Small LEGO scenes like this make me smile. With just a few parts and a simple story, Eli Willsea crafts a fun and colorful vignette of a hedgehog taking a walk after a light rain. The chopstick element makes perfect spines, yellow rainboots are instantly recognizable, and he even has a frog friend along for the ride.
After a galaxy-wide sigh of relief, one of the first things that will have crossed the newly-formed New Republic’s mind will have been ‘OK, but what do we do with all this stuff?’. After all, the Empire had a some pretty formidable weapons of war that suddenly needed new purpose. Fortunately, budding entrepreneurs like LEGO builder Dominique Boeynams were on hand to transform them into something better suited for peacetime. Dominique managed to get an AT-AT all the way back to Earth (don’t ask how – I gather he had to promise a lot of freebies), chopped its top off, and now arranges safaris with a Star Wars twist. It’s actually perfect for the job; that heavy armour comes in handy when the lions get hungry, see. They tend to have better luck picking off unruly tourists doing their best Luke Skywalker impression…
Today LEGO revealed the next four sets to join the thriving Botanicals line of life-like plant models. Coming on January 1st, LEGO Botanicals Mini-Orchid (10343) and LEGO Botanicals Lucky Bamboo (10344) complete the “Four Gentlemen” quartet alongside the Chrysanthemum (10368) and Plum Blossom (10369) sets that were released earlier this year. They are joined by LEGO Botanicals Pretty Pink Flower Bouquet (10342), a loose arrangement of flowers like the Wildflower Bouquet (10313). On February 1st comes LEGO Botanicals Flower Arrangement (10345), which features some of the largest flowers yet in a decorative vase.
Additionally, Botanicals moves from Icons to its own theme, complete with a new logo.
See what’s blooming in these four new Botanical sets!
When you go chasing LEGO rabits, you never know where you’ll end up. Perhaps, like Alice, you’ll find yourself at a mad tea party, like the one created by Centuri Chan and Wendy Graham from over 80,000 bricks! This entirely bonkers display took home Best in Show and People’s Choice prizes from Christchurch Brickshow 2024, and it’s easy to see why with the incredible characters and whimsical details at such enormous scale. To get a sense of just how big this scene is, squint and you can see a minifig-scale tea party under Alice. Curiouser and curiouser!
Uninvited Alice sits at the head of the table with yellow hair that only a very rude host would say wants cutting. If you want to ask Alice how she got that lovely powder blue dress, it took three copies of the LEGO Creator expert Vespa 125 to source the required bricks. (The builders added a cheeky tattoo tribute!) I love the use of pies tarts for buttons. Hopefully there are no knaves around to steal them.
Click to feed your head like the Doormouse said!
Lately, builder Alex Eylar has been absolutely knocking it out of the park with builds dedicated to creating a LEGO-made ambiance. I covered a pair of his brick-built spaces not too long ago, but I think I like Alex’s latest creation even more. A combination gas station and restaurant, this building and it’s superb lighting convey the desert at dusk perfectly. There’s so much detail, including the cacti, shelves inside the convenience store, and signage for the restaurant around back. But my favorite detail is the obscured brown car sitting along-side the building.
When it comes to solving mysterious dungeons that make lesser heroes shake and shiver, Jack McKeen has recruited a party of meddling adventurers you can count on. The LEGO minifig team is composed of Lady Daphne the Fair, Sir Fredrick the Foolhardy, The Orange Crone, The Wandering Gastronomer, and the Curse-ed Hound of Fear and Hunger (Although they are known to team up with the likes of Darkest Knight, Uruk’el the Vexing, and TV legend Don Knotts).
Jack’s medieval remix of the Scooby Gang is an inspired bit of figbashing that pairs the personality of each character with the perfect fantasy… parephernalia. He even built out an appropriately spooky dungeon diorama for the ensemble. The deathly statue is an especially chilling sight with its binocular bones.
This madcap builder is no stranger to pop-culture remixes. We loved his sci-fi twists on Breaking Bad and Mr. Freeze. As for this gang of medieval gang of mystery solving meddlers, Jack put them together for the Brickscalibur “Adventuring Party” category. The competition runs through January 15, 2025.
You ever run into a LEGO build that just perfectly sums up your day? While my rushing today was entirely computer-oriented (and involved way too much work in Crystal Reports for my own sanity), the character in this creation by greenarj has far more of a physical speed built up. With a brilliantly-blurred background, this character creation is a stellar woman on the go. Triangle tile sunglasses and banana-curled blonde hair highlight her face. Toothy plates, a banana collar, and a minifigure skirt simulate a white blouse under her black jacket. And don’t forget the banana/bucket handle buckle on her bag, which is absolutely astounding! With all the fruit showing up, I have a sneaking suspicion this lightspeed design is for the Mind that Banana contest over on New Elementary.
One of the LEGO themes that came out during my dark age (the period between childhood and adulthood when some fans stopped buying LEGO sets) was Exo-Force, a theme with a human and a robot faction and their battling mechs and vehicles. The designs were a perfect blend of anime and cyberpunk. This mech by Ryuhei Kawai is a fantastic reboot of the theme with plenty of modern mech construction techniques. The larger angled upper legs with the thin black calves give the mech a sporty look, while the machine gun with ammo belt feeding it from the shoulder and the large chainsaw-looking blade on the right hand show that this mech means business.
Sometimes a handfull of the right LEGO elements can make you look at your collection in a whole new light. This “Midnight Mushrooms” vignette from Eli Willsea is just such a build, invoking a whole matgical world on a base just 8 studs in diameter. The bulbous tree tops are made from Zamor Spheres, bygone Bioncle ammo, while the mushroom caps come from the Clikits jewelry line from the early 2000s. At ground level, the smiling salamander is a Friends recolor of Elsa’s magical pet and provides the perfect contrast to the cool blues. It’s a fantastic mix of unusual parts.
LEGO has announced the latest iconic work of art to become an official set: LEGO Art 31214 LOVE, based on the sculpture from artist Robert Indiana. LOVE joins other classic works in LEGO like the LEGO Ideas 21333 Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh and 31213 Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci. Keeping with the love theme, the set is designed as a collaborative experience for two adults to build together. You can buy LOVE starting January 1st or pre-order now for US $79.99 | CAN $99.99 | UK £69.99.
Check out the full details to see if LOVE is all you need!
Over the past three years, Jakob Kaiser and his LEGO building community, The Workshop, have an annual castle collaboration themed on Gothic builds and time of day. First Gothic: Mistlands focused on dawn. Gothic II: Twilight explored dusk. Now, comes the grand finale: Gothic III: Noctural, with Jakob’s showstopper contribution: Moonshade Cathedral. The massive diorama is a masterclass in medieval brickwork, landscaping, and presentation and the builder’s most impressive work to date. Let’s take a closer look!
Click to see more of Jakob’s impressive cathedral!
First started in 2017, the Build to Give initiative is a yearly event put on by LEGO to help get our favorite building sets into the hands of the children who need them. This is done each year with the help of LEGO fans across the globe who use social media or shop in physical LEGO stores. Repeating the same goal as was used in 2023, every LEGO heart made in-store or shared on social media (or on the LEGO Play app) with the hashtag #BuildtoGive sends a LEGO set to children in need of play all around the world.
The donation process is done through a network of charities partnering with the LEGO Group this holiday season, which has resulted in helping more than 9.1 million kids over the last 7 years, and can help up to another 1.5 million in 2024. Here at TBB, we’ve got some ideas pumping with an appropriately-themed heart of our own. What kind of heart will you make for #BuildtoGive?