Category Archives: News

Stay current on the latest news and information about LEGO, from sales & deals to new set announcements. We also cover LEGO events and conventions all over the world.

Reminder: Win the new LEGO Batcave from TBB in March [News]

In case you’ve been living in a cave, here’s a reminder that The Brothers Brick is giving away the new 76052 LEGO Batman Classic TV Series Batcave. If you haven’t entered yet, you still have another week to enter. We’ll be picking and contacting the winner at the beginning of April.

And yes, we’ll ship it anywhere in the world that we’re allowed to ship things (our apologies to astronauts on the International Space Station and the citizenry of North Korea). Be sure to follow us on Facebook and other social media for future giveaways like this.

This month’s contest prize kindly provided by LEGO.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Issue 18 of Blocks Magazine now available [News]

Issue 18 of Blocks Magazine hits shelves in the UK today. This month, the publication celebrates all things Batman v Superman with an exclusive series of builds, reviews of new sets and the low-down on how to create the perfect Dark Knight Tumbler. Plus an exclusive interview with LEGO artist Nathan Sawaya on his new DC Comics exhibition.

Also in this issue, MOD Squad member Daniel Konstanski shows how to improve your Carbon Freezing Chamber, there are reviews of the new TT Games offering and the latest Frozen sets, and a behind-the-scenes look at David Pickard’s Blacktron project. Get it today!

First look at The LEGO Batman Movie, including teaser trailer [News]

Following on from the global success of The LEGO Movie back in 2014, a spin-off movie starring the supremely popular LEGO Batman character is due for release on Februrary 10th, 2017. The LEGO Batman Movie stars Batman, once more voiced by Will Arnett. Warner Bros have released a few stills from the movie to give us a sneak peak.

[Update] Hot on the heels of the film stills being released, Warner Brothers has released the full teaser trailer.

Click to see more stills from the movie

LEGO.com celebrates its 20th anniversary today [News]

LEGO joined the digital revolution on March 23, 1996 when its first iteration of LEGO.com went live. The original website was a spartan layout, since large images and fancy graphics were the bane of dial-up modems. We’ve seen a lot of changes in the intervening 20 years, including huge leaps in technology and the usefulness of LEGO.com, as well as major changes within the company itself. Just a few short years after 1996, LEGO would find itself on the brink of bankruptcy, but thanks to a shift in focus back to its roots, centered around solid building and strong themes, LEGO has rebounded to become the world’s largest toy company.

LEGO has put together a special site to celebrate its 20-year anniversary, which includes a simple game where correctly matching five 1996 versions of sets, minifigs, and animals with their 2016 counterparts nets you a download of a nostalgic 1996 LEGO wallpaper. There appear to be 10 wallpapers, one each from Freestyle, Train, Pirates, Technic, Castle, Aquazone, Town, Exploriens, Western and Time Cruisers, and you can play multiple times if you want the full set.

LEGO 30% off for Amazon’s deal of the day (Mar 20) [News]

Amazon’s Deal of the Day for today is LEGO, with about fifteen sets as much as 30% off, with lots of Friends, Superheroes, and Duplo sets heavily discounted.

76021 The Milano Spaceship Rescue is 33% or $25 off at $49.99.

41058 Heartlake Shopping Mall is 22% off at $85.53.

See the full list of sets on Amazon.com.

As always, a portion of anything you buy on Amazon — at no cost to you — after clicking through from Brothers-Brick.com goes to support giveaways like the Batcave this month, prizes for contests like the LUGNuts 100th Challenge, and sponsorship of events like BrickCan and BrickCon.

LEGO Digital Designer updated [News]

LEGO has released an update for LEGO Digital Designer (LDD), the company’s proprietary virtual building program. Update 4.3.9 is available for free on both OSX and Windows operating platforms. If you already have LDD, the latest update will install automatically when connected to the internet. The update is approximately 275MB in size and includes over 300 new parts such as CMF Series 15 minifigure parts, Speed Champions, Elves, Jurassic Park, Nexo Knights and so on. The new parts are available by opening a project using LDD’s Extended tab.

After bringing you the news that LEGO Digital Designer was officially defunded and unsupported back in January, it’s safe to say that this latest update was unexpected. It is hard not to believe that the huge backlash in response to that sudden announcement of LDD’s demise was a factor in the decision to now release a long awaited update.

Since the LDD community has waited over 2 years since the previous update, there is no doubt that the new one will be well received. Enjoy the update, there’s no knowing when/if another update will be released in the future. Flickr user Nachapon S. has put together an image showing all the new pieces.

LEGO Ideas: 21305 Maze [Review]

The latest product of LEGO Ideas has arrived, and unlike many of the previous Ideas sets, it’s not a pop-culture reference. LEGO Ideas is the company’s crowdsourcing initiative, and this set was originally designed by LEGO fan Jason Allemann. It is a classic two-axis ball maze familiar to kids and frustrated adults everywhere. We highlighted Jason’s original LEGO Ball Maze way back in 2012, and now almost four years later LEGO Ideas 21305 Maze will hit shelves April 1. The Maze contains 769 pieces for $69.99 USD. LEGO has provided us with an early copy to review, so let’s dig in.

Click here to read the full review

Interview with Carl Greatrix, creator of the Caterham 7 LEGO Ideas set

Carl Greatrix‘s Caterham 7 was recently revealed as the next LEGO Ideas set. The announcement was met with almost universal approval, mixed with some surprise that such an obviously adult-oriented and complex model had made it through the review.

The Brothers Brick got in touch with Carl to get some of his thoughts following the announcement…

TBB: So, you’ve got to be delighted about the news. How does it feel to have an official LEGO set coming out?
Carl: I’m obviously super-excited. It means that everyone who wanted one, will now be able to get one. The realization is slowly but surely sinking in — the fact there will be an official LEGO set, available in practically every LEGO shop around the world, it’s quite a humbling thought and feels like a huge achievement.

Click through to read the rest of the interview

LEGO Ninjago 70604 Tiger Widow Island [Review]

By now, everyone is familiar with Ninjago’s new Skybound theme. We’ve already reviewed Zeppelin Raid and Misfortune’s Keep and today, we’d like to share our review of 70604 Tiger Widow Island. The set includes 450 pieces, 5 minifigs, and retails for $49.99. The instructions were clear and easy to follow and, except for the tricky chain connection holding up the “teeth” of the cave, the build was relatively straightforward.

Click through to read the full review

LEGO announces Adventure Time and Caterham Super 7 to become official IDEAS models [News]

The LEGO Ideas team has announced the winners of the second 2015 Review round. These projects will now proceed through a design phase, where LEGO designers will tweak the designs, and then they will be available to the public as official LEGO sets.

Adventure Time, by aBetterMonkey

Caterham Super Seven, by Carl Greatrix

There is no word yet on pricing or availability; we’ll be sure to let you know when we find out!

The announcement also noted LEGO has reviewed the Star Citizen F7A Hornet the last two review periods; this time, the decision was made not to consider the project further.

The next review round is underway, with an announcement anticipated later in the spring.

Congratulations to the selected projects!

To be highly organized is, I should fancy, the object of man’s existence: 5 tips for keeping your LEGO collection sorted [Essay]

The quote above is from The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde and it’s the epigraph for The Ideal Order, a recently published novel written by Christoph Bartneck. (You can find my review of this book on Goodreads.) The story is centered around the life of a troubled AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) named Rob, who, like all builders before him, eventually realizes that his LEGO collection is virtually useless when stored in one big cardboard box and thus sets out on a quest to find (you guessed it) “the ideal order” for sorting his LEGO collection. (Spoiler alert! No such order truly exists.) I sympathize with Rob’s predicament, because I’ve been there. There’s nothing worse than trying to build an old set by fishing pieces out of the rainbow-colored abyss of plastic that is an unsorted box of LEGO. So we sort.

The possibilities are endless when deciding how to sort a LEGO collection and what’s right for one person is not going to be right for another. However, there are certainly some agreed upon standards that most builders share when sorting. For example, sorting by color alone just doesn’t cut it. On the other hand, it’s nearly impossible to have a separate space for each unique piece. So what is the best method?

Click through to read about LEGO sorting tips

LUGNuts contest winners: a lot of class and a touch of gas [News]

In early February we announced that LUGNuts, which is the online group for LEGO car lovers, was celebrating its 100th monthly challenge by organising a car building contest. Prizes were sponsored by TBB, among others. The cars to be built were randomly assigned to the contestants from a list compiled by LUGNuts admin Lino Martins. He has announced the winners to the group’s members and it is my pleasure to present them here to you.

In first place: Firas Abu-Jaber with the very classy Rolls Royce Springfield Silver Ghost Playboy Roadster.

Thanks to a certain magazine, its name may not sound particularly classy nowadays, but it’s a beautiful car that is well built and very well presented. If you think you’ve seen it before, this may very well be because it was featured in a post by Elspeth little more than a week ago.

The entry that won the second prize is a bit gassy rather than classy: “El Laxante” by Andy Baumgart (D-Town Cracka). His assignment was to build a Chevrolet El Camino, which he brought to another level by putting it on tracks, among other things. It’s crazy, over the top and in real life would probably be smelly and very loud, but it’s fantastic.

Showing a degree of prescience, Elspeth’s earlier post also included the 3rd prize winner: Martien Nijdam (Pino) with his rendition of a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. It’s another classy classic car.

These winners were decided by combining top five lists of each of the five group admins and moderators.
The contest got an impressive 77 eligible entries and there were a lot of great models to chose from.

Other entries that were on several of the judges’ lists, but that didn’t quite gain enough points to end up among the prize winners, were the Volksrods by _Tiler, the Chrysler Town and Country woody by Velocites and the studly Ford F100 by TechnicNick. On behalf of TBB and LUGNuts, I’d like to congratulate the winners and thank everybody who participated for making this the best LUGNuts challenge to date.