Posts by Norm Harper

LEGO Thor Love and Thunder 76208 The Goat Boat [Review]

This July, with the release of Thor Love and Thunder, Thor becomes the first individual in the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe to get a fourth feature-length film with his name in the title. But just because the Avengers aren’t around, it doesn’t mean Thor is flying solo. His longtime love interest Jane Foster will return to wield Mjolnir herself. At their side will be fan-favorite Korg and the king of New Asgard, Valkyrie. And they’ll all be up against Gorr the God Butcher who, I assume, will be looking to butcher himself some gods. That’s bad news for our favorite Asgardians. The good news is that Taika Waititi is back in the director’s chair, and it’s a safe bet he’ll be bringing the same blend of action and whimsy that he delivered in Thor Ragnarok. Who else would make a movie with as bizarre a tie-in set as LEGO 76208 The Goat Boat? But bizarre might be just what the doctor ordered after countless MCU tie-in sets featuring mostly SHIELD vehicles and spaceships. This 564-piece set will be available on April 26th from the LEGO Shop Online for US $49.99 | CAN $64.99 | UK £44.99.

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Read on to see if this set gets our goat or floats our boat.

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LEGO 40529 Children’s Amusement Park: GWP for Children’s Day 2022 [Review]

To celebrate World Children’s Day, LEGO is offering a freebie Gift with Purchase (GWP) set in the form of a series of amusement park games for your LEGO City citizens to enjoy. 40529 Children’s Amusement Park lets you test your strength, test your aim, or test how long you can ride the swing before regretting all that ice cream you ate. This 170-piece set will be free with a minimum purchase of US $90 | CAN $90 | UK £90 in North America from May 16th-May 30th.

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Got your tickets? Let’s go to the park!

Hello, Dolly!

With this brilliant-looking robot, Julius Kanand pays tribute to M-Tron. The black, red, and trans-neon green pieces are all used in perfect proportion to each other to recall the color scheme of LEGO’s old, much-beloved and/or maligned space theme.

There’s some really nice parts usage, too; from the six-sided, rubber-framed dice at the shoulders to the socket wrench-as-antennae. But what I think works best is the minifigure dolly cart used as the shins and feet. The back of the dolly provides a natural vent effect, and the dolly cart is so stable that this robot can stand on one foot! It’s definitely an impressive engineering feet.

A real American LEGO

The G.I. Joe Wolverine was one of my favorite toys as a kid, and Big Easy Bricks is giving it the love it deserves with this near 1:1 brick recreation. Every slope and vent and piece of greebling from the original toy is accounted for and, thanks to a set of reproduction stickers, you’d almost be forgiven for thinking this was a picture of the vintage vehicle. There are even some upgrades on this version, like a pull-out storage rack for extra missiles. The Wolverine feels oft forgotten about in discussions of 80s nostalgia. Maybe it’s the unfortunate mutant-shared name. Maybe it’s the fact that it came with a female driver in the early 80s boy-toy market. But I’m happy Big Easy Bricks has let us know the Wolverine still has some fans out there. Because, after all, knowing is half the battle…

NPU – Nice Paper Use

Sometimes it pays to read the builder’s comments. When I first saw this build by Tom Loftus, I zeroed in on those amazing blinds and spent probably fifteen minutes trying to figure out how they were made. Some new panel I hadn’t come across, yet? Maybe a vent from some Star Wars UCS set? Nope. Turns out the Iron Builder April Fool’s challenge was to create a build using paper cut outs of the letters in “Iron Builder,” and I’d been staring at a bunch of the letter “I” in that window. The letters have been put to great use all around the room. “B” for the chair backs, “O” for the table, “D” for the desk against the wall, and almost a whole game of Wordle in that art piece on the wall. When the result looks this good, I don’t mind being played for a fool.

I’d love to see this robot lift a crate of forks…it’d be so dang literal.

Sci-fi builder extraordinaire Tim Goddard never fails to impress. Part of what makes his creations work so well is how much thought Tim seems to put into the fictional functionality of his builds. This forklift bot is a perfect example. By eschewing a typical humanoid form and anchoring the droid’s shoulders on an a-frame above its face, the droid looks more than ready to handle weight loads several times its own mass. And the slight angle in the hips gives a sense of life and character to the build. Tim goes the extra parsec by placing the robot on a base that makes perfect use of angled tiles and ingots to suggest a massive sci-fi locale in a very small space.

We do back this Dewback

As LEGO’s Jurassic Park sets start making more use of brick-built dinosaurs, I think it’s high-time other themes starting following suit. Shaun Sheepa shows us the way for what is arguably LEGO’s most popular license, Star Wars. Shaun has created a number of creatures from a galaxy far, far away, and this latest Dewback creation is an excellent example of what’s possible. The trusty steed for the Stormtrooper stationed on Tatooine is rendered here in a near-perfect shape and scale. The spindly legs in particular are a much better match for its onscreen counterpart than any of the unique molds of the creature LEGO has produced thus far. Give us all these parts in olive green, and we’d build a whole scouting patrol’s worth.

DUPLO kayaks get a crafty undersea upgrade.

One of my favorite things is seeing pieces from LEGO’s younger brands, like DUPLO and Fabuland, incorporated into regular LEGO system builds. The latest build by Joey Klusnick seamlessly blends two DUPLO kayaks into this sleek, shark-shaped submarine. The sideways kayaks perfectly match the curve of the two windscreens used to create the driver’s compartment. And the engine details built into the kayak seats help tie in the medium azure triangular girders, which give the submarine an effective research vessel vibe.

And we have to award bonus points for the complicated lift-arm that keeps the minifigure pilot seated between the regular and inverted windscreens.

An amazing sculpture with a powerful message

Let’s get the puns out of the way; green thumb, palm tree. This creation by Chi Hsin Wei deserves better than that kind of tomfoolery. I mean, look at this. A giant hand of nature, bursting through a slab of urban sprawl towards the sky. A single flower blooming from it and reaching to the heavens. This is the kind of build that shows LEGO creations can be an art form unto themselves. The subject matter alone is pretty great, but the execution is on another level. The realistic shaping and posing of the palm and fingers is top-notch. The flower looks realistically delicate, despite its plastic nature. It would be a crime to saddle this build with my usual snarky wordplay. This is, hands down, a triumph of a build.

Oh, son of a–

LEGO Marvel Superheroes Mech Armor mania: Wolverine, Iron Man, & Black Panther [Review]

The one constant about Tony Stark is that he’s always working on upgrades; portable suitcase armor, Hulkbuster add-ons, nanotech. And now it seems he’s helping his friends armor up with a line of Marvel Mechs from LEGO. Miles Morales, Thor, and Cap already got in on the fun, and now Wolverine and Black Panther are joining Tony in a new wave. Does mech armor make the hero as much as clothes make the man? Or are these largely extraneous accessories for what are already Earth’s Mightiest Heroes? Let’s find out with a closer look at 76202 Wolverine Mech Armor (142 pieces, US $9.99 | CAN $13.99 | UK £8.99), 76203 Iron Man Mech Armor (131 pieces, US $9.99 | CAN $13.99 | UK £8.99), and 76204 Black Panther Mech Armor (125 pieces, US $9.99 | CAN $13.99 | UK £8.99), which are scheduled to drop on April 1st.

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with early copies of these sets for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Jarvis, give me a link where people can click to read more about this. Attaboy.

LEGO Brick Sketches 40535 Iron Man & 40536 Miles Morales [Review]

Brick Sketches are a relatively new LEGO theme that debuted in 2020, based on a popular series of builds by LEGO designer Chris McVeigh, from back when he was just a humble fan. Brick Sketches blend 3D sculpture and 2D art to create brick-built portraits of popular characters suitable for hanging on your wall. So far, LEGO has officially released Brick Sketches for only three of its IP licenses – Star Wars, Disney, and DC Comics. But Marvel joins in the fun this April 1st with the release of the 200-piece 40535 Iron Man US $16.99 | CAN $19.99 | UK £14.99 and the 214-piece 40536 Miles Morales US $16.99 | CAN $19.99 | UK £14.99. But will these sets draw you in? Or are they kind of sketchy?

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with early copies of these sets for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Enough art puns. Let’s build!

You want fries with this mech?

Ivan Martynov routinely builds creations that transport the viewer to different worlds, but this latest digital build digs under them. We’re not sure what this tunnel engineer is constructing with its digging, but based on the colors we’re guessing it’s an upgrade to the intergalactic drive-thru. The yellow and red limbs might not remind you of mustard and ketchup on their own. But paired with those warm brown shades and the rounded shaping…the whole thing is giving off some incredibly charming hamburger-mech vibes. The trans-green eyes even look like a side of pickles. We have seen the future of construction, and it is delicious.