Yearly Archives: 2016

Supersized LEGO Architecture 21028 New York City skyline

One of my favorite LEGO Architecture sets of the last few years have been the city skyline series, including 21028 New York City. LEGO architect Spencer_R specializes in 1/650 scale models of landmarks, including numerous skyscrapers. Spencer says he’d already built several of the buildings in the set, so he built the Flatiron building and Statue of Liberty, and then put all of them on a large black base. This much larger scale enables Spencer to include much more detail than the minuscule buildings in the official set, and the higher-resolution photo on Flickr — as well as Spencer’s photostream as a whole — is well worth a closer look.

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LEGO City: Build Your Own Adventure [Review]

This summer, British publisher DK have continued their Build Your Own Adventure series with two new volumes that explore the themes of City and Star Wars. LEGO City: Build Your Own Adventure is an 80-page hard cover book that comes with an exclusive 99 piece LEGO vehicle set and minifgure.

The book’s storyline follows a rather hectic day in the life of LEGO City’s heroic firefighter Brave Ed as he journeys through typical locations within LEGO City, on a mission to get to the end of his shift with enough time to challenge his fellow fire-fighters to a game of table tennis (oh, and to spend the day helping out with rescues, accident scenes and fighting fires of course!).

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Breaking Bad in spaaaaaaaace

Remember when Citizen Brick created a set based off of Breaking Bad and there was a row on the internet? While that drama may long be past, the inspiration to build LEGO renditions of the show still exists. And, because this is LEGO, there just had to be a mashup with space down the line. Finally making it a reality is MadLEGOman with the build titled “Spacing Bad”.

Not only is this a sizeable creation with a detailed interior and complete LEGO drug lab, but it also seems to be created using only official LEGO bricks with original prints.

Oh, and please notice the pair of pants hanging on the mirror. The design of this ship really reminds me of the Eagle 5 from Spaceballs. Then again, it’s the only other flying camper van I know of.

Get ready for big spaceships

For some reason, LEGO builders like to make very large spaceships in September. Many of them spend the entire month working on their models, only releasing photos at the last possible moment. But Shannon Ocean is starting the season off with a bang.

Not only is this ship over 100 studs long, it has a well-blocked color scheme and some great stickers. What really stands out, though, is the uniquely innovative warp drive at the tail end. It looks sorta like the front of an old 50’s-style raygun, but is also vaguely evocative of something late modern, like Star Trek. And, oh my stars, that studs-down base! I hope the rest of the month is this exciting.

LEGO vignettes from CLUE the board game

Bust out your detective notebooks because it’s time to find out who killed Mr. Boddy! The list of suspects is long and the combination of rooms and murder weapons seemingly endless. Leah G built seven fantastic little LEGO vignettes based on the classic board game of who done it known as Clue. Each vignette depicts a possible murder scenario and tons of great details.

Who do you think could be responsible for such a heinous crime? Could Tim Curry be invovled somehow? I need to snoop around a bit more for clues before I’ll feel confident opening that secret envelope. Leah has narrowed the list of possibilities down to a few of the usual suspects.

See all the possible villains after the jump

Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Let down your hair!

French builder Kloou. creates a detailed and technically advanced model of Rapunzel’s tower using tiles for the round tower. If you look closely, you can see Rapunzel’s hair is an actually braided piece of yarn. The builder certainly has not spared a strand of detail.

Just as stunning is the textured roof made of flag clips to imitate the individual shingles.

In space, no one can hear you swoosh

Description says it’s a spaceship, but some LEGO models are like clouds: you can see almost anything in them. To me, this could easily be a retro-futuristic submarine, aiming torpedoes at George Jetson’s commuter car. Or, if you imagine the stand as a handle, this could be a pistol for Barbarella.

Whatever it may be, hold it in your hand and run around the house making strange noises. Or just stare at the smooth, clean lines and great minor details. The color scheme is deceptively awesome — there’s actually 7 colors visible, but the eye only cares about two of them. Red Spacecat‘s photo is also notable for its background texture, which enhances the model’s appeal without attracting its own attention. Swoosh!

Please pardon the dust as TBB migrates servers (and HELP WANTED)

As TBB readership continues to grow — we just crossed the 50,000 threshold for fans of our Facebook page — our poor old server is starting to crack at the seams. Rather than the hour or two every few months (which still works out to 99.9% uptime), we’ve had four or five separate downtime incidents over this past month alone, including about 7 hours earlier today. For those of us who want to give our readers the best possible experience, it’s incredibly frustrating, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Want to know how you can help?

Teemto Pagalies’ IPG-X1131 LongTail podracer as a UCS LEGO model

One of the highlights of Star Wars: Episode I: A Phantom Menace (yes, there are indeed highlights) was the “Boonta Eve Classic” podrace, populated by some great characters aboard interesting vehicles. One of my favorite podracers is the unique racer with the circular cockpit driven by Teemto Pagalies. Cecilie Fritzvold has created a LEGO version at UCS scale, with highly detailed engines as well as the signature cockpit.

Cecilie calls the cockpit a “headache” to build, but it’s certainly gorgeous to behold.

Hit the court at the Squash Centrum Maastricht

Reader Berthil van Beek tells us that he’s been playing squash for more than 30 years, the most recent 5 years at a squash gym in Maastricht, the Netherlands. After starting to build again with LEGO a few years ago, Berthil decided to recreate the the gym and the lovely building that it’s housed in. Built from 11,000 LEGO bricks, Berthil tells us that he spent about 400 hours designing and building this highly detailed LEGO model — a creation that celebrates the place full of “fun and wonderful people.”

The LEGO version of the Squash Centrum includes all the details of the real thing, from solar panels and a little garden on the roof to men’s and women’s locker rooms (complete with sauna) and the glass-enclosed squash court itself. Whether you love squash or not, this is an incredibly detailed creation worth poring over for lots of fun little scenes.

See more photos of this amazingly detailed building

LEGO Architecture 21029 Buckingham Palace [Review]

Summer 2016 sees two additions to the LEGO Architecture range — Washington DC’s Capitol Building and London’s Buckingham Palace. Here’s the Brothers Brick’s look at LEGO’s version of a very rich old lady’s house…

Click here to read our verdict on this new set

Tell your story in a LEGO book

TBB perennial favorite Jason Allemann is at it again with a gorgeous brick-built book. This book can feature different scenes, all showing different parts of your favorite story. When you’re ready to put it away, the whole closes up and would fit snugly on your shelf.