While I certainly admired the delicious-looking tempura shrimp and rice bowl by nobu_tary I highlighted a week or so ago, I’m vegetarian and prefer some lovely vegetables with my rice — no homemade Japanese meal feels complete without some umeboshi, or pickled plums. I think I’d enjoy this gorgeous LEGO bento box a bit more, with black sesame seeds and an umeboshi on the rice, with broccoli and a variety of small side dishes packed with care into a lacquer box.
While LEGO builders in many other parts of the world have been enjoying the first quarter LEGO sets since January, LEGO is finally releasing about 45 new sets on March 1st in the US. In addition to the Captain America: Civil War and Elves sets we’ve known were planned for release on March 1st, we finally have the official release in the US of the new Ninjago “Skybound” sets, Star Wars battlepacks, and LEGO Super Heroes Mighty Micros.
As always, a portion of everything you purchase by clicking through from TBB goes to support contests like Space Chefs and giveaways like our March LEGO Batcave giveaway (along with the humdrum business of running a high-traffic website).
76051 Super Hero Airport Battle includes 6 minifigs and 807 pieces at $79.99. Look for our review here on TBB soon.
76060 Crossbones’ Hazard Heist includes 3 minifigs and 179 pieces at $19.99.
76047 Black Panther Pursuit includes 3 minifigs and 287 pieces at $29.99.
75137 Carbon-Freezing Chamber includes 231 pieces at $24.99. (Read our review of 75137 Carbon-Freezing Chamber.)
Click through to see more of the March 2016 LEGO sets
Did you know that you as a reader of The Brothers Brick are among more than 250,000 people who visit TBB each month? But only 24,000 of you follow us on Facebook. One of the secrets of following TBB on social media is that we do regular giveaways. That means many of you are missing out! In February, we celebrated our 20,000th fan on Facebook by giving away 10251 Brick Bank. Congratulations to TBB reader Gabriel for winning our first big giveaway!
This month, we’re running two giveaways in parallel. First, enter all month long to win the new 76052 Batman Classic TV Series Batcave, along with a snazzy green TBB T-shirt.
And every day, we’ll also be giving away one of the new Series 15 minifigs. We’re starting out today with a giveaway of Left Shark.
To make sure you don’t miss future giveaways, be sure to follow us on Facebook, as well as Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr, and YouTube.
(Prizes for this particular giveaway were provided by LEGO. Other prizes and giveaways are funded by you our readers who support The Brothers Brick by clicking through from TBB to buy stuff on Amazon, the LEGO Shop, eBay, and Target. Check out the different ways you can help support these kinds of giveaways under “Support The Brothers Brick” over to the right.)
Cpt. Brick shows us what the Ghostbusters crew might have looked like if they’d been born in London instead of New York, a hundred years earlier. These Victorian gentlemen look ready to tackle ectoplasmic entities as well as pesky librarians. Just don’t cross the steams! That would be bad — nearly as bad as that steampunk pun right there.
Cody Purviance is participating in the ABS Builder Challenge on Flickr, in which the current seed part is the bright green telephone. Cody has put it to great use as the legs on this adorably professorial caterpillar. Will he turn into a butterfly when he achieves tenure?
It’s nearly spring here in the northern hemisphere, while summer draws to a close south of the equator. Time marches on. soccersnyderi has rebuilt the landscaping and scenery around one of his LEGO castles four times, reflecting all four seasons of the year. Up here in Seattle, I’m ready for spring myself, so I’m enjoying the tree in pink bloom and the ducks paddling in the castle’s tiny moat.
Here’s all four seasons, but be sure to check out the builder’s photostream on Flickr for plenty of photos of each season.
The 88th Academy Awards will be held this Sunday in Hollywood, and Andrea Toscano created a brickfilm trailer featuring all eight Best Picture nominees, from The Revenant and The Martian to Brooklyn and Room. Which is your favorite LEGO version?
To avoid duplication and showcase a broader variety of LEGO creations, we don’t often feature updated versions of LEGO models we’ve already highlighted, even if they’re significantly improved. But Will Galbraith and his friend Takamichi Irie decided to collaborate on an improved, more functional version of Taka’s BB-8, and the result gets a huge thumbs up from me!
The main challenge was that Taka was off in the UK studying, with Will back in Japan. The pair collaborated remotely to research BB-8’s various compartments, disassemble Taka’s original model, add the compartments to the sphere, and update the design of the head. Will documented the whole process on Twitter, so be sure to check that out — along with Will’s write-up on Flickr.
Many restaurants in Japan have plastic models of their food in their front window. Japanese builder nobu_tary has recreated the fake food that gaijin visiting Japan sometimes find so amusing. But as someone born and raised there, I know that it’s food art in its own right, and I can admire the well-built fried shrimp drizzled with sauce, chopsticks, and even some delicious pickled eggplant peeking out from behind the red and white striped bowl.
And after chowing down those crisp golden shrimp, you might consider ending the meal with some fruit. Perhaps a LEGO banana by the same builder would do nicely. Don’t forget to brush your teeth after every meal.
Tary says on his blog that this is his entry in this year’s Original Model Contest, held by clickbrick for the past 14 years. You can see this entry, along with all the others, at the Odaiba store in Tokyo from this Saturday through the end of March.
Most of the builds we see posted by LEGO Castle builders are, well, LEGO castles, and those that aren’t are often half-timber medieval taverns and houses. Aaron Gomez delves into the Iron Age with a Druid working magic in a stone circle — frankly much more interesting to me than yet another post-Roman, pre-Renaissance something or other (yawn).
While I don’t necessarily disagree with Aaron himself in thinking that the edges under the dark green leaves could have used some smoothing, the megaliths in the circle are wonderfully built — particularly the dolmen near the top of the photo.
I can’t believe it’s been more than six years since we’ve blogged a LEGO mosque. The intricate, geometric designs of Islamic architecture all over the the world — from Córdoba to Jakarta — would seem to lend itself particularly well to LEGO. This wonderful structure by brickbink represents a section of a mosque, with a minaret in which the muezzin is calling a diverse group of people to worship.
Only a handful in the past ten years? It seems to me like the world needs more LEGO mosques.
The ER-1250 was a massive bucket wheel excavator designed for surface mining in the Soviet Union in the mid-20th century. The tracked vehicle stood taller than an 8-story building. Brilliant Russian Technic builder Kirill has built a minifig-scale version of this behemoth that stands 56 cm tall and 123 cm long, and weighs 7.8 kg. That’s over 4 feet long, nearly 2 feet tall, and more than 17 pounds.
Even more than with his previously featured Ice Planet “Elephant” and snow rover, Kirill has built a huge amount of functionality into his vehicle using 14 Power Functions motors, 6 IR receivers, 2 regular battery boxes, and 2 rechargeable (lithium) battery boxes. Working features include fully steerable tracks, superstructure rotation, rotating bucket wheel, conveyer belts, elevating booms, and more.
Click through to watch the video and see more photos!