I haven’t gotten my hands on any of these yet, but the new jars, bottles and test tubes look pretty nifty. They borrow from the esthetic of the new LEGO bottles and flasks yet add their take on shapes and colors. I think I’m going to have to pick up some of these.
The bottles currently only come in trans-brown and clear, although I think those trans-blue bottles in the picture look cool.
As part of Lego’s partnership with NASA, three aluminum minifigs will be placed aboard the Juno spacecraft! The minifigs will represent Jupiter, Juno and Galileo.
Lego Press release:
Three LEGO® Minifigures leave earth on the Juno deep-space probe today on a five-year mission to Jupiter to broaden awareness of the importance of planetary research.
The specially-constructed aluminium Minifigures are the Roman god Jupiter, his wife Juno and ‘father of science’ Galileo Galilei. The LEGO crew’s mission is part of the LEGO Bricks in Space project, the joint outreach and educational programme developed as part of the partnership between NASA and the LEGO Group to inspire children to explore science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
The LEGO Minifigures will help get attention for Juno’s mission to improve understanding of our solar system’s beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution of Jupiter.
Juno and the Minifgures’ journey will be featured on www.LEGOspace.com, the website that gathers together educational and fun material about space. The site also houses a number of downloads, videos, a LEGOnaut game, and various facts about space exploration. Later this year it will also have videos of experiments conducted with LEGO Education models on the International Space Station.
From the NASA website:
NASA’s Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft will carry the 1.5-inch likeness of Galileo Galilei, the Roman god Jupiter and his wife Juno to Jupiter when the spacecraft launches this Friday, Aug. 5. The inclusion of the three mini-statues, or figurines, is part of a joint outreach and educational program developed as part of the partnership between NASA and the LEGO Group to inspire children to explore science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
See full text of NASA article here.
HispaBrick Magazine recently released their eleventh issue and I was quite impressed with it. They have definitely been improving with age.
This issue is packed with goodies and it’s all free! There is a literal plethora of articles including, among other things, the Arvo brothers‘ Mini Moog, Firas Abu-Jaber’s vehicles, a history of classic Space, 5 set reviews and interviews with Barney Main (AKA SlyOwl), Jamie Berard and Tormod Askildsen.
The final batch of summer LEGO sets has rolled off the truck at the LEGO Shop online, joined by heavily discounted LEGO Toy Story sets and several summer promotional items.
NinjaGo gets a refresh with some interesting creature-based sets, starting with this lovely brown dragon in 2509 Earth Dragon Defense.
All LEGO Toy Story sets are 40% off — or more, in the case of rock-bottom prices for magnets — and many of these are pretty nice parts packs for the price. My personal favorite Toy Story set is 7599 Garbage Truck Getaway, with a surprisingly interesting build (for a line clearly targeted the movie’s target demographic) plus lots of nice dark green parts.
On to the promos. First up, you get a free microscale Hogwarts Express when you buy the LEGO Harry Potter set 10217 Diagon Alley. It’s an awesome set in the spirit of the modular buildings line, so every LEGO fan should have Diagon Alley, even if you’re not also a Harry Potter fan.
Finally, you get a free Alien Conquest dude with a jetpack with any purchase over $35.
Just a reminder that BrickExpo 2011 kicks off in Canberra next weekend (6th and 7th Aug). So if you’re in the neighbourhood head along.
This will go live in my absence so please direct any queries straight to the Brick Expo team.
Seasonal LEGO sets can be hard to find if you miss the narrow window in time when they’re available, so it’s nice to get a chance to pick them up again if time got away from you the first time around. Thankfully, Amazon.com seems to have found a batch of 10199 Creator Winter Toy Shop
Sure, we’re four months away from Christmas, but I doubt you’ll get a chance to complete your LEGO holiday town again, so pick them up while they’re still available online.
Comic-Con was crowded. The biggest pop culture celebration in the world happened in San Diego from July 20 to 24. Over 125,000 crashed my Downtown where I work and eat. Infernal interlopers. Seriously, it was great hectic fun as always. It’s nice to live in the city where there’s an annual shopping, people watching and pop culture extravaganza of epic proportions.
I wasn’t lucky enough to get 4 day passes with preview night or scoop everyone on the biggest LEGO related news from Comic-Con, but others in the LEGO and Comics fan worlds were on it, and we were able to pass it on to you last week: LEGO negotiated DC and Marvel Comics licenses. DC sets are scheduled for set releases in January 2012 and Marvel in summer of 2012.
I went back on Sunday and got some slightly better pictures of prototype minifigures of Wonder Woman (with very invisible plane), Super Man, Hulk, Batman, Cat Woman, Poison Ivy, Thor, Iron Man and Wolverine.
There was also a display with four Hero Factory tie in figures: Green Lantern, Batman (no, I don’t know what’s attached to his back), Iron Man and The Hulk.
Both the minifigs and Hero Factory characters are official, but keep in mind they’re prototypes so they’re likely to be a bit rough and have changes before final release.
Unfortunately, the only LEGO panel this year was a Star Wars panel on Friday morning, which I missed. D’oh!
The other great highlight is running into all kinds of people. People in costumes, friends and even friends in costume. The only LEGO related costume I saw this year was a sexy red number sported by Michael “Bruno” Todd, an excellent human being, cat rescuer and force of nature. He dressed up just like an extremely rare vintage LEGO promotional figure that he somehow managed to snag late last year. Really, he looks just like the doll.
I was also amused by a woman dressed as Poison Ivy standing right next minfig Poison Ivy. My wife also dragged me over the LEGO free build area to see a strong contender for my personal Cutest Hobbit Child Dressed as Yoda Prize. Very prestigious.
Another great highlight of at Comic-Con is all the inspiration for LEGO building. Several weeks ago I searched all over the internet to find good concept art for the Numereji 2421 display at BrickCon and found some good stuff, but nobody quite had what I was looking for. It was a pleasant surprise to run across Robh Ruppel’s book, Aspect Ratio, and the great concept art sketches on his website. Not too militarized, not too idealized. Hit my personal sweet spot.
That’s it. Great weekend of geeky frolicking.
The summer 2011 LEGO Star Wars sets continue to arrive at the LEGO Store online. As much as I appreciate the cool vehicles in the Star Wars universe, it’s nice to see LEGO release playsets occasionally, like the new 7879 Hoth Echo Base.
It’ll set you back 90 bucks, but the base contains a Tauntaun and eight minifigs, including R-3PO the red protocol droid, 2-1B medical droid, and a Bacta tank Luke. (Release news via FBTB.)
Also at $90, I’m personally more impressed with the revamped 7962 Anakin Skywalker and Sebulba’s Podracers, which FBTB reviewed in detail recently.
The Brothers Brick turns six years old today! In my write-up last year, we focused on changes over the previous 5 years across the LEGO fan community. Today, let’s take a look at these past twelve months here on this blog.
The main theme here on The Brothers Brick this past year for many of our contributors (myself included) has, unfortunately, been that commitments to work and family have sometimes taken priority over blogging. This is fairly self-evident in the frequency with which we’ve updated the blog. Feedback we’ve gotten from readers reveals several assumptions I’d like to clear up, in fairness both to you our readers and to TBB contributors.
I’m often shocked when I talk to TBB readers in person to learn that they assume running TBB is a full-time “day” job for me and the rest of our contributors. I get a warm glow knowing that we do a professional enough job to make people think that, but it’s not, really. I created The Brothers Brick six years ago today because I love sharing my passion for LEGO bricks, and all our contributors do so because they share this vision. We have a diverse group of contributors who all have day jobs — a call center trainer, a research physicist, a lawyer, an oil refinery operator, a probation officer, a medical student, and a technical publications manager. It’s wonderful to know that many of you have come to rely on us for your daily LEGO fix, but we need all our loyal readers to understand that there will be an inevitable ebb and flow to the rhythm of our lives and to the corresponding rhythm reflected here on the blog. Real life always takes priority, so we’ll continue to blog what we like, whenever we can.
It’s also surprising when people assume we rake in so much money from advertising that all seven of us are employed by the blog (or, somehow, by The LEGO Group). The advertising is there to pay the bills, and whatever’s left over we “reinvest” back into the LEGO fan community we love so much. For example, last year, TBB covered travel and hotel expenses for several LEGO fans who might not have been able to attend BrickCon otherwise. This all amounts to a few thousand dollars, not hundreds of thousands — enough to keep The Brothers Brick operating independently while giving back to the community, but neither I nor the other TBB contributors pocket a single penny ourselves.
All of this isn’t to say that The Brothers Brick is going in a direction we all don’t want it to go — certainly not! We want to make sure TBB can continue giving back in a variety of other ways, even if we can’t fly people to conventions every year. We’ve also figured out several ways to maintain a consistent level of new posts for all of you out there without adversely affecting our non-LEGO lives, and we hope you’ve noticed an improvement in the front page’s freshness over the last few weeks.
As always, feedback and suggestions are welcome!
As always, here are some stats for this past year.
Central Africa, Central Asia, North Korea, and Svalbard continue to hold out.
The top 30 countries from which people visit The Brothers Brick didn’t change at all, though several did change places. Visits from Japan fell over 7%, moving from 11th to 14th place. Visits from Russia rose a whopping 91%, moving from 28th to 21st place. Similarly, Brazil moved from 21st to 17th, up 47%.
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Like last year, search engine keywords seem to be mostly about news items, while more and more of our traffic comes from fellow LEGO sites rather than sites outside the LEGO fan community.
| Top Keywords* | Top Categories | Referring Sites |
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* Excluding variations on “The Brothers Brick”.
The LEGO creations we feature here every day took center stage in most of our highest-traffic posts, with the usual news items interspersed — dominated this past year by the release of the Collectible MInifigures.
Finally, stuff for the historically minded:
As LEGO spreads various parts of its supply chain and manufacturing process beyond Billund, Denmark and Enfield, Connecticut, the number of countries listed on the box after “Components made in…” has increased dramatically, making it unclear exactly where specific LEGO elements and aspects of the product packaging come from. Some LEGO fans have been concerned about the fact that the country list now includes China. After all, the PRC is not particularly well known for its positive environmental record, nor for hitting the high quality bar set traditionally by LEGO.
Although LEGO has not yet confirmed — despite general consensus among fans — that products like the Collectible Minifigures and magnet sets are manufactured in China, LEGO has recently come clean about its packaging.
Environmental advocacy group Greenpeace reports that LEGO has agreed to stop sourcing paper and pulp products from Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), a company based in Singapore notorious for harvesting Indonesian rainforests in an unsustainable manner. LEGO packaging I’ve reviewed does not list either Singapore or Indonesia — though APP does operate plants in China. LEGO’s original response to Greenpeace identifies the offending item as a licensed product actually manufactured by Dorling Kindersley (most likely a book) and therefore not part of LEGO’s core product lines. Nevertheless, Greenpeace has complimented LEGO on its responsiveness to the issue and leadership among toy companies. (Packaging news via Environmental Leader.)
Meanwhile, LEGO is further improving its environmental record by making its boxes smaller. Astute readers will already have noticed that the latest line of LEGO Star Wars battle packs are in smaller boxes, reducing the amount of paper needed to produce the packaging. This is apparently a general trend across all product lines.
Our sources tell us that the move toward smaller packaging was entirely business-driven — that the smaller boxes allow more product to be placed on shelves, while simultaneously giving consumers the impression that they’re getting more LEGO by increasing the “perceived density” of the product (a counter-intuitive result from consumer research). Whatever the reasons, LEGO will be using less paper in its packaging going forward, and that’s a good thing.
Next time you call LEGO, let them know that you’re thankful that they’ve taken these steps to improve sustainability and environmental stewardship.
With the DC Comics license fresh off the press, reports have also surfaced that LEGO has also obtained a Marvel license. Some low quality pics appear here.
EDIT: Mariann Asanuma (Model Gal) has much better pics in her photostream including some strange Hero Factory/Superhero hybrids.
From StitchKingdom.com:
The LEGO SUPER HEROES Marvel collection will spotlight three Marvel franchises – Marvel’s The Avengers movie, and X-Men and Spider-Man classic characters. The LEGO Marvel’s The Avengers movie line brings such ever popular Marvel characters as Iron Man, The Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye, Loki and Black Widow to LEGO minifigure form. The LEGO X-Men collection includes minifigure comic versions of Wolverine, Magneto, Nick Fury and Deadpool, while the LEGO Spider-Man sets offer minifigure comic versions of Spider-Man, and Doctor Octopus. The first buildable characters in the LEGO SUPER HEROES collection are highlighted by Captain America, The Hulk and Iron Man. Select figures will be unveiled in the LEGO booth (#2829) during Comic-Con International at the San Diego Convention Center July 21-24.
“Our partnership with Marvel helps us continue to deliver some of the best and most constructible Super Hero stories of all time,” said Jill Wilfert, vice president, licensing and entertainment for The LEGO Group. “We’re thrilled to partner with Marvel to create creative, constructive play sets for builders, fans and collectors alike.”
Variety is now reporting that Lego has announced a broad license for DC Comics. What’s more, it appears that they’re giving away some promotional Batman and Green Lantern figures at San Diego Comic Con this weekend.
Warner Bros. has expanded its relationship with Lego, granting the toymaker access to DC Entertainment’s complete library of comicbook characters and stories to launch DC Universe “Super Heroes” as figures and playsets.
The multi-year licensing deal, made through Warner Bros. Consumer Products, will start rolling out the new line in January, starting with 13 characters, including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and villains the Joker, Bane, Harley Quinn and Lex Luthor.
The first toys will be shown off at the Lego booth at Comic-Con Intl. in San Diego, where 3,000 exclusive Batman and Green Lantern minifigures will be distributed to launch a promo that runs August-December, enabling fans to create and submit videos, photos or illustrations of the characters to win trips to Legoland and Warner Bros. Studios.
WB and Lego had already been producing toys and videogames around the Batman franchise, and will launch a new set of playthings around next summer’s “The Dark Knight Rises” through the Lego Batman collection. The “Lego Batman: The Videogame,” published by WB Bros. Interactive Entertainment, has sold more than 12 million units since 2008.”This partnership gives builders a chance to recreate the characters, vehicles and worlds of some of the most iconic super heroes, so they can relive the action and even customize it, a proven and winning formula in Lego construction,” said Jill Wilfert, VP, licensing and entertainment for the Lego Group.