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.

LEGO City 60304 Road Plates: A whole new system for your town [Review]

For most of my life, if you wanted streets in your LEGO town, you either cleared a path on your floor or table or used some LEGO baseplates printed with the road pattern. These big baseplates predate even the minifigure, and are a classic staple of the LEGO system. But for 2021, LEGO is changing things up, introducing a new design for roads that uses a modular plate and tile system. To kick things off, the new core system is 60304 Road Plates, which retails for US $19.99 | CAN $24.99 | UK £17.99 and includes 112 pieces. Let’s take a look at the new system and see if it stacks up.

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.

Click to read the full hands-on review of the new LEGO Road Plates

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2020 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 16

Happy holidays to all of our fellow LEGO builders! As is tradition, we at The Brothers Brick will be opening our advent calendars as we count down to Christmas. We’ll also be sharing commentary on each one, which will be both insightful and hilarious!

This year we have new Harry Potter, Star Wars, City and Friends advent calendars to open. We will be sharing images of the new calendars every day through Christmas, and hope that you’ll join us! Let’s see what there is to open on Day 16.

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Behold! The Power of Rome!

You can hear them an hour before they arrive. Ten thousand footsteps all in perfect sync, marching to war, wielding spears and swords and covered in armor. That’s the image builder Big Stannis creates with his epic Roman legionnaires.

This build is nearly beyond description. You can’t help but stare at the shouting soldier above, hearing his voice command the 144 troops into battle. I’m super impressed by the use of little yellow hands to form Rome’s symbols on the shields. The pieces use in the armor and helmets is equally expert.

Oddly, my favorite part is the dirt. Yes, the brown and tan pieces. I’m a sucker for well-constructed LEGO dirt, and this is another masterpiece. Using the round flat bricks is a method I haven’t incorporated into my builds, but I will now!

Minifigures, monster trucks, and Technic pins – LEGO’s 2021 Spider-Man sets are full of surprises [Review]

On January 1st, several new Spider-Man themed sets will be available from LEGO. Among them are three vehicle-centric offerings: 76174 Spider-Man’s Monster Truck vs. Mysterio (US $39.99 | CAN $49.99 | UK £44.99), 76173 Spider-Man and Ghost Rider vs. Carnage (US $19.99 | CAN $24.99 | UK ), and 76172 Spider-Man and Sandman Showdown (US $9.99 | CAN $13.99 | UK £8.99). Spider-man really isn’t known for his reliance on vehicles (much less monster trucks), but he does have some amazing friends, and as a result there are a lot of interesting minifigures to explore here. Not to mention a spectacular Technic discovery in that tiny Sandman set. Intrigued? Then read on and see what’s up!

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with early copies of these sets for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Click to read the full hands-on review

This epic 5000-piece Razor Crest from the Mandalorian is the perfect tribute to the trendiest spaceship out there

By this point, I’m pretty sure everyone and their mother has watched The Mandalorian (except my own mother, who only watches PBS). It’s a popular show, and for a good reason: it takes the western-cowboy movie vibes of A New Hope and runs with it, letting us see a grittier side of everybody’s favorite space fairy tale kingdom. It’s got a cute little Yoda-species kid, a more fleshed-out version of the mysterious Mandalorian Boba Fett, and plenty of epic gunfights. As a result, the spaceship that hauls around Mando (a.k.a. Din Djarin), the Razor Crest, has become almost as recognizable as the TIE Fighter or the X-Wing. And just like those venerable ships, the Razor Crest has received the epic treatment from Jarek Książczyk (Jerac), a master Star Wars LEGO builder.

Click to see more of this beautiful bounty hunting craft

LEGO Technic 42125 Ferrari 488 GTE “AF Corse #51” [Review]

Did you know that LEGO has been partnering with Ferrari for more than 15 years already? Over the years, the companies presented more than 50 building sets, and in 2021, the fruitful partnership continues with LEGO Technic 42125 Ferrari 488 GTE “AF Corse #51”. This is the third appearance of the iconic 488 GTE in a LEGO product; in 2018, 75886 Ferrari 488 GT3 Scuderia Corsa featuring a minifigure of Danish race car driver Christina Nielsen and 75889 Ferrari Ultimate Garage came with nearly identical mini-copies of the car. The new Technic model, although still being a red Ferrari covered in a ton of stickers, has very little in common with the Speed Champions sets since it consists of 1,677 pieces and is almost half a meter long. The set will be available from January 1, 2021 for US $169.99 | CAN $229.99.

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.
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2020 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 15

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We came from the land of ice and snow

While I’m boringly American in culture, I do have a significant amount of Scandinavian ancestry, as attested by my Swedish surname. Though I’m sure my ancestors were the same lowly farmers in Sweden that they were when they arrived in the United States several generations back, I like to imagine that somewhere among my forebears were some axe-swinging Vikings pillaging Irish fields so green with Led Zeppelin playing in the background, rowing longships like this LEGO one designed by Jonas Kramm across the North Sea. On they sweep with the threshing oar, seeking that rich western shore, crewed by a small army of CMF Series 20 Viking warriors. The serpent prow of the ship is lovely, as is the simplicity of the whole construction. Valhalla, I am coming!

Love Viking builds? Then check out the TBB archives here. And see more of Jonas’ builds here, too.

A tale of two GTOs

The Ferrari 250 GTO may be one of the most beautiful cars ever built. It’s certainly one of the most valuable, with a 1963 example currently holding the record for the world’s most expensive car having sold a few years ago for $70 million. However, with its shapely curves and swooping lines, it’s a challenge to translate to LEGO, which makes it quite a surprise to come across not one, but two stunning renditions in brick debuting online within short order. First up with have the 250 GTO wearing its iconic red paint job by builder Lennart Cort.

And then we have a gorgeous version by Jens M. which is modeled after a specific real example that bears the blue-and-yellow livery of its former Swedish driver.

What’s fascinating to look at here is how the two builders–both excellent in their craftsmanship–have approached the model differently. Both cars are roughly the same scale (about 1/15th, according to Lennart) and despite being built completely independently of one another, employ the same tires, hubs, windscreen, and even headlights. But that’s about where the overlap ends. For instance, the front fascia is radically different between the two versions, although both clearly evoke the source material. Continue reading →

Man, this thing is seriously buggy

If you spend any time working on a computer, and let’s face it, we all spend more time on computers than usual these days, you’ve probably experienced the occasional glitch with your graphics card. I think that Ivan Martynov may have discovered the real cause of all those graphic glitches. This dark and colorful critter is snacking on a graphic card, and by the look of it, he’s going to do some damage. Aside from the many printed tiles used on the computer module, I love the use of a Creeper face from the Minecraft theme.

2020 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 14

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When you have to be separated over the holidays

The holiday season has been a tough one this year. The COVID situation in the US means that I can’t be with all the people I care about, and every wintery milestone goes by with a hefty helping of separation. But, thanks to Allyson Gail I can at least share a wry bit of LEGO creativity that makes a good pun out of the whole deal. She’s once again taken the hard-to-repurpose brick separator and turned it into something special. This time it’s a holiday wreath that could easily go toe-to-toe with LEGO’s own offering.

You’d be forgiven if you thought this was just a clever arrangement of parts on a flat surface. But, if you look closely, you can see that all of the separators are actually connected by a hinge plate. That means that this creation can even go on a wall (if you hang it from a standard over-the-door wreath hook). And let’s also take a moment to enjoy the construction on that bow! The smooth lines and curves really play well with the texture of the separators.

My own collection of green brick separators is too small to duplicate this build myself, but maybe I can find some other holiday creation to reverse engineer. I’ll have some time on my hands, after all…