About Chris

Chris Malloy (porschecm2) has been a LEGO fan nearly all his life, having started with System bricks at age 3. He is the co-author of Ultimate LEGO Star Wars, and his creations have been featured in several books and The LEGO Movie. He also helped develop the first LEGO Minecraft set, 21102 Minecraft Micro World: The Forest, which has gone on to inspire a whole theme of sets. He's been active in the online community since 2002, and regularly attends LEGO fan conventions such as BrickCon and BrickCan. He enjoys building in a wide range of themes, but keeps returning to Castle, Space, and Pirates. Check out his LEGO creations and photography here.

Posts by Chris

LEGO Masters Season 2 cast revealed with 12 teams [News]

LEGO Masters has finally the cast of the show’s second season. The popular show will again feature 12 teams of two competing in brick-building challenges for the title of LEGO Master and a $100,000 cash prize. Some of the names are well-known in the adult fan community, such as Dave Kaleta and brothers Mark and Steven Erickson, who have all been featured multiple times on TBB. Mark is also a former TBB contributor, and fellow contestant Richard Dryden is one of TBB’s current contributors. For many of the others, we’ll have to wait until the show airs to get a glimpse of their building skills. The show will air starting June 1 on Fox, and will feature Will Arnett reprising his role as host alongside LEGO employees Amy Corbett and Jamie Berard as the judges.

Meet all the contestants below.

Continue reading →

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The stronghold of the separatists

I can only assume that the dark villains who live in this black castle nestled among spiked growths on a lake of lava call themselves the separatists. Why is that? Because the main piece of the castle by Simon Liu is one of the new double-wide brick separators from LEGO’s new mosaics, with a strip of chainlinks down the center to make stairs. But the separator isn’t the only piece that Simon copped from the mosaics, as the front wall of the castle is the Technic panel hangar, with the nail slot making a perfect front gate. Simon built this for our friends over at New Elementary as a way to explore the LEGO Art line.

LEGO Vidiyo reveals 8 new sets for summer 2021, including Bandmates Series 2 [News]

LEGO has taken the wraps off the next wave of LEGO Vidiyo sets, revealing this summer’s lineup will contain eight new sets. The sets will include a new wave of Bandmates blind pack minifigures, several new beatboxes, and a variety of larger sets such as 43114 Punk Pirate Ship or the range-topping 43115 The Boombox stage which retails for $99.99 USD and includes nearly 1,000 pieces. LEGO Vidiyo sets first launched earlier this year, and the sets integrate with an app, letting users arrange random, collectible BeatBit tiles that provide a unique musical effect to create music videos. With the addition of the new sets, the total number of BeatBit tiles in the Vidiyo theme expands to 134. The new sets will be available starting June 1.

Click to see all of the new sets

LEGO Collectible Minifigures 71030 Looney Tunes Feel Guide [Review]

LEGO is going looney as the latest license to get a Collectible Minifigure series is Looney Tunes, bringing 12 classic cartoon characters to minifigure form for the very first time. LEGO Collectible Minifigures 71030 Looney Tunes blind packs will be officially available April 26, though like usual they’ve been starting to pop up in retail stores for a little while already. To help you get the full crew of ‘toons, we’ve compiled a handy Feel Guide that contains all the info you need to get started.

LEGO Collectible Minifigures 71030 Looney Tunes are available starting April 26 for US $4.99 | CAN $4.99 | UK £3.49. They may also be available from third-party sellers on Amazon and eBay. In the US and Canada you can also buy a pack of six, though it doesn’t appear that LEGO guarantees each character will be unique: US $29.94 | CAN $29.99.

Click to see the Feel Guide

Didn’t get a Ulysses? Build your own! [Instructions]

If you were looking forward to the LEGO Ulysses Space Probe set, but like the majority of fans didn’t get one when they sold out in mere minutes, you can do what Jonas Kramm did and build your own design that’s even better than the official one! This gorgeous model has significantly more detail than the official one, and employs drum lacquer gold elements instead of yellow, which really amps up the coolness and accuracy.

And when I say that you can do what Jonas did, I really meant it. Jonas has provided free instructions for his design.

Building a stacked deck

We’ve seen LEGO playing cards before, but I don’t recall ever seeing them built life-size before, like this set by Dan Ko. The cards are very simple as far as the build, but there’s a lot of cleverness going on with the selection of pieces. The Clubs made with two 1×1 round plates and a lever handle are perfect, as is the Jack’s initial made from an umbrella. I don’t recall seeing a lobster on the diamond suit before, but I can roll with it, especially when it’s surrounded by a nifty thin red diamond made of a stretched rubber band.

Dan built them for a contest where he had to use 101 pieces or fewer, and he’s provided this lovely knolled image showing he used precisely 100 pieces.

LEGO Star Wars 40451 Tatooine Homestead: GWP for 2021 May the Fourth weekend [Review]

May the Fourth, the annual Star Wars Day, is almost here, and as usual LEGO is releasing some special goodies to celebrate. This year brings another freebie Gift with Purchase (GWP) set in the line of Star Wars microscale dioramas that LEGO’s been exploring since 2019. 40451 Tatooine Homestead lets you finally recreate Uncle Owen haggling over droids with the Jawa junk dealers outside the Lars family underground home. Maybe you can even get those units in the south range repaired by midday. The set includes 218 pieces and will be available from LEGO.com and in LEGO stores May 1 through May 5, free with a minimum purchase of US $85 | CAN $85 | UK £85 of LEGO Star Wars products.

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

Click to read the full review

LEGO Star Wars reveals 75308 R2-D2, a 2,300-piece UCS-style model to celebrate Lucasfilm’s 50th [News]

To celebrate Lucasfilm’s 50th Anniversary in 2021, LEGO Star Wars is taking the wraps off the long-anticipated Ultimate Collector Series-style droid with 75308 R2-D2. The large model of one of Star Wars’ most beloved characters stands 12.5 in tall (31cm) and uses 2,314 pieces. The set will include the large model of R2-D2, a UCS-style info placard, a minifigure-scale R2-D2, and a brick printed with the Lucasfilm 50th Anniversary logo. It will retail for US $199.99 | CAN $269.99 | UK £179.99 when it’s available starting May 1, meaning it will be available just in time for this year’s May the Fourth Star Wars Day sales. R2-D2 will be an exclusive limited to LEGO stores and the LEGO website.

Click to read the full press release

Getting a leg up on the enemy

LEGO builder Marius Herrmann has been on a quest to design what he calls “Fashion Robots,” that is, cool LEGO mechs and robots that employ some of LEGO’s most unusual elements, the cloth apparel items that show up from time to time in official sets, most prominently the Scala and Belville themes from the 90s and early 2000s. We’ve covered quite a few of these excellent Fashion Robots already, and this one marks Marius’ ninth with a cool dark tan color scheme. It employs Scala pants as the coverings for its four legs, but it’s actually the rest of the design that has me interested.

The silver ingots make great durable armor cladding on the legs, while the molded-in speakers from the boomboxes are perfect grilled covers for a missile launcher. A variety of dark tan curved slopes and arches make an interesting body, while the mech is topped with a three-barrel Gatling that’s strapped together with stretched rubber tires and a set of Tauntaun reins.

Space goat from coast to coast

We all know the drill by now. Build a cool Classic Space-inspired LEGO rover, set it in a semi-realistic moonscape of barren rocks. That’s all good and well, because honestly who doesn’t love that? But what I love most about this rover by OA KD is that instead of a moon crater, there’s an adorable space goat munching on some space flowers. But let’s not forget the rover itself, which is a beautiful example of Neo-Classic Space–the modern interpretation of the classic theme from the ’70s and ’80s. While the eggbeater antenna and the little jarred plant are awesome, the detail I love most is those antique grey rubber tires on modern rims, because it looks so perfect for spacey applications like this. I’ve actually tried this on a build a few years ago and found it works great in the short term, but the rims were just a tiny bit tight causing the fragile old rubber to crack after a while, so caution is advised.

But OA KD didn’t just build a space goat and a little day-trip rover. They also built an awesome big rover with treads. It’s loaded with a few canisters for carrying moon plants, and has a cool trans-yellow cockpit courtesy of the old-school angular windows. Continue reading →

LEGO Harry Potter reveals 8 new sets for Summer 2021, available to pre-order now [News]

The core Harry Potter books and movies may be wrapped up now, but the merchandising is still chugging along at top speed. Today, LEGO has unveiled the summer 2021 wave of Harry Potter sets, which brings new additions to the modular Hogwarts castle series, a chess set, and even a totally new series: giant brick-built minifigures. LEGO says that a selection of the sets is available for pre-order starting today, though at the time of writing they haven’t clarified specifically which sets will be available. With prices ranging from $20 to $130 USD, all of the sets will be released on June 1, though most of them are exclusive to specific retailers until August 1.

Click to see all the details on the Summer 2021 Harry Potter sets

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?

Amazing LEGO creations aren’t about showing off how many pieces you have. They’re about creativity and using what you’ve got in just the right ways. This tiny motorcycle by RGB900 is roughly minifigure scale, but packs in way more detail than LEGO’s official bikes, since it’s made of a lot more pieces. Of course, this one can’t actually fit a minifigure on it, but I’ll give it a pass on that front. Using robot arms for the frame, this slick ride has handlebars made from revolvers and an exhaust made with binoculars. Even the tires are non-traditional, since the rubber has been turned inside out to make smooth road tires.

Motorcycles aren’t all RGB900 builds, though. Here’s the bike with a sweet-looking Corvette C1 that looks ready to cruise down your LEGO town’s main drag. And don’t miss the super-cool Countach we featured back in February.