Posts by Jake Forbes (TBB Managing Editor)

Yo, ho, ho, ho, me hearties!

If ye be dreamin’ of a white Christmas, legend has it that there’s an uncharted isle where snow falls but once a year. Ye don’t believe me? Well, Jo Marte captured the whole jolly affair in LEGO! Featuring crows nests, skull-shaped caves, and shipwrecks, the scene bears all the trappings of classic Pirate, only things are looking a lot merrier for this motley crew of scallywags.

Swap yer grog for eggnog and cozy up by the fire as we await the arrival of White Beard’s booty. Here comes the jolly devil himself on his dolphin-pulled skiff. “On Flipper! On Skipper!” the festive freebooter calls.

Ye best be staying silent about what you’ve seen. Dead men tell no tales. “Now swim away, swim away, swim away all!” Until next year.

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Keep building LEGO toys, who knows where you’ll wind up

Few builders in the LEGO community are as prolific and full of surprises as Australian artist Shannon Sproule, whose work we’ve admired since the site’s early years. During the fall of this year, Shannon focused on building “Z-Bots” – retro robots in bright colors inspired by the toy line of the early ’90s, many of which were donated to the Creations for Charity auction. For his latest build, Shannon sticks with the retro robots while bringing in a Zoids-inspired wind-up look for a new type of toy he calls the Strydor.

Click to see more of Shannon’s playful robot walkers

2024 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 24 [Feature]

We’ve made it to the end. Christmas Eve is here and with it, the final doors of our six advent calendars. LEGO tends to hold a special treat for the final day. Still no sign of Red One… Maybe Moana can ask her friend The Rock to help track him down. Or we could just open the doors and see what we find! We have six calendars to get through: Friends, Disney, City, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Spider-Man. Which has been your favorite this year?

As ever, our intrepid TBB team is on hand with witty comments, insightful observations, and bad jokes for each day’s builds. And of course, you can add your own thoughts in the comments section each day! So without further ado, let’s crack open the build for day 24…

Click here to see today’s builds!

LEGO test chamber shows that Portal love is still alive

It’s been over a decade since Portal 2 reunited Chell and GLaDOS for one last round of physics-based puzzles and razor-sharp comedy, but the game still holds a special place in our hearts. Thanks to builders adotnamedstud and _standaartwoudt_, Aperture Labs is open again for testing, this time in LEGO! The scene has it all: A button! Switches! Gravity! Science! Potato! Minifig Chell is joined by familiar friends GLaDOS (in a potato) and Companion Cube, while new sidekick Wheatly keeps an eye on things from above. The Aperture logo made from tiles is a wonderful touch. Seeing this scene makes me want to dig out the game to play through it again. In case you missed the LEGO Dimensions wave of gaming sets, the Companion Cube tiles and Chell minifig were a real thing!

2024 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 23 [Feature]

It’s December 23rd, aka Christmas Eve Eve! Only two doors remain. How about a little trivia first? The first LEGO Harry Potter calendar debuted in 2019. This year’s iteration echoes that version with a few very similar builds, and the same professor – Flitwick! But while 2019 had a younger-looking dapper Flitwick, this year we get the wizened whitebeard version from the first two films. Why two such different takes? Thank Alfonso Cuaron, director of Prisoner of Azkaban, who restyled the character for a cameo appearance that ended up sticking for later films. A win for Warwick Davis who was spared a lot of extra prosthetic makeup! What will Harry Potter’s calendar bring today, not to mention our other gifts from Friends, Disney, City, Star Wars, and Spider-Man?

Click here to see today’s builds!

2024 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 22 [Feature]

Only three days left of our annual calendar spree. I’m going to miss these posts and sharing the opening experience with the team and with you, our readers. Before we begin, perhaps a little more trivia? In 2008 LEGO released the first Castle advent calendar and there was much rejoicing… in some parts of the world. The US and Canada weren’t officially supported for this set, which created quite an uproar with our readers! A Kingdoms calendar appeared two years later, marking the last time LEGO Castle appeared in advent form. While we don’t have Castle doors to open this year, we do have Friends, Disney, City, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Spider-Man!

Click here to see today’s builds!

2024 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 21 [Feature]

What’s your favorite holiday sweet? Candy canes? Cookies? Fudge? …Fruit cake? In Denmark, where our Advent Calendars are designed, this is the season for Æbleskiver, which are pancake balls served with jam. Fresh from the griddle at a winter market, there’s nothing better! But the powdered sugar and jam would make for sticky Friends, Disney, City, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Spider-Man!

Click here to see today’s builds!

Michael Jasper’s li’l choppers

The gearhead kid in Michael Jasper‘s latest vignette might not be ready for their first tattoo, but in every other way, they’re a chip off the old motor block. Dad’s ride is a masterpiece of minifig scale engineering, combining tools, droid arms, and precious chrome details to form a motorcycle of uncanny detail. Junior’s RC chopper, with its beanie propeller handlebars, is a six-element wonder. Of course, Michael’s minifig designs and expressions bring the scene to life.

While Michael Jasper hasn’t been as prolific of late, he was one of the most featured builders during the early years of this site and his skill at recreating furniture and objects at minifig scale continues to inspire builders to this day. He impressed us long ago with his mini motorcycles, like this sidecar duo from 2007 and this blinged-out chopper from 2009. A new Michael Jasper motorcycle build is a wonderful holiday gift indeed!

An audacious rebuild of a LEGO Porsche 911 into an Audi TT

When LEGO released the excellent Creator Expert 10295 Porsche 911 it came with two variants right out of the box. For auto enthusiast Nathanael Kuipers, other car models are always waiting to be found within the parts of official sets, like this alternate build Audi TT. As Nathanael explains in his blog, the biggest challenge is working with the limited selection of curves and wheel arches from one set to find the unique shape of another model. The results here speak for themselves as you’d be forgiven for thinking this alternate build was an official set!

The model features opening doors, bonnet, and boot, as well as a working steering wheel. Nathanael’s solution for the iconic Audi logo in the grille is especially genius.

Nathanael regularly shares alt builds of official LEGO automotive sets. We also loved his pickup truck alt of 10265 Ford Mustang. I wonder what set Nathanael will remix next?

2024 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 20 [Feature]

December 20th is here already? We’ve emerged from the awkward teenage years of calendar doors and entered the roaring 20s. Before we start, how about a little more LEGO advent calendar trivia? The first Star Wars calendar was released in 2011 and the theme has appeared each year since. It shares 4 ships with this year’s calendar. Of course this year Star Wars is joined by Friends, Disney, City, Harry Potter, and Spider-Man!

Click here to see today’s builds!

All aboard the Autobot Express!

Alex “Orion Pax” Jones is a legend in the LEGO community thanks to his spot-on replicas of ’80s toys in LEGO form, especially the Transformers. A year after debuting his high-flying Aerialbots, the undisputed champ of transforming toy tributes is back to ring out the Transformers’ 40th anniversary year with his latest masterpiece: the Trainbots! It’s hard to imagine transforming locomotives picking up much steam with kids today, but if there’s anyone in the middle of the Venn diagram overlap of LEGO, Transformers, and trains, it’s our TBB readers!

Each of the six Trainbots is fully transformable and can couple together to run on LEGO tracks, with the red diesel engine equipped with a power unit to pull the others. The combined form, Raiden, towers at 65cm tall and stands atop a track base with cherry blossoms and a torii gate. Ever the master of presentation, Alex unveils the transforming trains on rails with all the pomp of a proper ’80s toy commercial.

There’s more to these bots than meets the eye. Click to read on!

2024 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 19 [Feature]

Happy holidays, dear calendar fans! Before we dig into today’s boxes, let’s start with a little LEGO advent history. The first LEGO advent calendar was released in 1998 featuring basic bricks and one Santa minifigure. It wasn’t until 2004 that LEGO released two choices in one year. That second calendar option? Clikits! How far we’ve come. This year we have Friends, Disney, City, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Spider-Man!

Click here to see today’s builds!