With a couple hundred thousand regular readers here on TBB each month, we do our best to get great LEGO content to you wherever you are, whether it’s links to posts on Facebook and Twitter, photos on Flickr, or the occasional video on YouTube. To help you get your LEGO fix in even more places, we’ve just enabled posts on Google+, and we’re curating a couple of boards on Pinterest.
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We’re taking a break from reviewing all those Star Wars sets to catch a look at something a little closer to home: a good old fashioned racing truck. 60115 4×4 Off Roader hit stores in December, and is currently available for $19.99. It has 176 pieces.
Click through for the full review
This year’s Creations for Charity fundraiser concluded with over $18,600 worth of Lego products donated to children around the world from USA, Canada, Brazil, Hungary and Australia. As the founder, I am grateful for community’s support in giving back and I’d like to give a huge shout out to everyone who contributed to this record-setting year of donations. You can see the results of this year’s fundraiser and the smiling faces of the kids on creationsforcharity.org.
Croatian LEGO fansite Kockice.hr has announced their annual Brickstory contest, and they’re throwing it open to everyone. The four themes this year are Greatest Inventions, Ancient Civilizations, The History of Art, and One Moment in Time. Those are pretty broad categories, and they’re looking for a lot of different interpretations. There are also some nice prizes on the line, with 9 total winners.
Ryan McNaught is a professional LEGO model builder, and there’s absolutely no question about his building skills when he produces models like this or a life-sized Tardis. The breathtaking scene of the final moments of the Titantic show its stern lifted high in the air, the vessel splitting under its own weight before sinking over two miles to the sea floor. Supporting the significant weight of the ship’s stern through the thin connection in the ship’s keel is an incredible feat of LEGO engineering.
Click to see more photos of the sinking LEGO Titanic
KLUG, the LEGO Users Group (LUG) based in Osaka, Japan, is putting on the largest LEGO event in Japan this June called Japan Brickfest.
The event will be held June 4-5, 2016 at the Canadian Academy international school on Rokko Island in Kobe. (I went to second grade in Kobe, and it’s a lovely city.) Registration for builders is now open, but closes at the end of February.
KLUG itself includes a number of names that should be familiar to both LEGO builders on sites like Flickr and MOCPages as well as readers of TBB. KLUG seems to be a bilingual LUG with both Japanese and English-speaking members, so if you’re a gaijin AFOL in the Kansai area who misses your LUG back home, KLUG and Japan Brickfest sound like a great way to get involved with LEGO in Japan.
Attendee pricing is based on requested table space. For more details, see the builder page (in both Japanese and English) on the event website.
I’ve never watched either Star Wars Rebels or The Clone Wars animated TV shows, but I’ve appreciated some of the minifigs and bought a few of the sets on discount for parts. I regret not picking up 75053 The Ghost when it went on pretty deep discount late last year, given the ship’s great design, reminiscent of bombers and naval patrol aircraft from World War II like the B-17 or PBY Catalina. I’m mildly consoled by the release of 75127 The Ghost, part of the latest wave of LEGO Star Wars Microfighters. 75127 The Ghost includes 104 parts and 1 minifig, and retails for $9.99.
Click through for the full review
LEGO continues its Star Wars “Microfighter” series with Wave 3, released in January. With new sets from The Force Awakens, 75125 Resistance X-wing Fighter is the first Microfighter we’re reviewing here on The Brothers Brick. This set includes 83 pieces and the usual solo minifig, and retails for $9.99.
Click through for the full review
Registration for Brickworld Chicago 2016 is now open. Brickworld Chicago is held June 15-19, 2016, at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL.
Registration
There are three registration tiers with their perks outlined on the convention page. All registration types are ages 18+; registrants under 18 years of age must have a parent/guardian register and attend Brickworld with them. All Access and Full registration is available until 5/16/16. After that date, Late registration is the only option.
All Access registration is $55 and allows access to all scheduled events and activities, and includes a name badge and the Brickworld commemorative brick.
Full registration is $80 and includes everything from the All Access tier plus eligibility for displays, door prizes, the goody bag, and Brickworld awards. Full registration is limited to 700 registrants.
Late registration is $100 and allows access to all scheduled events and activities, and includes a name badge and eligibility for collaborative displays only.
Hotel
Brickworld is held at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center, and attendees can choose to stay at the connected Renaissance Hotel for an event rate of $139/night. Two room types are available: 1 king bed, or 2 double beds. Phone and online reservations for this event rate can be found here.
While we’ve largely focused on the “good guy” sets like 75102 Poe’s X-wing Fighter from The Force Awakens since their release in September, our coverage would be incomplete if we didn’t also review “bad guy” sets like 75101 First Order Special Forces TIE Fighter. The set includes 517 pieces and 4 minifigs, with a retail price of $69.99, though it has been consistently 20% off at $55.99 on Amazon since nearly its release last September.
Now that we’re nearly a month after the movie’s release, I will reference SPOILERS in this review. Again, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
I’ll share one non-movie spoiler, though: This is an unexpectedly awesome set — you need it.
Click through for the full review
Contrary to the resource-strapped organization in The Force Awakens, the First Order in the LEGO Star Wars universe certainly doesn’t lack stormtroopers, helped along by new releases like the 75132 First Order Battle Pack, which accompanies the 75131 Resistance Trooper Battle Pack we also reviewed recently. This battle pack has 88 pieces, the usual 4 minifigs, and retails for the normal $12.99.
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We’ve been so focused on LEGO Star Wars sets from The Force Awakens that you’d think we’d forgotten there was an Original Trilogy thirty-odd years ago (I deny the existence of any Prequel Trilogy). For their January 2016 assortment, LEGO hasn’t neglected Episodes IV, V, and VI though. Although still a challenge to find here in North America, LEGO sent us a copy of 75137 Carbon Freezing Chamber from The Empire Strikes Back and I’m pleased to bring you this review.
The set includes 231 pieces and three minifigs. Once available, we expect this set to retail for around $30 in the US (it’s £19.99/29.99€ in Europe).
As we noted when the first official pictures of January 2016 LEGO Star Wars sets appeared back in December, the interior of Cloud City on Bespin hasn’t been depicted in a LEGO set since the rare 10123 Cloud City was released in 2003.
Click through for the full review