About Edwinder

Ed’s interest for LEGO was rekindled not long ago and it seems there’s no way out of the rabbit hole. His love for LEGO goes beyond the bricks and into being curious about every aspect about the company, its strategy, the community and the eco-system that brings the brick to life. His AFOL counterparts describe him as inquisitive, opinionated and vengeful. His response is you should not believe everything you read on the internet.

Posts by Edwinder

LEGO Advent Calendar 2019 revealed and available for pre-order on Amazon (US) [News]

LEGO has revealed all of this year’s holiday season Advent calendars with new images and they’re now available on Amazon US for pre-order. This year we have an addition of Harry Potter to the regulars of City, Friends and Star Wars. The same prices are holding as previous years: $29.99 USD each for City and Friends, while Harry Potter will be priced at $39.99 along with the Star Wars set. They will be released on September 1, but if you want to make sure you’re good and ready before Christmas, you can pre-order them at Amazon right now.

Click to see the rest of the Advent Calendar sets

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We could all live in harmony if Aliens just attended social etiquette schooling

We love our Ridley Scott adventures and can continue to worship Alien Xenomorphs like what the folks over at Build Better Bricks did with LEGO bricks and parts. That lighting and pose is awesome, making this one of the slickest medium-scale Aliens we’ve seen. It smoothly blends System and Bionicle elements to create the cold, clammy, terror-inducing Xenomorph form.

But, let’s all calm down and think a little. These Alien creatures that we see running around in the movies are not dumb species. They can certainly walk upright like us homo sapiens, and with a bit of schooling, surely we all could live together in harmony. To start with, get them to don clothes and manicure down those claws down to something manageable. They’ve got to also learn to close those gaping mouths to avoid all that drooling. The problem with us is that we human explorers fail to communicate. As soon as we see something ugly, we just whip out the blasters and assume these creatures want to just eat us all alive. Sure they need to figure out a way to survive, but I’m sure we can work something out for when they need to implant us with face-huggers and reproduce those cute tiny babies. Volunteers perhaps?

VESTIGE – A LEGO space exploration short film documentary [Feature]

Most of us can probably think of iconic LEGO advertisements from when we were kids, whether it was the little red-haired girl proudly holding her creation, or the Brick Maniac’s zany exploits from the 90s. But it’s not very often that you get to see a LEGO campaign pitch that didn’t come to fruition. In 2016, Brian Ellis pitched a new branding concept to LEGO that unfortunately wasn’t chosen. However, Brian has shared not only the video pitch, but also a full 20 minute documentary of a behind-the-scenes on how it was created. With 5 years of effort put into this bringing friends and like-minded individuals together, it also offers an insight into just how much work needs to be put in for a 60-second production.

If you’re thinking, what so special about it all? There are several. For one, it’s always admirable and insightful to see how fans of LEGO go the extra mile — putting more blood sweat and tears into a production for the toy company whose products we love so much. It also features no computer-generated graphics (CGI), something rare in this age of digital. The stage and models were built by hand, including the costumes, and put together in post-production with traditional non-linear editing software. The LEGO builds were made by LEGO Designer Mark John Stafford, who we recently interviewed for the Jurassic Park: T-Rex Rampage release. Everything down to the soundtrack, which has a Blade Runner-esqe feeling, was composed specially for the one minute feature.

Click to read our interview with the creator and watch the full video production and documentary

LEGO Collectible Minifigure Series 19 revealed [News]

The 19th series of LEGO Collectible Minifigures has been revealed, thanks to German retailer jb-spielwaren. Get ready for adventures in space, in the bathroom, and also online. The new 16 minifigures bring a ton of new accessories, including a rubber duck in green and a gamepad tile. The series goes on sale later this month. Check out the gallery in our post and let us know which character is your number one pick.

Click here to check out all the minifigures…

An Open Letter to Vader and the Management of the Imperial Forces

Dear Honorable Darth Vader and the Management Team of the Galactic Empire,

You have an almost infinite budget at your disposal to spend on wages and upskilling of personnel and technological innovation. I’m sure you’ve attended the Business Strategies 101 course at our SPOT (Security, Peace, Order, Terror) University and learned that having quality over quantity is paramount towards a calculated win in all battles. The root cause of all losses has been apparent, and we can narrow it down to one thing: bad aiming (be it Stormtroopers, or TIE pilots). At one time, our Stormtroopers had a reputation for being precise enough to pinpoint a Jawa from two sand dunes away. Until we return to this, you will continue to see mockery in all forms like this one built and sculpted in LEGO form by Pasq67 – Tie Fighters tailing Rebel scum piloting X-Wings Starfighters, which are low-tech vehicles that have little automation and only manual firing systems. However, they are always evading, destroying, and killing so many of our innocent troops and soldiers.

The solution? Invest in better targeting systems, and train the troopers to shoot well and not let them graduate unless they have a decent passing rate for marksmanship. My analysis shows that it’s a simple strategy that will save us from countless numbers of sequels, prequels, animated series, and god knows how many more spinoffs down the road. Until then, toy companies like LEGO will continue to build multi-million dollar businesses from allowing people to recreate scenes and games retelling history on our continuous defeats. It’s embarrassing. Do something.

Yours sincerely,
Stormtrooper
(FN-2186)
#NOTATRAITOR

Instructions for LEGO San Diego Comic Con 2019 Exclusives now available [News]

LEGO has released the build instructions for the 3 Sets that were released at San Diego Comic-Con. If you were not one of the lucky ones that got them at the event, here’s a great way to enjoy them if you’re a builder and would just want to enjoy these for display in your collection.

Click to reveal the download links

Two will battle, only one shall return

Sometimes simplicity tells a great tale — a lone Japanese temple with a wide vast landscape with a battle in the snow, perhaps for the freedom of a prisoner of war. The 3×4 modified tile that comes with as the character stand in the collectible minifigures series, somewhat less commonly found in builds, is put to good use as the roof design for this lovely scene by Brickr. The toribusuma, which is the curved part at the edges of the roof, reminds us of a time when sometimes the only way to bring honour to the family is through “harakiri” sacrificial death.

Man and dog versus a whole bunch of mutants

The 2007 Will Smith movie I Am Legend is in my top 10 favorite films from the post-apocalyptic genre, and I’ve always wanted this to have a sequel of sorts. This iconic scene built by Patrick B. is full of painstaking work showing the disarray of a weathered city block. Countless number of brown whip minifigure accessories intertwine as tree roots and vines, crawling all over the building facade and road surface. If you haven’t already seen this movie, give it a chance — and even if you’ve caught it on the big screen, do lookout for an alternate ending that was produced with many different scenes that tell a slightly different tale.

We have proof that the earth is as flat as a LEGO baseplate

If it’s on the internets, it must be real. Thus, by Laws of Cyberspace, I decree that there is sufficient evidence to prove that the earth is flat. LEGO Certified Professional Ryan McNaught collaborated with Centuri Chan to turn this conspiracy into reality by building a scaled-down Flat Earth. However, just proving the earth flat is not enough — all fakery perpetrated on the sheep-like masses by Them must be debunked! So Ryan and Centuri toiled away (probably wearing the necessary tin-foil headgear) to reveal the truth behind key moments in our history. The truth is out there, and it may keep you up at night — just be careful where you walk barefoot in the dark!

Some of the real-life moments captured with LEGO bricks include a behind-the-scenes view into the making of the movies purportedly about men landing on the moon, which of course was filmed in a Hollywood back lot. Lots of coffee and croissants were needed to energise the hard-working crew. We must never forget.

Let the scales drop from your eyes to see more truth as revealed in LEGO bricks

A haunting image of the cleaners of ghost town Pripyat

The HBO Docu-drama series Chernobyl tells a chilling tale of the unfortunate events that transpired on 26 April, 1986. The Chernobyl liquidators, as they were called, were civil and military personnel dispatched to deal with the aftermath of one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents. If a picture tells a thousand words, this build by Red captures the essence of a weary and despondent liquidator in a single pose. The myriad clever use of LEGO parts used, especially for the headpiece, can be hard to make out, but if you look closely enough, you may spot things like a dinosaur piece or a stretched tire.

LEGO Ideas 21318 Treehouse unleashes your childhood dreams [Review]

LEGO’s purpose for the LEGO Ideas program is to encourage and crowdsource new concepts from the LEGO building community that typically might not be produced as mainstream designs from LEGO’s in-house design teams. LEGO Ideas 21318 Treehouse is the 26th entry that has been mass-produced to date and is the largest Ideas set ever released, coming in at a whopping 3,036 elements. Based on the other sets that have been released this year so far, it will be the fourth-largest set for 2019. With such a high piece count and price, at US $199.99 | CAN $269.99 | UK £179.99, LEGO fans might think twice before deciding if this is something that they’re going to fit into their budget and collection, so we’ve got an in-depth review of the set to help you decide.

This original idea was conceived by adult fan of LEGO Kevin Feeser and then designed as a LEGO set by LEGO Designer César Soares. With many other LEGO Ideas finalists are tied to some kind of intellectual property like a nostalgic movie, the concept here is a rare original idea. Let’s dive in and evaluate if it makes the cut in its final form.

Check out our hands-on review of the new LEGO Ideas 21318 Treehouse

Amazon Prime Day is just around the corner, and we’ve spotted some great LEGO deals [News]

Amazon Prime Day is just around the corner, and we’ve already spotted some good deals. These are great deals if you don’t already have the LEGO sets in your collection.

When you click through this link (or any of the links in this article) to shop at Amazon, The Brothers Brick receives a small amount back — at no cost to you — which helps us bring you the quality content you’ve come to expect. So if purchasing anything on Amazon — not just LEGO — please consider supporting The Brothers Brick when you do so.

Click to see LEGO Amazon sets on offer