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.

All your baseplates are belong to us

When I was a kid, LEGO’s raised baseplates were among the coolest parts in my budding collection. But as I grew as a builder, I found myself using them less and less. It’s quite difficult to incorporate a the simplistic features of a raised baseplate into great, detailed model, but you wouldn’t know that from looking at this fantasy tower by Eyrezer. Hiding at the core of this diorama is the massive light yellowish green baseplate from a mid-2000’s Belville set. Combined with whimsical architecture and that huge onion dome from the Raya sets, this elven manor is glorious. See if you can spot all the other innovative parts uses, like the umbrella top, numerous hairpieces, leaf sprues, and even Bionicle statue.

Check out a few other times skilled builders have incorporated raised baseplates.

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.

This flower mantis wants you to put up your dukes

This LEGO flower mantis built by Takamichi Irie is so pretty. It’s also deadly if you happen to be its prey…or a male flower mantis. I’m not sure whether I want to fight it or kiss it. Either way, it’s probably best I keep a safe distance from anything that would bite my head off after mating, not that I’d be into that sort of thing. (Well, that got awkward fast!) While you’re mulling over how that would work out, take a look at why we are so smitten by anything Takamichi does. On second thought, maybe I can give this pretty flower mantis just a tiny smooch. What can go wrong?

TBB Weekly Brick Report: LEGO news roundup for January 8, 2022

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 first full week of January 2022.

TBB NEWS AND REVIEWS Our start-of-year avalanche of set reviews tapered off a bit this week but we had two exciting features! A new LEGO Brand Retail Store set and the announcement of our 2021 TBB Builder of the Year!

[REVIEW] LEGO Gift with Purchase 40528 LEGO Brand Retail Store – Take the whole store as a trophy — Now you can hold the power of LEGO Brand Retail in the palm of your hands. See what Chris B has to say in his review.
[NEWS] The Brothers Brick LEGO Builder of the Year 2021 — Markus Rollbühler is the winner of the prestigious title TBB Builder of the Year!

Click through to read more LEGO news from around the world

Another day in Allanar

For many of us, our first LEGO collaborations are with our siblings. Brother builders Isaac and John Snyder know that life gets away from us as time goes on, but thankfully they managed to get another session in that gave us some great results. After knocking out the Everdell castle they took a little trip to the countryside of Alnya to show us a day in the life of a Dwelf. Lush with wildlife and foliage, this little cottage on the edge of Allnar forest is full of interesting parts usage and plenty of character. That purple door certainly makes a statement, but I love the buckets on the chimney or chainlinks around the well.

Continue reading →

This jester will keep the royal court entertained

Markus Rollbühler has created this impressive build of a juggling jester. The use of vibrant pink and purple in the colour scheme has made this one eye-catching model. The entertainer has some great details such as the frilly sections of the costume which are cleverly represented by skirt pieces at the upper shoulders. Torches, fruits, and even a knife have been slotted onto a flexible tube piece, used to portray the items in mid-air. It appears the jester might be planning to add more to the mix as some apples and a glass jar are suspiciously placed on the table below him.

Spacey-Racey Swoosh Champions

When you love spaceships, it’s impossible not to like racecars. And vice versa. They two go hand in hand like… Cheerios and milk. PaulvilleMOCs combined the best of both worlds in this colourful racer. The racecar influence, as well as the respective sponsor decals, stems from usage of odd car elements from an old promotional LEGO set released in Cheerios boxes.

PaulvilleMOCs originally built this racer as a parts experiment for our good friends at New Elementary. Check out his article where he explores these strange promotional sets which barely pass as LEGO, proving that even the weirdest of the weird can be used in LEGO creations!

This upgraded Iron Man armor is ready for battle.

I recently reviewed LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 76206 Iron Man Figure and found it to be a fun, if slightly flawed, take on the ol’ Aluminum Avenger. Builder Nobu_Tary must have felt similarly, because they’ve taken a stab at giving the set an upgrade. Nobu’s approach gives the armor a thicker neck, reshapes the torso, and hides the visible hip joints beneath some inverted slopes. Plus Nobu has eliminated the need for many of the stickers on the set’s arms and legs by building out similar detail with appropriately colored tiles and slopes. If you dig the upgrades, you might want to check out Nobu’s other mech and figure builds right here.

This is what you call a pop-up

One of the themes I wish LEGO would pick up is the cyberpunk theme. The visibility of segregation between rich and poor is something that always strikes my interest. The same goes for this latest build by Swestar. We can see a clear separation between the poor and the rich. The world is filled with neon signs. These have been made with an assortment of tiles to create LEGO letters. The result is stunning. We get references to Tron and Atari and a lot of other references that are lost on me because I am not much of a gamer.

The best thing about this beautiful build is the fact that the triangular sign which features retro game characters can actually spin. Check out the video.

Continue reading →

Intergalactic villainy has never looked so stylish.

LEGO fans will often borrow from each other’s work, but builder Redverse has taken that to a whole new level with this tribute to fellow builder Patrick Biggs. As a Secret Santa gift to Patrick, Redverse has created P.B. Vader, an avatar for Patrick dressed in a stylish suit and trench coat ensemble, with a matching Darth Vader helmet. To drive home the relation to Patrick, P.B. Vader is holding a microscale version of one of Patrick’s own creations, The Branching Elk.

Art Nouveau book covers

LEGO has been into books as of lately. We got the LEGO Ideas 21315 Pop-Up Book, the Hogwarts Moments books, the Disney Storybooks, the 40410 Charles Dickens Tribute, and more. So as a LEGO fan, why not hop on the trend? That is exactly what Ted Andes must have thought. They created a series of lovely hardcover books with Art Nouveau-inspired cover art to go along with the Wasp-wing Table Lamp we featured a while back.

The blue book looks quite elaborately embellished with golden details which make the satin white jewels pop. The green book uses Spider-Man’s web as a very artistic cloud and the minifigure butterfly wings are used to represent a magical transparent butterfly. Most of all this is a very ingenious way to display minifigures you like and it can be translated to any theme.

LEGO Gift with Purchase 40528 LEGO Brand Retail Store – Take the whole store as a trophy [Review]

For ten years, LEGO has celebrated grand opening events with delightful models of LEGO brand stores for lucky customers with qualifying purchases. While the last few versions have been minifigure scale, the original from 2012 was a stylish microscale model. This year’s update seems to be celebrating the anniversary of this concept by revisiting the design of the original. Qualifying customers at new store celebrations will receive the 40528 LEGO Brand Retail Store as a gift with purchases over US $125 | UK £125. No word on the limit for our Canadian friends yet but this should be available for new store openings in select locations worldwide after January 1st, 2022. Still, this 402-piece modern design features a larger floor plan than its predecessor and plenty of sets to catch your eye within a tiny package. Let’s take a tour around the building, shall we?

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Continue reading →

Smaug the brick-built dragon

We’ve seen LEGO Tudor-style buildings before, and quite often the building is the main focus of the creation. We’ve also seen LEGO brick-built dragons before, and just like the Tudor-style buildings, they too tend to be the main focus of the creation. Not so for KitKat1414, however. They built an amazing Tudor-style house to represent one of the houses of Lake Town and it is lit! No literally, it is on fire!

For the woodwork on the house, Kitkat1414 used window frames and filled those in with bars to represent the wooden beams. In other places, the window frames were filled in with cheese slopes representing stained glass windows. Often these types of buildings can be very earth-toned, and while that’s mostly the case for this one, if you look closely you can spot quite a few colours being used. There is a lot of sand blue and even some lavender hidden in the roof, and the house gets a dark green door which complements the dark red Smaug in a lovely way. The dragon itself is a true work of art and there are multiple parts used in very clever ways. One that really deserves a quick mention is the use of the Bionicle minifigure legs for the dragon’s nose bridge and eye sockets. The last part that deserves a little highlight is the angled bar with stud used to represent icicles. And naturally, there are quite a few Tolkien references hidden in this wonderful build. Can you spot them all?