Posts by Jake Forbes (TBB Managing Editor)

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?

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 23…

Click here to see today’s builds!

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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!

LEGO Icons 10355 Blacktron Renegade revealed as the next retro set reimagining [News]

Following in the success of 10497 Galaxy Explorer, LEGO has announced the next iconic Space set to get a modern-day remake: LEGO Icons 10355 Blacktron Renegade. The original Renegade debuted in 1987 as the largest of the initial Blacktron wave of Space sets that introduced the nefarious faction to the LEGO Space universe. While the original contained just 293 pieces, the new set clocks in at 1,151 pieces with a crew of 3 minifigs and a robot. Like its inspiration, the reimagined Renegade includes modular connections, a rover that can be stowed in the ship, and a distinctive asymmetrical design. LEGO Icons 10355 Blacktron Renegade will be available on January 1, 2025 for LEGO Insiders and January 4 for all, and will retail for US $99.99 | CAN $129.99 | UK £89.99.

Read on for more pictures of LEGO’s modern take on the classic Blacktron Renegade

2024 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 18 [Feature]

We’re into the final week of this year’s advent adventure. We’ve had some amazing special guests join our photo shoots, from Johnny Thunder to Saruman, but the real stars are the daily gifts found in our bounty of calendars: Friends, Disney, City, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Spider-Man!

Click here to see today’s builds!

Give that lizard a banana

Over at New Elementary, the results are in from the “Mind that Banana” contest that challenged builders to make creations featuring any of LEGO’s banana elements. Filbrick crawled into the bunch of first-place builds with this mellow yellow iguana. As the builder mentions, yellow iguanas do exist as the typically green lizards appear yellow if born with albinism. Bananas are featured as spines, toes, eyelids, and the tip of the tail. Speaking as a former Iguana owner, the anatomy here is spot-on.

Creating a lifelike lizard with limited colors is no easy feat. Here’s a behind-the-scenes pic of how Filbrick found this scaly friend in a sea of yellow.

The Crash Bandicoot tribute that we spotlighted last week also made it into the beautiful bunch of banana winners. Congratulations to everyone who participated, and thanks to New Elementary for such an a-peeling competition!

2024 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 17 [Feature]

Opening up a new set of LEGO gifts each day is a great day to mark the passing of time. Why not make Advent calendars for every day of the year? Think about it, LEGO! I’m sure the crack design team can come up with a few hundred more Star Wars micro builds each year, right? For now, let’s enjoy our calendar gifts when we can get them in December. All six of them: Friends, Disney, City, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Spider-Man!

Click here to see today’s builds!