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 celebrates 25th anniversary of LEGO video games with 10-part Bits N’ Bricks podcast [News]

December 2020 marks the 25th anniversary since the LEGO company’s first video game released. To celebrate the milestone, the company has produced a 10-part podcast series called Bits N’ Bricks that walk through the history of the plastic brick company’s foray into digital games, from Minecraft to LEGO Island and the LEGO Star Wars games, and everything in between. LEGO says they’ve been working on the show for more than a year, and have interviewed at least 120 people and researched more than 50 games in the course of production. The podcasts will be released weekly, with the inaugural episode launching today. The first episode is actually a teaser that’s not part of the main 10-part series, and along with a Christmas special in a few weeks, means the whole series will run for 12 weeks.

The podcast will be hosted by journalist Brian Crecente and documentarian Ethan Vincent. Crecente has a long history with video game journalism, having founded Kotaku and co-founded Polygon, and Vincent likewise has an impressive resume as an Emmy Award-winning documentary director for PBS.

Check out the timeline below to double-check your own LEGO video games knowledge, and you can read the whole press release and check out a gallery of images from classic LEGO games. Most of us probably thought LEGO Island was the first video game with the LEGO logo, but actually the original LEGO video game, released in 1995, was an educational game produced by SEGA for the Japanese market called Fun to Build. It was followed two years later by the much better known LEGO Island. Continue reading →

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2020 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 2

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. Let’s see what there is to open on Day 2!

Click to see the LEGO Advent Calendars Day 2

LEGO 40370 Push-Along Steam Engine now available for sale [News]

Earlier this year in March, the 40370 Push-Along Steam Engine was a gift-with-purchase (GWP) that required a spend of USD $99. LEGO has now listed it as a direct for sale item and priced at US $19.99 and CAN $26.99 (Not available in the UK Stores)

Click for more details

Cantinas come in all sizes

Not everyone has the money or space needed to acquire the newest Cantina set, but that didn’t stop ron_mcphatty from applying the magic microscale treatment to this iconic location that was once referred to as a wretched hive of scum and villainy. The scene includes all vehicles and other details as the official set, including both moister evaporators, Greedo’s ship, and even has Luke’s speeder.

Not only does this model capture many of the details that make it’s larger inspiration such a fantastic model, it even opens up just like it.

Space themes on wheels

Generally, when one thinks about yore’s classic space themes, big spaceship builds come to mind and occasionally a tiny rover. The G Brix gives us something different – a very large LEGO rover which can be flipped over, each side with its own aesthetic, depending on your mood it can be Blacktron or the Space Police.

The space police portion of the build uses vibrant translucent red elements, including the cockpit, and brilliant blue elements such as tiles and wing pieces. Of course, there are some distinguishing printed “police” tiles and slopes.

Now flip the build over and you get a very cool blacktron build complete in the black and yellow color scheme. Signature elements also included here are the yellow trans-clear cockpit and the printed slope with the blacktron logo.

This vehicle is a model and an RC car as well that can be controlled through an app. Overall it is an awesome build for any fan of classic space themes villainous or heroic.

LEGO reveals Series 21 (71029) minifigures featuring a Space Police Guy, Beekeeper, Ladybug Girl and more [News]

LEGO revealed today on their social media platforms the upcoming Collectible Minifigure Series 21. Consisting of 12 Minifigures instead of the usual 16 or more, the reasons for the reduced number of blind packs is not apparent at the moment. The minifigures will be priced at USD $4.99 | CAN $4.99 and available on 1st January 2021.

Continue reading →

Maybe a Jedi, but not a mechanic

Season two of the Disney+ streaming series The Mandalorian presses on, and in episode four, a very toasted Razor Crest starship makes its way through space as Din Djarin continues on in his quest to reunite the child with his kind. Mihal builds a humorous scene out of LEGO from this episode of the child who is small enough to fit into some crevices and able to get to some electronics necessary for repair, unfortunately, this type of work may not be the child’s calling.

The build for the child here actually looks like a miniature version of the buildable child with his legs and torso being largely brick-built; it looks like many small plates and tiles in tan were utilized for this portion. The child’s head consists of slopes and bricks in sand green, his eyes being the same ones used in the dewback build from the 2019 Escape Pod vs. Dewback micro-fighters set. This built scene is not only expertly executed but also makes great use of wire-like elements and other small pieces like the lightsaber hilts. As always, I cannot wait to see more builds inspired by the show.

2020 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 1

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. Now let’s get the holidays started with day one!

Click to see the LEGO Advent Calendars Day 1

The changing faces of NYC taxis

The image that pops into my mind when I think of New York City is one of urban canyons full of yellow taxis. For decades, taxis in the city that never sleeps were large sedans with big engines. In the last ten years or so, things have been changing, though. NYC taxis are still yellow, but most are now hybrids. And most are made by Toyota, rather than by American manufacturers such as Checker, Chevrolet or Ford.

The Checker Marathon is the classic New York taxi from the sixties and seventies. It was a traditional sedan, with a heavy-duty cab-on-frame construction well-suited for New York’s famously pot-holed streets. Its design changed very little during the two decades that it was in production. It became a New York icon, comparable to London’s black cab or the Routemaster bus. Many movies and TV shows filmed in the Big Apple feature Checker cabs, including Taxi Driver and Ghostbusters, as well as the TV sitcoms Taxi and Friends.
Continue reading →

Absolutely Riddikulus!

Ekjohnson1 shows us that even though LEGO did their best, a good figure can always be improved. The figure in the spotlight is the second edition of the Snape Boggart from the Harry Potter franchise. Although LEGO did a splendid job on creating this figure, it didn’t fully capture the description in the books:

“You will raise your wand — thus — and cry ‘Riddikulus’ — and concentrate hard on your grandmother’s clothes. If all goes well, Professor Boggart Snape will be forced into that vulture-topped hat, and that green dress, with that big red handbag.”

The builder has added the green dress and topped the hat off with a crow, formerly of the Scarecrow CMF. Placing said figure in a well lit diorama complete with a brick built wardrobe and a quite easy yet effective chandelier using the knob wheel and some small flames, makes for one stellar shot.

That’s when an evil woman trapped him on the dark side of the moon

The Brothers Brick contributor Chris Doyle once again builds something based on Mystery Science Theater 3000. What’s his excuse this time?

One of my favorite escapes from reality is Mystery Science Theater 3000. People riffing on bad movies just makes the world seem less bleak, somehow. The best part, though, is that my wife Jennifer is also a big fan. She’s usually more of a “build a LEGO set” person than a “make something new out of LEGO” person, but I was able to tempt her into collaborating on a LEGO Art style mosaic of the latest MST3k head-honcho: Kinga Forrester. (As portrayed by a Felicia Day.)

The techniques we used were very similar to the ones I helped develop for my Wonder Woman collaboration. We bought a couple of LEGO art sets (Beatles and Warhol this time.) We used the LEGO Art Remix site to create several prototype images. We threw away our first few attempts, and combined at least three different versions of instructions for the final image. And then hand-built all the fine details anyway.
Continue reading →

Your favorite desk-mates

I recently finished watching the popular television series The Office, therefore any office supply or item reminds me of the show, this LEGO build of some desk essentials by Joffre Zheng included.

The brick-built models include a grey stapler, a classic #2 pencil, and an eraser. All three builds are composed of bricks with heavy use of tiling and slopes to cover studs and smooth things out. Judging by the grey round 4×4 brick with technic pin holes piece used at the top of the pencil to render the metal eraser binding, these builds are pretty large in scale, much larger than the actual real life objects. If office supplies are your thing, or you’re just missing the workplace or school, then this build is definitely for you!