Category Archives: LEGO

You’d probably expect a lot of the posts on a LEGO website like The Brothers Brick to be about LEGO, and you’d be right. If you’re browsing this page, you might want to consider narrowing what you’re looking for by checking out categories like “Space” and “Castle.” We’re sure there’s something here that’ll fascinate and amaze you.

Hero Factory 3.0 [Review]

I was sent some of the upcoming Hero Factory sets to review, so I built them with my two sons, 4 and 8 years old, in order to get the reaction of someone in the age demographic for these sets. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. But first, just the facts.

We received four sets: Furno 3.0 (#2191), Stringer 3.0 (#2183), Waspix (#2231) and Witch Doctor (#2283). Furno and Stringer are two of the Heroes, who have appeared in the previous series. As far as I know, Waspix and Witch Doctor are new characters and appear to be “baddies”. Furno and Stringer came in the typical cans, and the other two came in boxes.

My four year old built Furno and my eight year old built Stringer and Waspix. Both of my sons are experienced Bioinicle and Hero Factory builders and neither had any problems building the sets, though the four year old had a few issues with the instructions. I built Witch Doctor as it was too complex for the boys.

Now for the reactions, opinions and general blather.

The first thing that jumped out at me was the theme. It appears that this series of Hero Factory is going with an animal totem theme. Furno has a hawk mask and Stringer is a bear. According the pictures on the back of the box, other Heroes may have a rhino totem, a wolf or fox and a tiger. Bad guy Waspix is naturally a wasp. Witch Doctor appears to be just that, as it has a skull theme to it and has a stylized skull scepter/wand.

The second thing I noticed was that there quite a few new parts that don’t use “bionicle-style” connections, but more traditional connection points, such as clips. The claws on Stringer really stood out in this regard.

Lastly, as far as I reactions go, I was quite impressed with the Witch Doctor build. It was actually quite complex, very rugged and surprisingly large. I wouldn’t be surprised if the skull masks find their way into quite a few fan creations, as they are rather cool. My only complaint is that his left hand has the over-used bionicle shooter, but kids like things that fire. I just wish it had something new there. Waspix was an average build, with a decent amount of pieces. The Heroes had very few pieces and took me about a minute to put together. Even my four year old had one together in less than five minutes and they have an age range of 6-16. They are pretty simplistic.

My sons reactions were very similar but they each noticed different things. My four year old was enamored with the animal theme. He especially liked the Bear/Stringer. He wasn’t as excited about the wasp, but he “flew” the Hawk all over the house and “fought” with the Bear quite a bit. He was impressed with Witch Doctor, due to his size but didn’t really like the skulls as much.

My 8 year old was in heaven. Part of his reaction was colored by the fact that he was building sets that weren’t available yet, but he did come back down to earth to answer a few questions. He loved Waspix, due to the multiple arms, red spikes and trans-yellow wings. Of the two Heroes, Stringer the Bear was his favorite, due to the claws. He said the actual building experience was better than the previous Hero Factory offerings, but he still preferred Bionicle and misses it. He thought Witch Doctor was really cool because he is really into skeletons right now. He liked the animal theme of the two Heroes but felt like they were too simple to build and didn’t have enough pieces.

All of the review pictures can found in the Hero Factory set in my photostream.

This concludes our Father/Son review. Hopefully it gives you some helpful facts about the new Hero Factory sets. Take care!

Edit: I am not an experienced reviewer. If there is information that I left out, please ask questions in the comments and I will do my best to answer them.

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Iron Mecha roundup

The 2011 edition of Iron Mecha has ended and it had some truly superb entries. In the spirit of the original I volunteered myself to write some feedback and crown a winner.

Aaron Williams (m_o_n_k_e_y) was crowned winner after barely edging out Rong Yiren (below left). Nate Daly (below right) had the most creative entry with his nautiloid/gorrila crossbreed.

Air mattress surfing

That’s something you don’t see everyday, especially in Lego.

By Klementina Kos

The Summer Blockbusters are here.

And so is PCHLUG’s 101 Challenge. Your goal is to build something that represents a Hollywood summer blockbuster (or, really, any movie at all!) and submit it to the Flickr group by July 31st.

Prizes include fantastic custom trophies built by PCHLUG’s members!

For complete rules, click here!

Get your build on!

Mirage, sanctuary of the guardians

Tyler and I present our third collaborative build of a sanctuary in the sky called Mirage. For this project, we took on the challenge of building a large diorama without a baseplate. The result is a 7′ X 7′ creation composed of over 150 modular octagonal platforms. The building process started in January and the finished model with will be shown at Brick Fiesta this weekend. You can learn about the backstory by following the teasers we posted.

Fire or Renewal: A History of the CSS Howland Survivors on Numereji

As we head into the summer building and convention season, we’re pleased to bring you a genuine, original science-fiction short story and concept art to serve as inspiration for Numereji 2421, written and illustrated by Brandon “Catsy” Bannerman.

We’re keeping “building standards” pretty loose right now, with the exception of tan as the primary background color for the landscape and white for salvaged ship sections. Follow the discussion in the dedicated group on Flickr. In the meantime, happy reading!

“See the stars,” said the recruitment holos, brimming with high-saturation images of well-fed colonists farming an expansive homestead under a sky with multiple moons. “Find a new life in the Stellar Diaspora.” To the inhabitants of Old Earth, it was a compelling argument — Sol 3 was, in the parlance of the time, a “dump”. Two centuries of industrial civilization and a population of billions staggering inexorably towards a Malthusian terminal scenario had turned the planet into a concrete and steel wasteland of cityscapes — a place where a gallon of clean water cost more than a day in a simsense VR pod, solitary living quarters were an expensive luxury, and blue sky was a thing of old twenty-first century threedys. Day-to-day life on Earth was defined by escaping from it as much as possible — and space was the ultimate escape.

Thus began the Stellar Diaspora: mankind’s search for a new home worthy of the name. It began with the generation ships, colossal megastructures the size of a spacescraper intended to support hundreds of families at sublight speeds on the long journey to the nearest extrasolar planets with hydrogen in their spectral lines. But with the invention of the Cheyden faster-than-light drive, the number of worlds with the potential for colonization went from less than ten to more than a hundred virtually overnight.

Continue reading →

The Love Boat captain cruises BrickWorld

Actor Gavin MacLeod, best known as Captain Stubing of The Love Boat, made a stop at Brickworld this year. His purpose? To pay a surprise visit to certified Lego professional, Ryan McNaught, who had built a super-sized replica of the Pacific Princess, the ship used in 1970s tv show.

You can also see Ryan’s work in his Flickr stream.

Ent Misbehavin’

Hideous puns aside these Ents by Shannon Sproule (Shannon Ocean) are brilliant. Apparently you’d know this if you were at Brickworld 2011.

Avant Garde Paris

I make no secret of my love for people who build off the grid. This version of Paris in the 1930s cleverly builds to a curve. What’s more impressive is that it’s a collaboration between three builders: LegoManiac (LM), Captain Spaulding and 74louloute for the recent Fanabrique convention. Très bien!

Cars Roundup

There are too many fantastic entries this month into LUGNut‘s Cars, Too theme, so I do believe I’m just going to list my favorites here, in no particular order. We are, after all, big fans of all things Pixar here at this humble blog.

So! Onto the cars.

Tim Inman, with Giselle Grocery Getter:

Peter Blackert, with Ramone:

Peter Blackert, with Ramone’s sister, Coral:

Nathan Proudlove, with a LEGO Chatterphone (While not in Cars, necessarily, this one DOES figure into another Pixar favorite!):

Die Roboter – Moog in LEGO

Moog synthesizers helped revolutionise music. The Arvo Brothers LEGO MiniMoog captures the retro futuristic look of these iconic instruments in an incredible way. Fabulous.

EDIT: In my haste to blog this I completely missed (as pointed out in the comments) that there is actually a working MIDI interface in this. Which makes it 198.2% better.

When Worlds Collide

Ted Andes calls this ship an M-Wing Viper, and sets it in the Star Wars universe. I can’t help but see some Cylon Raider in the shape, though, and the Viper name also reminds me of Battlestar Galactica.

All talk of provenance aside, this is just a well built ship. The wings blend smoothly between parts with lovely effect. Then there is the sticker usage, just enough without going overboard. In addition, the stickers on the windscreen knock that piece in a completely different direction than I’m accustomed to.