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.

Not so tiny: This microscale LEGO Hogwarts uses over 75,000 pieces

In the Harry Potter films, Hogwarts looked massive and majestic. Although LEGO did a great job with the massive 71043 Hogwarts Castle set, builder Mathieu BL has built a microscale LEGO version of the castle that feels just as big as it should, despite its diminutive size. Part of this can be attributed to the surrounding terrain, which places the building within its proper context. The hills and cliff-sides have been carefully sculpted, utilizing a variety of colors and shapes to achieve a nice degree of realism. The sparkly water adds a touch of beauty, and it consists of loose trans clear and trans-medium blue elements mixed together to emulate the choppiness of the sea.

Turning the model around reveals a quidditch stadium behind the castle. A lot of time and care went into detailing this model. Mathieu spent over 1,200 hours designing and building Hogwarts, and nearly 75,000 pieces were used in its construction.

When photographed from certain angles, the little castle seems huge. Here, it looks absolutely stunning.

If you’d like even more LEGO Hogwarts in your life, be sure to check out our review of set 71043.

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LEGO Ninjago summer 2019 wave revealed with 12 sets [News]

Today, Swiss retailer meinSpielzeug have revealed the summer wave of Ninjago sets, which consists of eight standard sets plus four Spinjitzu Slammers. It’s a song of ice and dust, as the new sets feature two dominant locales of an icy mountain and a dusty desert. The Serpentines are back again as the primary opponents, with a few even sporting fearsome new headpieces. Meanwhile, the Ninjas’ legendary ship, Destiny’s Bounty, has received quite the makeover. No longer a vessel, this time it’s got six monster wheels and the top deck can convert to a flying ship.

According to meinSpielzeug, the sets will launch May 28. We don’t have standard pricing for them yet, but we can make a rough guess on their price points based on the Swiss prices from the retailer.

Don’t miss the rest of the LEGO summer 2019 sets reveals, and be sure to check out the new Toy Story 4, Spider-Man, and The LEGO Movie 2 sets that just went sale a few days ago:

LEGO Architecture
LEGO Batman
LEGO City
LEGO City Space
LEGO Creator
LEGO Friends
LEGO Friends Ocean
LEGO Harry Potter
LEGO Jurassic World
LEGO Ninjago
LEGO Star Wars

Click to check out all the sets below

LEGO Marvel Avengers Tower now available for free with purchase [News]

With the mega-blockbuster movie Avengers: Endgame on the horizon, LEGO is celebrating by offering a fairly substantial gift with purchase: 40334 Avengers Tower. The set comes with 211 pieces and an exclusive Iron Man minifigure (a similar set would typically retail for around $20 US). The promotion is available with purchases of LEGO Marvel Super Heroes sets totaling more than than $75 US | £75 UK | $75 CA for the next two weeks from now until 11:59 pm EST on May 2nd, or whenever supplies run out. (As an added benefit, many Avengers sets currently offer double VIP points too.)

The offer stacks with the Easter seasonal gift with purchase, 853958 Chicken Skater Pod, available with any order of more than $35 US through 11:59 pm EST on April 22nd or until supplies run out.

Additionally, VIP members can get a limited Captain Marvel Art Print (one of three prints available) with LEGO Marvel Super Heroes purchases more than $35. This should stack with the Avengers Tower promotional set.

Click to see more pictures of the LEGO Avengers Tower gift with purchase

A place to find crystals, cupcakes and kidnapped little girls

LEGO Friends (and by extension, Elves) is a theme that had great success both with its target audience and beyond. Many builders love the themes for the exotic colours they brought to the palette, but some, like Isaac Snyder, take inspiration for builds from the Elves theme itself.

This little village has just enough buildings to look busy, and all of them have their own aesthetic while still looking very much like they belong together. My favourite techniques are the roofs, especially the purple windscreen used as an arch on the leftmost cottage. The clean lime grass broken up by printed tiles along with crystals and strange plants give the scene an otherworldly and profoundly magical feeling, just right for the Elves theme.

Superfast redhead has the Italian look

It can be difficult to capture the smooth flowing lines of a beautiful sports car in LEGO without stepping up to a large scale. However Firas Abu-Jaber has managed to make this formidable challenge look easy with this excellent brick-built Ferrari Testarossa. The name means ‘Redhead’ in Italian, so naturally the colour scheme fits its inspiration, but the iconic shape of the famous supercar is also spot-on, with pop-up headlights, an impressively-raked windshield, and those long arcs over the wheels. However, the signature element to this car’s design was always the multiple slash intakes on the vehicle’s flanks, and here they’re recreated perfectly. Lovely building.

Not content with nailing the sumptuous curves of the car’s exterior, Firas has gone the extra mile and included a detailed interior complete with leather-look seats and a dashboard stuffed with instrumentation…

Historical black hole picture and ALMA observatory antenna accurately built in LEGO

Unless you have been living under a black hole, you have probably seen the historical picture of the supermassive black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy. Chilean builder Luis Peña was inspired by the results of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration to build this new icon of science and the ALMA observatory, located in his home country. Luis loves science, and we have previously featured another historical event in science built by him, the Apollo/Soyuz meeting.

The mosaic on the left displays the famous black hole radiowave picture, where the resolution of a 16×16 mosaic actually gives an accuracy almost comparable to the original. Speaking of accurate to the original, the dish of the radio antenna (one of 66 antennas in the observatory) is strikingly clean and parabolic, for the perfect focusing of captured light into the detector. The dish is stabilized by a white rigid hose, making a robust and accurate recreation.

LEGO Education releases two new construction-themed sets for FIRST LEGO League [News]

LEGO has announced two new sets built for STEAM Learning. STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics, and is an academic approach for getting kids enthusiastically involved in education. The LEGO system will include SPIKE Prime, which is the new hands-on learning kits and a new Inspire set released by LEGO Education, along with two additional sets, Boomtown Build and City Shaper.

The Inspire sets are both architecture-themed (though they have no relation to the popular Architecture LEGO theme), and they will be available for the 2019-2020 FIRST LEGO League and FIRST LEGO League Jr. seasons. Continue reading →

A spaceship built for two

Is there anything more romantic in this universe than a trip to some distant world in a two-seat Neo-Classic Space ship? Aussie LEGO fan aido k makes the dream come true for this lovely couple of space explorers. Just like many other great LEGO models, the design of the spaceship started with a single piece, in this case, a bulky Spinjitzu rotor. The amount of exterior elements on the ship’s body and wings looks just perfect; massive engines, a couple of pipes and small grills create a totally swooshable model.

Dinomite build of a mechanical T-rex

Before the official LEGO House Dinosaurs have had a chance to escape in the upcoming exclusive sets, we’re already getting variants of them. This bad boy by hachiroku24 is a tiny replica of the Technic Dinosaur in the LEGO House. Although it’s not exactly a duplicate in likeness, the broad strokes of it come across quite nicely in capturing the essence of its larger cousin. The clever repeated use of the Minifigure Utility Belt from the Batman Minifigures gives it that unique mechanical look.

Shiny ride for a dark knight

Probably, the worst thing about being Batman is that you always have to keep a low profile. Whether you’re punching criminals or chasing a villain through the Gotham City, the less attention you’re drawing to yourself, the better. But how can Batman be okay with this lifestyle while driving a collection of jaw-dropping vehicles? ianying616 presents an ostentatious alternative: the ultimate edition of the famous Batpod. Completely covered in chrome, including many custom chromed elements, this vehicle was designed to draw the eye. The metallic color of the pieces goes perfectly with their shapes; all the LEGO Technic connectors and panels make the model look like a diecast.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Spider-Man: Far From Home sets revealed [News]

LEGO has officially revealed three new sets from the upcoming Spiderman-Man: Far from Home, which will hit the big screens in July. They bring several new additions to the LEGO Marvel universe, including a some that have been a very long time coming, such as Happy Hogan, who’s finally getting a minifigure 11 years after first appearing in Iron Man. The exact date that these sets will come to shelves is not certain yet, but you can bet they’ll be on shelves by the time the movie debuts; after all, the LEGO sets for Avengers: Endgame are already available now. Check out all the details below.

Edit: The Spider-Man: far From Home sets are now available from LEGO.

Click to see the full details of the sets

Could Classic Space and Blacktron ever get along?

Looking at this Tracked Laser Mining Vehicle by Jon & Catherine Stead, the first thing that springs to mind is classic Blacktron. A few details seem out of place in this assumption and the description reveals no villainous intentions.

The yellow spacemen suggest this is in fact very much a peaceful vehicle. I particularly like the laser array, supported by strings going between pillars of translucent red 1×1 round plates. The ground is quite interesting as well, using an established technique and carrying us to a faraway moon or planet with its colours.