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.

Cyber-Monday LEGO deals [News]

The LEGO Shop online continues its Black Friday deals through Cyber-Monday, enabling all you procrastinators out there (or those of you who were traveling, like me) to get in on the shopping action.

Although the special holiday set has run out, here’s what you get through midnight EST today:

Free shipping on all orders of $49 or more
~~Free Limited Edition Holiday set featuring Santa Minifigure with orders of $99 or more~~
10% off all orders of $149 or more
25% off a bunch of sets (list below)

The LEGO Shop isn’t the only place you’ll find deals. Amazon.com also has a bunch of Cyber-Monday deals, including 7066 Earth Defence HQ for $12 off (along with more I don’t have time to link to before I rush out the door for work).

Happy shopping!

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 Black Friday sales & deals [News]

Black Friday 2011 is here, which means the LEGO Shop online is having a bunch of deals to get your holiday shopping started.

Here’s what you get, November 25-28:

Free shipping on all orders of $49 or more
Free Limited Edition Holiday set featuring Santa Minifigure with orders of $99 or more
10% off all orders of $149 or more
25% off a bunch of sets (list below)

All of the following sets are 25% off (plus a few other Duplo, Belville, LEGO Games, and other non-System sets):

Republic Swamp Speeder
Winter Toy Shop
Cad Bane’s Speeder
Skeleton Bowling
Race Truck
Public Transport Station
Horse Stable
Imperial Flagship
Tank Truck
Tantive IV“
Repair Truck
Republic Dropship with AT-OT Walker
Obi-Wan’s Jedi Starfighter”
Emerald Night

Brickvention 2012: Jan 21-22 Melbourne [News]

Registration for Brickvention 2012 and tickets for the public days are now open. The 2012 event will be held in the same place as the 2011 event (Melbourne Town Hall) with public days on the 21st-22nd January 2012 and a registered attendees only day on the 20th (with setup on the 19th).

As ever I expect this event to be heaps of fun. Last year’s event was huge and if past growth continues we can expect this year’s to be even bigger. I’m sure details of collaborative events will be announced closer to the time so keep an eye on the website for future announcements.

The timing makes BV 2012 a bit closer to Australia Day this year so if you’re coming from interstate or overseas try booking your accomodation sooner rather than later.

Please note that this year a new system is in place for registration. And especially note that a pre-purchased ticket will be required to attend the public days. This is to ease waiting times for those attending.

To become a registered attendee able to attend all days and display your models:

Follow this link to the Brickvention 2012 registration page at TryBooking
http://www.trybooking.com/ZYA

Registered memberships cost $60 (plus booking fee).
Make sure you bring along your printed tickets to the event.

Due to venue size, there are only 150 registrations available. The first 50 people who register will be entered into a special competition organised by LEGO Australia.

If you want to just check out the displayed models on the weekend:

Saturday 21st and Sunday the 22nd from 9.30am – 5.30pm are the Public Expo days, allowing the general public of all ages to watch LEGO® builders at work and view LEGO® creations and displays.

You will need to pre-purchase tickets for this display.

Adults – $10 (plus booking fee)
Children – $6 (plus booking fee)

Children under 3 are free

You can purchase tickets at TryBooking

Make sure you bring along your printed tickets to the event!

And if you don’t know where and when it is:

The next Brickvention will be held over the weekend of 21st and 22nd January 2012 at The Melbourne Town Hall, corner of Swanston and Collins Streets Melbourne Victoria, where anyone can come along and view the amazing creations made out of LEGO.

1-day sale for LEGO VIP members [News]

The LEGO Shop online continues its pre-holiday series of sales & deals with a special offer for LEGO VIP program members. Get free shipping on orders over $49, get the second holiday set for free with orders over $99, get that plus 10% off your whole purchase for orders over $149.

Look for more sales news early next week, leading up to Black Friday weekend.

Free shipping from LEGO Shop through Dec 12 [News]

The LEGO Shop online is continuing free shipping for all orders over $99.00 through mid-December, ending December 12.

A fair proportion of the 2012 LEGO sets are also online now.

And don’t forget that you can pick up a free LEGO Star Wars ARF Trooper with the code 4TBB (US) or TBBO (CA).

UPDATE 1: The LEGO Shop team have informed us that the checkout system has experienced a problem recently while applying the promotional code, preventing the ARF Trooper from being added visibly to the the shopping cart at checkout. ARF Trooper supplies have not run out, and they are correctly being included in your orders.

Update 2: For those of you like me who noticed last night that the second of two Christmas vignettes was available for purchase at $10, this was also an inventory/website mistake. It will be available for free with orders over $99 during Black Friday weekend next week.

TBB registration & commenting issues resolved (we think...)

Important: This is not the raffle post! Leave your raffle entry comments on Win LEGO Super Hero minifigs early, not here.

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We’ve heard from readers anecdotally that some of you have had trouble registering or leaving comments. Unfortunately, the reported numbers were low enough, and we just never had enough info to get to the root of the problem until recently, so weren’t able to fix it. As it turns out, there were a few related issues that all contributed to the problem.

First, some Internet service providers only allow inbound email from domains on a “whitelist.” If you’ve registered here on Brothers-Brick.com using the email address provided by your ISP, such as t-online.de or comcast.net, or if you have your own custom domain that you’ve used to register, email — including the registration confirmation message — from us may get blocked. There’s nothing TBB can do about this, but there’s something you can do. Please try registering again with an email address from a free webmail service, such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail. If you use your ISP mail as your primary email account (or don’t have a webmail account), you can always set up the webmail to automatically redirect all messages to your regular address.

Second, many of you haven’t been able to change your auto-assigned passwords after you registered. We fixed this one a while ago.

Finally, those of you using Internet Explorer 9 have been unable to comment at all. I’m contractually obligated to say that this is our old code’s fault, not IE9’s. ;-) We’ve also fixed this.

We’re still going to keep the registration requirement for leaving comments, but we hope we’ve at least eliminated the bugs enough to enable those of you who’ve encountered any of these three issues to start leaving comments again. Thanks for your patience!

Frequently Asked Questions

I have a WordPress.com account. Why can’t I leave a comment here on TBB?

Although Brothers-Brick.com runs on WordPress software, the WordPress.com registration system is completely separate from any “self-hosted” instances of WordPress. You’ll need to specifically register here on Brothers-Brick.com to leave a comment on a TBB post.

I left a comment a while ago but it still hasn’t shown up. What’s going on?

First-time commenters are moderated to make sure they’re not spammers. One of our administrators needs to look at the comments from any first-time commenter and approve them. Any future comments after that will appear immediately. We’re not online 24 hours a day, so there may sometimes be a delay in moderating first-time comments.

ExpoLego 2011 – Nov 19 & 20 in Concise, Switzerland [Event]

LEGO fans in Switzerland are hosting the ExpoLego event November 19 and 20, 2011 in Concise (near Yverdon). With a display space of over 300 square meters, the event will feature Star Wars, System, Trains, and many custom LEGO models built by LEGO fans.

The public exhibition costs 3 swiss francs for kids and 6 for grown-ups.

Sylvain says, “In Switzerland, LEGO events are too rare, so enjoy!

2012 LEGO sets out early from LEGO Shop online [News]

In a surprising turn of events, you’ll be able to get next year’s LEGO sets directly from LEGO, rather than watching them trickle in (frequently at inflated prices) at big box toy stores: LEGO informs us that they’ve just listed a substantial number of the January 2012 LEGO sets on the LEGO Shop website.

Everyone already knows that I’m most excited (oddly enough) about the newest LEGO City sets, what with their hillbilly moonshiners and rampaging bears. 4440 Forest Police Station includes a bear, along with a hillbilly in a tree. There are eight other 2012 LEGO City sets out as well.

LEGO dinosaurs return from extinction with the new LEGO Dino sets. 5887 Dino Defense HQ includes a T-Rex, Raptor and Coelophysis, while 5885 Triceratops Trapper has the horned dino we all know and love.

LEGO has listed nearly 30 new sets in half a dozen categories, so head on over and check them out.

LEGO Design byME to close January 2012 [News]

Following close on the heels of the announcement about the closure of LEGO Universe at the beginning of 2012, The LEGO Group has just announced that the Design byMe program will also be closing in January.

Here’s the official announcement:

The LEGO Group is closing that part of the Design byMe customization service that allows consumers to order digital models in real bricks. We will be accepting orders until January 16, 2012.

Consumers will still be able to design what they want with LEGO Digital Designer and upload models into a public gallery as before. All existing models will be transferred to a new gallery on the LDD website. Consumers will also be able to download the instructions generated from LEGO Digital Designer.

The HERO Recon Team Hero Creator will be unchanged and consumers will still be able to build and buy their own customized Hero. Bricks can be bought separately, using the Pick a Brick service http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Pick-A-Brick-ByTheme.

This is not the end of customization for the LEGO Group, but a revision. We believe in the future of customization, but the service we offer has to be right for our consumers and Design byME has proven to be too complex for children.

The original Design byMe vision was for a unique customization service, where consumers could design whatever they imagined, display it and get the model sent to in their own LEGO box. Design byMe as a concept attracts several million people each year to build a huge range of amazing creations using the LEGO Digital Designer (LDD) software. Despite this success, the overall Design byMe experience has struggled to live up to the quality standards for a LEGO service.

Over the years, we have also added other simpler customized building experiences like Hero Recon Team. However, the overall Design byMe experience has struggled to live up to the quality standards for a LEGO service. The feedback from Design byMe users has taught us that we would need to rebuild the entire setup of Design byMe to fix this. This would only make the service too expensive.

Creations for Charity deadline approaching, new MOCs listed

Each year, Nannan and several other organizers run a fundraising event for Toys for Tots called Creations for Charity.

The team has just listed several new creations in their online store.

Fine print: Creations for Charity is a fundraising event for the Toys for Tots charity organization. As such, donations to Creations for Charity itself are not tax-deductible. Creations for Charity is not affiliated with The Brothers Brick.

If you’d like to donate a creation yourself, the deadline for doing so is November 15.

Don’t miss Nannan’s writeup about last year’s fundraiser, which resulted in over $14,000 worth of LEGO for underprivileged children.

LEGO Star Wars ARF Trooper minifig returns to LEGO Shop – quantities limited

For those of you who missed the ARF Trooper minifigs during Star Wars Days back in May, the LEGO Shop online has a limited quantity that they’re going to give away to readers of The Brothers Brick, FBTB, and Brickset over the next couple of weeks.

To get one, you’ll need a special code from us, FBTB, or Brickset. Here are the details from LEGO:

We have discovered a limited quantity of LEGO Star Wars™ Shadow ARF Trooper minifigures in our warehouse! Due to the very limited quantity we would like to give the fan community the first chance to receive these as bonus gift on any LEGO Star Wars holiday purchases that meet the Free Shipping threshold of $99.

The offer will be available Nov 7th – 21st or while supplies last. To add the LEGO Star Wars™ Shadow ARF Trooper to your eligible order simply enter code 4TBB (US) / TBBO (CA) at checkout.

Unfortunately, warehouses elsewhere in the world didn’t have a lost stash of ARF Troopers, so this is limited to North America.

Amazing Lego Sidewalk Art

Ok, it’s the street, but it’s still some amazing chalk work.

There’s some speculation that this may be related to the giant Lego minifig that recently washed up in Florida.

Thanks to Tom Hohman for the heads up.

UPDATE (Nov 9): Artist Leon Keer has posted complete photos of his chalk art effort on Flickr (I’ve replaced the unsourced photo above with one of his). And here’s the finished artwork, evocative of Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s terracotta army: