As LEGO celebrates the 20th anniversary of the LEGO Star Wars theme, the LEGO House is featuring a special LEGO Star Wars exhibition. The exhibition, which takes place in the History section of the House, consists of two massive displays. The Brothers Brick is bringing you an exclusive look at the jaw-dropping LEGO Star Wars minifigure collection as well as an impressive Designer’s Choice display.
Click here to take a look at The LEGO Star Wars displays…
May the 4th — Star Wars Day. Perfect timing to take an exclusive first look at the new LEGO Star Wars Build Your Own Adventure book. Galactic Missions comes with a new Cloud Car model and Bespin Guard minifigure, and the story is packed with new LEGO Star Wars models and building tips put together by The Brothers Brick’s very own Rod Gillies. The book will be available in August, and can be pre-ordered now from Amazon.
We caught up with Rod to find out more about the new book, and what it’s like for a ‘fan-builder’ to work on a project with the LEGO Star Wars team and book publisher Dorling Kindersley.
Click to read the interview and see more pictures of what’s inside the book
It’s hard to believe twenty years have passed since the release of the first official LEGO Star Wars sets. Unofficially, children and adults alike have been building Star Wars-themed models since the first film hit theaters in 1977. While many of these custom builds have been lost to history, some photographs of Star Wars models made their way into LEGO Club magazines like the UK’s Bricks ‘n Pieces and North America’s LEGO Mania Magazine. One of the earliest models I was able to find was this AT-AT walker from The Empire Strikes Back (1980). That movie was only two years old in 1982, which is when twelve year old Philip Dodge had his model featured in the Summer 1982 issue of Bricks ‘n Pieces. While the photography might not have aged well, his AT-AT looks amazing for having been built during the 1980s.
Check out more LEGO Star Wars models from the pages of LEGO’s club magazines.
LEGO trains have a big following in the LEGO fan community, and what follows LEGO trains? Well a LEGO caboose of course! In fact, one just like this cute little CN caboose by Mike Sinclair. This is a magnificent train car, but what makes it cute to me is that the model includes more than just rolling stock. Not every train car we see includes track and terrain, but it’s included here, and the green grass is the perfect complement to the red caboose.
In addition to the beauty and technical precision of this creation, I find it incredibly nostalgic. One on hand, the door is one that hasn’t been produced since 1980 and was a mainstay of the hand-me-down LEGO that started my collection. More than the bricks it’s made out of though, this little train car brings back memories of playing in a caboose at my local municipal museum as a child. I can fondly remember waiting to climb up in cupola and breathing in the smell of creosote railroad ties.
Do you have any 2×4 bricks in wild colors with unusual letters on their studs? If you do, you just might have a treasure from LEGO’s historic quest to improve the quality of its bricks back in the late 1950s-1960s. German LEGO fan Beryll Roehl (aka Fantastic Brick) enjoys collecting and artfully photographing such test bricks. We found Beryll’s pictures so impressive and intriguing that we reached out to her for an interview. Get ready for a fascinating and colorful journey into the wonderful world of test bricks!
TBB: Hi Beryll, and welcome to the Brothers Brick! Can you tell our readers little bit about yourself?
Beryll: Sure! I grew up in the late 1960s, so I come from the generation that built LEGO models with the few types of basic building blocks that were available. I currently live in small village in northern Germany with my three adult sons…and their LEGO bricks! Careerwise, I studied mathematics and art and currently work for a school in the special education sector.
TBB: Could you tell us why you collect test bricks and how you became interested in collecting them?
Read more about the intriguing world of collecting LEGO test bricks
Back in April 1999, it would have been hard to imagine what LEGO Star Wars sets might look like in twenty years, but it would have been even harder to predict how the LEGO fan community would evolve over the next two decades. As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the LEGO Star Wars theme, I also wanted to take a moment to reflect on how LEGO Star Wars has affected my life, along with the lives of countless other LEGO fans all over the world.
Read more of what it’s been like to be part of the LEGO Star Wars fan community for 20 years
Earlier this year on March 29th, The Brothers Brick team was invited to take part in a Star Wars Fan Media Day at the LEGO House in the centre of Billund, Denmark. One of the main events was a round table discussion with LEGO Star Wars designers Jens Kronvold and Kurt Kristiansen — designers who have been working on LEGO Star Wars sets since the very first wave of products hit shelves back in 1999. Jens and Kurt had a lot to share with us, so we didn’t miss a chance to ask them some of the most exciting questions.
Kurt Kristiansen (left) and Jens Kronvold (right)
Q: Tell us about the LEGO Star Wars model design team. How many people does it include? How many lead designers are there?
Jens: Right now, the model design team consists of 10 people: me as the Creative Director and Lead Model Designer and nine other model designers. We also have two graphic designers, who create designs for all the stickers, printed pieces, and minifigures. While in the office, we sit it an open office environment together with the marketing team, people who design building instructions and other specialists. So, all together we form one “super-team” which I find particularly nice and convenient. If you need to talk to somebody, they’re just next to you!
Kurt: It’s the same with any other model design team. And if, say I have a question regarding LEGO Technic elements, I just need to walk 10 meters down the aisle and I can talk to anyone of my colleagues who are working with LEGO Technic pieces. So, it’s a very open office environment.
Q: How many sets does LEGO Star Wars model team create each year? How many sets are designed by each member of the team?
Over the past two decades, LEGO Star Wars has released more than 700 sets and 1,000 minifigures. It is no surprise that the theme has racked up a significant amount of interesting milestones along the way. From the first flesh-colored faces to the first new hair piece in 20 years, LEGO has explored a lot of new territory within the Star Wars product line.
Below we have two lists, one of interesting LEGO Star Wars trivia and the other an abbreviated history of the product line. To whet your whistle, which droid has appeared the most throughout the entire LEGO Star Wars history? How many LEGO versions of the Millennium Falcon have been created? How many bricks were in the world’s largest LEGO X-Wing that was built in Times Square? Read on to find out.
Keep reading to see how well you know your LEGO Star Wars trivia and history
Where were you when the LEGO Star Wars theme launched twenty years ago? For me, it began with the January 1999 LEGO Shop-at-Home catalog. The front cover promised “LEGO Star Wars action” on pages 6 and 7, and it did not disappoint! My eyes widened at the sight of LEGO versions of the X-Wing and TIE-Fighter. As soon as the sets hit store shelves, I gathered my allowance money and purchased the Landspeeder as my very first LEGO Star Wars set. Now as an adult, I find the story behind the beginnings of LEGO’s first licensed theme just as exciting.
The foundations for LEGO Star Wars arguably existed long before the launch. Space exploration was a big topic of interest in the 1960s and 70s, giving rise to hit space-themed TV shows like Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. In 1977, Star Wars was released and became a blockbuster hit. During this period, LEGO too began embracing the space age and released the first Classic Space sets in 1979. Instead of lightsaber battles and dogfights, the initial emphasis of LEGO was on exploration. Conflict would eventually make its way into LEGO space sets with the introduction of the thieving Blacktron I faction in 1987. The relationship between these defined “good guys” and bad guys” was relatively tame, keeping in line with founder Ole Kirk Christiansen’s commitment to not make “war toys.”
Keep reading about the historic launch of LEGO Star Wars
Today we are excited to announce The Brothers Brick has acquired the popular YouTube channel Beyond the Brick, creating largest LEGO-related online content provider in history. The acquisition essentially triples the volunteer staff at The Brothers Brick and will bring a whole new level of quality to Beyond the Brick’s long-form interview videos.
In addition to The Brothers Brick’s current contributor recruitment drive, acquiring Beyond the Brick’s army of editors will ensure that each video will receive professional editing with scripts, teleprompters and an accompanying written article with high-quality photos. The ultimate goal will be to publish LEGO convention videos the same day they are recorded rather than having to wait several months after each event.
Joshua Hanlon, one of the founders and main host of Beyond the Brick was asked about the purchase: “HEY EVERYONE, JOSHUA HANLON HERE. It makes so much sense to be part of The Brothers Brick since John and I are brothers and we always get confused as being The Brothers Brick anyway, so it is great to have that cleared up so we can focus on upping our quality and create new daily videos hopefully featuring even more LEGO Star Wars builds, and now with the acquisition we are free to travel to EVERY fan convention and LEGO event no matter how small or remote, even to all the tiny train shows or kid displays at libraries, plus personally I think I look better in green anyway.”
In the short term, every daily video from Beyond the Brick will be published as a post on The Brothers Brick as well as on YouTube. The acquisition will also allow Beyond the Brick to feature smaller, high-quality builds that often get overlooked by the bigger, flashier and moving LEGO creations that have been a primary focus of the YouTube channel. Beyond the Brick will also start to produce and publish instruction videos to the LEGO builds they feature as well as finally start highlighting Great Ball Contraptions (GBCs), an area they have sorely underrepresented until now.
Andrew Becraft, founder of The Brothers Brick said: “This was a strategic LEGO community acquisition that will push us ‘Beyond The Brothers Brick’ to new heights and deeper brand awareness.”
The exhaustive branding transition is expected to take up to one year, with The Brothers Brick iconic green taking over Beyond the Brick’s existing red and yellow coloring before the eventual absorption of the brand altogether including all merchandise, t-shirts, stickers and logos.
It’s been a number weeks now since The Lego Movie 2 hit the big screens, and while we’ve already published our review, we also wanted to share our final thoughts on the movie. We all know the opening weekend didn’t perform as well as compared to the first movie, so with that in mind we wanted to take a longer-term view. Now that it’s in its 7th week of screening, the good news for LEGO and Warner Bros. is that it has now crossed the 100M (USD) mark for the domestic market alone, and is doing much better than The LEGO Ninjago Movie did in 2017.
While there have been few explicitly negative reviews out there, most of the feedback we’ve seen online seems to indicate that audiences felt while it entertained and surprised, the ‘freshness’ of seeing a new LEGO Movie has somewhat diminished. We asked a few of our own writers to compile their views on The Lego Movie 2. And if it isn’t obvious enough, yes, spoilers ahead. Continue reading
LEGO seldom makes changes to their sets once they’re already in production, but it does happen from time to time, usually to correct a section of a model that’s discovered to be too fragile for play. However, the most recent case is an oddity even in this rare class of updated sets. Nearly a year after its release, set 75188 Resistance Bomber has been updated with a minifigure swapout, changing one of the pilots from a generic “Resistance Bomber Pilot” figure to Finch Dallow, a named minifigure sporting a new head and helmet. So, why did Finch Dallow suddenly become important?
