Category Archives: Feature

The Brothers Brick is not just about showcasing the best  fan builds and bringing you the latest LEGO News, we also love to investigate, interview and discuss!  These featured articles are all interesting articles that you can look back and enjoy reading.

Tom Servo and me – a journey part 4 [Feature]

Previously on Tom Servo and Me: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

When we last left Chris Doyle, he had just finished building his latest replica of Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater 3000. All that was left was to take photos and write up the summary article. Simple, right? Well, if you’ve read the previous installments, you know things rarely went according to plan throughout this journey. Why should the last few steps be any easier? When things go disastrously wrong during the final photo shoot, Chris will find himself questioning if getting back into LEGO building was the worst idea he ever had.

Tom Servo and Me - The end of the journey

In the end, it will all work out. We promise.

Read more about the final leg of Chris’s journey in rebuilding his LEGO Tom Servo model.

Tom Servo and me – a journey, part 3 [Feature]

Previously on Tom Servo and Me: Part 1 | Part 2

Chris Doyle has been clawing his way out of a grey age, reconnecting with LEGO building by creating a new replica of Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater 3000. Tom is looking pretty good – his central body is done and he has working puppetry elements. There’s just his hoverskirt and the display base left to go. Should be a quick win!

End of the day: Progress
Or, rather, it should have been a quick win…. Come along with Chris as he journals the final days of this build. Will the end result be worth the effort?

Read more about Chris’ journey in building Tom Servo.

Which LEGO sets have the most part count of a single element? [Feature]

LEGO enthusiasts love uncovering every tiny detail and bit of trivia that they can get their hands on. One of the questions that resurfaced recently was to identify the set that has had the highest number of the same parts — parts that are repeated not just in element design, but also in color. We found this thread on Facebook (login required) where the question was raised, which led to a Brickset discussion, and thanks to dvdweyer, we have an answer. He’s extracted the Rebrickable database for the most up to date status — at least until the next “biggest LEGO set ever” takes over one of the spots in this list.

We’ve then used the extracted details to form an infographic and added additional statistics to highlight the percentage of elements in comparison to the whole set. Here are the Top 13 sets visualised with the highest part count.

See more LEGO parts trivia after the jump

Announcing the winner of TBB’s Stranger Things “Darker Hawkins” building contest [News]

To celebrate the launch of the third season of Netflix’s sci-fi drama Stranger Things, TBB kicked off a contest on the Fourth of July, challenging our readers to build other locations from Hawkins, Indiana not featured in the LEGO Stranger Things 75810 The Upside Down. The challenge was actually quite simple — the LEGO creation needed to feature both the normal world and its “Upside Down” counterpart location, as we showed in our own free instructions to build a LEGO Castle Byers. It’s been great to see builders interpret this design brief in so many different ways, through the contest entries on Flickr. Today, we’re happy to announce the clear winner of our contest — “Barb’s Disappearing” by talented German builder Jonas Kramm.

Barb's Disappearing

See more of Jonas’ winning creation along with honorable mentions

Tom Servo and Me – a journey, part 2 [Feature]

Last time on Tom Servo and Me…. (AKA Part I)

In an effort to claw his way out of a LEGO grey age, builder Chris Doyle has started building a new version of his LEGO Tom Servo. After a month or so he has a revised head and some very basic prototype Technic puppet-gearing.

Mid-July? Already?

There’s still a long way to go until Tom’s “perfect,” though. And Chris is still refusing to plan things out or let well enough alone when he has a “pretty good” solution. Will he do better over the next month of infrequent building time?

Spoiler alert: No. No, he will not.
Continue reading →

LEGO Ideas 21319 Friends Central Perk – could it BE any more 90’s? [Review]

For those of us who watched Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Ross, Chandler, and Joey live out their lives on TV as the show Friends aired between 1994 and 2004, there’s much more nostalgia attached to this television series than to something like The Big Bang Theory. But for those of us who don’t necessarily consider ourselves life-long, hardcore Friends super-fans — I personally do not own an officially licensed Central Perk coffee mug — it hasn’t been clear what we had to look forward to with the new LEGO Ideas 21319 Central Perk set released today ($59.99 US | $89.99 CAN | £64.99 UK), which includes 1,070 pieces and 7 minifigures. Let’s dig in and find out.

Read our complete hands-on review of LEGO Ideas 21319 Friends Central Perk

Tom Servo and me – a journey, part 1 [Feature]

Hi, my name is Chris Doyle. And I’m an AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO). Once upon a time, like 10 years ago, I was a prolific LEGO builder. No, really. I was. I built huge pop culture-inspired builds, took them to shows, and made a little bit of a name for myself in the community. If you’ve been around for a while you might even remember a few of them. I discovered the potential for cheese wedges to create lenticular images. I had one of the first large builds of Serenity from Firefly. I did a lot of Cube Dudes and super-heroes and transparent-brick mosaics.

Two of my proudest creations were 1:1 reproductions of Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo.

chatty

They were pretty well received. I won a few awards and even had them signed by series creator Joel Hodgson and members of the cast. And then…life happened. I stopped building. I stopped being involved with LEGO in general, really. Tom and Crow were packed up after their last showing, and more or less forgotten. Despite the hours I spent sorting bulk brick in an attempt to set up a home workshop, I was firmly in my grey age.

But, in the infamous words of Monty Python…“I got better.” This is the story of how Tom Servo (and LEGO) came back into my life. Thanks to timestamps from Twitter, Instagram and metadata from my photos, I can retrace my steps and take you with me on this journey of rediscovery. Warning….it’s a bit long and involved. Really. I mean, note the “Part 1” in the title up there…

See more of Chris’ journey in rebuilding and redesigning Tom Servo.

These Hollywood stars love their LEGO minifigures [Feature]

For any hardcore fan of LEGO, having yourself immortalised as an official LEGO minifigure can be the highest honour. But you might think that’s not the case if you’re already famous. On some level, it’s nice to think that the stars of Hollywood are bigger than the branding that’s associated with LEGO and its licenses, but it turns out that no matter how famous you are, it’s still a prestige to be acknowledged and embodied as plastic minifigure that will live for eternity (well, almost that long).

Let’s take a look at some Hollywood Stars who loved to pose with minifigures of themselves, whether official figs from sets or custom fan creations.

Continue reading →

I’m a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.

Fans of the short-lived television series Firefly will instantly recognize this LEGO version of Serenity built by Richard Van As. His model does a fantastic job of capturing the look of the sturdy, cobbled together freighter that was as much a cast member as her human crew. The model features an opening cargo bay door, rotating thrusters, landing gear, and docking for two short-range shuttles. The ship has several off-colored parts to represent the many repairs and replacements installed over her years of service. If you squint, you can almost see Wash’s collection of plastic dinosaurs through the cockpit viewport.

Firefly Class Vessel - Serenity Micro Scale

For more Serenity, you can build your own, or check out this shiny large scale model.

Build your own LEGO transforming microscope [Instructions]

Do you own a copy of Emmet’s Triple-Decker Couch Mech from The LEGO Movie 2? Would you like to take that set from a 2-in-1 build to a 5-in-1? Alan Yap has investigated the possibilities and discovered there is more to this set than meets the eye. By rearranging parts, you can make a microscope that transforms into both a hovertank AND a sweet, sweet robot. This is alternate building at its finest and, best of all, you can build it too thanks to Alan’s instructions!

There’s more to this model than meets the eye. Read on to find out why!

LEGO, Vintage Toys, Video Games and more at The Strong National Museum of Play

What if I told you there was a toy history museum with over 100,000 square feet of displays, interactive exhibits, playable pinball & arcade machines, and an indoor butterfly garden? All this and more can be found at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York! For the past few years, I’ve been meaning to visit The Strong to check out its collection of vintage playthings and research LEGO history. A scheduled trip to nearby Niagara Falls provided the perfect opportunity for my girlfriend Natalie and I to explore the museum and what it has to offer.

Click to continue reading about the Museum of Play

LEGO Stranger Things Castle Byers event build & Comic-Con exclusive Barb minifigure [Review & Editorial]

LEGO has gone all out to promote the new LEGO Stranger Things 75810 The Upside Down set released earlier this summer, with a hilarious retro designer video, and a contest on LEGO Ideas (don’t miss TBB’s own Darker Hawkins LEGO contest). These are all things that every LEGO builder can enjoy together, but LEGO has also released two items to much more limited audiences — Will’s fort Castle Byers (a small build given away only to attendees of launch events in London and New York City) and fan-favorite Barb (a unique minifigure only available at San Diego Comic-Con). Both of these are now only available at exorbitant prices on the secondary market. The Brothers Brick picked up each of these so we could bring you a hands-on review.

Read our hands-on review of these unique LEGO exclusives from Stranger Things