Posts by Jake Forbes (TBB Managing Editor)

2025 LEGO Advent Calendar Spoilers: Day 20 [Feature]

Our favorite holiday tradition is opening all six LEGO Advent Calendars, one day at a time, with you, our readers! Along with spoiler pics of the daily gifts, we include commentary and alternate builds to celebrate the season and creativity.

We have an all-star cast of custom minifig creators leading our Advent adventure this year. Fool’s Figures is wizarding his way through Harry Potter and Frozen calendars. ExpansionBricks is launching Star Wars and Friends. And beyondb0nes is digging into Minecraft and City. Now let’s open some doors and see what gifts are in store for today!

Click here for spoilers of today’s builds!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

2025 LEGO Advent Calendar Spoilers: Day 19 [Feature]

Our favorite holiday tradition is opening all six LEGO Advent Calendars, one day at a time, with you, our readers! Along with spoiler pics of the daily gifts, we include commentary and alternate builds to celebrate the season and creativity.

We have an all-star cast of custom minifig creators leading our Advent adventure this year. Fool’s Figures is wizarding his way through Harry Potter and Frozen calendars. ExpansionBricks is launching Star Wars and Friends. And beyondb0nes is digging into Minecraft and City. Now let’s open some doors and see what gifts are in store for today!

Click here for spoilers of today’s builds!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

From Blacktron to bot bands – Talking bricks and ships with rubblemaker_lego [Interview]

Here at the Brothers Brick, we love a good spaceship (almost as much as Benny). Builder Steve Marsh, aka Rubblemaker, has created many of our favorite LEGO spaceships over the years, especially his distinctive starfighters based on Classic Space themes. Steve was nice enough to sit down with us to reflect on his shipbuilding journey.

Our interview with Steve follows

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Viva New Vegas! Fallout is back in bricks

The first season of Amazon’s Fallout adaptation was a violent romp that satisfied gamers and new fans alike. The second season, which debuted this week, digs deeper into game lore as Lucy and co head to New Vegas.  Kevin Wanner (Brick Ninja) sets the scene with this excellent brick-built sign and custom figs. Some post-production gives the shot cinematic flare, but Kevin doesn’t skimp on the LEGO craftsmanship with intricate decay and a clever mix of typography techniques. The builder has created many memorable Final Fantasy tributes – we can only hope more Fallout builds will follow!

Fallout: New Vegas

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

2025 LEGO Advent Calendar Spoilers: Day 18 [Feature]

Our favorite holiday tradition is opening all six LEGO Advent Calendars, one day at a time, with you, our readers! Along with spoiler pics of the daily gifts, we include commentary and alternate builds to celebrate the season and creativity.

We have an all-star cast of custom minifig creators leading our Advent adventure this year. Fool’s Figures is wizarding his way through Harry Potter and Frozen calendars. ExpansionBricks is launching Star Wars and Friends. And beyondb0nes is digging into Minecraft and City. Now let’s open some doors and see what gifts are in store for today!

Click here for spoilers of today’s builds!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

We go full ninja with LEGO’s 2026 January wave of Ninjago playsets [Review]

2026 marks 15 years of LEGO Ninjago, arguably the most successful home-grown theme in the company’s history. In Ninjago, LEGO has a theme that can contain martial arts adventure, dragons, mecha, tranquil gardens, and cyberpunk cities. Ninjago has led to some of the all-time great sets for AFOLs and kids alike. And in the year to come, the Brothers Brick will spend more time unwinding with the Masters of Spinjitzu and rising with dragons to look at both official sets and the inspiring fan creations that wouldn’t be possible without the evocative parts that Ninjago brings to the mix. We’ve already shared our thoughts on LEGO’s two big Legacy sets for January, the excellent Four Weapons Blacksmith and impressively massive Old Town. Today, we’re joined by guest reviewer Capt. DarkShark for a look at the remaining sets from the Dragons Rising arc.

Our review of the January wave of Ninjago playsets follows

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Beware of mimics posing as gifts under the Christmas Tree

The toothy monsters known as mimics famously disguise themselves as chests or other mundane furniture to catch adventurers off guard. It only follows that in a realm that celebrates Christmas, mimics would impersonate gifts! minifiguring.it.out builds this merry monster in LEGO with a toothy maw guaranteed to give you nightmares before Christmas. Remember, kids, never touch your presents without casting “detect thoughts” first or poking the gifts from a distance with a long stick.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

2025 LEGO Advent Calendar Spoilers: Day 17 [Feature]

Our favorite holiday tradition is opening all six LEGO Advent Calendars, one day at a time, with you, our readers! Along with spoiler pics of the daily gifts, we include commentary and alternate builds to celebrate the season and creativity.

We have an all-star cast of custom minifig creators leading our Advent adventure this year. Fool’s Figures is wizarding his way through Harry Potter and Frozen calendars. ExpansionBricks is launching Star Wars and Friends. And beyondb0nes is digging into Minecraft and City. Now let’s open some doors and see what gifts are in store for today!

Click here for spoilers of today’s builds!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Lavender fields forever

TBB alum and RebelLUG member Nannan Zhang can always be counted on for builds that mix innovative techniques with elegant presentation. The AFOL legend’s latest creation depicts a medieval farm where lavender is in bloom. Originally created as part of a collaborative castle build at Brickworld Chicago this past summer, Nannan created a black frame to hold the andscape and added a new farmhouse.

Lavender field

See more of Nannan’s pastoral creation after the break

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

2025 LEGO Advent Calendar Spoilers: Day 16 [Feature]

Our favorite holiday tradition is opening all six LEGO Advent Calendars, one day at a time, with you, our readers! Along with spoiler pics of the daily gifts, we include commentary and alternate builds to celebrate the season and creativity.

We have an all-star cast of custom minifig creators leading our Advent adventure this year. Fool’s Figures is wizarding his way through Harry Potter and Frozen calendars. ExpansionBricks is launching Star Wars and Friends. And beyondb0nes is digging into Minecraft and City. Now let’s open some doors and see what gifts are in store for today!

Click here for spoilers of today’s builds!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Building a LEGO countryside to soothe the soul [Guest Feature]

This landscape is an homage to my grandmother, as I’ve always seen her surrounded by nature, living in a house between two mountains with a large garden and forests. As you can imagine, this moc has a special place in my heart.

Countryside

The idea for this moc came, as usual, from wandering on Pinterest to seek inspiration. Pinterest is packed with fantastic arts of all kinds, making it really easy to gather inspiration, even if AI art is spreading there like crazy nowadays. One day, I came across a series of pixelated microscale landscapes such as valleys with villages, hills and fields that caught my attention. At first I thought it was yet another AI image, but I was informed it came from a human  – Franek pixel art. The person behind it even made a game, so beautiful.

Every time I hike or just wander in mountains, plains, or forests, I’m always getting inspired by nature like this. Just the sound of birds singing repairs the soul. Seeing a waterfall, a nice path through trees or a rock partially covered with green moss, it just makes me want to build something – that’s why I love doing terraforming. Unfortunately, these are the hardest to recreate for various practical reasons such as space, parts, or even time. Yet, on microscale though, those issues are kind of solved because those landscapes can be represented without having to turn a living room into a modelling convention.

Learn how the build came together after the break

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

From Bullet-Spongebob to Bluey 40k, these LEGO mech mashups are are a demented delight

Scrolling through the creations of Thorben (tee_baum_bricks) is like a glimpse into a nerdy LEGO fan’s fever dreams. It’s a place where Saturday morning cartoons and eldritch horror meet over a slice of pizza. This year, Thorben has created a series of mechs and super soldiers based on family-friendly game and cartoon characters. This SpongeBob mech first grabbed my attention (with those sick clawed arms). In Thorben’s world, the absorbent power of sponges aid pirates in their undersea invasion. Poor SpongeBob, trapped inside this infernal machine.

Meanwhile, in the Mushroom Kingdom T.O.A.D.E.T.T.E. in AI-enhanced power armor leads the charge. Thorben credits Brickbot Studio for the power armor frame fundamentals.

See more mash-up mechs after the fold

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.