Posts by Jake Forbes (TBB Managing Editor)

Corny builds as smooth as butter

Competition is cooking in a new Iron Builder duel between returning champ and prolific builder Duncan Lindbo and a fresh face on the scene, Ari “loafbuilds” Hytti. Per tradition, a challenger takes on one of four reigning Iron Builders to build models based around a surprise “seed part.” This time the seed part is the unikitty tail piece in bright light orange. “Allez Brick!”

Ari is a builder whose public LEGO creations have mostly focused on Bionicle and character builds, like his compelling entries in the 2024 Bio-Cup. You wouldn’t guess that from Ari’s first salvo, a brilliantly life-like pair of corn cobs that use 82 tails to create the truthy kernels, wrapped in complimentary sand green husks. It’s an ingenious use of the part that should serve Ari well in the competition.

It’s an iron builder tradition to respond to your competitor’s build with one that rhymes. Duncan ripostes with a playful scene of produce gone bad. Corn returns in miniature, with palm leaves making great husks at this scale. An appealing friend, perhaps resting his bones for a Fortnite, joins in the kitchen carnage. We can’t wait to see what these two builders cook up next!

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.

Rocco’s capital LEGO build of Capitol Hill is a 36,800 piece marvel

“Here, sir, the people govern.” So said Alexander Hamilton as engraved in the US Capitol in Washington DC. Chances are you’ve seen the Capitol in LEGO before, perhaps in the official release from the LEGO Architecture line, but you’ve never seen it like this. Assembled here from over 36,800 LEGO bricks over four months, Rocco Buttliere‘s model of the Capitol is a masterclass in microscale landscaping and a breathtaking tribute to the heart of American democracy.

To differentiate from past builds of the landmark, Rocco chose to recreate the entire 100-acre grounds of the Capitol Campus, which includes the Capitol, Reflection Pool, Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, Botanic Garden, Capitol Steps, visitor center, and tree-lined paths. As with all of Rocco’s creations, the model is built at 1:650 scale, which posed unique challenges in capturing the appropriate detail. Some of Rocco’s solutions used delightfully surprising parts, such as fork facades, microphone lamps, and jewel fountains.

Take a stroll down the Capitol Steps with us to view the rest of Rocco’s jaw-dropping model!

LEGO Star Speeder 3000 is now ready for service to Endor

Star Wars fans in the LEGO community have created incredibly detailed and screen-accurate renditions of iconic ships like the X-Wing, B-Wing, and Y-Wing. But there’s one vehicle in the Star Wars universe that fans have a first-hand experience of riding in, and it’s one we don’t see as often in LEGO: the Starspeeder 3000, trusty transport used by infamous travel agency Star Tours! Japanese LEGO builder and Lucasfilm superfan Negipon fixes this with an incredible recreation of the Starspeeder, crewed and ready for a relaxing trip to Endor!

Not only does the build match the lines, colors, and greebling of the classic ride, but it is packed with play functions, including functional doors, retractable blasters and landing gear, custom lighting, and housing for an iPhone next to the pilot droid RX-24 (voiced by Paul Reubens, aka Pee Wee Herman, in the original ride) so that minifig passengers can get the full 4D movie experience. A video shows off all the details. Speaking of minifigs, Negipon booked quite a crew for his model’s maiden voyage.

This isn’t Negipon’s first Disneyland build. He recently built a motorized tribute to the Indiana Jones Adventure that brings the thrills home, and his LEGO Indiana Jones dioramas definitely belong in a museum (I’m partial to Negipon’s action-packed Club Obiwan scene).

Blacktron blight leads to mutated mech meyhem

LEGO’s nefarious Blacktron faction may have traded their classic black look for white and trans neon green. But make no mistake, they were still up to no good, pillaging from M-Tron miners, evading Space Police, and apparently getting mixed up with dangerous mutagens. Whatever infected the Blacktron fig from Collectible Minifigures Series 26 seems capable of transforming Blacktron tech as well, at least as imagined by LEGO designer Theo Bonner. His Blacktron Exo-Mech celebrates the colors of the Blacktron II theme with a gloriously gooey mix of modern parts. Theo draws on big and small macaroni tubes and every shape of tail, tentacle, and horn in neon green to fill out the biomechanical menace. I especially like the curled grass piece for the trigger tentacle. I wonder, is the mech an extension of the pilot’s body, or a lifeform of its own?

You know what would help to take down a squishy mech like this? A really big chainsaw. Thankfully, Theo already has that covered with his last cool mech creation.

“I’m not a toy, I’m a building system!”

Forky, the breakout character from Toy Story 4, may be a crude assemblage of pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and a spork, but he opens up major existential questions about the nature of ~~life~~ toys. LEGO did once release this not-a-toy monstrosity as a single molded piece, think this brick-built ~~abomination~~ masterpiece by Bas van Houwelingen does a much better job at capturing Forky’s special charms. Stacked red flowers make excellent pipe cleaners, and a bent blue tube closed with a minifig hand is a genius solution for Forky’s mouth. Bas’s creation is made for friendship (or for soup, salad, maybe chili).

An impressive SHIP made of Soviet blocks

The heyday of cosmonauts at the bleeding edge of space exploration might be history, but science fiction imagines an alternate timeline where the space race never ended. LEGO builder Duncan Lindbo drew on this alt-reality for his SHIPtemeber creation: the Gazprom Samovar-class tanker ship. Designed to resupply Soviet outposts on Mars, the massive vessel is armed with turrets to protect its precious liquid cargo. The mix of curves, girders, and all of that lovely sand green perfectly extrapolates ’60s space race tech into the future. I love the cluster of engines, angled out like Vostok rockets. In a month of stellar SHIP’s Duncan’s Samovar is steeped in skillful techniques.

If Duncan’s alt-future take on Soviet tech has you curious about the historical precedents, comrade, reflect on this LEGO Soyuz capsule, also built in sand green.

Spooky scary skeletons spell doom for the Lion Knights

In the LEGO photography hobby, light and focus are as essential to the creative process as which bricks to use. Photomark6, a member of the BrickCentral photography community, specializes in shots where the camera is brought down into a diorama, giving the viewer a minifig’s view of the action. (And he manages to sneak a cat into every scene!) With spooky season upon us, Mark delves into the darkness and captures the likely final moments of the Lion Knights as they walk into a necromancer’s trap.

The black skeletons with double-long limbs are especially frightening, the minifig equivalent of those terrifying lawn skeletons that loom over trick-or-treaters. And nothing screams horror like chains hanging from the ceiling. Mark uses some scary good techniques in the castle backdrop; the hinge bricks work great as cornices. In the background, Szazz Tam from the D&D Collectible Minifigures watches the knights fall. Can the Lion Knights turn the tides? If only skeletons were allergic to cats…

Life on a LEGO sailboat looks like paradise

Tales of life at sea have long cast a siren spell over many a landlubber and LEGO builder. Real-life heroes like Thor Heyerdahl, Ernest Shackleton, and ~~Steve Zissou~~ Jacques Cousteau captured the imaginations of past generations; with many followers on YouTube, Lauren Landers and her feline first mate Mak are new stars sharing the ups and downs of life on the waves. Builder Kevin Wanner was inspired by Landers’ home, the Soul de La Mar, and recreated it in LEGO. The sailboat is a 1993 Oceania 510, decked out for long-term life at sea.

Kevin proves an able LEGO shipwright, creating impressive curves in dark blue. He first planned to build only the above-water section of the boat, but felt driven to complete the keel as well. The end results, with the full ship “floating” on a then patch of sea over a coral reef, is nothing short of stunning. The sea alone includes 1,900 1×1 tiles with clips to achieve the undulating effect. Kevin calls it a “don’t bump the table” build on account of the entire ship and sea resting on three fragile contact points. I hope he never learned that the hard way!

Kevin’s gallery features many more angles of this exquisite ship. The build is an amazing tribute to the Soul de La Mar that just might have you dreaming of trading in your house or apartment for sailboat of your own.

Perfect LEGO furniture for the modern minifig

Gone are the days when a set of pre-molded seats and an elevated plate was all that a minifig needed to furnish a LEGO home. Thanks to techniques innovated by builders like Michael Jasper and introduced into official sets with the Modular line, a minifig’s home can be filled with as many build-it-yourself designs as an Ikea showroom. Oshi Builds assembles a cozy set of bedroom furniture with muted colors and compact forms that would look great in a Copenhagen studio. Leaving in a few specific molded parts, like the laptop, guitar, and desk drawer, elevates how elegant the custom builds are. Be careful on that rug, though. It looks a little slippery.

LEGO Marvel 76294 X-Men: The X-Mansion revealed [News]

This November LEGO invites you to build the next step in human evolution with LEGO Marvel 76294 X-Men: The X-Mansion. Also known as Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, the X-Mansion is one of the most iconic sites in the Marvel universe, featured most recently in the X-Men ’97 animated series. The set features familiar details like the Danger Room, Cerebro, and a buildable Sentinel robot. The X-Mansion includes 10 minigures, with Professor X, Gambit, Iceman, and Bishop, making their LEGO debut. If purchased during the first week of release, Insiders also receive LEGO Marvel Cerebro, a companion display piece. Available November 1 to Insiders and November 4 to all, 76294 X-Men: The X-Mansion contains 3093 pieces and retails for US $329.99 | CAN $429.99 | UK £289.99.

To me, my X-Men. Let’s look at the rest that the set has to offer!

The Charrus is SHIP full of delightful parts

During SHIPtember, when LEGO Space builders race to complete a ship at least 100 studs long within a month, the biggest challenge is finding the time and parts to get it done. But almost as hard is finding a unique hook to make your SHIP stand out. Andre Odyssey‘s OSV Charrus is a slick cargo ship with very few studs that draws on an eclectic range of parts. The ship’s deck is made from road plates, alongside race car spoilers and City ship parts. For cargo, Andre uses Mario mushrooms, lavender barrels from the Friends line, a brilliantly employed Vidyo box full, and a brick-built sand green container. The new “jumbo macaroni” tubes make excellent manipulator arms at this scale. The result is a ship that is both an impressive resupply vessel and a fun celebration of the mix-and-match potential of LEGO themes.

Fabulous LEGO Cloud Nine Car from an old smoothie

Stewart Lamb Cromar‘s Star Wars x Fabuland mashups have been viral sensations and appeared at LEGO shops and conventions, but his latest creation the Cloud Nine Car, was created for a much smaller audience. The adorable build, made from vintage parts and presented in custom packaging, was a wedding gift for friends. Stewart originally designed the pods using yellow Fabuland boat hulls to match the theme’s iconic red, yellow, and blue color scheme, but ultimately swapped them for red to better match the source material. Whether in smaller sets like the Fabulandspeeder, or on the massive scale of the Tie Bungalow Hanger, Stewart’s builds always deliver smiles.

Should you find yourself in Billund, Stewart’s work can currently be found at LEGO House where his Fabuland paddle steamer recently joined the World Explorers experience.