There’s been an argument circulating recently on the web that Gandalf’s original plan to get the One Ring into Mordor was via Air Eagle. It’s an interesting textual analysis, though unsupported by Tolkien’s copious notes and background information. The latest hilarious video by Brotherhood Workshop illustrates the counter-argument.
The video features the massive Barad-dûr by Kevin Walter that we featured a few years ago.
It’s been about a week since LEGO released the new Exo Suit, and there’s been quite a lot of rumor and conjecture circulating about how many will be available, and whether backorders placed after last Thursday night will be fulfilled. I had a conference call with LEGO staff in Enfield and Billund yesterday, and they all reassured me that the “limited run” rumors (especially the rumored number of “10,000”) are completely false.
If LEGO’s own word isn’t enough, here’s Oliver Twist the Pug to inspire confidence.
We’ll be closing down the LEGO Exo Suit raffle next Friday morning so that we can ship out the set in a timely manner, so head on over to that post and leave a comment if you want to win one.
But the important update here is that our raffle isn’t the only way for you to get an Exo Suit — go ahead and order your Exo Suits (and click through from The Brothers Brick if you’d like to support what we do), and LEGO will fulfill those orders once their supply chain catches up with this initial burst of demand. The LEGO Shop online currently lists the set as either “Temporarily Out of Stock” or “Sold Out”, but this is more of a website status issue than a predictor of future availability. Once they become available on each site, LEGO reassures me that you can go ahead and order them with confidence:
And since I’ve included a photo of my pug Ollie with my own Exo Suit that arrived last Thursday, let’s totally make pugs + Exo Suits a meme. Here’s a completely different pug who is also named Oliver (!!!) with an Exo Suit from Ilia. Post those pug + Exo Suit photos and share them here in the comments, on Facebook, and on Twitter! Bonus points if your pug is also named Oliver.
Welcome back fight fans, to Sin City Nevada for another round of Friday Night Fights. After seeing some mighty Mecha last weekend, I felt the need to scale down to some nice mini mecha. These little guy pack the same awesome punch as some of the bigger boys that usually get all the attention. Let’s go to the tale of the tape.
In the dark red corner we have LEGOLIZE IT MAN with his Silurus mech:
In the white corner we have crowandrats and his SN-LRMC
As usual, constant reader, you are tasked with deciding, by way of comment, which of these Bionicle Brutes will win the battle. On the last edition of Friday Night Fights, Bionicle Brutes, Pate-keetongu won 4-1. Tune in next week for another action packed edition of Friday Night Fights!
It’s funny how your perspective changes with age. As a kid I was tortured annually with the BBC’s Christmas airing of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music. But as an adult I find it absolutely captivating – all three hours of it. I mean, it’s got everything… Nuns. Yodeling. Christopher Plummer. Some Nazis.
In the film adaptation, the The Lonely Goatherd number was performed as a marionette show (by Bil Baird and Cora Eisenberg-Baird). And now half a century later, VirtualLUG die-hard Millie McKenzie has perfectly recreated the entire theater and its distinctive puppets for our enjoyment:
If all this looks vaguely familiar, but you need your memory jogging, here’s the original scene:
Clearly the goats were too lifelike, as sadly Millie’s cat later went on to destroy the entire setup…
…naughty kittie, over the Alps into Switzerland with you!
OK, so I’m pretty sure that spaceships shouldn’t be just regular sea-going ships with space engines strapped to them, but it sure does look cool, even if it is asking for a space-sized environmental disaster. This Octan Supertanker by Evan (Lego Junkie) weighs in at 120 studs long, and comes with a space tugboat to boot.
Adam Dodge brings us this instantly recognizable brickified version of the dynamic childhood duo Calvin and Hobbes.
The Vertibird is one of the more recognizable pieces of industrial design from the Fallout universe (and practically the only aircraft in the games). Justin Stebbins (Saber-Scorpion) has done a great job of capturing the shape of the original. While a trans blue cockpit may not match the appearance in the game, it matches the shape well, and still feels right.
A few months ago Kenneth Vaessen unveiled his 1/36 scale model of a Russian Tu-22M3. The reason why I didn’t blog it back then is that his pictures were taken against a fairly dark background. However, he has now posted this newly edited version.
The Tu-22M3, named the Backfire-C by NATO, is a supersonic bomber developed in Soviet times. The Russian military went through rough times after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Backfires are getting long in the tooth, but they are still impressive-looking machines. Kenneth has done a fine job recreating the sleek look. His model is 1.17 m long (almost 4 ft), is beautifully shaped and has many working features such as working variable geometry wings, a retractable undercarriage, opening cockpit canopies and an internal weapons bay. There don’t seem to be all that many LEGO builders willing to tackle scale models of military aircraft, certainly not compared to, say, Star Wars models or mecha, so it is always a great pleasure to welcome a new member to the flock, certainly one who produces models this good.
Ever wondered what a steampunk SWAT team bust would look like? Well, I think it might look a little something like this charmingly titled diorama by Logan (captaininfinity), “The Grand Arrest of Professor Filius Bertram.” It’s not every day we get a cool steampunk diorama that includes an airship, a tank, and a legged vehicle, all of which come together with the help of copious quantities of earth-toned elements.
Forest King (KingBrick) has finally unveiled his most massive build yet, the 4 foot long Kingfisher. Forest has employed many of his signature techniques to great effect here, with faded white bricks and chunky paneling all lending a sense of extreme durability and resilience. The mix of colors is particularly nice, with orange, red and yellow highlights accentuating the tan, white and grey color scheme and giving an industrial feel to the design.
After over 10 years in flight, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta space probe today arrived at it’s target, comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. And builder Stefan Schindler decided to commemorate the event by recreating it in LEGO! Not only did he do a splendid job on the probe, he even managed to capture the bizarre shape of the comet as well.
Stefan has entered his creation in the ESA’s official #RosettaAreWeThereYet photo contest. So LEGO fans should head over there and VOTE FOR IT NOW! (Entries are piling up so you may have to search for it on the second or third page).
I remember getting a used M:Tron set as a kid and discovering how awesome magnetism is, and how I wanted to learn where magnets came from. Thanks to Blake Foster and his M:Tron Magnet Factory, I finally know the answer:
Not only has Blake created an inspired M:Tron base and stunning landscaped base, but he’s added a monorail and some really impressive movement which you can see in the following video:
I was able to see this incredible creation this past weekend at BrickFair Virginia, where it took the Best Space trophy (check out the time-lapse setup video). I sat down with Blake to get the details on his layout:
TBB: With all the classic LEGO space themes or even other pop culture references why did you choose M:Tron as a theme for your build?
BF: It’s part nostalgia and part obscurity. I loved M:Tron as a kid, and yet it doesn’t get all that much attention from the AFOL community. Compared to Neo-Blacktron or Neo-Classic-Space, M:Tron is a rarity. That obscurity can be a good thing, though, because there are more opportunities to do something original. I really wanted to make something unique, so M:Tron seemed like a good theme to do it in.
TBB: With something of this size, 4 x 6 baseplates (192 x 128 studs), how long did it take you to build?
BF: I started toying with ideas for this project 4-5 years ago. I was in grad school at the time, though, and didn’t have the budget to complete it. I started working in earnest two years ago. By my best guess, it took about 3,000 hours of building, 462 Bricklink orders and I would estimate 100,00 bricks. Here is an early work in progress image of the build:
Read more about Blake’s M:Tron Magnet Factory →
