It’s not your typical brick but an actual mp3 player. Now you can listen to your favorite songs playing from a 2X4! The product page is on Homeloo, and you can also check out some other novel LEGO themed MP3 accessories.
(AB: Screen shot of anythingbutipod post by Don Solo.)
You heard me right, Spacers! (Space!)
Here’s the description on LEGO.com:
10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1-Touchdown!
Get ready for Space when fan-designed LEGO Factory Space Exclusives launch.
Help the Star Justice or Space Skulls crews gear up for battle!
Star Justice and Space Skulls, huh? Intriguing, no? :-D
New information on the upcoming LEGO MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) game, LEGO Universe, has truly been scarce. Some of the only information has been in early concept art doled out to newsletter subscribers:
But Blog | Life from Wired.com has a handful of new details on the game.
Based on the way the game is being marketed, I’m personally not entirely convinced the game will have the broad, multigenerational appeal that one might hope for (read: they don’t seem to be marketing to adults).
Still, I’m intrigued by the organic feeling of the backgrounds in the concept art released so far.
Head on over to Blog | Life to read the feature and see bigger versions of the new concept art (above).
(Via BB Gadgets.)
Toy Fair 2008 is approaching and there have been pictures of the late 2008 sets circulating on the web. I found Joe Meno with some of the first pictures of themes including Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Speed Racer, Bionicle, and Batman.
Update (AB): Ace Kim also has extensive pictures from Toy Fair 2008, nicely organized into photosets with lots of great details — prices, release dates, etc.:
Lino Martins says, “Everyone knows Batman has all the coolest rides.”
As Nathan Proudlove demonstrates above, that’s certainly true! But if you’ve always thought that Spider-Man got hung out to dry or the Green Lantern got left out in the dark, the Heroes and Villains Challenge in the LUGNuts group on Flickr is your chance to give your favorite characters a sweet, sweet ride.
Here’s a bit more from Lino:
Variety is important and I’d like to see this become the coolest and most successful LUGNuts challenge yet, so if the creative juices are really flowing and you can’t decide on just one good guy or bad, then with this and every challenge, each LUGNut is encouraged to “go nuts” and build lots of MOCs! Also, while Marvel and DC offers a vast array of material to work with, you can build for your fave hero or villain outside of the comic book world as well.
Read all about the this challenge in Lino’s official announcement.
Finally, I can’t help sharing a bit of inspiration from one of my favorite builders, MisterZumbi:
Wicked. Okay people, get building! Zoom zoom!
Remember Boing Boing Gadgets contributor Joel Johnston’s Nine Sets I Have Known and Loved?
Something rather beautiful happened in the comments on that post — a connection between Joel and Bjarne P. Tveskov, one of the LEGO designers who worked on Classic Space sets in the 1980s.
Bjarne designed many of the sets we all know and love from the 80s:
BB Gadgets: What did designing kits for LEGO entail back in ’80s?
Bjarne: My LEGO career started when I was 17 years old; I saw an ad in the Sunday newspaper…. when suddenly I was offered the job I had to ask my parents if it was OK if I quit high-school to become a Spaceship designer.
Read the rest of Joel’s excellent interview with Bjarne on BB Gadgets.
The LEGO Exo-Force theme was received with mixed feelings back in 2005. Nevertheless, many fans have embraced the theme in the intervening years — if for no other reason than that it yielded a plethora of new minifigs and other new parts.
So, it is once again with mixed emotions that I share the news of the end of the LEGO Exo-Force theme at the end of this year. Personally, I think the 2008 Exo-Force sets were some of the best-designed sets of the theme, so it’s disappointing to say goodbye to the theme just as it seems to be coming into its own.
Check out the latest episode of LAML radio for an interview with Joe Meno, editor of the fabulous BrickJournal magazine. Learn about the past, present, and future of the largest unofficial LEGO magazine for fans, with the next issue coming out in print for the first time.
Meanwhile, take a look at an informal interview conducted by Joe with the CEO of LEGO, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp.
The second part of my conversation with James Wadsworth is up on Radio.LAML.org.
In this episode, James and I chat about some of the current trends in the LEGO “blogosphere,” including the blogs I can’t live without (including VignetteBricks, MicroBricks, How Many Studs to LEGOLAND, Klocki Lego dla dorosłych, and Young Spacers Association Blog) and this past month’s seeming explosion of LEGO-related posts on non-LEGO blogs (including personal faves Boing Boing Gadgets, Gizmodo, and Neatorama).
Check it out on Radio.LAML.org, and be sure to subscribe via iTunes, Zune Marketplace, or whatever floats your boat. Brick on!
UPDATE: The LEGO Castle Giant Chess Set
will be available for pre-order from the LEGO Shop on July 1. No release date has been announced yet.
Some people know where to look for leaked pictures of upcoming sets, and many times great treasures are dug up in lego.com’s cache (the specific procedures are still a mystery to me, but I think it involves manipulating image url’s). Check out the upcoming castle chess set, complete with just about everything and probably including a big price tag too.
James Wadsworth invited me to join him for the latest LAML Radio podcast. We shoot the breeze about the week’s news, including the new Indy pics, the 50th birthday of the brick, and other topics.
It should come as no surprise to longtime TBB readers (1447 of my own posts and counting) that I have a lot to say (some would argue too much, heh heh), so LAML Radio #17 is part 1 of my conversation with James.
Check it out on Radio.LAML.org.
LEGO is catching on to the success of battle packs and are in turn making castle fans happy as well. Check out the upcoming castle army boosters:
UPDATE: Both the Knights Battle Pack and the Skeletons Battle Pack
are now available from the LEGO Shop.
