Readers under the age of 40 are probably looking at this creation by Flickr member jtheels right now and thinking either (a) “Nice spaceship, dude!”, or (b) “Worst Chrome logo ever”. In fact, this is a life size recreation of Simon, an electronic game that first appeared in 1978 and became ridiculously popular at the time. By a complete coincidence, we have a Simon here at The Brothers Brick, who is also ridiculously popular, and has various buttons that we enjoy pushing on a daily basis!
Movie-centric builder SPARKART! has put together a pretty thorough LEGO history of the Batmobile, from 1966 to the present day. The mandatory tumblers are in there of course. But being an old fart, my favorite has to be the original TV version! I like the scale chosen for these, and also the inclusion of matching figurines. (Hey LEGO company, *this* is what that exclusive Comic Con batmobile set should have looked like!)
This beautiful section of medieval wall is part of a much larger display put together by the folks over at THE BRICK TIME for the SteineWahn LEGO exhibition in Berlin earlier this month. As much as I enjoy the ‘tumble-down’ style of castle building that is very popular right now, it is kind of refreshing to stumble across a crisp piece of German engineering like this! The texturing and color palette are to die for:
When all the planets’ resources are depleted, mankind must turn to space to harvest even the most common of material: iron. And when that time comes, the Iron Mountain will lead the fleet of prospectors to find new sources of wealth. This awesome space miner by Sam Malmberg rings in at a whopping 162 studs long, and like most other large spacecraft you’ll see around here for awhile, was built as part of the “build a giant spaceship in a month” challenge known as SHIPtember. Sam has beautifully blended an armor-plated hull with large technological greebly appendages, but my absolute favorite part is Sam’s use of LEGO’s short-lived Aero Tubes and even more impressively, its accompanying Air Pump — a piece I can’t recall ever seeing in a fan-creation before. Oddly enough, just a few days ago I rediscovered the Air Pump in my collection, and thought to myself “one day I must find a use for this…”
Sam says he’s bringing the model to Brickcon in Seattle, which begins tomorrow for registered attendees, and is open to the public Saturday and Sunday. So if you want to check out this model in person, or many of the other models we feature, be sure to stop by. A number of us from the Brothers Brick — including myself — will be in attendance as well, so seek us out and say hi!
Chris’ recent Tesla post reminded me of one of the more impressive sculptures I saw this year. Robert Turner (rt_bricks)‘s (almost) life sized Tesla Supercharger. Standing at over a one meter (42.5 inches) tall, and taking over three months to build, this is a deceptively large build due to Robert’s fantastic shaping:
You might be thinking: “well it’s not that big…”
Which is why he actually put it beside an actual Tesla Model S to show off the size:
That Tesla incidentally is Adrian Drake’s, who had his own Tesla build to contribute to the display.
You can check out Robert’s interview about this creation, courtesy of our friends from Beyond the Brick:
Described by his creator Seth MacFarlane as an “evil Rex Harrison”, this psychopathic matricidal infant genius adorable little rascal from TV’s Family Guy probably needs no introduction. But the question of whether the other characters in the show can actually hear him talking remains a topic of endless debate! TBB regular Jimmy Fortel has put together this great little palm-sized version Stewie for our enjoyment:
…the rabbit jumped over the moon? Maybe the cow was on a break. Last night’s Super Mega Blood Death Moon was preceded by a wave of moon-themed LEGO builds and here is the first of them, from Taiwanese builder James Zhan. I have absolutely no idea as to the significance of the rocket-powered bunnie in this mosaic! Perhaps someone can fill me in?
Ivan Angeli builds big. Really big. His latest diorama, showing the clash of an angelic stronghold with nefarious Drow forces, measures about 12 by 6 feet. The name will be familiar to D&D Forgotten Realms aficionados, as most of Ivan’s models are based in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. Shown recently at LUGS United, a fan event in Belgrade, Serbia, Ivan says this diorama includes over 1000 minifigs, and the white tower is over 6 feet tall. Impressively, Ivan says that he has only enough room at home to build about 18 by 18 inches at a time, forcing him to carefully plan so that each section will fit together when assembled at a show. As with most fans who bring builds to shows — especially large builds — Ivan has plenty of tales of woe to tell of parts not connecting properly or structures collapsing the night before the show, requiring hasty on-site reconstruction. Be sure to also check out our interview with Ivan for his previous model, which was similarly as ridiculously large.
The Tesla, arguably what is the world’s first stylish electric car, is a testament to how far electric vehicles have come. The first thing about this minifig scale version by Cole Edmonson was how instantly recognizable it is. Often real life sports cars and sedans translated down to minifig scale loose so much of their distinctive styling that they just look like a generic car, but the proportions of this Tesla give it away. Cole has even provided a very detailed write-up of his design process for this model, which is a cool behind-the-scenes look at what a good builder puts into even a small model.
As Nintendo’s ink-em-up Splatoon continues to slowly take over the entire planet, we’re seeing more LEGO builds based on the hit game. Here is an inkling girl by Djordje, and the squid sisters Callie & Marie by Anton Sundström. I’m hoping someone steps up soon and builds an entire level!
For a few weeks now I’ve had Lego set 31039, Blue Power Jet, sitting on a shelf in my LEGO room. It’s currently $69.55 from amazon. I picked mine up from the LEGO Store in Tyson’s Corner back in August after Brickfair, because, as an aircraft builder, I figured I would enjoy building this and be well-suited to write a set review. However, subsequently, I didn’t get around to it. Fortunately, my father helped me out here. He stayed at my place for a while a few weeks ago and, some of the time together was spent with me building my Men In Black Ford and with him building the jet. The review, however, still went nowhere.
For the record, the set contains 608 parts and the instructions to build the jet or, alternatively, a powerboat or a helicopter. My father, who never had LEGO as a child, enjoyed the build, although the dark blue, dark grey and black were a bit hard to identify in the instructions. The model looks great and construction of the wings clearly shows the masterful hand of Mike Psiaki, who, before becoming a set designer, was already well-known for his ingenious aircraft models. The jet has lots of play features, such as an opening cockpit, a folding undercarriage and moveable control surfaces, yada yada yada. I’m ill-suited to writing this review (and not just because I didn’t graduate from The Eurobricks Reviewers Academy; for a more detailed review with lots of photographs of the model under construction, I suggest brickset). As nice as the finished jet is, I don’t enjoy following instructions for anything and the main reason why I like this set and pretty much the whole point of any LEGO set is that I can use the parts to build my own models. This one is a wonderful parts pack. Just look at all that lovely dark blue. Preciousss!
As LEGO fans we’ve all probably heard or read it many times: according to lots of people who used to build with LEGO as children, back in the sixties and seventies LEGO only made simple bricks in boxes with no instructions, but nowadays, if you look at the LEGO shelves in your local toy store, all you’ll see are licensed products and sets full of parts that can only be used for the model in the instructions. This allegedly kills children’s creativity. Have these people looked at the Creator range at all? One would think that the fact that there are instructions for three different models is enough of a hint that the parts aren’t single use. This doesn’t only apply to an arguably fairly expensive set such as the Blue Power Jet, but also to the smaller sets in the range. Furthermore, just because there are instructions, doesn’t mean your children have to follow them. Radical, isn’t it? What kills creativity is having them build the model from the instructions and then not allowing them to take it apart and mix up the elements with all the other parts, because a few might get lost or because, eventually, your children may want to rebuild the original. Have them improvise! I betcha Mike used to build his own stuff when he was a child.
