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 Ninjago’s new people pack: 71708 Gamer’s Market [Review]

When I looked over the new 2020 wave of LEGO Ninjago sets, one immediately stuck out among the dragons, mechs, and other usual Ninjago fare. 71708 Gamer’s Market is a small set crammed with nine minifigures, along with three small booths. Other themes have long had people packs and army builders, with City and Star Wars providing the most well-known recent examples, but apart from blister packs of figures, Ninjago has always balanced minifigures with the brick-built parts of the set. With 218 pieces and nine minifigures, 71708 Gamer’s Market retails for US $29.99 | CAN $39.99 | UK £29.99 and is available now.

As any modern video gamer knows, microtransactions are where game publishers make the big bucks these days, and it’s no different for the new Tron-like digital world in which the latest season of Ninjago is set, so the Gamer’s Market is where you can outfit your character with all the latest gear, from katanas to hats.

Click to read the full hands-on review!

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It will be hard to build a better, bigger bomber than this 6-foot LEGO B-36D

LEGO builder Jack Carleson is back with yet another model that shows why he goes by the screen name “Big Planes.” Following up on his incredible minifigure-scale Air Force One, Jack brings us a huge model of the Convair B-36D “Peacemaker” from the early cold war era.

Entering service in 1949 with a profile that fits right between the B-29 that preceded it and the B-52 that replaced it (which is still in service), the B-36 is nonetheless distinct with its six push-prop engines augmented with four jet engine nacelles. Jack’s model is massive with a wingspan of 6 feet. That’s all the more impressive when you look at how rigid the self-supporting wings are, which is an amazing feat of LEGO engineering. Continue reading →

New orange spaceman joins the Classic Space LEGO minifigure lineup [News]

The old-school Classic Space astronaut is of the most beloved and iconic minifigures of the last 40 years, and later this year it will be available in orange for the first time. The figure will be an extra in the upcoming new edition of LEGO Minifigure: A Visual History from publisher DK. According to the Amazon UK listing, where it is available for pre-order, it will be available Oct. 1 for £30.00.

Originally available in black, blue, red, white, and yellow, the figure featured prominently in space sets for more than a decade across the 1970s and 80s. Recently, LEGO has been picking up on the nostalgia fans have for the simple spaceman and have been filling in the lineup with additional colors. In 2014 the Ideas set 21109 Exo Suit included a green version, and of course Benny from The LEGO Movie proudly wears an original blue suit. Last year for The LEGO Movie 2, he was joined by two rereleases of the white and yellow space figures, along with another new addition: the pink version, in 70841 Benny’s Space Squad. Now, DK’s new book adds an eighth color to the lineup, bringing us one step closer to having a space minifigure for every occasion.

LEGO Collectible Minifigures 71026 DC Super Heroes Feel Guide [Review]

A few weeks ago we took a look at the latest wave of Collectible Minifigures, 71026 DC Super Heroes, with a full in-depth review. That in-depth review will give you insight into which minifigures you want to pick up, especially given this series represents the new high-water mark in pricing for individual CMF packs, ringing in at US $4.99 | CAN $4.99 | UK £3.49. As always, we source our reviews from a full case which we sort by feel before opening any packs. This means that we can also bring you one of the best feel guides on the internet, since we’ve handled each pack just like you would.

71026 Collectible Minifigures DC Super Heroes are available now at LEGO.com for US $4.99 | CAN $4.99 | UK £3.49, as well as from third-party sellers on Amazon and eBay.

Continue reading →

To the stars and beyond: my microscale LEGO spacecraft inspired by NASA – part 2

Continuing on my fad of building “hard sci-fi” spaceships that look like they might have been designed by NASA or SpaceX, after completing the Vanguard, I found myself with a handful of leftover modules. So I set about building another ship and employing some of the techniques I’d learned and adding others. Last time my ship had topped out at 89 studs in length, but the I.E.A. Discovery rings in at 120 studs.

Read Part 1 here.

One of the main things I wanted change was the color scheme. Although the solid black-and-white motif is very classic NASA, I was trying to build a spaceship of the future, so perhaps a little color was in order. My two chosen highlight colors were sand green and flame yellowish orange (or bright light orange, if you prefer Bricklink’s nomenclature). Both are vibrant and bold, while still capturing the vintage space-race color palette I wanted. Continue reading →

These were 2019’s Top 10 most popular LEGO creations featured on TBB [News]

As we welcome the new year, let’s take a quick look back at the highlights of 2019. We dove through our archives and compiled this list of the LEGO models that were most popular with you, our readers, throughout the year. These MOCs, as LEGO builders call them, are sure to wow, just as they’ve captured the imaginations of thousands of LEGO fans around the world already.

Don’t forget to check out the 2019 TBB Builder of the Year and 2019 TBB Creation of the Year awards as well, as judged by our staff.

We’ll start at number 10 and work our way up to the year’s most popular custom LEGO creation.

Click to read the full list

To the stars and beyond: my microscale LEGO spacecraft inspired by NASA – part 1

As a longtime LEGO space builder, I found I was ready for a bit of a change. After years of building Star Wars and video-game inspired spaceships, I wanted to try my hand at building a spaceship that is, paradoxically, a little more down to earth. Rather than ships bristling with big guns or outfitted with wings, I decided to take my visual cues from movies like Interstellar, The Martian, and of course, NASA’s own designs. Several years ago I built the space shuttle launch system for the theme, and since then I’ve been working on a couple of spacecraft. I’ve displayed them at a number of conventions, but over the holidays this year, I finally polished them up and photographed them. The first ship I built was the Vanguard, part of the fictional Interplanetary Expedition Alliance, mankind’s first attempt at visiting nearby planets and their orbiting bodies.

I built it as a series of discrete modules, and then strung the modules together to create the larger spacecraft. I like this technique because it lets me play with small structures of a few dozen elements at a time, which also results in a look similar to the real International Space Station’s modular design. Continue reading →

This huge LEGO microscale city continues to grow

When we last checked in with Christophe Pujaletplaa almost a year ago, he’d just finished adding roads to the microscale LEGO city he calls Microville. It’s now grown to more than 11 meters squared, or close to 100 large 48×48-stud baseplates and gained a waterfront.

Christophe has been continuously working on the city since 2010, slowly adding more streets with detailed buildings, along with the occasional larger upgrade. The waterfront section adds new beach real estate and an industrial port next to the airport. Continue reading →

Check out the toothy grin on this LEGO bot

Sometimes you see a LEGO part and you think “now what will I ever do with that?” I’ve always loved the greebly, mechanical look of the ripcord housing element, but for the life of me I’ve never found a use for it. That’s not a problem for Cezium, though, who whipped together this brilliant digital model with two whole rows of them for the teeth–er, excuse me, railgun housings on this sentry bot. This just goes to prove that old LEGO building axiom: all pieces are useful if you have a sufficient quantity of them.

LEGO Ninjago Avatar Arcade Pods: 71714 Kai, 71715 Jay, and 71716 Lloyd [Review]

Each year LEGO’s homebrewed Ninjago theme finds a new setting for its cast of pseudo-ninja heroes, ranging from sky pirates to medieval fantasy. The theme has always reveled in a no-holds-barred approach to mixing and matching ancient bladed weapons, advanced technology, and outrageous antagonists. The 2020 lineup’s twist is a cyberpunk aesthetic set in a digital world via a videogame. All of the Ninjago heroes find themselves dueling in the cyber realms via their avatars, bringing a Ready Player One-like plotline to LEGO’s most successful in-house theme. Today we’re looking at a trio of small sets that serve as the entry points to theme both for the consumers and the characters in the world. These arcade cabinet boxes are the transformation portals wherein Kai, Jay, and Lloyd are transformed into their digital avatars. 71714 Kai Avatar – Arcade Pod (US $9.99 | CAN $13.99 | UK £8.99), 71715 Jay Avatar – Arcade Pod (US $9.99 | CAN $13.99 | UK £8.99), and 71716 Lloyd Avatar – Arcade Pod (US $9.99 | CAN $13.99 | UK £8.99) will be available starting January 1. They contain about 50 pieces each.

Click to read the full review

Only 2 weeks to Bricks LA 2020, Southern California’s premier LEGO convention, Jan 11-12 [News]

Bricks LA is Southern California’s premier LEGO convention, open to the public January 11-12. Builders from around the country will gather at the Pasadena Convention Center to showcase more than 13,000 square feet of amazing creations to eager LEGO fans of all ages. Vendors will be selling vintage LEGO sets, LEGO-themed jewelry, custom gifts, and more. Tickets are only $5, with kids under 5 free, and are available online.

Bricks LA also offers a special experience for adult LEGO fans, beginning January 10. Participants will enjoy LEGO-related games, panels, prizes, and more, as well as be able to display their custom creations for the public. For more information, click here.

The Brothers Brick is proud to be a sponsor of Bricks LA.