As we reported from Toy Fair in February, the April 2017 LEGO Architecture releases include a redesigned Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (21035). The new LEGO Guggenheim includes 744 pieces and retails for $79.99.
This latest Guggenheim is a new edition of an earlier LEGO Architecture set released in 2009. We’ll compare the two versions later in this review.
With Rogue One: A Star Wars Story available for purchase beginning today, we’re circling back to some of the 2017 LEGO Star Wars sets we haven’t reviewed yet, starting with 75172 Y-wing Starfighter. This is the fifth minifig-scale Y-wing that LEGO has released since 1999 and the largest at 691 pieces.
75172 Y-wing Starfighter depicts a Blue Squadron Y-wing featured during the Battle of Scarif in Rogue One, with five minifigures. The set retails for $59.99.
Read the full review of this Rogue One set after the jump
We first noticed Lasse Deleuran when we highlighted his MAN cement truck and Buy-N-Large semi truck. Lasse continues a strong building streak with a Japanese dekotora, or decorated truck. These spectacularly-customized trucks ply roadways and highways from Sapporo to Kagoshima, and Lasse has reproduced the bright chrome and lights of these unique vehicles with pearl-gold LEGO tiles and plenty of trans-clear 1×1 plates.
The truck is excellent, but the school girls and truck driver are noteworthy as well, built at a unique scale that lends itself to good details and articulation despite the small size (smaller than Miniland-scale). The rear of the truck is no less decorated than the front, with a huge bank of brake lights.
Putting Duplo foliage pieces to good use, jsnyder002 brings us a tranquil little fantasy scene with a pair of mushroom houses in a lush landscape. The mushrooms themselves include some great details, from the white spots on their red roofs to the little doorknobs on one of the houses built by inverting jumper plates. The large Duplo bushes give the scene a bit of a cartoon feel, as do the curly sprigs on the left.
The UT-60D U-wing gunship revealed in Rogue One (out digitally today and on disc next Tuesday) has inspired numerous LEGO models, from the official 75155 U-wing Fighter set to fan-made creations like the UCS U-wing by Mirko Soppelsa. Adding to his fleet of smaller-scale LEGO Star Wars vehicles, Tim Goddard has built a fantastically detailed U-wing, accompanied by a pair of updated X-wings representing Blue Squadron and Red Squadron.
Like the short-lived 7778 Midi-Scale Millennium Falcon, this scale gives Tim enough pieces to achieve lots of interesting detail (I love the gray section and those blue stripes on the sides of the U-wing) without a huge investment in parts. Naturally, Tim has built fully functional swing-wings for his U-wing.
It’s hard to improve on the builder’s own title of “Panic in paradise!”, but when I first saw this beautiful and terrifying little scene by Marcel V., I immediately thought of the Hawaiian goddess Pele, simultaneously destroying as she creates new land. While I’m personally not a huge fan of loose bricks for water, the tiny houses and lush forest, along with the fiery volcano itself, more than make up for my aversion to unattached LEGO.
I was born within walking distance of Ogikubo Station in Tokyo, and by the age of ten or eleven, I was using the subway system to get around the city to take foreign tourists to see the sights, earning myself a bit of extra LEGO money. Australian LEGO Certified Professional Ryan McNaught and his team of builders spent more than two hundred hours building this complete Tokyo subway system map from 31,000 LEGO bricks, showing all thirteen lines in their distinctive colors (my favorite line is the Chuo line in orange). The mosaic measures 4.6 meters (over 15 feet) wide and 2.6 meters (8.5 feet) tall, dwarfing the rather tall bloke standing nearby.
I always feel a deep sympathy for moths stuck indoors at night, attempting to flutter straight somewhere but instead circling a nearby electric light they mistake for the far-off moon or stars. LEGO lepidoptery enthusiast Revan has constructed a gorgeous white moth alighting on a patch of ground, complete with sprigs of grass enlarged to great proportions. Revan has captured the big black eyes and stubby little legs of these adorable fuzzy night-time creatures.
Next time you see a moth trapped indoors, be gentle and help it, won’t you?
For anybody who’s wanted to have one of the planets or moons in the Star Wars universe to decorate their home or garden — because, who doesn’t want a patch of Nar Shaddaa, am I right? — Kit Bricksto has solved the problem with an ingenious little build. Available to galactic residents everywhere from Corellia to Ryloth*, the Grow Your Own Planet line of celestial objects in garden pots brings you a little piece of a planet (or moon) far, far away. The Rebel trooper minifig with a dripping watering can is a lovely touch, as is the pair of life-size pruning scissors lying nearby, but my favorite detail is the waterfall flowing from the larger pot into the smaller pot.
* Product not available on Alderaan, Jedha, Scarif, or the Hosnian System. Not recommended for residents of Mustafar.
After more than a decade of hit-or-miss Harry Potter movies, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them quite as much as I did. One of my favorite early scenes is the niffler popping around New York stealing every jewel in sight and secreting them away in his infinite, Doraemon-like pouch. Tyler Halliwell takes a break from his usual macabre fare to bring us an adorable, life-size LEGO niffler, replete with coins and treasures.
The creature looks quite pleased with himself, though his fur appears to be a bit ruffled after being chased and cornered by Newt Scamander. 50 points to whatever house Tyler belongs to for the brick-built LEGO wall and floor.
For those of us who are fans of cars we’ll never own, the LEGO Speed Champions sets have provided a rather more affordable way to collect Ferraris, Porsches, McLarens, and more. Absent from LEGO’s eclectic mix of supercars has been the Bugatti. While the inimitable Veyron might have been more to the liking of many fans, Bugatti retired the Veyron toward the end of 2014, just before the release of the new LEGO Speed Champions line. Perhaps better late than never, its even faster successor the 75878 Bugatti Chiron was just released on LEGO.com, and should be available more widely on March 1st.
The LEGO Bugatti Chiron includes 183 parts and one minifigure for $14.99.
See the full review of the LEGO Bugatti Chiron
Galaktek continues his long-running series of mechanically inclined animals with a turtle named Toby on an interstellar mission to the newly discovered planets of the Trappist-1 system a mere 39 light years from Earth. The builder says, “Unfortunately, when the NASA contract asked for an “amphibious” rover, they may not have considered how a turtle would look at it…” With wheels that fold into the rover’s body, and a color scheme reminiscent of the LEGO Ideas set 21306 The Beatles Yellow Submarine, it looks like Toby is in for a groovy spacey adventure.
