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.

10193 Medieval Market Village to be released in 2009 [Exclusive]

UPDATE: 10193 Medieval Market Village is now available from the LEGO Shop online!

LEGO Castle fans have wanted more civilians, more women, and more non-equine animals for a very long time — something a little more like this:

Box art for 10193 Medieval Market Village

With the announcement of 10193 Medieval Market Village last night during opening ceremonies at BrickCon 2008, there should be no doubt in anybody’s mind that LEGO listens to fans like us.

The Brothers Brick, Classic-Castle.com, and Klocki are proud to bring you exclusive high-resolution pictures of this upcoming set, scheduled for release in January 2009.

Click each photo in this post for full-size, high-res versions:

: Turkey dinner in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

: Minifigs and accessories in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

: Box art for 10193 Medieval Market Village

: Tavern in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

: Blacksmith at work in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

: Blacksmith’s shop in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

: Market stall in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

: Overall shot of 10193 Medieval Market Village.

Here’s the full description (my bolding, for emphasis):

Expand your LEGO® Castle kingdom!
This classic medieval village with marketplace is a perfect match for any LEGO Castle. Full of authentic features, fun accessories and all-new animals to expand and enhance your kingdom; it includes two complete buildings with detailed interiors like a blacksmith’s shop with waterwheel-driven hammer, a food stand, tree, table, cart, cows, horse, chicken, rooster, duck, peasants, knights, rare elements and colors, and more!

Includes 8 minifigures: blacksmith, 2 soldiers, 2 male peasants, 2 female peasants and a boy minifigure!

Play inside! The 2 two-story buildings feature a hinge system that allows you to open and close them as you wish!

The yellow building contains the stables, blacksmiths shop and his home upstairs! Help the blacksmith forge the swords with the working water powered trip hammer! Don’t forget to close the stable gates and feed the horse some carrots!

Blacksmith’s home features pictures on the walls, opening windows, table and fireplace!

The classically European styled blue building features a cozy tavern on the first floor and welcoming bedroom on the top floor!

Lots of authentic touches: fireplaces in the bedrooms, pictures on the walls, dressing tables, working doors and windows and other interior details!

The soldiers and peasants alike shop and eat in the marketplace filled with baskets of fish, apples and flowers. Sit at the table for a meal of ale, cheese and whole turkey but stay out of the way of the soldiers carrying the king’s treasure!

Buildings measure over 7.5″ tall and over 9″ long when open wide!

The set contains 1,601 pieces, and the price varies by country:

Australia: $149.99
Canada: $149.99
United Kingdom: £84.99
United States: $99.99

Reaction by LEGO Castle fans attending BrickCon was ecstatic (click the picture for more 10193 pictures from BrickCon):

A few observations of my own:

New feather/fire piece in red and trans-orange
New table leg/column piece
New fish and cows
Whole turkey (it bears repeating)
New torsos for the three male peasants, blacksmith, and tavern wench
Peasant girl otherwise available only in 7979 Castle Advent Calendar
New faces on the blacksmith and senior-citizen peasant

Finally, one more look at the minifigs and accessories:

Minifigs and accessories in 10193 Medieval Market Village.

Wow. January can’t come fast enough!

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BrickCon 2008: Friday, October 3rd

I’ve uploaded a few of my photos from today to Flickr. We’ll fill this post with something more than this later, but first, sleep!

Nannan has also uploaded his photos:

BrickArms.com relaunches with M21, baseball bat, and Lee-Enfield [News]

Recent visitors to the BrickArms Web site will have noticed the intriguing message that they’ll be back soon with new products.

Just in time for BrickCon 2008, the site is now back online with all-new items, including:

We’ll of course have full coverage of other new BrickArms products announced at BrickCon in the coming days.

BrickCon 2008: Thursday October 2nd

Andrew, Josh, and I are at BrickCon this week (the third and last LEGO convention in North America of 2008).

As usual, Thursday is arrival and setup, and from our photo coverage you can see the 20,000 square feet of display area in the process of filling up with marvelous creations. Andrew and I have uploaded a few pictures to our respective Flickr photostreams here and here. We will keep you updated with news of the opening ceremony and other important events happening Friday.

P.S.- this blog entry was written in the comfort of Andrew’s living room. More blog fests from headquarters to come…

EDIT (AB): Lonnon Foster has also begun uploading photos to his Flickr photostream.

Announcing the Reasonably Clever Spooky Star Wars Contest [w00t!]

Having just announced winners for the Brick Science contest, Reasonably Clever is now co-hosting a new contest with TK 1420.

The Spooky Star Wars Contest challenges you to build a spookified Star Wars vehicle, a scene, an impulse-size creation, or the death of Jar-Jar Binks. (I’m sure we’ve all dreamed of ways that would go down.)

Judges include Steve Sansweet and Mary Franklin from Lucasfilm, as well as TK 1420 and Chris Doyle.

You can win some out-of-circulation LEGO Star Wars sets, so what’re you still doing reading this? Get building!

BrickCon 2008: Last-minute logistics (and more free stuff)

Apologies for boring 99% of our readers, but this is still the fastest way to communicate with the fairly large number of TBB readers who are attending BrickCon later this week.

Fill out your MOC cards now

MOC (My Own Creation) 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 (more on how that relates to the zombie display later in this post).

Fill out your MOC cards on BrickCon.org. A couple quick points:

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.
Zombie creations go in “Other,” not “Train/Town” (whose organizers I suspect think they’re being invaded at this point; that doesn’t actually happen until Sunday).

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

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

By now, you should’ve received a message from Daniel Brown with details on when, where, and how to unload your LEGO creations at Seattle Center. The loading dock is only available during the following times:

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

Please only use the loading dock if you have massive amounts to unload. For more details, please see Daniel’s e-mail. If you didn’t get that e-mail, let us know and we’ll post more information here.

(CC-licensed photo of the Space Needle by Chris Blakely.)

Get to and from the airport

I know several of you are looking to share rides between Sea-Tac Airport and the BrickCon venue at Seattle Center (301 Mercer St., Seattle, WA 98109). Transportation options include Shuttle Express, taxis, and rental cars — all available near baggage claim.

If you’d like to share a ride with someone to cut costs, post a comment here with your arrival time, and when two or more of you are interesting in connecting, I’ll put you in touch through e-mail.

Bringing 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 2008 is 7626 Jungle Cutter.

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

Help bring some order to the Great Chaos of the Zombie Apocafest

With so many last-minute, “Oh, I’m so there!” contributions (thanks in no small part to BrickArms’ generosity, I’m sure), we don’t have a very good sense of how many zombified LEGO creations to expect for the Zombie Apocafest.

Filling out a MOC card will help, but could we also get a quick roll-call from readers planning on bringing a building? (Vehicles will be easy enough to incorporate into the display.) I’ll be at the venue nearly all day Thursday to help with setup — Castle and the zombie display in particular.

Build your GO MINIMAN GO Photo Contest entries

If you haven’t entered our GO MINIMAN GO Photo Contest yet, you can do so right there at BrickCon.

Just swing by The LEGO Group’s table, dig through the bricks, build a vig or dio, have it photographed, and fill out the entry form. Oh, and you get to keep what you build.

Get your Brothers Brick LEGO brick

Last but not least, the first 100 people who come up to Josh, Nannan, or me and say “It’s a brick-built world out there” will get a custom-engraved brick — your choice of “The Brothers Brick” or “Brothers-Brick.com”.

Oh yes, this is gonna be the best BrickCon yet! See everybody in a couple of days!

Let us know what you want to see from BrickCon 2008

For those of you who can’t make it to BrickCon 2008, Josh, Nannan, and I will be covering the con starting this Thursday.

We want to know what you’re most interested in seeing from us. By voting in the new poll and leaving a comment here, you can help shape our coverage of BrickCon 2008. Our coverage of BrickCon 2008 is in your hands.

(Photo by Adam Hally.)

So, do you want to get to know some of the people behind the creations featured here on The Brothers Brick? Are you most interested in product announcements from LEGO, BrickArms, and other companies? Maybe you want to see more pictures of people’s creations and group displays. Let us know!

Note: If you see an error when you try to vote, rest assured that your vote is still being counted. It’s a conflict between two WordPress plug-ins.

[poll id=”14″]

Welt der Steine fan event in Vienna, Austria on October 4-5, 2008 [News]

Austrian LEGO fan group LGOE (not a typo — it stands for LEGO Gemeinschaft Österreich) will be hosting an event next weekend in Vienna.

Here are the details in German (courtesy Verena Schaden):

Die LEGO® Gemeinschaft Österreich lädt euch ein zur
Welt der Steine – taucht ein in das bunte Reich der LEGO® Fans
4. – 5. Oktober, 10 – 17 Uhr
Veranstaltungszentrum Simmering
Simmeringer Hauptstr. 96a, 1110 Wien
Kontakt: info@lgoe.at

And in English:

Name of the show: Welt der Steine (means: World of Stones)
Date: October 4 – 5, 2008
Time: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Location: Veranstaltungszentrum Simmering, Simmeringer Hauptstr. 96a, 1110 Vienna, Austria
Contact: info@lgoe.at

LEGO Factory adds new bricks, plus cool fan-created stuff you can buy [News]

Chris Doyle sends word that the parts from Custom Car Garage are now available from online Pick A Brick. New parts include the great pilot torso originally from the redesigned Naboo fighter.

RP Cuenco used 2,558 bricks from LEGO Factory to build a case for his Mac (via Gizmodo):

Bricked Mac – Time-Lapse from RP Cuenco on Vimeo.

What’s so cool about LEGO Factory and online Pick A Brick is that you can buy individual parts, as well as sets created by fans using LEGO Digital Designer, ranging from a Mini Stephen Hawking by Ochre Jelly for $1.86 or the aforementioned Bricked Mac for $376.65:

And for our non-US readers, a direct link to online Pick a Brick: Pick a Brick.

LEGO Batman: The Video Game now available [News]

LEGO Batman: The Video Game was released this past Tuesday. I’d hoped to play the game and write a review, as I did for LEGO Indiana Jones: The Video Game, but I won’t have time to do that for a couple weeks.

McDonald’s has of course had Happy Meal toys inspired by the game available for a while (very funny photo by FiddybobiddyFiddy):

William Eng has a bunch of pictures from the LEGO Batman launch party, including this cake by Elisa Strauss:

Mariann Asanuma contributed this mosaic to the launch event:

LEGO Batman: The Video Game is available on the following platforms:

New BrickArms Zombie Defense Weapons Pack at BrickCon 2008 [News]

BrickCon 2008 begins this Thursday! When I announced prizes and giveaways for the Zombie Apocafest, I realized we needed a good way to repel the zombie menace.

What better way to fend of that flesh-eating horde than with a special set of weapons designed for just that purpose from BrickArms?

In addition to the other prizes and giveaways, BrickArms and The Brothers Brick will be handing out new Zombie Defense Weapons Packs to everyone who contributes a building or vehicle to the Zombie Apocafest display. That’s right: BrickArms for free!

The weapons pack is full of the tools of the zombie-hunting trade:

SW500 Magnum Revolver (for stopping power; x2)
M21 Sniper Rifle (for keeping your distance)
Mk48 Mod 0 Machine Gun
AK Assault Rifle (doesn’t jam as easily as the M4/M16)
Uzi Submachine Gun (x2)
Bipod (x2) and Monopod (x3)
Combat Shotgun (brand-new prototype)
M1 Garand Rifle (in black)
M1 1911 .45 Pistol (backup weapon #1)
Baseball Bat (backup weapon #2)
Glow-in-the-dark Zombie Head

If you don’t have time to build something for the display, you’ll be able to buy your very own Zombie Defense Weapons Pack at the BrickArms table. And if you can’t make it in person, BrickArms will be making these available through the re-launched BrickArms.com.

Well, I’m off to finish up my final building for the display and begin creating the horde itself… :D

How to buy your 7979 Castle Advent Calendar [News]

FINAL UPDATE: As of October 20, 7979 Castle Advent Calendar was no longer available from LEGO Shop @ Home.

UPDATE (1:30 PM PDT, 9/27/08): I just got off the phone with LEGO Shop @ Home, and they said that there are still some left, so if you couldn’t call or weren’t able to get through yesterday, you should still be able to order today.

As we promised yesterday, here’s how US and Canadian fans can get their hands on the coveted 7979 Castle Advent Calendar set:

Call LEGO Shop@Home at ~~1-800-453-4652 (English) or 1-877-518-5346 (French)~~ 1-800-835-4386.
Give them the code JesterUS (for the US) or JesterCA for Canada.
Order no more than 2 copies of 7979 Castle Advent Calendar, and nothing else! (This will keep the lines free for others trying to order. You can always add other sets to your order later, before it ships.)

Prices:

US: $29.99 USD per set, plus shipping.
Canada: $39.99 CAD per set, plus shipping.