In addition to 21028 New York City (which I reviewed here a couple of weeks ago), LEGO has also just released 21027 Berlin and 21026 Venice as part of a trio of new city skyline sets.
In contrast to the $60 price tag for NYC, both Berlin and Venice retail for $29.99, and I’ll be reviewing these two smaller sets together today.
Read the full review after the jump!
It’s the first day of the new year, which means that the January 2016 assortment of LEGO sets is now officially available. Highlights include more LEGO Star Wars sets from The Force Awakens, the brand new NEXO Knights theme, new Creator sets, and more.
75139 Battle on Takodana includes 5 minifigs and 409 pieces at $59.99. We’ll have a review of this new Force Awakens set shortly.
75827 Firehouse Headquarters includes 9 minifigs and 4634 pieces at $349.99. Read our in-depth review of the new LEGO Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters here on The Brothers Brick.
Click through to see more January 2016 LEGO sets
For my stocking this Christmas, my wife included two adorable little SD Gundam figures she picked up at Uwajimaya here in Seattle. They were all the rage back in Japan in the 80’s, and I have fond memories of playing in the schoolyard dirt with adorably chibi versions of Guntank, Dom, Zaku, and of course the titular Gundam RX-78-2. There are about as many variations on Mobile Suits in the Gundam canon as there are stars in the galaxy, and Moko has built the “SUPERIOR DRAGON” character from the Gaiden storyline.
Notably, Moko has used nothing but stock chrome-gold parts for his build — mostly the rare 1×2 gold-chrome tiles that only came in three City sets back in 2003. Rather shockingly, I think I see several chrome-gold C-3PO arms for Gundam’s fingers! The dual lances can combine with part of the shield to form a bow, and the wings spread out like many of the stock toys and plastic model kits.
Moko says on his blog (where you can see more photos) that he’d been putting off building this because he thought getting the shape right with the very limited parts selection would be too hard. But he also says he wanted to end 2015 with flair, and I think he’s certainly done so!
Did you know that a new Star Wars movie came out in 2015, with accompanying LEGO sets? If you’ve been living in your basement working on your LEGO masterpiece and weren’t aware, one glance at TBB’s top LEGO news stories would provide a clear picture of just how much excitement has preceded what turned out to be a rather excellent movie. Like our round-up of most popular LEGO models of 2015, LEGO Star Wars stories have dominated news coverage this year — especially since the sets were first revealed in September.
The actual Top 10 list is heavily dominated by set announcements, so hit the jump to check it out.
But some interesting and important news doesn’t necessarily show up in this top 10 list. Back in July, TBB celebrated its tenth anniversary, and I reflected on what it’s been like running a LEGO blog for 10 years. I promised we would be making some changes to improve the experience for our readers, and we’ve done exactly that. After BrickCon in October, we added eight new contributors, who’ve all helped us improve our coverage of both LEGO models and LEGO news. We’ve significantly broadened our geographic diversity, with two new contributors from the UK (both Scottish, coincidentally) and one each from Russia and South Africa — adding to our existing team from the US, Canada, and the Netherlands. Our new contributors have helped to free up our editorial staff to focus more on time-consuming content like LEGO set reviews.
In other news, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s LEGO project generated some interesting discussion in the comments, and several of our contributors participated in the annual Creations for Charity event.
Meanwhile, TBB staff were also a strong presence at LEGO conventions such as Brickworld in Chicago and BrickCon in Seattle, where readers and contributors built a rather epic American Civil War display in LEGO, featuring help from a corps of volunteer dinosaur cavalry.
And in the UK at BRICK, Elspeth took on LEGO Wonder Woman.
Click through to see all of the top LEGO news stories of 2015!
History is rarely accurate when written at the time. The first comprehensive History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire wasn’t published until 1776, and William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich wasn’t published until 15 years after the end of World War II. And so it goes with the great Battle of Bricksburg, which took place October 1-4 at BrickCon in Seattle this year. Now, nearly three months later, thanks to the intrepid battlefield photography of Sean Edmison, we have an unprecedented view of this historic engagement between the Union and the Confederacy.
The idea for the Battle of Bricksburg was conceived during BrickCon 2014. We envisioned a realistic, historical contrast to our many years of sci-fi displays such as the original Zombie Apocafest 2008 and Numereji 2421.
In the end, about a dozen TBB readers and staff members participated in building a cohesive display that ​was assembled from individual segments as well as loose brick​ in the two days before the public exhibition hours on Saturday and Sunday. The display featured about a thousand troops, including cavalry, sharpshooters, supply trains, medical corps, and even a pair of ironclads on the nearby river.
Union troops charge forward in front of an 1800’s farmhouse built by Caylin. Another group of Union soldiers has captured some Rebels.
Our friends over at Beyond the Brick produced a video overview of the display, in which I describe some of the display’s highlights and show off details like the BrickArms stackable cannon balls that are hard to see in photos.
Particular thanks go to Will Chapman of BrickArms, who supplied huge quantities of stackable cannonballs, cannon muzzles, caplock muskets (by the thousand, in gallon bags), bayonets, cavalry sabers, and pistols. We would not have been able to achieve the level of historical realism in the display without these accessories, many of which Will custom-designed and injection molded in small batches by hand just for this display. Similarly, we relied on historical flags and unit banners printed and donated by Dave Ingraham of Cape Madness.
Click through to see more photos and details!
I half joked in my post about improving Rey’s speeder that my next project would be to mod my 5,000-piece UCS Millennium Falcon set into the version seen in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Hannes Tscharner planned a bit more ahead of me, and has spent the last year planning, designing, gathering the LEGO parts, and building his own Millennium Falcon from Episode VII.
At 7,500 pieces, Marshal’s Millennium Falcon uses fully 50% more parts than the 5,195-piece official 10179 UCS Millennium Falcon (the second-largest LEGO set ever sold by part count, and arguably physically the largest set ever). This LEGO Millennium Falcon measures 82 x 54 x 18 cm, or nearly three feet long.
Hit the jump to see more photos of this amazing Star Wars model!
It’s Christmas Eve, which means it’s the final day of this year’s virtual LEGO Advent Calendar series here on The Brothers Brick.
As I predicted, the lazy git C-3PO has forced the hardest-working droid in the galaxy, R2-D2, to pull him along in the sled revealed yesterday — as proved in this photo by #yslego.
Click to see the Day 24 mini-kits!
The day after tomorrow is Christmas! That means we’re on Day 23 of TBB’s virtual LEGO Advent Calendar series, with another pair of LEGO Friends and LEGO Star Wars minikits.
We’ll be unveiling the mini-kits or minifigs from each Advent Calendar around this time every day, and we won’t ruin the surprise — you’ll need to click through to reveal the LEGO behind the tiny doors.
Click to see the Day 23 mini-kits!
It’s Christmas on Friday, and we’re down to just the last three batches of LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Friends mini-kits in TBB’s virtual LEGO Advent Calendar.
We’ll be unveiling the mini-kits or minifigs from each Advent Calendar around this time every day, and we won’t ruin the surprise — you’ll need to click through to reveal the LEGO behind the tiny doors.
Click to see the Day 22 mini-kits!
One of the most spectacular scenes in the trailers for The Force Awakens was seeing the Millennium Falcon flying into the engine of a crashed Star Destroyer, chased by TIE Fighters. Simon Pickard has recreated this iconic scene in LEGO, with the maw of the engine about to swallow the Falcon and its pursuing TIE Fighter. The chunk of tan desert landscape surrounding the grey engine complements the scene beautifully, with a bit of sand spilling into the engine.
(Don’t worry, dear readers, we won’t be posting any LEGO creations that reveal spoilers from Episode VII for a long time, and certainly not without warning, as we’ve done in reviews. But the trailers are fair game, and still a rich source for LEGO creations.)
I obviously hadn’t seen the movie yet when I reviewed 75099 Rey’s Speeder on the day the set came out back in September, so I had no idea whether the LEGO set was in any way accurate. I was most suspicious of all the fun play features built into the set — the stud-flinger weapons, the opening doors, the inner compartment, and so on. Now that I’ve seen The Force Awakens twice (my inner Star Wars nerd having also reawakened), I wanted to mod the LEGO set to make it a bit more accurate to the movie.
To be honest, the stock LEGO set now feels a bit like an entry in our Pimp Rey’s Speeder contest — though I still love it. When I got home from the movie again yesterday, I pulled out my two copies of this lovely little set along with a few choice pieces from my existing collection and set to work to build a movie-accurate, unmpimped version of Rey’s speeder.
Rather than a LEGO creation built entirely from scratch like nearly all the models we feature here on TBB, this is a lot like the “kitbash” process plastic modelers use, so I thought my build process might be interesting enough to share. I’ll avoid plot spoilers, but in case I mess up, hit the jump for my full write-up.
Read all about the differences between the LEGO set and my kitbash
We’re three weeks into December, which means it’s Day 21 of TBB’s virtual LEGO Advent Calendar series.
We’ll be unveiling the mini-kits or minifigs from each Advent Calendar around this time every day, and we won’t ruin the surprise — you’ll need to click through to reveal the LEGO behind the tiny doors.
Click to see the Day 21 mini-kits!