Yearly Archives: 2020

LEGO Ideas’ newest set 123 Sesame Street (21324) takes you back to your childhood [News]

The latest set to come from LEGO’s crowdsourcing platform LEGO Ideas is one that’s sure to take you down memory lane. 123 Sesame Street (21324) captures a piece of the famous children’s show with a block of New York City populated with a variety of its most beloved characters. The 1,367-piece set includes Bert, Ernie, Grouch, Elmo, Big Bird, and Cookie Monster, and locations such as Hooper’s Store, Bert and Ernie’s apartment, Elmo’s room, and Big Bird’s nest. The set will retail for US $119.99 | CAN $149.99 | UK £109.99 and will be available from LEGO starting Nov. 1. Be sure to check out our full, hands-on review of the LEGO Ideas 123 Sesame Street (21324) published earlier today.

Click to see more images and read the full press release

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Come and Play! LEGO Ideas 123 Sesame Street (21324) [Review]

If you were lucky, part of your pre-school experience was spending quality time learning from the humans and fuzzy monsters on Sesame Street. If you’re like me, you found a friend in Cookie Monster, sang along with Ernie and Bert, and wished you could take a nap in Big Bird’s nest. If you’re younger than me, then you might have spent time in Elmo’s world. No matter your age, they were good times, to be sure. The latest Ideas set from LEGO, 123 Sesame Street (21324), gives us a new chance to revisit old friends, and maybe make some new ones along the way. This 1,368-piece set will be available directly from LEGO.com and from LEGO stores starting November 1 for US $119.99 | CAN $149.99 | UK £109.99. The Brothers Brick was sent an early copy to review, and we’re eager to explore it with you. So come along, and let’s see who are the people in your neighborhood!

Click to read the full hands-on review

Mr. Mercedes makes many merry motorcars

LEGO car builder Jonathan Elliott tells us that boxy small-scale saloon cars like this classic Mercedes are fiendishly difficult to build, even more so then their curvier sportscar counterparts. I’m inclined to agree. This model is chock full of tricky SNOT (Studs not on top) techniques and complex offsetting. But I love its understated elegance. We’ve enjoyed Jonathan’s small-scale vehicles before. If vehicles of any scale are your thing, then I’d advise you buckle in and check out our archives. There’s some automotive gold in there for sure.

We’ve trained for this.

Recently, we’ve featured quite a few LEGO builds based on the 9V Train Track switch element. Those were some mighty fine builds. Some might even call them transformative. But Librarian-Bot has taken the idea of “Train Switches” in an unforeseen direction with Switchback. This sinister-looking Decepticon is ready to take you for the last ride you’ll ever go on. I particularly like the way the hands are constructed – they add a delicate, almost surgical feel to an otherwise bulky robot.

In train mode Switchback completely hides any robotic nature – and even works on standard LEGO track. It’s a sharp-looking engine build that makes good use of tile and curved slope elements to provide just the right level of real-world detail.

If you’re ready for even more Transformers goodness (and badness) be sure to check our archives!

An entirely different kind of X-Wing

When it comes to starfighters, there’s no limit to the shapes and colors used by LEGO builders, and inspiration comes from many sources. Take this x-shaped starfighter by Chris Perron, who built this spicy fighter as part of a unique challenge using another builder’s starfighter as a starting point.

I can’t decide what I like more about this fighter, the amazing angled cockpit formed by 4 converging panels, or the 4 wings detailed with magenta and blue. Here is the fighter alongside the ship from another builder.

See you at Pier 3... if you can make it back to the surface safely

We rarely focus on the piece count when discussing digital builds. Well, it’s not surprising since accumulating a palette of real-life bricks is a lot more challenging than copy-pasting some from a digital library. Nevertheless, designing something mind-blowing always requires a lot of skill and an artistic eye — whether you work digitally or not. I was totally taken aback by a diorama Finn Roberts revealed the other day. Being a result of thorough planning and an enormous amount of designing, this digital masterpiece brings back one of my childhood hobbies — spending hours spying insanely detailed posters from LEGO promo catalogs.

The composition, the focal length, the depth, even the angle — everything seems to be just perfect in this photo. Finn shares that it took him seven months to finish the designs of the facades. And these are just a part of the whole diorama, which weighs in at nearly 12,000 pieces. The crowded alley of the pier fit about 60 minifigure characters; I find a new one each time I look at the image! And if you are not into minifigures, check out these amazing shots of the facades. The longer you look, the more parts you notice that didn’t make into the final shot even though they are still there.

A very heart-y tree

Spooky builds don’t have to be all black to get their point across. Anthony Wilson has created a LEGO-based human-tree hybrid called the Aortis Bloom that instead leans into the crimson side of the spectrum. The medically-inclined among us might not even find it creepy – the heart is just a biological necessity, after all. The twisting veins and arteries made from dinosaur tail elements may be a little disquieting, but they’re also very vital to good health. And the blood-red and dark-blue leaves suggest the flowing of oxygen through the system. I’m not sure what those little bits of “fruit” are supposed to represent, though. And just what is the tree sitting in? Dirt? Dried blood? And while really elegant looking, I think that table is actually evil, too. (Just trust me on that.)

If you’d like your October to be a bit more direct with the disquieting images, just take a scroll through our horror archives.

The play at Chapel Street

As I might have mentioned before, I am a sucker for using the old castle minifigures in creations using intriguing LEGO building techniques. Something about the mix of classic and modern just feels right to me. Atahlus latest build ticks all the boxes for me. Both buildings are filled with details. I love how the gothic building on the right is symmetrical for the most part, but some of the details are not. The offset between the woodwork and the yellow wall on the left is also quite nicely done. The base on which the houses are built is oddly shaped, which to me, always is a plus. Even the minifigures in the creation are not just there to fill the space; they tell a story (quite literally in this case).

An autumn haven for the Post Master

Imagine a world in which the trees keep their vibrant autumn colors all year round. Vermont and New Hampshire aren’t even that charming, and they make a mint in tourism on account of their autumn leaves! Ayrlego has built such a world in LEGO and it’s called Otoño (The Autumn Isle). Here we see that a post office has recently opened in the sleepy settlement of Hojaroja on the Eslandolan Island of Otoño. When not delivering the mail, the Post Master lives upstairs in his quaint Tudor style home. I can get lost in all these details, particularly the lantern and the rustic chimney. I can imagine standing on that porch and soaking in the autumn splendor. We quite often get lost in Ayrlego’s worlds. Settle in for a while because you can too.

Alas, a fellow of infinite jest

Pardon the nonsensical title, but who can look at a skull-like this and not think of poor Yorick? Unfortunately, we used the quotation that I’m sure many of you are thinking of for a LEGO skeleton holding its own skull in 2006, forcing me to use the messy hacked up title that I did. That wasn’t the case for TBB alum Nick Jensen though, as he sculpted quite the smooth looking skull.

I don’t think I’d be wrong to call Nick the master of 1 to 1 LEGO weaponry, so it makes sense that he’s also skilled at recreating what happens to someone who faces down the wrong end of that weaponry! This LEGO skull is a great exemplar of what can be done with rounded and angled elements like slopes and wedges. I can’t really explain why, but I love the way the 3×4 triple curved wedges are held in place with 2×2 corner tiles to shape the sides of the forehead. The gold tooth is a nice touch too!

Mortgages are truly horrifying

I’m not the kind of guy who likes to watch horror movies; real life is scary enough, so why should my entertainment be scary, too? I mean, have you ever considered how much money you pay in interest on a 30-year mortgage? Terrifying! Add in taxes and maintenance, and it really does feel like my house is eating me. Now, I realize that Pieter Dennison built this incredible LEGO monster house after watching, well, Monster House, but I haven’t seen it. That doesn’t stop me from being frightened. Seriously, look at the state of those shingles, probably a slate roof that would take more than my left kidney to repair. And that siding needs fresh paint, if not a total tear-off (unless you slap some vinyl siding on top, like lipstick on a pig). And that front porch? There’s no way that railing is up to code. This is true horror, folks.

This warship is all about the curves

From the wedge-shaped Star Destroyer to the cylindrical Saturn V, we’ve seen a lot of different shapes used in spacecraft design. This one built by F@bz, however, is a completely new direction.

I have never seen so many sloped downward curves in my entire life, and I don’t think I’ll see them anywhere else but here. F@bz’s ship looks like something that Thor might sail out of Asgard, or a vessel of Humanity in Warhammer 40k. Either way, I’m buying a ticket for the next cruise onboard.

Seriously. Almost nobody can find a use for these weird parts that hail from the mid-2000s LEGO Sports theme, and then F@bz goes and uses all of them. Nicely done!