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.

Blessed brick Jubilee Church is a divine achievement

ARK.builds’ 1:125 scale model of the Jubilee Church in Rome is a stunning facsimile with its accurately recreated curved walls, a supremely technical feat.

I’m just blown away by this model; there’s complexity in representing a very organic real-world building and ARK.builds made it look easy. With such a complicated exterior I didn’t expect to see was any kind of interior, but he’s done it up complete with pews, organ, altar, and cross.

I asked the builder how these stunning curved walls were achieved and he shared the photo below. It looks incredibly fiddly with multiple hinges but it certainly got the job done.

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April showers bring May flowers, right? Right?

Perhaps it has been all this time indoors. Maybe it’s the fact that it has been raining a bunch, and I have small children who cannot be kept out of the mud by anything short of shock collars (which I have not tried, for the record). But when I see this build by why.not?, I get the feels. It’s sad and grey, with only dark and dingy colors, just like an afternoon of re-runs of Clifford the Big Red Dog with toddlers with rain pouring down outside. While I love the rocks made from the huge pieces, and the decrepit shrine is well done, too, it’s the rain that strikes me most with this build. The brick-built sky, with the slanting dark grey raindrops against the light grey clouds, is melancholy enough, but the dark tan water, with tiles inserted at differing depths to simulate raindrops plunking onto the surface, really brings the effect home. Golly. Are those really raindrops, or just my tears?

Six new LEGO Harry Potter sets revealed for summer 2020 with centaurs, Hogwarts expansion, buildable Hedwig and more [News]

LEGO has revealed six Harry Potter sets coming this summer, expanding the Wizarding World with new minifigures and scenes from multiple films. Hogwarts-based sets include the Astronomy Tower, the Room of Requirement (with new Patronus figures), and the Forbidden Forest: Umbridge’s Encounter (with new LEGO centaurs). The other three sets include Attack on The Burrow, 4 Privet Drive and a brick-built mechanical Hedwig.

These six new LEGO Harry Potter sets will become available on August 1st in the US and two months earlier in other select regions starting on June 1st (though LEGO will be offering pre-orders starting April 30th in some regions). In the US, the Burrow will be a Target exclusive and the brick-built Hedwig will be a Barnes and Noble exclusive–both likely to be available eventually from LEGO as well.

Take a closer look at each of the new LEGO Harry Potter sets coming for summer 2020.

Taking social distancing to the extreme

Some folks are handling this whole social distancing thing better than others. Some dislike it so much that they’ve picketed outside of empty statehouses in large groups with guns and misspelled signs demanding the end to all this safety lockdown hoopla. While you’re mulling over that sound logic, allow me to present a guy who has no problems with social distancing. Harold, the hermit, has lived peacefully atop a rocky island for many years. He’s been doing this for so long, LEGO builder valerius_maximus goes on to say, that the rock supporting his little home has just about eroded away. Soon he’ll have to find another ramshackle hideaway or risk toppling ass-over-tea-kettle into the drink. (As they say in New England.) But for now, the fishing is good, the carrots look like they’re just about ready for harvesting, and Harold has all the friends he needs. Seagulls are friends, right?

76157 Wonder Woman vs. Cheetah now available from LEGO [News]

The newest LEGO DC Comics set 76157 Wonder Woman vs. Cheetah is now available from LEGO. The set comes with 371 pieces and includes three minifigures of Wonder Woman, Cheetah and Maxwell Lord. The set is currently available for US $39.99 | CAN $49.99 | UK £34.99 (with 2x VIP points for the month of May).

The Warner Bros. film Wonder Woman 1984 was originally slated for June 5th, though it has been delayed until August 14th because of the coronavirus. The Wonder Woman set is now available from LEGO along with the new Minions sets and Star Wars helmets.

Click to see more photos of the Wonder Woman LEGO set from our original product announcement.

Isn’t it about time?

This orange, perfectly balanced scale by Joe incorporates microscale vignettes representing the effects of time. There are several details to hunt for and appreciate here — check out the teeny tiny tree trunks on the mountain side of the scales, and the really subtle shaping about a third of the way up from the base of the clock achieved with minifig chairs placed top-to-top.

Will anyone trade me two bricks for one sheep?

I’m trying to build the longest road here, folks. I need those bricks. Anyone who has ever played the board game The Settlers of Catan will instantly relate to this build by Cab ~, with the hexagonal board tiles and the wooden game pieces. This one is built in three dimensions, however, and with LEGO bricks. Impressively, the whole scene is LEGO, including the cards in the background, the table, and the dice. I happen to love mosaics, and the work that went into those cards is well worth it. I also love Catan, so this build has me wanting to have a game night. The only problem is the social distancing. Maybe if we all sit six feet apart it will work…

It’s also an entry to the Iron Forge, the open-to-all-comers entry competition to the famous Iron Builder, so you can see lots of minifigure legs in the build. They give the hexagons their distinctive shape. I also love the clips for the sheep’s grass and the grille tiles for wheat. Now if only I had built my settlement on the bricks.

She called me a steed

Contests bring out a different side in builders. I cut my teeth in the LEGO world making fantasy-based castles and the like over in the Guilds of Historica on Eurobricks, but for contests I have been building out of my comfort zone. First there was some Star Wars builds last May, then more recently a Neo-Classic spaceship, a pirate ship, a butterfly, and a bird. They’re quite different from what I got used to building, and they required different approaches. Most recently, I (Benjamin Stenlund) built an American Mustang, and no, I’m not talking about the muscle car, but about the horse that roams some parts of the Western USA. Though maybe I’ll build some cars soon, too, just for kicks.

Building him (and he is a male, if you look closely, a stud stallion) required patience in shaping like grey castle walls don’t. A plate or two of difference in the legs, the angle of the head, the girth of the chest, all these things required fine tuning and frequent adjustments. I built the head first, because if you start with the body, scaling the head to it becomes a nightmare (or is it a night stallion?), but even so I had to redesign the body multiple times. And pulling apart reddish brown pieces is a harrowing experience, never knowing when one could snap. And then supporting the weight of the whole horse with the tail required some Technic structure; I admit I fudged it a bit, and things did not quite line up, but it’s a custom creation and not an official set, so who cares? It was built for the studless category of the Style it Up contest (hence I made a stud) but I threw in some gratuitous minifigure-leg cacti to enter it into the Iron Forge, too. Now hopefully I can go back to building castles for a while…

Quiet solitude

Sometimes it’s all about getting the right camera angle… And maybe some fantastic vaulted ceilings. This monochrome shrine, built by David Hensel, is an exceptional marriage of LEGO architecture and photography. The lighting gives the whole scene a sense of somber and noble peacefulness. And the way that the pieces mesh together provides an element of age. It’s bold yet austere. If you have never tried to build curves like this, take a crack at it. This style requires a patient hand!

David recently made another completely different monochrome build. This time photography comes into play in a different way. Also take a look at some of these other awesome monochrome creations in our archives.

LEGO Minions sets now available including brick-built Stuart, Kevin and Bob [News]

Two new LEGO sets based on the upcoming animated film Minions: Rise of Gru are now available from the LEGO Store online. The sets include brick-built minions and their lairs (w/ 2x VIP points for May) as well as a motorbike with Gru and various Minions minifigures. LEGO had originally planned on releasing five Minions-themed sets, though it has postponed launching three of them more closely based on the movie which was delayed until next year due to COVID-19.

You can see all five Minions sets from our live coverage of Toy Fair New York, or take a look at all the other new LEGO sets launched in the month of April. More LEGO Minions set photos, piece counts and prices are included after the jump.

Click to see all the new LEGO Minions sets available today

In a house in a tree lived a hobbit

Not all hobbits lived in snug little tunnels under the rolling hills of the Shire. Some of them made their homes in the trees. These adventurous souls were probably Brandybucks or Tooks mind you, and the sensible folks around Hobbiton always suspected they were a little odd in the head. This fantastical LEGO treehouse home built by Mountain Hobbit is a cracker. The tree itself is wonderful, all gnarled and ancient with some serious root action going on, and the house set into the trunk is an interesting selection of angles. But it’s the little details which make this model pop — the vines wrapping around the tree’s branches, the window and the lantern, the hanging bunting, and the little basket of possessions. Lovely stuff.

LEGO and Universal Music Group to create music-based toys [News]

LEGO and Universal Music Group (UMG) have announced a partnership to create a new lineup of music-based sets that seek to inspire children to express themselves musically and explore their creativity through interactivity. The music sets will be revealed later this year and are scheduled for launch in 2021.

Universal Music Group is separate from Universal Pictures which announced a five-year agreement to produce and distribute LEGO movies earlier this week. We also don’t know if the recent LEGO Ideas “Music to Our Ears” competition is at all related to this announcement, though LEGO is evaluating bringing some of the submissions to market as sets.

The full press release and a LEGO music equalizer announcement video are included after the jump.

Click to see the press release and announcement video.