Monthly Archives: October 2019

LEGO Ideas 21320 Dinosaur Fossils now available [News]

The latest LEGO Ideas set 21320 Dinosaur Fossils is now available from LEGO. The set features three skeletons including a T. rex, Triceratops, and Pteranodon. It also includes a minifigure skeleton and a paleontologist. The set comes with 910 pieces and retails for US $59.99 | CAN $79.99 | UK £54.99.

Be sure to check out our incredibly in-depth review of 21320 Dinosaur Fossils to learn how accurate these LEGO recreations are.

And if you’re looking for older Ideas sets, the incredible 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V is currently 25% off on Amazon US. Check it out in the link below.


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When the ants go sailing in...I feel bad for the spiders.

My original title for this article was something along the lines of a Zoolander quote, but then, that just made me feel old. But enough about me. We’re here to talk about a few amazingly detailed pirate ships at a scale suitable for Ant-man, the Wasp, or any other shrinking superhero, built by Robert4168/Garmadon and adorned with tiny sails made from paper, I think, and dozens of hand-tied rigging, which makes me tired just thinking about… or maybe that’s just me being old again. These ships may be small, but they still strike a mighty fierce cut.

Montroy's Flagship

This black-sailed ship is even firing cannons, using the ice-cream cone for the cannon smoke.

The Cardinal's Shadow

Halloween Zombie Freak-Out 2019!

What are your Halloween plans? Mine are to buy a bag of candy for trick-or-treaters, stay in and watch a few schlock horror flicks, but leave the lights out in hopes trick-or-treaters won’t actually come so as to have all the delicious candy for myself. What? Don’t judge. I like schlock horror flicks. It would seem Pieter Dennison has some schlock Halloween plans of his own that involve surviving the inevitable zombie apocalypse. Shipping containers make great zombie deterrents (right up until they learn to climb) and a rickety ladder serves as optimum transport between the two of them. I can’t see how that can go badly. Cattails (nature’s corndogs) populate the center area while the power lines in the background are an excellent touch. If this layout was a movie, I’d totally watch it with a bag of candy. Trick-or-treaters be damned!

halloween 2019

Get high on sugar this Halloween with a LEGO automated chocolate dispenser

You can always depend on Jason Allemann to take all things LEGO to a new level. For Halloween this year, the actual action of dishing out treats to tiny monsters, ghouls and all toddler-sized superheroes has been automated. It’s powered by a Mindstorms EV3 control unit and motor.

Mini Chocolate Vending Machine

It holds a total of 40 candy bars separated by Technic axles acting as dividers. The buttons are connected to lift arms which go all the way to the back activating touch sensors to release the sweet goods.

Click to see the dispenser in full action

A castle is a wish your heart makes

The subject of an impressive official LEGO set, Disney’s Cinderella’s Castle has also proved itself a popular building with LEGO microscale modellers. However, few of the versions we’ve seen previously have captured the detail of the original as effectively as this beautiful creation by Koen Zwanenburg. The high walls rising out of the water are nicely shaped, with some ingenious parts use (check out the hammers as supporting buttresses beneath the crenellations). The soaring towers are lovingly depicted, with a level of texture and detail which makes the model seem much bigger than it really is. And who would have thought the underside of plates would so perfectly depict the tall windows built into the Mansard roof?

LEGO Disney Castle

This is an extensive redesign of a model Koen built a couple of years ago. It’s a great example of a builder revisiting their work and improving on it in almost every aspect. This is excellent microscale LEGO building.

Delivering tofu with style in a Toyota AE86

This build by Peter Blackert is a throwback to the culture that sparked drifting and made the Toyota AE86 an iconic phenomenon. It’s said that, to date, Toyota AE86’s inflated price is not only because of its rarity but also because of its cult following from fans seeing it featured in the Japanese manga Initial D in the mid-90s and its appearance into the anime scene in the late 90s. The AE86 was popular for its capability to drift with its relatively lightweight and rear-wheel drive combination and also the main premise of the legendary stories in the aforementioned manga. In LEGO, the 10-stud wide design gives it a lot more room for design language compared to the regular 6-stud wide designs from the Speed Champions series from LEGO’s own take on popular cars.

Initial D - Toyota AE86 Trueno Sprinter

Initial D - Toyota AE86 Trueno Sprinter

All that is gold does not glitter, but don’t tell this dragon that

I love dragons. One glance through my own Flickr stream would show you that. I grew up reading books about dragons, watching movies about dragons, collecting pictures and sculptures of dragons, playing with dragon toys, and even writing stories about dragons. Some dragons are evil, others are good. This dragon by Jessica Farrell looks more like the evil variety, e.g. Smaug from The Hobbit, Fafnir from the legends of Sigurd, or the wyrm from Beowulf. Why do I think so? Well, judging from the picture, it is the type that gathers gold, guards it jealously, and gets attacked by resplendent knights. Plus, it is spiky and red and black, and everyone knows that spiky red and black characters are evil (hello, Darth Maul).

The Dragon's Hoard

What I love about Jessica’s dragon is the size and setting. This is a large beast, probably fat from eating all those brave knights and the kings who once possessed that gold. The articulation in the tail and neck makes for a very natural pose, despite the hard and mostly rectangular nature of LEGO. The giant columns are also lovely, with the curved slopes making for good round shapes. That glittering golden bed, though, draws the eye like nothing else can. It looks like just about every gold piece, whether that is pearl gold, flat dark gold, metallic gold, or chrome gold, went into this dragon’s hoard (I’m not seeing any pearl light gold or speckle black-gold, but maybe I just missed them). This dragon has stolen crowns, as one might expect, but also satellite parts, the One Ring, and even Aquaman’s buckle! Plus everything else that’s gold. Jessica says that the model consists of precisely 7,416 LEGO elements, and it seems like half of them are gold. The dragon would know for sure how many, since they know down to the smallest coin what their hoard contains.

Ollivander’s shop looks wand-erful in LEGO

My preferred style of LEGO build is the kind geared towards a fully immersive photograph. The lack of edges, the painstaking arrangement of light, and precise positioning of the minifigures contribute to a realism that is gratifying with tiny bits of plastic. It is about the photograph. The work of up-and-coming builder Lego_nuts is in a similar vein, with splendid use of light. The subject matter will be apparent to anyone who has seen the first Harry Potter movie, as Harry tries just about every wand in Mr. Ollivander’s shop before finding the right one, making a huge mess in the process (though why anyone cares about messes in the wizarding world is beyond me, as it cleans itself up with a flick of a wand). But what excites me about the build is the light streaming in the window in the back, giving it a feeling of harsh daylight outside on Diagon Alley.

Oops, sorry Mr. Ollivander...

The stacked wand boxes are also beautifully arranged, utilizing a number of different elements to create the effect, from ingots and grille tiles to masonry bricks and grille bricks. I love how many of them are at an angle, just stuffed in there wherever they can fit. The desk has some wands for display, of course, highlighting the different colors that one could have (perhaps the different woods?), along with a ledger and quill. Some 1x4x1 fence pieces make for great wrought-iron risers on the stairs, too. What sells the build, though, is the tiled ceiling and the light fixture hanging down, finishing the space. It’s the details like those that are the difference between a lackluster immersive build and a lustrous one.

Lamborghini unveils the new 8-stud wide LEGO Speed Champions Huracán Super Trofeo EVO and Urus ST-X [News]

Earlier this month Jaguar shared the new LEGO Speed Champions in its new 8-stud wide design. Lamborghini now takes center stage to show off their new addition to the same LEGO design language with the Huracán Super Trofeo EVO and Urus ST-X. The two new models were revealed at the Super Trofeo World Final on stage in Jerez.

Click to take a closer look

Build your own LEGO creepy crawlies for Halloween scares [Instructions]

Builder Corvus Auriac brings us this creepy looking spider made of LEGO just in time for Halloween. Just imagine how much fun you could have if you could spare enough parts to make a dozen of these to scare the bejesus out of your loved ones opening the medicine cabinet–or perhaps left on the toilet seat cover after midnight with the lights out. What a lovely surprise to bring joy and scariness to celebrate the season.

Click to see full instructions and parts

When desert warriors take over your classic castle

Here’s a fabulous tribute to a classic LEGO set — the iconic Yellow Castle 375, reimagined as a desert fortress. Galaktek has done a cracking job with this Arabian take on the 1978 original. Whilst the shape is immediately recognisable, a modern parts selection allows for the injection of more detail, with printed tiles and patterned fencing helping create the impression of elaborate tiling, and an appropriate choice of minifigures adding to the exotic Arabian atmosphere.

LEGO Arabian Nights

Best of all, the model features one of the most fondly-remembered elements of the original — it opens up. This was a much-loved play feature “back in the day” and, in this creation, allows us a better look at the fine interior work…

LEGO Arabian Nights

Many minifigures would give their right arm for a rover like this

There are many LEGO builders out there who are such strict purists that they would never, ever use an “illegal” connection, such as one that stresses a piece. I’m not one of those people, and it seems that official LEGO designer Chris Perron is not, either. Try to wrap your mind arms around the way the wheels get a grip on the terrain, or do your best to get a handle on that gold accent near the front; something seems off, not quite orthodox, but I just can’t seem to put a hand on it. Besides the countless arm-less and hand-less minifigures walking around Chris’s workbench, I would be remiss if I did not point out something else that separates this build from the pack: the use of a teal brick separator on the hood, seamlessly integrated. I also love the bubble canopy and the bright colors of the rover and the landscape. It’s so pretty! It is like a Friends version of Neo-Classic Space.

Ridge Ranger

Read more about “illegal” LEGO connections, or check out our glossary for other cool LEGO terms you might not know.