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.
LEGO has announced the finalists for the third and last 2015 review round from their crowdsourcing platform, LEGO IDEAS. To qualify, each project had to garner 10,000 votes on the IDEAS website. Being a finalist means LEGO will take a serious look at turning the project into an official LEGO set. It does not, however, guarantee that the project will definitely be created into a set. Generally LEGO selects a single project to move forward to set design, though sometimes none of the finalists make the cut. The IDEAS platform has brought us a wide variety of sets, from The Big Bang Theory, to Birds, to the recently released Doctor Who set.
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LEGO’s new Nexo Knights line has launched and is finally available. We’ve already reviewed two of the medium-sized sets from this line, but some of the little sets intrigued me. Each of the named characters has an Ultimate version, available as an individually boxed set for $10 USD. Part counts range between 65 and 101. Six characters are available now, and at least three more are in the pipeline.
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.
Amazon.com has just discounted the January 2016 assortment of LEGO Dimensions Fun Packs from $15 to $7.50, or 50% off. Pick them up now if you haven’t preordered them already (and the discount should also apply even if you have, thanks to their pre-order price guarantee). Fun Packs work on all platforms.
The Back to the Future Doc Brown Fun Pack includes Doc Brown and a Time Traveling Train from Back to the Future III.
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.
In addition to 21028 New York City (which I reviewed here a couple of weeks ago), LEGO has also just released 21027 Berlin and 21026 Venice as part of a trio of new city skyline sets.
In contrast to the $60 price tag for NYC, both Berlin and Venice retail for $29.99, and I’ll be reviewing these two smaller sets together today.
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.
It’s the first day of the new year, which means that the January 2016 assortment of LEGO sets is now officially available. Highlights include more LEGO Star Wars sets from The Force Awakens, the brand new NEXO Knights theme, new Creator sets, and more.
75139 Battle on Takodana includes 5 minifigs and 409 pieces at $59.99. We’ll have a review of this new Force Awakens set shortly.
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.
Happy New Year! LEGO sent us 75827 Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters, and I am pleased to end the year by giving you this review. This set, available January 1, 2016, has 4,634 pieces and retails for $349.99. It features the Firehouse and eight minifigures and four small ghost figures, including Slimer.
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.
LEGO just announced a partnership with ESPN to cross-promote the upcoming College Football Playoffs. LEGO has created brick-built helmets for each of the four playoff teams, as well as some smaller football-related models for which they’ve released instructions to build your own.
The LEGO® team and ESPN are teaming up to build even more excitement and family fun for this season’s College Football Playoff!
To help get you ready, check back for more exciting updates through January 11th to see:
Cool college football models – tiny and life-sized! – built using LEGO bricks
Awesome videos about the four semifinal teams and the LEGO
models that have been built to celebrate the playoff season
Mini-models that you can build to decorate your New Year’s Eve game viewing party
A chance to win the LEGO version of the National Championship
Trophy signed by the ESPN College GameDay crew to show off to your friends!
Click the helmets to watch a time-lapse video of them being constructed.
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.
Did you know that a new Star Wars movie came out in 2015, with accompanying LEGO sets? If you’ve been living in your basement working on your LEGO masterpiece and weren’t aware, one glance at TBB’s top LEGO news stories would provide a clear picture of just how much excitement has preceded what turned out to be a rather excellent movie. Like our round-up of most popular LEGO models of 2015, LEGO Star Wars stories have dominated news coverage this year — especially since the sets were first revealed in September.
The actual Top 10 list is heavily dominated by set announcements, so hit the jump to check it out.
But some interesting and important news doesn’t necessarily show up in this top 10 list. Back in July, TBB celebrated its tenth anniversary, and I reflected on what it’s been like running a LEGO blog for 10 years. I promised we would be making some changes to improve the experience for our readers, and we’ve done exactly that. After BrickCon in October, we added eight new contributors, who’ve all helped us improve our coverage of both LEGO models and LEGO news. We’ve significantly broadened our geographic diversity, with two new contributors from the UK (both Scottish, coincidentally) and one each from Russia and South Africa — adding to our existing team from the US, Canada, and the Netherlands. Our new contributors have helped to free up our editorial staff to focus more on time-consuming content like LEGO set reviews.
Meanwhile, TBB staff were also a strong presence at LEGO conventions such as Brickworld in Chicago and BrickCon in Seattle, where readers and contributors built a rather epic American Civil War display in LEGO, featuring help from a corps of volunteer dinosaur cavalry.
And in the UK at BRICK, Elspeth took on LEGO Wonder Woman.
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.
Time for another list; the top ten of fan-built models, based on how popular they were on TBB’s Facebook page and right here on Brothers-Brick.com. We may write about news and set-reviews, but the custom creations from builders around the world are the bread and butter of this blog. If you are sick to death of Star Wars, it’s best for you to ignore this list, as it is rather heavy on models based on the movie franchise. In fact, perhaps you are better off ignoring this blog altogether for the next few weeks, as I suspect there will be many more Star Wars models to come.
It happens to be the newest model in our Top Ten, but the Millenium Falcon from The Force Awakens built by flickr user marshal banana shot to the top of the list even faster than it could make the Kessel run. It ticks multiple boxes: it’s from Star Wars, large, immaculately detailed and has working lights to boot. It was also nicely photographed and came out just after the movie. Well played Mr. Banana, well played. Look for an interview with the builder in the new year.
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.
The divisive Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is nearly upon us, and it brings a new wave of LEGO Superhero sets. You can see the full collection in LEGO’s Spring Catalog. Today we’re reviewing 76046 Heroes of Justice: Sky High Battle. (Yes, that’s really its name.) It will retail for $59.99 USD and includes 517 pieces. Those pieces build a Batwing and Lex Luthor’s helicoptor, and you’ll get five minifigs: Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Wonder Woman, Superman, and Batman.
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.
Brothers Brick daily covers cool fan-built models and LEGO news, but sometimes we get a chance to highlight a story from the human side of our favorite hobby. This touching story by the State Journal Register, an Illinois newspaper, shows how sometimes LEGO can be more than just a toy or a fun hobby. Sometimes it can be a means for healing.
After his wife, Tricia, died in the spring of 2011, Ray Hofman was having a hard, hard time. They had been married 39 years and, understandably, Ray felt lost.
“It was two years of long, long days,” he says.
The Christmas before Tricia died, Ray’s nephew, Jason Stokes, gave him a present. It was a replica of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater home, made out of Legos.
It is on such small things life sometimes turns.
“I didn’t know much about Legos,” Ray says. “When I grew up, it was Lincoln Logs.”
But something about that gift resonated with him.
Ray discovered the joy of receiving a LEGO set as a gift, and set out to bring that delight to others. First he built and donated a Taj Mahal to a cancer treatment center charity auction, but soon fell in love with the idea of building LEGO sets and giving them as gifts to everyone around him, including those who least expected it. His postman received sets for his grandchildren, and a local restaurant owner received a Space Shuttle because Hofman knew he was a space enthusiast. His favorite though, is giving gifts to children, and Hofman’s fridge is covered with heart-felt thank-you cards from children.
Hofman has spent the last two years building LEGO sets and giving them away to friends, family, and charities. “It filled a void,” he says.
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.
History is rarely accurate when written at the time. The first comprehensive History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire wasn’t published until 1776, and William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich wasn’t published until 15 years after the end of World War II. And so it goes with the great Battle of Bricksburg, which took place October 1-4 at BrickCon in Seattle this year. Now, nearly three months later, thanks to the intrepid battlefield photography of Sean Edmison, we have an unprecedented view of this historic engagement between the Union and the Confederacy.
The idea for the Battle of Bricksburg was conceived during BrickCon 2014. We envisioned a realistic, historical contrast to our many years of sci-fi displays such as the original Zombie Apocafest 2008 and Numereji 2421.
In the end, about a dozen TBB readers and staff members participated in building a cohesive display that was assembled from individual segments as well as loose brick in the two days before the public exhibition hours on Saturday and Sunday. The display featured about a thousand troops, including cavalry, sharpshooters, supply trains, medical corps, and even a pair of ironclads on the nearby river.
Union troops charge forward in front of an 1800’s farmhouse built by Caylin. Another group of Union soldiers has captured some Rebels.
Our friends over at Beyond the Brick produced a video overview of the display, in which I describe some of the display’s highlights and show off details like the BrickArms stackable cannon balls that are hard to see in photos.
Particular thanks go to Will Chapman of BrickArms, who supplied huge quantities of stackable cannonballs, cannon muzzles, caplock muskets (by the thousand, in gallon bags), bayonets, cavalry sabers, and pistols. We would not have been able to achieve the level of historical realism in the display without these accessories, many of which Will custom-designed and injection molded in small batches by hand just for this display. Similarly, we relied on historical flags and unit banners printed and donated by Dave Ingraham of Cape Madness.
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.
