UPDATE: 10189 Taj Mahal is now available for pre-order in the United States as well! It’s $299.99 and will ship by September 15, 2008.
Brickshelf user whung has a picture showing an upcoming set, the 10189 Taj Mahal. As of now I have no further information regarding this set, but from the box it looks like a general release product, and at almost 6000 pieces, it would be the largest LEGO set to date and would rival the price of the UCS Millenium Falcon set.
I’m sure many LEGO fans across the world have wondered why the US has the lowest LEGO prices while countries in Europe and Asia have significantly higher prices, oftentimes twice that of the MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) for a LEGO set in the US. There are even countries where LEGO costs up to three or four times the prices in the US. Here is the answer from Mads Nipper of LEGO’s Corporate Management.
Our selling costs in Europe and Asia are higher than in the US because of the size of US market and retailers (economies of scale). Furthermore, the US market is by far the most price competitive in the world. These factors combined mean that we have for years priced our products higher in eg Europe than the US. In recent years, the difference has been increased due to the weakening US dollar – but we have consciously decided not to let this (hopefully short term) weakening of the dollar hurt the US consumer. And in order to stay profitable as a company, we cannot decrease our European prices – especially seen in the light of increasing cost pressure on oil, labor etc. Finally, final pricing in the market place is obviously determined by retailers, which is something we cannot and will not influence.
I missed it initially, but Kotaku posted a fairly long video a couple weeks ago of gameplay footage from E3 of the forthcoming LEGO Batman video game. The video shows several scenes with playable characters that include Mr. Freeze, The Riddler, Catwoman, The Joker, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy.
More recently, DESTRUCTOID has a bunch of new screen shots that feature Man-Bat — who, I’ll be honest, I’d never heard of:
The game comes out September 1st, and rest assured that I’ll be taking some time out from my BrickCon prep to play the game and write a review.
Update: Zombie Apocafest 2008 went off smashingly at BrickCon 2008, October 2-5. Don’t miss our full coverage here on The Brothers Brick:
The pre-registration price for BrickCon 2008 goes up from $40 to $50 next Tuesday, August 5th. If you’re still thinking about joining Nannan, Josh, Keith, me, and lots of other Brothers Brick readers in Seattle this October, now’s the time to register!
If you’re still on the fence, here are a couple building challenges and contests to whet your appetite.
ChiefLUG Initiation
ChiefLUG will be extending initiation to anybody who builds a LEGO Viper from Battlestar Galactica. Here’s what ChiefLUG founding member Ryan “Chief” Wood has to say:
ChiefLUG is a superrad group of Lego fans dedicated to veggie platters, crazy group builds, being awesome, and pretending to be half as cool as KeithLUG. You might be familiar with our work.
To join ChiefLUG, you just have to build and bring a Viper, like the one above designed by Andrew Lee (more photos). Creative color variations are encouraged.
The Brothers Brick LEGO Zombie Apocafest
Not to be outdone by some upstart KeithLUG wannabe, KeithLUG itself, or a bunch of reasonably well-adjusted Train/Town builders, we at The Brothers Brick are sponsoring the first ever large-scale LEGO Zombie Apocalypse. Think Shaun of the Dead. Imagine Max Brooks’ World War Z in LEGO.
Naturally, we’ve recruited some of our favorite twisted LEGO minds to contribute, including Rocko™ and Justin Pratt:
There will be free swag for participants, of course, including prizes in various categories (such as Best Building, Best Vehicle, or Best Minifig) the quality and quantity of which will be determined at our whim between now and October.
To make the display easy to integrate, we’re asking participants to follow the modular building standards exemplified by Cafe Corner, Green Grocer, and Market Street. Well, basically anything featured on Brick Town Talk — with a zombie twist, of course.
Since I can’t find any documentation on what the “Cafe Corner standard” is, here’s my take:
(Please correct my description of the standard as necessary, and I’ll update this. I can post the standard separately too, if there’s interest.)
We’re talking about the apocalypse here, dear readers, so variations are certainly allowed. We’ll also do our best to integrate larger structures (like Justin’s bombed-out office building). We respect zombie diversity, certainly, but I really love the old Harry Potter troll as the basis for my own zombie horde.
And don’t forget survivors. And their multifarious modes of transportation.
So, if you’re coming to BrickCon, we’d love to include your contributions to The Brothers Brick LEGO Zombie Apocafest. Bring whole buildings, or partially destroyed buildings. Bring a truck. Bring just one zombie. Whatever. There’s room for one and all at the Zombie Apocafest!
LEGO Universe remains fairly mysterious despite this video from Gizmodo and Kotaku (click through to view):
This is the first time we’ve seen any kind of real in-game footage, and the short video (and article) also provides some insights into how the game has been developed with input from LEGO fans.
(Nice to see LEGO Certified Professional Robin Sather in this, and I think I caught a glimpse of Tormod Askildsen too.)
We recently highlighted HKLUG’s LEGO Sport City display, with huge models of the venues we’ll be seeing in the Beijing Olympics next month.
Thanks to LEGO Ambassador and HKLUG member Tsang Yiu Keung (better known as Chiukeung), we have lots more information on the models, including behind-the-scenes photos.
Chiukeung gives a sense of just how large the display is:
Venues recreated in LEGO include the National Stadium (nicknamed “The Bird’s Nest”), National Aquatics Center (“Swimming Cube”), and Olympic Village.
The finished display is certainly impressive, but the behind-the-scenes photos reveal the true scale and impressive techniques that went into the LEGO Sport City.
The iconic National Stadium was designed by Ming, an architect by trade. It took him over 100 hours to complete, and is 128×154 studs in size (that’s about 40″ x 48″). The outer shell includes thousands of hinge plates.
The National Aquatics Center was built by Vincent Cheung over the course of 120 hours, and has a three-tier design with a cell-like structure in the transparent blue walls.
The Swimming Cube is illuminated with a fluorescent lamp inside, and measures 148 by 148 studs, or 46″ on each side.
Chiukeung built the Olympic Village, which is 160 x 224 studs (50″ x 70″). Chiukeung spent 100 hours on the project.
There’s lots more to see (56 pictures in all) in the HKLUG LEGO Sport City photoset on Flickr, including the Equestrian stadium by Hudson, Greek temple by Wai Kee, and various Chinese and European buildings by Andy. The mosaic was built by Hot, who also coordinated the entire project.
If you’re in Hong Kong, you can see this LEGO display for yourself at Grand Century Place between now and August 31, 2008.
Thanks again to HKLUG and Chiukeung for the behind-the-scenes info and photos!
For those curious to know what went on at the Toys R Us Midnight Sale last night, I took a ride to my local store to check out the frontline action. The Midnight Sale, hosted by participating Toys R Us stores, celebrates the release of new Star Wars Clone Wars toys, such as action figures, LEGO Star Wars sets, and other miscellaneous Clone Wars items.
Participants at the event received the limited edition holographic General Grievous action figure and Clone Wars poster for their purchases.
The picture below was taken last night at my local store near Dallas, and you can see how many people showed up. Inside the store was a marked section dedicated to all the brand new merchandise, and I’m excited to see that the LEGO Clone Wars sets dominated about a third of the space.
Almost half of the shopping carts I saw contained LEGO products. However, to my chagrin, Toys R Us has marked up prices on all of these new LEGO sets by $5-10. In the end I used coupons to purchase two Republic Gunships, definitely one of the must-have LEGO sets of the year.
If you missed this event, good news is that you didn’t miss too much.
Just today LEGO Shop at Home has listed all of the new Clone Wars sets fresh for sale. Don’t forget that your order qualifies for a free gold brick keychain with purchases over $75 until the end of July.
Here’s the full list of LEGO Star Wars Clone Wars sets available from the LEGO Shop:
Today marks the third anniversary of The Brothers Brick!
I believe that 2007-2008 was the year that The Brothers Brick truly became more than just another LEGO blog. All of you out there make this a community, with LEGO Ambassadors representing the tens of thousands of you who visit the site.
The LEGO fan community has seen its shares of ups and downs over this past year. We rallied together during the Great Brickshelf Crisis of 2007, and we’ve avoided much of the fragmentation I feared at the time. In addition to blogs and other online venues like The Brothers Brick, fans can now get their LEGO fix in print from BrickJournal and listen to the LAMLradio podcast on their MP3 players.
We’ve also been fortunate to add two contributors over this past year. Nannan Zhang has brought much-appreciated energy, while we look forward to columns from Keith Goldman. Thanks to Nannan, our event coverage expanded beyond my posts about BrickCon last October to include his news and highlights from BrickWorld in June.
And then there were the fads and bandwagons, proving that with great power comes great responsibility.
Looking to the future, and giving back
Advertising sucks. We added ads to pay the bills, but now we have enough traffic and so many of you are making your LEGO purchases through us (thank you!) that this is the right time to increase our transparency by sharing what we’ll be doing with the extra income.
We’ll be rolling everything beyond what pays the bills back into the LEGO fan community. It really is as simple as that. Specifically, you’ll see more frequent contests (with good prizes), giveaways (online and at conventions), and maybe even “scholarships” for LEGO fans who might not otherwise be able to attend important LEGO conventions.
All about you, by the numbers
Despite my inability to perform basic arithmetic (“100% more of zero is still zero,” as someone gently pointed out recently in response to one of our taglines), I always like sharing numbers about all of you readers out there.
Although we’ve had visitors from 181 countries (literally Afghanistan to Zimbabwe), most of our readers are from countries where English is the predominant language.
I’ve always listed the top 10 countries, but you might find the top 30 more interesting:
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So, what are all of your out there most interested in? And what sites are you coming from?
| Top Keywords* | Top Categories | Referring Sites |
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* Excluding variations on “The Brothers Brick”.
The top ten referring sites are only the tip of the iceberg:
Of seventy million blogs that Technorati tracks, we’re in the top ten thousand, or 0.0143%. Wow!
Our most popular posts run the gamut from the very best (and sometimes weirdest) LEGO creations of the past year, along with the up-to-the-minute news you’ve come to expect from us:
Finally, stuff for the historically minded:
Hi all,
After heavily delayed judging thanks to the slackness of one of the judges (sorry!) the full list of winners of PotW have finally been announced. Going backwards by class we find… drumroll…
While the special judges choice winners are as follows:
And I can now debut an old MOC… the special prize for my pick is the all new Petri Racer
And I think it is time to bury the caveracing fad once and for all.
Pause magazine has some great coverage of the opening of the LEGO Discovery Center in Chicago. From the pictures I’ve seen of the Berlin centre this one looks to be even better and we can all hope that more of these will be rolled out (Australia… please!!!).
Incidentally I suspect most of you wouldn’t realise that Pause magazine was one of the very first AFOL resources way back in 19965 or so. It’s great for me to be able to refer to their LEGO coverage from my own little platform.
The Lego Company has announced the upcoming release of a new robotics system, scheduled to be released in January of 2009. Geared towards grade school children, ages 7-11, WeDo is designed to introduce robotics to an age group that has been previously overlooked. By building robots that remain tethered to their computer, kids can write, download and tweak their programs, giving them the opportunity to see what changes occurred immediately. While it appears that, due to its tethered nature, it may have a limited use outside of the classroom, anything that introduces young children to robotics is a good thing in my book.
In a company press release, dated June 30 2008, Jens Maibom, vice president of LEGO Education, said:
“Building upon our successful 10-year history of bringing educational robotics to middle, high school, and university classrooms with the award-winning LEGO MINDSTORMS toolset, we are excited to extend this expertise to benefit an even younger audience. With a progressively competitive global economy, we know it is imperative to provide even younger children and their teachers with curricular-relevant, easy-to-implement educational materials to spark children’s interest in all manner of subjects. After observing classroom tests conducted in Brazil and the United States, we are confident that WeDo Robotics, the first product from LEGO Education designed to serve the classroom needs of emerging markets, will inspire teachers and motivate students in classrooms around the world.”
Check out more WeDo info at the Lego Education site.
Wedo! Can you?
The BrickMaster January exclusive set is announced as a mini Venator revealed at Comic-Con.
Via FBTB