Yearly Archives: 2015

PE-004 GRIFFON Powered Exoskeleton by Moko

We post a lot of LEGO mecha here on The Brothers Brick, and even though I’m the main culprit I’ll admit that most of them are bipedal, humanoid contraptions that all blend together after a while — the style inspired by anime shows like Evangelion and Gundam. But Moko takes a very different approach with his latest mecha, built for an event in Japan, which is more of a hardsuit or exoskeleton than a true mecha.

Moko himself says that it was inspired more by military helicopters than “Japanese style” robots. A minifig operates the exoskeleton, and I love the jet engines and helicopter blades on the shoulders. You can see more photos on Moko’s blog.

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Mercedes Unimog U1250.05 crane truck

Longtime readers of the blog will be aware that the Mercedes Unimog is one of my favorite vehicles. While rare here in the US, they’re ubiquitous across Europe. Polish builder Damian Z. doesn’t disappoint with his Unimog crane truck in high-visibility orange.

LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens 75099 Rey’s Speeder [Review]

One of everyone’s favorite vehicles from the trailers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the speeder that shoots across the sands of Tatooine in front of the crashed Star Destroyer. Fortunately then for all of us, 75099 Rey’s Speeder is one of the first wave of LEGO sets from The Force Awakens released today in advance of the movie’s opening in December. I picked up a copy at my local LEGO Store, and here’s a brief review — it is, after all, the smallest of the new Star Wars sets at $19.99 and 193 pieces.

Read the full review after the jump!

I find your lack of bricks disturbing

Scruffy-looking son of a nerfherder umamen has been continuing his series of Star Wars themed character builds. But unlike his 8″ tall Chewbacca and Stormtrooper figures, this latest series are a mere 5″ tall – practically action figure sized. So if you showed up a bit late to the stores on Force Friday, maybe you can take a leaf out of his book and craft your own instead! The level of detail, clever part usage, and pose-ability in these is quite amazing…

Microscale scenes depict all VII Star Wars episodes in LEGO

Over the last few months, Irwan Prabowo has been posting a series of microscale LEGO dioramas inspired by all of the Star Wars movies, including the upcoming The Force Awakens.

My favorite is the crashed Star Destroyer seen in the trailer for the new movie. An X-wing and TIE fighter in the sands add some additional visual interest to a scene that might otherwise be a bit more plain at this scale.

Here are all of the mini-dioramas together, including the Death Star trench run, AT-AT assault on Hoth, and Sarlacc pit:

To see all of them in detail, plus some more not in the group shot above (like Owen & Beru’s moisture farm with a Jawa sandcrawler) check out Irwan’s photostream on Flickr.

A crashed TIE fighter wing makes a good junkyard awning

Maybe it’s that I’m just noticing more LEGO Star Wars models as excitement has been building about the new The Force Awakens LEGO sets, but it seems like there have been a lot of pretty great Star Wars models popping up online over the last few weeks. de-marco brings us a scene from Tatooine with a cool green land speeder pulling up to a junk dealer’s shack. The builder doesn’t provide a whole lot of detail, but I can imagine this scene happening in the same time frame as the crashed Star Destroyer in Episode VII.

de-marco has only included his TIE fighter wing in this one scene, but I’d be interested in seeing his take on a complete fighter.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens LEGO sets available now [News]

The LEGO sets for Star Wars: The Force Awakens are hitting hitting shelves and online sites today, three months ahead of the movie’s release in December. It’s apparently “Force Friday” or something to that effect. As a result, the world has gone insane.

If you’re not insane and would like to help The Brothers Brick out by purchasing the sets through us, you can do so by clicking through from the links below.

75099 Rey’s Speeder ($19.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online
75100 First Order Snowspeeder ($39.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online
75101 First Order Special Forces TIE fighter ($69.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online
75102 Poe’s X-Wing Fighter ($79.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online
75103 First Order Transporter ($89.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online
75104 Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle ($119.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online
75105 Millennium Falcon ($149.99): Available from Amazon.com & LEGO Shop Online

First Ever Danish Astronaut takes LEGO to Space [News]

Space news typically makes me giddy. When LEGO is in the mix, it’s all the better. On September 2 the Russian Soyuz rocket launched a new crew to the International Space Station for Expedition 44. This new crew will join astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, who are spending one full year on-board the ISS as we study the effects of long-term space travel in preparation for future deep-space missions.

Image courtesy of the European Space Agency and CollectSpace

Expedition 44 includes veteran cosmonaut Sergei Volkov (Russia), Aidyn Aimbetov (National Space Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan), and Andreas Mogensen (European Space Agency). Why are we telling you all of this? Andres Mogensen is Denmark’s first ever astronaut and has brought LEGO with him aboard the ISS to mark the occasion. Along with the crew and supplies for their mission, 20 minifigures flew aboard.

Image courtesy of the European Space Agency and CollectSpace

According to Mogensen, “ESA and LEGO Education have partnered together for this mission, and among other things, we are running a competition for Danish schoolchildren to tell a story about my mission using Legos.” Mogensen recently completed a fantastic AMA on Reddit, if you wish to read more.

For more information on the mission and Expedition 44, check out Collect Space, the European Space Agency, NASA, and follow Andreas Mogensen on Twitter.

Japan’s WW2 surrender depicted on 26-foot LEGO USS Missouri

As the grandson of an American World War II veteran who was born and raised in Japan, I have a rather complicated relationship with the Pacific War in World War II. From Nanjing to Bataan, there’s no denying the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese military against both the peoples of fellow Asian nations as well as Allied prisoners of war, and yet I feel deep sympathy for the genuine suffering that the people of Japan experienced themselves — from the firebombing of my hometown Tokyo to burning Okinawan civilians alive as they hid in caves. The end of World War II could not come soon enough, and Japan’s surrender ensured that my GI grandfather did did not get shipped from Hawaii across the Pacific to participate in the invasion of the Japanese home islands.

To commemorate this important event 70 years ago today, Dan Siskind has built the American battleship USS Missouri, which was the venue in Tokyo Harbor for Japan’s surrender. At 26 feet long, Dan’s “Mighty Mo” is the largest LEGO warship ever made (four feet longer than Jumpei Mitsui’s Yamato).

This giant LEGO battleship dwarfs the room it’s currently housed in at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.

You can see more photos, including lots of work-in-progress shots, in Dan’s “USS Missouri Project” photoset on Flickr.

And the red corner...

The most recent round of Iron Builder certainly did not disappoint, with contestants Tim Schwalfenberg and Matt De Lanoy utilizing the silver barbell ‘seed part’ to produce more than 50 builds between them over the space of just 4 weeks, as well as engaging in some traditional pun-centric smack talk! We’ve covered some of those builds already, but let’s take a look at a few we missed, this time from Tim…

In the blue corner...

August has ended, and that means the latest bout of Iron Builder is now in the hands of the judges. We saw an exciting month long build-off between American title holder Matt De Lanoy and young Canadian challenger Tim Schwalfenberg. The fight produced some epic creations, many of which we’ve been covering along the way. So while we wait to see who emerges victorious, let’s enjoy some more of the entries, starting in this post with Matt’s…

LEGO Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Just Desserts

The much anticipated movie Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice is still 7 months away, but Tommy Williamson and his crew at BrickNerd Studios (the team that did the animation for the recent LEGO Brickumentary) have wasted no time in producing a follow-up to their earlier LEGO Batman vs Superman brickfilm. So without further ado, here is…

Now animation of this quality requires time and money to make. To that end, they have just started a pledge drive to fund future BrickNerd projects and activities. And as a token of their appreciation, lucky pledgers will be eligible to receive one-of-a-kind LEGO trinkets from BrickNerd Studios …including the batmobile featured in both films!