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.

Weekly LEGO news roundup for September 26, 2009 [News]

It’s not so much that this was a slow news week, but that most of us have been too busy with last-minute preparations for a certain LEGO convention happening in just a few days to blog everything. Anyway, here we go.

BrickCon: If you’re coming to BrickCon, be sure to check out our post about last-minute logistics.
The house that May built: James May’s LEGO house has been destroyed. Worse, a LEGO version of May’s cat Fusker built by a LEGO fan was stolen from the house.
LEGO movie: It seems The Adventures of Clutch Powers is not the rumored LEGO movie. Phew!
BrickForge: We’ll be giving away a bunch of BrickForge’s new helmets at BrickCon.

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BrickCon 2009: Last-minute logistics

Well, if we haven’t convinced you to attend BrickCon next week, you’re pretty much stuck following along at home, so we’re moving on without you. For those of you who’ll be joining us at Seattle Center a week from today, this post includes a bunch of important information — especially for first-time attendees.

Past attendees will also notice that this is largely an update of last year’s post. Please forgive the repetition.

Fill out your MOC cards by September 28

MOC cards identify your LEGO creations for fellow attendees and the general public. They also help theme organizers like Josh and me plan for how much space is needed.

Fill out your MOC cards on BrickCon.org by September 28 to ensure that they’re printed on the nice card stock that will help them stand up next to your amazing LEGO creations.

Remember, only “registered” LEGO creations (ones with MOC cards) will be eligible for the various awards given out by BrickCon.

By the way, unless you want to spend the public hours explaining what “SNOT” and “MOC” are to kids and their parents, avoid “AFOL-speak” in your descriptions. Seriously.

Bring stuff for the draft and Dirty Brickster

Drafting a LEGO set allows you to get parts in large quantities that you might otherwise have to buy individually (from, say, Bricklink). Read more about how the draft works on SEALUG.org. If you want to participate, the draft set for BrickCon 2009 is 5972 Space Truck Getaway.

Dirty Brickster is a LEGO “white elephant” gift exchange. Bring something that would be worth $10-20 to the recipient, wrapped.

Pack your LEGO creations for travel or shipping

Before you stuff your LEGO into your carry-on luggage, consider reading the LUGNET post by Duane Hess and the Classic-Castle.com article by Lenny Hoffman about packing and shipping LEGO.

Wouldn’t you rather spend your time socializing and integrating your pristine creations into the display instead of rebuilding them?

Unload your LEGO at the venue

You should soon be receiving a message from BrickCon organizers with details on when, where, and how to unload your LEGO creations at Seattle Center. Last year, the loading dock was only available during the following times (we’ll update this as the 2009 times are finalized):

Thursday 8am – noon
Thursday 5pm – 9pm
Friday 8am – noon
Sunday 5pm – midnight

Given the limited space (it’s a tunnel), please only use the loading dock if you have massive amounts to unload.

Give us a tour of your LEGO room

One of the most interesting things about LEGO User Group (LUG) meetings is getting to see another LEGO fan’s building space.

If you’d like to share what your LEGO room looks like with fellow BrickCon attendees, bring a few good photos on a thumb drive for projection during the con.

Build!

With a week left, you still have time to build something and bring it for one of the many collaborative displays. Here’s a list of the various themes planned for this year’s convention:

Battle Bugs
Capital Ship Modular Project
Castle
Great Ball Contraption
Mecha
MicroCity
Model Team Motors
Operation Bricklord
Space
Town/Train
Zombie Apocafest 2009

See you next week!

The Adventures of Clutch Powers [News]

Gerard Joosten just posted a picture of a flyer he found packaged with the latest Bionicle movie. The flyer claims that “The Adventures of Clutch Powers” is coming to DVD in the spring of 2010. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the movie with which Warner is involved. There are Universal and Tinseltown Toons logos on there. What are your thoughts and feelings about this?

(Edit: Its looks like this is the first of several straight-to-DVD releases.)

James May’s LEGO house destined for ruins

The life-sized LEGO house built by the British TV presenter James May faces imminent destruction after LEGOLAND Windsor withdrew their plans to purchase the massive structure due to expensive transportation costs. The house was built with about 3 million LEGO bricks supplied by the LEGO Group and took about 1000 volunteers who worked tirelessly for about a month to complete. It features a furnished bedroom, living room, kitchen, and a bathroom with a functional toilet – all made from LEGO bricks. Unfortunately, this architectual feat will not be enduring the times. According to the Daily Mail, “if no one collects it by 8am on Tuesday, it will be hacked to bits with chainsaws.”

Read more on BBC News or the Daily Mail.

UPDATE: There’s even a Save James May’s Lego House group on Facebook.

Pictures of 2010 LEGO sets – Atlantis, Toy Story, & more – at Festival RFFL [News]

UPDATE: High-res photos of LEGO Atlantis sets are now out.

——–

Alexander (Shurik) posted pictures of some of the 2010 sets that LEGO has displayed at a sponsored event in Russia called Festival Rossiyskogo Fan Forum Lego. The featured sets include samples from the following themes: Atlantis, Toy Story, Prince of Persia, Star Wars, Power Miners, City, Bionicle and more.

EDIT (TG): These pictures were uploaded due to a miscommunication and have been removed from Flickr at the request of TLG. The local Ambassador, Igor Makarov, asked me to remove the deeplink which I have done.

UPDATE: Target.com also has box art for one of the 2010 LEGO Power Miners sets, 8188 Fire Blaster:

BrickForge releases “UN” helmets, mushrooms, lots of new colors [News]

One of the themes we’ll be incorporating into the final Zombie Apocafest is “Victory!” If last year’s display represented the outbreak and chaos that would follow a zombie pandemic, we’ll arrange this year’s display to include the human counterattack, victory, and even reconstruction.

To that end, we’ve worked with BrickForge on a way to unify the organized human resistance. And what’s more iconic of multi-national military forces than the blue headgear of the United Nations?

BrickForge’s Military Helmet and Beret are now available in Medium Blue. The Brothers Brick will be handing out a bunch to those of you who bring military minifigs, but you can of course order more from BrickForge.com.

Through Tuesday, September 22 at 11 PM Eastern, if your order includes any medium blue headgear, BrickForge will automatically upgrade your shipping to USPS Priority (applies to domestic US orders only). This ensures that you get your helmets and berets in time for BrickCon 2009.

While you’re at it, you might want to include some of the great new colors and items BrickForge has just released. I’m particularly pleased to see that the mushrooms BrickForge teased us with at BrickFair are now available.

Shrooms are available in six colors, and don’t miss all the other items BrickForge has released in new colors.

Weekly LEGO news roundup for September 19, 2009 [News]

LEGO Pirates ship

Arrrr!!! The LEGO Pirates theme will be going on hiatus starting in mid-2010.
Flickr. Tim gave us some great guidelines for participating in LEGO groups on Flickr.
Brick shirt. ThinkGeek gave us the Brick Construction Shirt. We eagerly await the ability to build on our chests.
Sean Kenney. David Pagano interviewed Sean Kenney, the first LEGO Certified Professional, for the New York Geekcast podcast.
BrickCon 2009. More than 300 people have registered so far to attend BrickCon, which starts in less than two weeks. If you’re still on the fence, there’s still time to register.

Less than two weeks left until BrickCon – there’s still time to come! [News]

BrickCon 2009 starts October 1, the Thursday after next. Five of our seven contributors will be there (Josh, Dan, Thanel, Caylin, and me), making this year’s BrickCon the single highest risk to blog continuity should an alien robot invasion take place in Seattle. Fortunately, our other contributors stand ready to pick up the bricks and carry on.

Enough with the silliness, though there’s plenty of silly that goes on at LEGO cons.

If you didn’t register before the deadline for engraved badge bricks, you can still register right up until the day of the convention — you just won’t get the fancy bricks from Brick Engraver. With more than 300 LEGO fans registered so far, this year is gonna be awesome.

Finally, if you can’t take the time off from work Thursday and/or Friday, you can also register to attend private convention events with single-day passes on Saturday and Sunday.

Important notes for our younger readers: Like most other LEGO conventions, BrickCon is intended for adult fans of LEGO. Attendees under 18 must be accompanied by a parent, and children under 13 are discouraged from attending. Similarly, contributions from collaborative displays are only open to registered attendees. Unfortunately, we can’t accept contributions to displays like Zombie Apocafest 2009 and Operation Bricklord during the public display hours.

LEGO to discontinue Pirates line [News]

A few days ago, Andrew reported that the Pirate Advent Calendar would not be available in North America. Now we find out that the entire Pirate line will be discontinued by the middle of 2010. This is not to say that it won’t be back, but there are currently no plans for new sets. This is especially frustrating given the fact that LEGO has repeatedly made comments that Pirates would now be a regular theme. In an interview with Gizmodo, LEGO said that Pirates would be an “evergreen” theme. Also, in the 2009 Company Profile, Pirates is called a “perpetual” theme, along with Town and Castle. However, Vikings is also listed and, as we all know, that theme had a very short lease on life. While I am not an avid Pirate collector, I have bought all the sets and I share the frustration of the Pirate fan community.

Ben Ellermann, on Forbidden Cove, has started a petition. You can also make your feelings known here and our resident Lego Ambassador will be able to forward that information onto LEGO.

There is also a thread on Classic Pirates discussing the same issue.

UPDATE: Steve Witt from The LEGO Group writes:

Pirates isn’t gone, its on hiatus like every other line that isn’t one of our primary themes:

CASTLE, SPACE, and CITY

Pirates isn’t going away, it’s just not going to be a constant theme. It’s going to phase in and out just like every other theme that isn’t one of those three… I just wanted to reassure you guys that pirates isn’t disappearing. Just taking a break. :-)

David Pagano interviews Sean Kenney on New York Geekcast

David Pagano has interviewed LEGO Certified Professional and MOCpages founder Sean Kenney.

Photo of Sean from Sean’s website

Head on over to the New York Geekcast to download the podcast.

ThinkGeek baseplate T-shirt lets you build the pecs you always wanted

Yes, yes, yes, we got your messages. For the four readers out there who haven’t sent us this suggestion, here’s the “Brick Construction Shirt” from ThinkGeek:

We’ll be reviewing this unique piece of apparel when it arrives in the mail.

Amidst the snowy mountains...

This was just too good to pass up. The Schubert family created this amazing Alpine Village, which was displayed at BrickFair. The only photos appear to be on Brickshelf from Abe (scrope), another attendee.

Thanks to Bruce, via Fascinating LEGO Model of the Day!