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.

5×10-foot Hoth base diorama includes teeny tiny minifig footprints

Mark Borlase‘s most recent revision to his colossal 5’X10’ Hoth base diorama is a marvel to behold. The entire display consists of 55,000 to 60,000 pieces and has cool features such as 50 real lights and a remote controlled mechanism that deploys troops from the AT-ATs.

The entire creation took over 4 years in the making and consumed about $3000 (that’s a lot of white bricks!). This creation won the recent Star Wars building challenge and was featured in the official LEGO Magazine. Looks like hard work paid off, congratulations Mark!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Rong Yiren goes for mobile surgery

Rong Yiren has been taking a break from his signature Primal Bots. Instead he has embarked on a foray into the realm of medical bots. This one can work you over on the run…

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Great Jumping Star Fighters!

Kevin Fedde posted a pretty nifty little jump fighter. I love those side mounted canopies…

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Tequila Sunrise by Sava

Anthony Sava recently upgraded his Dreyfuss Hudson locomotive. That’s a pretty sweet looking train!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

The gunship Cerberus by Paul Meissner

This great gunship by Paul “legosamurai” Meissner has a definite Matrix vibe to it, but it’s also very original. Paul’s Cerberus is built in a smaller scale than some of the larger hoverships inspired by the movie trilogy, and the large gun pods on either side of the cockpit make the name particularly appropriate.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Get well soon, tadashistate’s girlfriend!

Tadashistate‘s girlfriend is sick. So he built this lovely little heart for her. Boys, take note! And get well soon, whoever you are!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Casual camping

William Wards Shasta Cavavan

Bill Ward has made a very cool compact caravan. It’s based on a Shasta Teardrop Travel Trailer. While the doors are a little hard to find I suspect most of us could whip up a little variant of this to show off in a display.

EDIT We liked this one so much that Andrew blogged it too:

Details like the vent on the roof and Bill’s choice of the old-style door are excellent. The trailer is being pulled by the SUV from 7635 4WD with Horse Trailericon.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

LEGO Designers want our input on future play themes

FINAL UPDATE: Thanks for all the suggestions, readers! We’ve passed on your ideas to LEGO. Look for other opportunities to submit ideas to The LEGO Group through The Brothers Brick’s LEGO Ambassadors in the future.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: LEGO tells us that they didn’t intend for this discussion to take place in public, since that enables their competitors to watch the discussion and steal all your great ideas! So, we’re locking comments, removing the ones posted so far (85!) and asking all of you to use the Contact Form at the end of this post to submit your comments instead.

You don’t need to re-submit your suggestions if you had already left them as a comment; we’ve saved all the comments so far.

——————————-

LEGO Designers have asked the LEGO Ambassadors to help brainstorm ideas on future play themes. Here is the original message:

My name is Phil McCormick; I am a Senior Designer at the LEGO Group working within a small concept group specializing in new theme generation.

We are looking for new LEGO set opportunities within the Play Themes line-up. Play Themes are sets involving characters and stories, where the minifigure always plays a key role. The big theme this year is Power Miners. Some sets from the past include: Agents, Aqua Raiders, Exoforce, and Mars Mission. Usually the stories are conflict-based (good vs. bad) and revolve around treasures or missions. The stories that accompany Play Theme sets help spark the imaginations of our target group: boys aged 7-9.

Currently we are in an “insight phase,” gathering inspiration for the next big Play Themes opportunity and we would really like your input. We hope to involve you as much as possible for the next few months as we take in the ideas. Please submit ideas for themes as detailed below. Limit your words to a few sentences; we encourage you to submit pictures, drawings, MOCs, to accompany each story. Feel free to involve your greater fan community at this point–the more ideas the better.

Things we do look for:
-Simple, well understood themes (Usually, placing a “twist” on a known universe works well).
-Unique Model expression, or play experience to accompany the set.

Things we do not look for:
-Castle, or IP (Star Wars/ Indiana Jones/ Sponge Bob/ etc…). They each have devoted project teams which are separate from us.

The deadline for submissions is Jan 12, 2009; but we do encourage you to post earlier. Thanks and we look forward to your input!

Create a new, never-before-seen, LEGO Play Theme! (Place words and images under the following categories)

Theme Name (something short and catchy):

Characters (who is good and bad guys?):

Conflict (why do they fight, and what do they fight over?):

Setting (where does the story take place?):

Background Info (if relevant):

Please use the Contact Form below to submit your suggestions, using the format requested above:

Before you click Submit!

  • We won’t be able to pass on your suggestions if they don’t follow the format described above.
  • LEGO cannot use suggestions based on IP (intellectual property) owned by other companies, such as Halo, Lord of the Rings, or Pirates of the Caribbean.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Brothers-Brick.com is two years old today! [Editorial]

The Brothers Brick turned three a few months ago, but today is our second anniversary on Brothers-Brick.com.

And what a difference a second year on our own domain has made!

2008 stats 2007 stats
  • 5,973,090 page views
  • 2,006,339 visits
  • 820,532 unique visitors
  • 119,524 unique keywords from search engines
  • 36,382 spam comments
  • 12,307 real comments
  • 4,824 unique referring sites
  • 1,086,362 page views
  • 337,158 visits
  • 131,046 unique visitors
  • 15,062 unique keywords from search engines
  • 26,198 spam comments
  • 2,325 real comments
  • 1,567 unique referring sites

There are Brothers-Brick.com readers in 196 countries and regions around the world:

Notable additions since last year include Mongolia and Madagascar. Next year, we’re hoping to find readers in North Korea, Turkmenistan, and central Africa.

Here are a few of my favorite lists, based on statistics from this past year:

Top Countries Top Keywords Referring Sites
  1. USA
  2. UK
  3. Canada
  4. Australia
  5. Germany
  6. The Netherlands
  7. France
  8. Japan
  9. Poland
  10. Italy
  1. lego blog
  2. 2009 lego sets
  3. lego power miners
  4. lego agents
  5. lego castle advent calendar
  6. ramm lego
  7. lego wall-e
  8. lego pirates 2009
  9. lego
  10. brickarms
  1. Search engines
  2. StumbleUpon
  3. Flickr
  4. Gizmodo
  5. Digg
  6. BB Gadgets
  7. Brickset
  8. Eurobricks
  9. Classic-Castle.com
  10. The old blog
  11. Fark

With a couple of exceptions, our most popular posts in the past year have been news items:

  1. Ed Diment finishes HMS Hood — in 20-foot-long minifig scale!
  2. Zombie Apocafest 2008: Children, avert your eyes!
  3. Rocko summons the worm
  4. LEGO Star Wars 10188 Death Star pics reveal interior and 21+ minifigs
  5. 10193 Medieval Market Village to be released in 2009
  6. First pictures of 2009 LEGO sets
  7. Pixar animator Angus MacLane builds best LEGO Wall-E yet
  8. First pictures of 2009 LEGO Power Miners sets
  9. Possible 2009 LEGO sets
  10. First pictures of 4999 Vestas Windmill set

Most importantly, 2008 has been the year during which you the readers of The Brothers Brick have come together as an online community to nominate your own Ambassadors to The LEGO Group.

Finally, here are some links to historical posts for readers who care:

Here’s to many more years of creativity and community! We hope you’ll stick with The Brothers Brick for the ride. It’s going to be fun.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

A box of train

Box of train

As part of my Wild West Train project I’ve been trying to vary the presentation as well as produce useful instructions for each stage. The final stage let me try a new experiment: packaging the ‘train set’ in its own satin lined wooden box. Fabric is kind of difficult to render without special tools so I decided to go for satin as the easiest.

And of course there are instructions for each part of the train: loco, passenger wagon, lumber wagon, boxcar and caboose.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Sea to snow to sky

For the LUGNuts All But Four (anything but a four-wheeled vehicle) building challenge, Nathan Proudlove has built quite the collection.

Insert requisite Monty Python reference here:

My favorite is this snowcat:

But this simple little biplane is also very cool:

Check out the LUGNuts thread on Flickr for more entries by Nathan and others than I could possibly blog!

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Dark night hold tight

Bundalings takes inspiration from indie rockers Eisley for Bionicle Building Contest 51 — a “bat with butterfly wings”:

Check out more pictures on Brickshelf (and download “Marvelous Things” from Eisley - Room Noises - Marvelous Things, if you like).

Via BioniBlog.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.