Though Lucas lost me by the second Star Wars prequel, I still love many of the vehicles and vessels designed by his brilliant team. One of my favorite scenes is the one in which Obi-Wan and Anakin fight through the blockade of Coruscant in their Jedi Interceptors. Official LEGO Star Wars sets have featured the Eta-2 Actis-class Light Intercepter a couple of times, but this studless design by Kevin Murney (legorevolution) truly pops. The bright orange certainly helps.
Thanks for the tip, Dave!
The final batch of summer LEGO sets has rolled off the truck at the LEGO Shop online, joined by heavily discounted LEGO Toy Story sets and several summer promotional items.
NinjaGo gets a refresh with some interesting creature-based sets, starting with this lovely brown dragon in 2509 Earth Dragon Defense.
All LEGO Toy Story sets are 40% off — or more, in the case of rock-bottom prices for magnets — and many of these are pretty nice parts packs for the price. My personal favorite Toy Story set is 7599 Garbage Truck Getaway, with a surprisingly interesting build (for a line clearly targeted the movie’s target demographic) plus lots of nice dark green parts.
On to the promos. First up, you get a free microscale Hogwarts Express when you buy the LEGO Harry Potter set 10217 Diagon Alley. It’s an awesome set in the spirit of the modular buildings line, so every LEGO fan should have Diagon Alley, even if you’re not also a Harry Potter fan.
Finally, you get a free Alien Conquest dude with a jetpack with any purchase over $35.
TR Brownridge (.Tromas) has posted another inspiration model for the MaK Starfighter Contest. It’s great to see a classic MaK hardsuit, and this one has some lovely details — not least of which the sticker/decal use. Notice in particular the thin warning stripe below the floodlight on the front.
It’s always nice to see our little hobby get some broader exposure, so it was great to see Nathan Sawaya‘s sculpture of Conan O’Brian‘s superhero alter ego “The Flaming C” on the show the other night, but Andy Richter deserved his own LEGO homage, too. Hilarity ensues.
Tommy ([Strange]) sets his sights on the future of military hardware with the TAURUS MBT. The splashes of blue and yellow printed tiles add the kind of believable labeling that appears on many military vehicles, and also breaks up the dark gray.
Tommy’s photo is also an interesting lesson in presentation that I think is worth sharing. Reader Vedad sent us a link to Tommy’s original photo, but the angle at which the model was photographed (and the contrast) didn’t really do the tank justice. Tommy retook the photo, and now details like the gun are much more visible. Here’s the photo above again, alongside the original:
Seasonal LEGO sets can be hard to find if you miss the narrow window in time when they’re available, so it’s nice to get a chance to pick them up again if time got away from you the first time around. Thankfully, Amazon.com seems to have found a batch of 10199 Creator Winter Toy Shop
Sure, we’re four months away from Christmas, but I doubt you’ll get a chance to complete your LEGO holiday town again, so pick them up while they’re still available online.
Speaking of MaK, Fredoichi returns to form with this little quadruped beauty, sporting minifig bike helmets as some excellently rounded grills.
The summer 2011 LEGO Star Wars sets continue to arrive at the LEGO Store online. As much as I appreciate the cool vehicles in the Star Wars universe, it’s nice to see LEGO release playsets occasionally, like the new 7879 Hoth Echo Base.
It’ll set you back 90 bucks, but the base contains a Tauntaun and eight minifigs, including R-3PO the red protocol droid, 2-1B medical droid, and a Bacta tank Luke. (Release news via FBTB.)
Also at $90, I’m personally more impressed with the revamped 7962 Anakin Skywalker and Sebulba’s Podracers, which FBTB reviewed in detail recently.
Okay, so this cassette player by Angus MacLane may not actually play your favorite 80’s tunes, but it’s equally portable and no less nostalgic.
The pressed switch is a nice touch.
Raysor Beam enters the NPU fray with this sculpture of an alien mechanic. Call him awesome, but just don’t call him “four eyes”.
The Brothers Brick turns six years old today! In my write-up last year, we focused on changes over the previous 5 years across the LEGO fan community. Today, let’s take a look at these past twelve months here on this blog.
The main theme here on The Brothers Brick this past year for many of our contributors (myself included) has, unfortunately, been that commitments to work and family have sometimes taken priority over blogging. This is fairly self-evident in the frequency with which we’ve updated the blog. Feedback we’ve gotten from readers reveals several assumptions I’d like to clear up, in fairness both to you our readers and to TBB contributors.
I’m often shocked when I talk to TBB readers in person to learn that they assume running TBB is a full-time “day” job for me and the rest of our contributors. I get a warm glow knowing that we do a professional enough job to make people think that, but it’s not, really. I created The Brothers Brick six years ago today because I love sharing my passion for LEGO bricks, and all our contributors do so because they share this vision. We have a diverse group of contributors who all have day jobs — a call center trainer, a research physicist, a lawyer, an oil refinery operator, a probation officer, a medical student, and a technical publications manager. It’s wonderful to know that many of you have come to rely on us for your daily LEGO fix, but we need all our loyal readers to understand that there will be an inevitable ebb and flow to the rhythm of our lives and to the corresponding rhythm reflected here on the blog. Real life always takes priority, so we’ll continue to blog what we like, whenever we can.
It’s also surprising when people assume we rake in so much money from advertising that all seven of us are employed by the blog (or, somehow, by The LEGO Group). The advertising is there to pay the bills, and whatever’s left over we “reinvest” back into the LEGO fan community we love so much. For example, last year, TBB covered travel and hotel expenses for several LEGO fans who might not have been able to attend BrickCon otherwise. This all amounts to a few thousand dollars, not hundreds of thousands — enough to keep The Brothers Brick operating independently while giving back to the community, but neither I nor the other TBB contributors pocket a single penny ourselves.
All of this isn’t to say that The Brothers Brick is going in a direction we all don’t want it to go — certainly not! We want to make sure TBB can continue giving back in a variety of other ways, even if we can’t fly people to conventions every year. We’ve also figured out several ways to maintain a consistent level of new posts for all of you out there without adversely affecting our non-LEGO lives, and we hope you’ve noticed an improvement in the front page’s freshness over the last few weeks.
As always, feedback and suggestions are welcome!
As always, here are some stats for this past year.
Central Africa, Central Asia, North Korea, and Svalbard continue to hold out.
The top 30 countries from which people visit The Brothers Brick didn’t change at all, though several did change places. Visits from Japan fell over 7%, moving from 11th to 14th place. Visits from Russia rose a whopping 91%, moving from 28th to 21st place. Similarly, Brazil moved from 21st to 17th, up 47%.
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Like last year, search engine keywords seem to be mostly about news items, while more and more of our traffic comes from fellow LEGO sites rather than sites outside the LEGO fan community.
| Top Keywords* | Top Categories | Referring Sites |
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* Excluding variations on “The Brothers Brick”.
The LEGO creations we feature here every day took center stage in most of our highest-traffic posts, with the usual news items interspersed — dominated this past year by the release of the Collectible MInifigures.
Finally, stuff for the historically minded:
While others may have been more impressed by Karf Oohlu‘s recent armored vehicle, I’m a sucker for his weaponized LEGO animals. Hilarious, yes, but the “Cowabanger assault bovine and Rashbacon support pig” are actually rather well built, with some interesting techniques and parts usages, especially on the cow’s smaller porcine companion.
