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

Beauty and the Beast LEGO BrickHeadz revealed [News]

Last week we got our first look at LEGO BrickHeadz, the upcoming line of collectible brick-built characters. Today LEGO is unveiling 2 additional characters, the beloved Disney characters Belle and the Beast. This isn’t the first time Beauty and the Beast has come to LEGO, as Belle’s Enchanted Castle was released last year in the Disney Princess line.

Each BrickHeadz character will retail for $9.99 USD, and they will be available for VIP early access beginning Feb. 15, with a wide release March 1, just in time for the March 17 opening of the live-action Beauty and the Beast film. Read the full BrickHeadz press release below the jump.

With 4 BrickHeadz each from Marvel and DC, plus these two classic Disney characters, that accounts for 10 of the planned 12 characters for BrickHeadz Series 1. Let us know in the comments what you think the last 2 characters for Series 1 will be. Continue reading →

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First look at the new 2017 LEGO sets from Nuremberg Toy Fair [News]

Germany’s Nuremberg Toy Fair is the largest Toy Fair in the world, and where toy manufacturers go to show off their new products to potential buyers. As in previous years, LEGO has a large presence with a lot of new sets. Thanks to our friends at Promobricks, we’re able to bring you the first look at some of what LEGO has planned for the rest of the year, including Architecture, Creator, Technic, City and more. In a few weeks we’ll be covering the New York Toy Fair and bringing you close-up, hands-on coverage of these new sets and more.

LEGO Architecture 2017

Don’t miss other upcoming LEGO sets we’ve announced, including:
Summer wave of The LEGO Batman Movie sets
21035 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Marvel & DC Superheroes LEGO Brick Headz
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 LEGO sets

Click to see the rest of the new sets

Summer 2017 wave of LEGO Batman Movie sets revealed [News]

The LEGO Batman Movie’s Feb. 10 release is right around the corner, but LEGO isn’t done revealing all the tie-in sets yet. Last week we got a look at the new LEGO Brick Headz collectible figures line, which includes 4 characters from the movie, and today we’re getting our first look at the summer lineup of film sets, due out in June.

70916 The Batwing, $89.99 USD

Includes Batman, Robin, and the Batwing with seating for two minifigures. The Batwing can transform from flight to landing modes, and features a rear compartment with a small car. The Batwing is 18 in. (48cm) wide and 12 in. (31cm) long. The set also includes Harley Quinn and her cannon. We reviewed the Batwing mini set recently.

Continue reading →

A LEGO boudoir fit for a queen

With magnificent ornate furniture, and perhaps the lushest LEGO carpet you’ve ever seen, this boudoir by simply bricking it is ready for royalty. Amazing parts-usages abound, from the minifigure stretchers used for the folding screen to the basketball net as the lampshade. How many more clever bits can you spot in this creation?

Incredible Great Ball Contraption accelerates tiny LEGO balls at 1000 rpm [Video]

If you’ve never heard of a Great Ball Contraption (or GBC for short), you’ve probably never been to a LEGO convention. The term describes a popular theme of complicated LEGO machines built by fans, which can interconnect to continually pass LEGO soccer balls and basketballs around in a mesmerizing fashion, and they’re a mainstay of LEGO fan conventions. This particular GBC is built by Berthil van Beek, who was inspired after seeing another fan’s marble run. Berthil’s machine shoots the tiny balls up to the top of the run, where they hurtle down and are recycled.

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First look at the new LEGO Architecture set, 21035 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum [News]

The first wave of 2017 Architecture sets hit stores late last month with lovely new famous skylines from Sydney, Chicago, and London (which we reviewed). But here’s your first look at one of the new standalone structures joining the Architecture theme this year, 21035 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Manhattan’s striking art museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The set contains 744 pieces.

Continue reading →

First official images of LEGO’s new Marvel & DC Superheroes BrickHeadz [News]

LEGO first unveiled the BrickHeadz theme of blocky, cute brick-built figures at San Diego ComicCon in 2016, but the 8 figures revealed then were a limited release only for that convention. Now we’re getting our first look at the sets that will be widely available, and the first wave includes 8 figures sold individually, split between DC characters from next month’s The LEGO Batman Movie and classic Marvel characters. Each figure will retail for $9.99, available Feb. 15 to LEGO VIP members, and March 1 to everyone else.

41590 Iron Man, 96 pieces

41585 Batman, 91 pieces

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Last chance to win the LEGO Death Star from The Brothers Brick

The biggest LEGO Star Wars set currently made is 75159 Death Star, and The Brothers Brick is giving away one copy of this massive 4,016-piece set to celebrate our readers! Today is your last chance to enter to win by clicking this link or the image below, or by clicking the Contests section on our Facebook page. The winner will also receive an awesome TBB logo T-shirt, stickers, and some really sweet A. Lemur buttons. The contest ends tomorrow, Jan. 20, so don’t delay!

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 LEGO sets revealed [News]

Retail giant Amazon has published images of the new LEGO sets for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, which hits theaters May 5. As with previous films in the Marvel cinematic universe, LEGO will release a small wave of sets prior to the film’s opening, and in this case the sets are slated for release April 25. We don’t have word yet on the US prices, but expect them to run just slightly less than the Pound and Euro prices.

76081 The Milano vs. The Abilisk, 460 pieces, £44.99/49.99€

Continue reading →

Animated LEGO Mario Bros scene features truly old-school side-scrolling action [Video]

How do you recreate a video game using LEGO? You could build the game’s characters, or even a 3D version of a level. But that doesn’t capture the movement videogames have. Or you could do what Jason Cichon has done, and take the term “side-scrolling platformer” quite literally by turning the classic Mario Bros into a moving diorama.

The various pieces of the level are attached to a conveyor belt out of sight, and a crank on the diorama’s side scrolls the level past the viewing screen, duplicating in 3-dimensional bricks the feeling of moving through the level.

The LEGO Batman Movie Batman in the Phantom Zone & The Joker Training Battle [Review]

As we approach The LEGO Batman Movie‘s February release, LEGO is launching scores of sets to accompany its first feature film of the year and we’ve been covering them as quickly as we can. Today we’re bringing you two more mini sets, 30522 Batman in the Phantom Zone, and 30523 The Joker Training Battle. Both are minifigure scale, unlike the microscale sets we covered recently of The Mini Batmobile and Batwing. Both are expected to retail for $4.99 USD.

30522 Batman in the Phantom Zone, 59 pieces

Click to read the full review of both sets

Build your very own adorable TBB Lemur [Instructions]

Have you seen an adorable, wide-eyed Lemur lurking around here? That’s A. Lemur, TBB’s resident dogsbody and mischief maker, and this green-fringed strepsirrhine primate has become something of a mascot for our site. TBB Senior Contributor Elspeth De Montes designed a fantastic mini model of the cute little guy for our Advent Calendar Contest last month, and now we’ve got instructions for you to build your very own!