Yearly Archives: 2015

Not all Japanese cars are boring

Friends of mine in the US used to own a Japanese minivan and it was reliable, comfortable and great for road trips, but about as exciting as wet noodles. When I think of Japanese cars in general, the first ones that spring to mind are tiny little boxes on wheels that seem more suitable for a shopping trolley and the second ones are competent but boring sedans. However, this impression isn’t fair at all, as shown by the Datsun Z240 by LegoMarat.

Z-cars are exciting. The 240Z had the looks of a classic long-bonneted sports car, but without the dodgy electrics that plagued similar endeavours from England. The roof on the model looks a bit too flat to me and the wheel arches are a bit awkward, but the model has presence. This is helped by its dark blue colour and the nicely curved flanks.

It doesn’t just look good; it too has some very clever engineering inside. It drives, powered by two Power Functions motors and using a servo motor for the steering. These are controlled via a nifty third-party Bluetooth controller, called an SBrick, which is specifically designed to interface with Lego Power Functions. It allows the user to operate them via an app on their smart-phone or via the internet. Its development was funded via a kickstarter campaign that Nannan reported on in July last year. You could be forgiven for thinking that this too must be Japanese, but it was actually designed in Hungary.

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Toy Fair New York 2015 preview [News]

This year’s Toy Fair will be from February 14th to 17th at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan and is, according to their website, “the largest toy and youth product marketplace in the Western Hemisphere.” And as suckers for things that are the largest in the Western Hemisphere (such as the Wheaton Metro Station escalators, the New River Gorge arch bridge, and Keith Goldman’s ego), we can’t help but go.

LEGO will be one of over 1,000 exhibitors at the annual showplace for what’s new in the toy business. It’s not open to the public–only industry professionals, buyers, and (of course) the press are invited. This year, for the first time, the Brothers Brick will be in attendance. Okay, it’s more like the Step-Brother Brick, but you get the idea.

So while you’re trying to decide which of your many valentines you should spend the day with, The Brothers Brick will be toiling away on February 14th at Toy Fair collecting news and photos of the true love of your life…the LEGO Group.

It’s all in the wrists

To many of you, this may look like just another building created in the popular “Café Corner” style. But to those of us that were creatures of the Eighties, it’s immediately recognizable as Flynn’s, the videogame arcade featured in the 1982 pre-cyberspace pre-Matrix movie TRON.

Using fluorescent bricks and black light, Joel Baker has managed to impart his creation with the neon look and feel of the original. It has a complete interior featuring all manner of vintage arcade machines, and even the secret doorway that appeared in the 2010 follow-up TRON Legacy.

Official LEGO Doctor Who, Wall-E sets coming! [News]

LEGO Doctor Who and Wall-E sets have just been announced! LEGO Ideas has just released the results of the 2nd half 2014 review. LEGO Ideas is a crowd-sourcing platform for fan-designed sets. If a set gains 10,000 votes, LEGO will examine the ideas to potentially create a set. LEGO has just announced that both Doctor Who and Wall-E have passed the approval process, and the designs will now be further refined by master set designers at LEGO before being sold as official LEGO sets.

Doctor Who, designed by Andrew Clark.

Wall-E, by Angus MacLane. Angus is a Pixar animator and is known in the LEGO community for originating “Cube Dudes.”

Symphony of Construction contest

Symphony of Construction is a telephone game that alternates between the mediums of LEGO and music. Already 3 rounds have produced interesting results, and now it’s your turn show us your creativity of interpretation. Check out the Symphony of Construction contest, where you have until March 1st to build a creation inspired by a piece of music and possibly win one of four LEGO gift certificates donated by The Brothers Brick.

Take a look at a sample of the works from the most recent round:

Everything’s a product

We know you all just *loved* the Zeus vs Thor brick film we recently featured, by the potty-mouthed YouTubers Epic Rap Battles of History. Well, like a bad penny, they’re back! This time providing a rap segment for this irreverent (PG rated) take on the The LEGO Movie by Honest Trailers.

[WARNING: Contains satire]

Cloudy with a chance of fireballs

Conveying action in a microscale LEGO scene is impossible unless it’s action on an epic scale. Pascal Schmidt demonstrates this perfectly with his model of a volcano raining fiery death on what I assume is some poorly-situated Roman era town. Note the NPU (“nice part usage”) of white ray guns in the pyroclastic cloud.

For some reason this reminded me of a build from last year that we kinda overlooked, a microscale tornado by Jimmy Fortel, created during a round of Iron Builder, and featuring some more NPU (the seed part for the contest was Mixel ball and socket joints).

Ask A Lemur – 3rd Party Elements, Raising Children & the Lie that was Susan Williams

Hello again, Dearest Readers!

I had a strange experience this last weekend. I had the honor of attending a rather unusual tradition that is practiced in the United States. It was called “Super Bowl”. Josh had a party at his house and invited me to come over. I was very excited to see how big this super-bowl was and what sorts of yummy things it held. Come to find out there is no actual “bowl”. There is a lot of food involved but no bowl. What’s up with that?

So, I was the first guest to show up. Apparently the first one to arrive gets to wash the host’s cars. I’ll remember that for the future as no one else had to wash anything. Anyway, the rest of the evening seemed to involve watching some guys on TV fight over an inflated pigskin. I’m not sure why they were fighting over it, as no one got to eat it when it was all over. But the food was good (Bacon-wrapped Jalapeno poppers, FTW!) and I learned enough to yell at the TV when everyone else was. I’d go again next year, but I’ll try to be fashionably late.

On to your questions!

Why do so many people think that 3rd party items are cool but consider clone bricks to be taboo?

This is a great question and the answers are highly subjective. For those how don’t know, 3rd Party items are made by LEGO fans and intended to complement LEGO. Clone bricks are elements made by companies that compete with LEGO.

In general, 3rd Party Items are intended to fill a niche that LEGO is not supplying. For example, LEGO has stated that they will not make modern weaponry. Several small companies, owned by LEGO fans, have attempted to fill that void. 3rd party manufacturers make a large variety of items that are intended to work with or replace certain LEGO elements but are not meant to compete with or replace LEGO as a whole. The quality tends to be high, though it does vary. Fans of the various 3rd party companies tend to be very vocal and enthusiastic.

Clone Bricks are made by companies that are trying to compete with and replace LEGO itself. They make versions of the exact pieces that LEGO already makes and are trying to convince people to buy their products rather than LEGO. The quality tends to be lower than LEGO, but there are exceptions. The names of clone brick companies are often used as substitute expletives.

There are LEGO fans who won’t touch either 3rd party items or clone brick. There are other builders who will use anything and there is a wide range of people in between. The general consensus seems to be that 3rd party items are okay because they are made by fans of LEGO and are meant to add to LEGO. Along similar lines, clone bricks are bad because they are intended to compete with and/or replace LEGO.

In all honesty, there are problems with the logic of any of positions. It all comes down to personal preference. For the most part, they all taste the same. Arguing over it is silly.

Continue reading →

The Great Harbor Ship

The Homeworld series of games featured some truly fantastic space ship designs, providing inspiration for tons of Lego space ships, but I’ve never seen anyone attempt to render a copy of this particular ship before now. De_chef has built a micro scale version of the epic Bentusi harbor ship from the games. As you can see above, he’s incorporated lights, and delivered photos that really show off the shape and illumination. Beyond that, he also built a series of smaller ships to accompany it in display, really bringing the scale to the forefront.

Right back at ya!

While Mario may be one of Nintendo’s most enduring videogame characters, Kirby has been around almost as long. And this lovable ball of fun has some pretty cool powers too, like inhaling his enemies to steal their abilities, and not being a ridiculous cultural stereotype. Heck, he even had his own cartoon show once …suck on that Mario!

Fun fact #1: During development of the first Dream Land game in 1992, Kirkby was intended merely as a simple placeholder graphic for the real character, but the designers loved him so much they used him in the final game. Fun fact #2: This LEGO version of Kirby by Swan Dutchman uses the Bram Sphere technique, which is anything but simple.

Epic Rap Battles of History embraces the brick for divine face-off

For its Season 4 bout between the Greek god Zeus and the Norse god Thor, the hugely popular YouTube channel Epic Rap Battles of History turned to Forrest Whaley and his team of stop-motion animators to give it the LEGO treatment. And the result is hilarious! Make sure to check out the entertaining behind the scenes video too.

[WARNING: Some profanity]

Awesome Star Trek NCC-1701 Enterprise model made of LEGO

To boldly go to space – the final frontier – and prosper, my friend.

My mangled Star Trek quotes aside, this magnificent Enterprise model comes to us from Chris Melby. Chris has done a fantastic job with the circular disk of this iconic ship, managing to make it entirely studless. Don’t be deceived, though, this is actually a huge model at over 5 feet in length.