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.

This small LEGO fishing boat is simply Fabu-lous!

Building the gentle curve of a boat hull in LEGO bricks can be a challenge. That is, unless you find an old Fabuland boat part in your collection like Norton74. He promptly put it to good use as the start of a fishing boat full of the kind of details we have come to expect from Andrea. The simple dock gives a good setting without taking attention away from the vessel. It includes a small cargo hold and a rig for hauling in the day’s catch. Round, white studs give the boat a proper wake in a bed of transparent blue as it approaches the dock at the end of a long day.

Fab Boat

Sketching out the Diary of a Wimpy Kid in LEGO

While Jeff Kinney may be the original creator of Manny Heffley from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise, builder SDR. may be the first one to immortalize is visage in LEGO. Younger brother of series protagonist Greg, the smallest of the Heffley clan is also the most spoiled (or at least from the perspective of the Diary, he is). And this brick-built doodle looks like it’s been lifted – or rather torn – right off the page! There’s quite a bit of minifigure headgear used in this caricature, notably relying on the standard space helmet to form those great big buck teeth. And the paper background is no slouch either, with some brilliant linework forming that wide rule on the notebook paper. The blue lines are even show the varied shades of color thanks to cheap printing on thin paper. What a great detail!

Manny Sketch

In the category of Far East Elegance

With Chinese New Year coming up, it is no surprise that we are seeing a bevy of Asian-inspired LEGO creations from our friends around the globe. BrickheXe presents The Hidden Sakura, and it is for the Far East Elegance challenge over at Brickscalibur. We are greeted by two regal gate lions guarding the round entryway. Beyond that, a bonsai tree promises a tranquil garden visit. Outstanding textures abound in this exquisite scene.

The hidden Sakura

TBB Weekly Brick Report: LEGO news roundup for January 13th, 2024 [News]

In addition to the amazing LEGO models created by builders all over the world, The Brothers Brick brings you the best LEGO news and reviews. This is our weekly Brick Report for the 2nd week of January, 2024.

TBB NEWS AND REVIEWS We are wrapping up our end-of-year features this week, including our Builder of the year and our Creation of the year. We also took another look back, on our most popular reviews, and we saw one more Creator 3in1 set review, of flowers in a watering can.

Click through to read more LEGO news from around the world

Top ten TBB LEGO reviews of 2023 [Feature]

With 2023 behind us, we’ve been looking back on LEGO moments, and crowning our LEGO Builder of the Year and LEGO Creation of the Year, congratulations to both. But one of the things that our readers enjoy about our content is our in-depth set reviews. Many of our readers (myself included) count on our reviews to help them decide whether or not to buy that new modular, or that Star Wars set packed with unique minifigures. So, lets take a look back over our most popular reviews of 2023 based on total views.

Find out which of our LEGO reviews was the most popular in 2023

With 7,000 pieces, this golden LEGO dragon welcomes in the New Year

Next weekend, the LEGO convention Brickvention will return to Melbourne, Australia, bringing with it so many brick-built creations from the continent. Now we’ve seen some pretty impressive stuff from this show in past years, so it should be no surprise that a LEGO dragon of this scale will be making an appearance for this year’s con. From the mind of Donny Chen, this marker of the coming Chinese New Year 2024 can stretch out to 2 meters long and contains 1300 2×4 oval tiles as golden scales.

As impressive as the body is, with a flexible skeleton supporting all those tiles, the dragon’s face is also quite the marvel. Pearl gold has a fairly limited part palette, but Donny is still able to create some fantastic shapes in constructing the eyes, crown, and jawline of this majestic mythical beast. I particularly like his use of 1×1 slopes to create the appearance of small scales along the dragon’s snout and chin. I hope those of you able to make it to Melbourne can enjoy it in person.

In the golden forest, a LEGO dragon blocks the way

When I first spotted this exquisite LEGO creation by F.S. Leinad, it was most definitely the dragon that made me stop for a deeper peek. It’s such a beautiful agglomeration of parts and connections forming the small beast. With a neck made from a robot’s foot and horns from minifigure goggles, there’s so much to love about its construction. But you may not see the forest for the dragon, so to speak. These yellow-foliated trees are a wonder! They form such natural shapes with their trunks and boughs, providing an irregular, natural look that’s a far cry from the standard LEGO leaf parts. I’m absolutely taking notes on this one!

"More afraid of you than you are of it"

The Home of Wisdom was built on wise parts usage

In looking upon Simon Schweyer’s elegant LEGO Home of Wisdom, I feel smarter already. Simon goes on to tell us that this home’s occupant Futuros couldn’t sleep. He found no inner peace. After reading philosophical books, he simply couldn’t turn off his thoughts. What really existed? And what was just imagination? And why did anything exist, rather than nothing? That is surely some lofty stuff to be thinking about as you try to sleep. You know what keeps me up at night? Getting that song My neck, my back stuck in my head and also wondering if there’s beer on the sun. Cleary I could use a bit of philosophy and wisdom from a stay in this stunning home.

Home of Wisdom

As if that isn’t brilliant enough, the place is lit at night and I don’t mean two 40s of Malt Liquor kind of lit.

Home of Wisdom

“Orange you glad I didn’t say red panda”

Amid the social media universe of artists, there is a creative prompt known as the color wheel challenge. The artist must complete a separate piece for each wedge of a color wheel, typically consisting of red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, and pink. And LEGO character builder extraordinaire Steven Howard (aka Ghalad) has taken up the challenge in brick form with this first submission for the orange slice. Despite the misnomer, it’s fair to say that a red panda is quite the orange beast. But I’m pretty sure (and feel free to fact-check me on this one, dear readers) that a red panda has never presided over a fiefdom in the history of the animal. Nevertheless, fiction or not, this is still a dynamite character exuding all the regal glory that Ailurus fulgens can muster. Very much looking forward to the next wedge, Ghalad!

Orange - The Red Panda Prince of the Northlands

And if you’d like to see more of Steven’s awe-inspiring work, please take a look in our archives.

The man in the Moon isn’t taking visitors today

You know LEGO’s 10315 Tranquil Garden? What if it was a bit more… Other-worldly? Might it look something like this Crescent Moon Garden by Nannan Zhang? I would say so! Nannan – formerly of these pastures, of course – was inspired by a real-world garden sculpture hybrid for this, and I love his take on it. I have to imagine it’s set on some distant world with floating rocks, giant trees, and a grumpy hermit who built a whole temple just so he could get some peace and quiet away from the world. Well, sorry, grumpy hermit, but I want to come and visit!

Crescent Moon

Twice the helmets for double the NPU

Hot off the heels of featuring in many of our end-of-year lists, Maxx Davidson gets off to a cracking start with his first LEGO build of 2024. Or should that be a… Croaking start? With the latest Iron Forge seed part, he’s crafted one of the cutest amphibians out there: the red-eyed tree frog. Said seed part is the minifigure helmet, and there are actually two variants used here. Both designs have been around for a long time, albeit in decidedly modern colours! The classic spaceman helmet in orange makes up the frog’s toes. Meanwhile, the flowers use a colour variation that’s barely a couple of years old – the ‘newer’ crash helmet in coral pink. I say newer – that part is now 30 years old! (Holy heck, that part is 30 years old?! Where does the time go…)

Red-eyed tree frog built for this year’s Iron Forge! Seed part of a minifig helmet used 14 times.

LEGO Creator 3-in-1 31149 Flowers in Watering Can: Transformations and the conservation of studs [Review]

Traveling the yellow brick road from the savannah to the windowsill, we arrive at a home for some flowers and winged creatures. Today we take a look at LEGO Creator 3-in-1 31149 Flowers in Watering Can. This set caused us to sit back and reflect a bit on the nature of 3-in-1 sets and if more thought is going in to the secondary models than used to – and if so, is it working? Here’s our review of this 420-piece set, which is available now from LEGO.com for US $29.99 | CAN $39.99 | UK £24.99.

Read on for our full review