to know about the price differences. Quite often here in new Zealand I’ll find that after currency conversion i’d be paying between 1.5 and 2 times the us prices, more often than not when I buying larger amounts of Lego its cheaper to get it in the us and pay the hefty shipping fee. I know shipping here is expensive but when Lego does it in such bulk surley that doesnt translate to such a massive mark up?
    Vent over ;)

  2. NeedsWhippedCream

    2 questions:
    1. Why did Josh post this instead of you?
    2. What happened to your arm? O_o

  3. Sid Sidious

    Lemur finds camera
    Lemur uses camera to record mysterious goings-ons in Lemur’s compound
    Mysterious goings-ons get more and more sinister
    Lemur finds out Mrs. Lemur is possessed by a demon
    Mrs. Lemur stabs Lemur and disappears
    Footage is released to public
    Footage makes $197M on $15,000 budget

  4. swoofty

    WTF? I thought TBB had class, but now this? Is this a late April Fools? Are you familiar with the phrase ‘jumping the shark’? Well, you’re there, TBB, you’ve jumped the shark. I think it’s time to bury this one like the ‘Star Wars Family Christmas special.’ Yeah, it’s that bad. Cheers

  5. jimmythefly

    Didn’t watch the video so can’t comment on that. But otherwise I quite like the Lemur and enjoy his(her?) posts.

  6. Tananavalley

    As Andrew stated in the comments of The Epic Rap Battles of History “Our audience is adults.”

    The idea of a mascot is not necessarily a bad one, just not this one.

    I have always felt that the lemur was a bit dumbed down for this site and this video really cemented that idea. I will give you an A for effort but the final product is lacking.

    Don’t let all these comments get you too down. Some things work and some don’t and you don’t know until you try, and at least you did.

  7. Xtopher98

    What is the best way to acquire large quantities of a single brick? Also, Do you know any good tips for taking photos of a fainted MOC?

    Thanks!

    ~Xtopher98

  8. bmerrill

    Thank you for rescuing what is obviously a perfectly good camera from the trash and crafting this video post for us. I thought the video was great, but it left me wondering, do lemurs blink?

    Keep up the good work and hopefully they’ll promote you from intern to full contributor one day!

  9. Bunbrick

    Ooh, tough crowd.
    Well I thought that was pretty darn great, and a wonderful welcome little surprise to find along with the written answers.
    But I guess same as with LEGO bricks-eating, tastes also differ when it comes to Lemur-home videos.

    By the way, this post & Iain’s Helicarrier review posts have firmly convinced me that I need to stop with this whole ‘skip the video and just read the text’ dealio I usually went for on here. Very much enjoy what you guys are going for with such material, and can’t wait to see what’s next.

  10. vanhook

    Question:
    I’ve got pieces from fairly new sets (less than a year) that have got cracks in them. I haven’t been using ‘illegal’ attachments, hell,, one of the cracks is the side of a minifig torso.
    Does LEGO want to know about these pieces? Should I send them a picture that includes the pieces’ numbers?

    Also I think the puppet might be too far. The more editorial direction of a weekly Q&A is good, but I think expanding BB beyond a curated photostream does not include kitschy voices.
    Thanks.

  11. LimitedLegoBuilder

    You probably got the message from all the commenters “Do Not Ever Post A Lemur Video Ever’, so I will not say that, but I still like the lemur just not in a video.

  12. David FNJ

    Yikes! What did you do with A Lemur? Impostor, this. Hopefully A Lemur will be able to eat his way out of this one ;)

  13. AK_brickster

    Oh come on you guys, it wasn’t that bad! I actually found it amusing, though the voice acting was a little stunted. Not a bad first attempt tho and I can definitely appreciate all of the effort that went into this!

Comments are closed.