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.

2019 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 7

Welcome to Day 7 of our LEGO Advent Calendar countdown. Each day, we’ll reveal the four mini-builds from the LEGO Harry Potter, LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Friends, and LEGO City 2019 advent calendars along with commentary from The Brothers Brick team.

If you’re opening one (or more) of these advent calendars along with us, we’ve made sure the pictures and commentary on each day’s models will be behind a jump so we don’t accidentally ruin the surprise. Will Day 7 make an impression?

Click to reveal today’s LEGO advent calendar builds!

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.

Slower than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive

I was recently at the Caterpillar Visitors Center in Peoria, looking at the big construction vehicles made for shaping the Earth in a profound way, from the gigantic mining dump trucks to the tiny little excavators. Somewhere in between are the bulldozers, offered in nearly a dozen sizes. The biggest Caterpillar, the D11, is one huge rig, but shockingly it isn’t the biggest dozer around. That title belongs to the Komatsu D575A-3 Super Dozer, weighing in at 336,400 pounds and measuring 38+ feet long, 24+ feet wide at the blade, and 16 feet high. While Beat Felber‘s LEGO model is not quite so large, it is not small, either. The builder has a whole series of 1:28.5 scale machines, from dump trucks to mining shovels, and the Super Dozer is a super addition to the lineup. The little kid inside of me is drooling all over the keyboard as I look at this beast, because this is the bulldozer every kid imagines driving as a construction worker.

Komatsu D575A-3 Super Dozer

Click to see more, including a video of the dozer at work

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.

Magic keeps Hogsmeade Village together

The Harry Potter universe’s village of Hogsmeade continues to be a great source of inspiration for LEGO builders. I don’t know if it’s the lure of crafting medievalesque buildings in a non-castle creation or the fact that it’s a winter-themed town that isn’t decked out in red and green, but I know it works. The latest one to catch my eye is Roanoke Handybuck’s Hogsmeade Village. The two buildings pushed against each other, bookended by three happy little trees, and blanketed in snow, really captures the feeling of cozy wizarding town. Looking deeper into the scene, you’ll notice a few amazing parts usages that make these cottages look old and ramshackle. Maybe magic is the only thing keeping them standing. The first thing to notice is the lantern made from a pair of brown Witch-king crowns. Most interesting to me though, are the windows framed with neck brackets. Well a relatively stable connection of LEGO parts, it gives an especially rickety look for the windows’ muntins.

Hogsmeade Village

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.

Even with a pair of ears, one can never have too many sets of headphones

Even though I’m not an audiophile, I am a headphone freak. I have one just for watching movies, another for doing conference calls, and another for listening to music without noise cancelling, and yet another one with it if I need the silence. I guess each one works the best for what it was designed for. Having said that, though I have no idea what I’d do with these LEGO headphones made by Andreas Lenander. Perhaps I’d just have them for a showcase accessory. I wonder if replacing that head parabolic reflector with a speaker would make a nice mod. One thing for sure is that it would make an excellent addition to my collection.

Headphones - New Elementary parts fest

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.

Learn the secrets of 10270 Bookshop from LEGO designer Wes Talbott [Video]

LEGO Master Designer Wes Talbott and LEGO Graphic Designer Tore Harmark-Alexandersen sat down to give a tour of the new Creator Expert 10270 Bookshop. In the video, they show off the set, play features, minifigures and give some insight on some nifty details hidden inside.

Some of the revelations include that two of the minifigures are based on Wes’ parents, and that the street address of the Townhouse is actually the internal number indicator for the color Teal which Wes lobbied to have return to the LEGO color palette after a long absence.

10270 Bookshop will be available from LEGO beginning January 1st for US $179.99 | CAN $199.99 | UK £149.99.

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.

Hands-on with 21052 LEGO Architecture Dubai [Review]

The LEGO Architecture sets have recently taken us to London, Paris, Shanghai, and New York, amongst other famous world cities, but the latest places to receive the LEGO skyline treatment are Tokyo and Dubai. 21052 Dubai depicts five famous landmarks of the United Arab Emirates’ most populous city, contains 740 pieces, and will be available in January 2020. It will retail for US $59.99 | EU €59.99 | UK £54.99.

Join us as we take a detailed look at this new stop-off on LEGO Architecture’s world tour…

21052 LEGO Architecture Dubai Review

Read our full review of 21052 LEGO Architecture Dubai

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.

LEGO Exclusives Star Wars 20th Anniversary Obi Wan and Mini Gingerbread House now available with Double VIP points [News]

This weekend (Dec 6 – Dec 9) a Double VIP Points for LEGO shoppers and features two special exclusive gifts with purchases. First up is the second holiday exclusive, the LEGO Mini Gingerbread House (40337) (free with purchases from) $99 and the LEGO Star Wars 20th Anniversary Obi-Wan Kenobi (30624) polybag (free with Star Wars purchases from $40),

Both will be available until supplies run out, though double points is only this weekend and will likely be the last double VIP points of 2019.

Click to see the specific dates and global spend amount for the exclusives

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.

LEGO Creator Expert Modular for 2020 revealed as 10270 Bookshop [News]

LEGO has revealed the upcoming Creator Expert Modular for 2020 as the 10270 Bookshop. The set comes with 2,504 pieces which create a pair of three-story buildings similar to 10218 Pet Shop from 2011. The model features the “Birch Books” bookstore and an accompanying Townhouse. The Bookshop comes with five minifigures and two animals including a chameleon and a blue bird.

10270 Bookshop will be available from LEGO beginning January 1st for US $179.99 | CAN $199.99 | UK £149.99.

Click to take a closer look at the new LEGO modular Bookshop

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.

2019 LEGO Advent Calendars, Day 6

Welcome to Day 6 of our LEGO Advent Calendar countdown. Each day, we’ll reveal the four mini-builds from the LEGO Harry Potter, LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Friends, and LEGO City 2019 advent calendars along with commentary from The Brothers Brick team.

If you’re opening one (or more) of these advent calendars along with us, we’ve made sure the pictures and commentary on each day’s models will be behind a jump so we don’t accidentally ruin the surprise. What bricks will we get for Day 6?

Click to reveal today’s LEGO advent calendar builds!

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.

World’s first AI-powered LEGO sorting machine built with 10,000 LEGO bricks [Exclusive Feature]

There are some individuals who find sorting LEGO pieces therapeutic, but most of us loathe the task. And there are entirely non-LEGO machines that could do it, although what fun is that? Some people have tried to use LEGO to build sorting machines, yet their limitations have been quickly apparent. Enter Daniel West and his incredible Universal LEGO Sorting Machine! This baby uses Artificial Intelligence, with the most extensive index to date, to sort parts at a speedy one brick every 2 seconds!

Watch a video of the sorting machine in action!

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.

LEGO popcorn (the one that got away)

We don’t see many creations from real LEGO designers. I mean…yes we do, but they end up being featured in The Brothers Brick news sections when they launch as official sets. Since LEGO designers are so busy designing actual sets, it is rare to see what they build for fun. Former LEGO Designer Tiago Catarino tells us that this is “one of the first MOCs (My Own Creation) I did while working for LEGO in Denmark, and one of the few that ever got to see the light of day, since 99% of the building I did there was, after all, confidential.” There we have it, the 1% he did for fun.

LEGO Popcorn

So what does Tiago do when not having fun with LEGO popcorn and gets locked down to conduct some serious business? Well, perhaps you might recognize this one or this other one. Serious business, indeed!

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.

Keeping track of the Cuthbertson Land Rover 2A.

Here’s something you don’t see every day. That is precisely how John O’Shea started his write-up, which is fortuitous for me as it offers a neat segue into the rest of this article. Lazy writing? No, call it “opportunistic”. This model is based on the Cuthbertson tracked Land Rover created by J.Cuthbertson in Scotland. Here we see it employs tank tracks bolted onto an extra frame beneath the vehicle. This setup allowed Scottish farmers to navigate through uneven boggy terrain as they tended to their farms. The idea was so popular that it eventually became a factory option.

Cuthbertson Land Rover 2A

This particular Land Rover is equipped with spotlights on the roof as well as a snorkel just in case the farmer gets into some deep doo-doo. Topping out at a little over 20 mph (32 kph) this wouldn’t make an ideal getaway car but if the aforementioned deep doo-doo is in your cards, then the snorkel shall accommodate nicely.

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.