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.

Princess Monoblock protects the forest

The blocky Brickheadz building style meets classic Japanese anime in this cubist LEGO rendition of San from Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke. Immediately recognisable to fans of the movie, Nathan DeCastro‘s model captures all the essential elements of the famous character. Those streaks of red makeup are perfect, tapering to a point thanks to the use of curved 1×1 tiles, and the white fur headdress and the necklace are excellent. Now all this needs is a giant wolf built to the appropriate scale!

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Beware the dangerous depths of Layers City

With sets like 70620 Ninjago City and 70657 Ninjago City Docks, The LEGO Ninjago Movie brought a cyber-punk aesthetic to official LEGO sets, which in cool factor is only eclipsed by the post-apocalyptic aesthetic of the new LEGO sets from The LEGO Movie 2. While LEGO fans have certainly been building cyberpunk creations for many years, even more builders have embraced this aesthetic, inspiring numerous custom LEGO models, including our own Ninjago City collaborative display at BrickCon, featuring over 60 custom city blocks. Sebastian Bachórzewski is an incredibly talented builder who builds in everything from medieval to post-apoc style. His latest large-scale model is “Layers City,” featuring a slice cut from a teeming metropolis full of colorful characters.

Take a closer look at Layers City

A small reflection of life as it is

We often build with LEGO bricks to imitate, in other words reflect, life. While Ralf Langer‘s latest creation is a completely realistic microscale depiction of medieval life, the word reflection has more meanings to it.

First we see a micro mountain village with some cool techniques like the church roof, printed tiles as windows and modified plates as pine trees, but then something interesting in the water catches the eye. Ralf states in the picture description on Flickr that this is an experiment in water reflections, and I can see where he is going with it. A little extra bit is exposed in the description; if you go to the beginning of Ralf’s Flickr photostream, you can see that the building being reflected in the water is a microscale version of his first custom LEGO creation, earlier this year.

Top 10 most popular LEGO set reviews of 2018 on The Brothers Brick [Reviews]

In 2018, the team at The Brothers Brick reviewed over 120 LEGO sets. For Collectible Minifigures, we’ll remember this year as the year that LEGO introduced “chaser” minifigures – having only one special figure in a box of 60. From the Technic range, the largest set ever was unleashed. In the classic System theme, the largest set this year trumps nearly all other sets that came before, coming in as the second-largest set of all time, just behind the UCS Millennium Falcon. LEGO IDEAS made headlines yet again this year, proving that LEGO has a winning theme on their hands, but only 2 of them made it into the Top 10 out of the four released.

Curious to find out which ones made it? Which Technic sets made the cut? How well did the Collectible Minifigures do? Dive right in as we take a moment to look at the Top 10 most popular reviews featured on The Brothers Brick website.

Dive right in to see the Top 10 Reviews of 2018

Rorschach test in LEGO bricks

While these strange shapes don’t look anything like inkblots, they’re as good as any Rorschach test to me. It’s titled “Rot” by builder Sheo, and it’s an enigmatic scene to test our visual perception of what we see. If had to guess, I’d say that it’s partial skeletal remains of an alien lying in decay in a faraway galaxy. I can’t say for sure what the balloon-like piece depicts but I can say it’s an ingenious use of parts with LEGO rubber tires held together by mechanical arms that we frequently see on droid figures.

LEGO Bumblebee in beetle form is one sweet ride [Instructions]

The new, much-anticipated Bumblebee movie has inspired LEGO fans to build some fantastic creations recently, from this large-scale figure by Ekow Nimako to this transforming model by Jerry Builds Bricks and this cute model in Volkswagen Beetle form by hachiroku24 is the latest. One of my favorite details is the gently curving back of the car, which very closely matches its real-life inspiration. The extra curvy front wheel well is also a very nice detail and helps to complete this iconic car profile.

Click through to see the parts list and instructions to build your own LEGO Bumblebee

Japan Brickfest 2019 – Registration closes on 31st December [News]

2019 will be the 5th anniversary for Japan Brickfest Kobe Fan Weekend, which is now the largest international LEGO fan event in Asia. Unlike other years, there’s only a single round of registration regardless of whether you’re contributing a build or just attending the event. So, hurry up and sign up before its too late! Registration closes on the 31st of December at midnight, (JST) Japan Standard Time.

Japan Brickfest is held at the Canadian Academy in Rokko Island, Kobe and hosted by KLUG (Kansai LEGO User Group). Japan Brickfest is a charity event with a percentage of the entry fee being donated to Children Charities and other charities. A portion of admissions and sales will be used as a donation to nursing homes.

The Brothers Brick is an official sponsor of Japan Brickfest

A battleship for the digital age

Specializing mostly in digital builds, CK-MCMLXXXI has made quite the beauty of a spaceship with his recent build, The Solomon & Guggenheim. Certain bricks may not exist in the colours used in this build, but that is really not the main quality of the creation. Pieces like a tile with UNITED text print (from the LEGO Ideas Saturn V) and all sorts of modified tiles such as ingot pieces, pentagonal tiles and 1×1 tiles with a rounded side make for some great patterns and colour blocking that look like a legitimate spaceship. The shaping with a large portruding segment on the bottom and all sorts of crazy angles just add to that and the end result is quite an enjoyable sight.

LEGO Minecraft Big Figs Series 1: 21148 Steve with Parrot, 21149 Alex with Chicken, and 21150 Skeleton with Magma Cube [Review]

Minecraft keeps getting bigger — and I’m not just talking about the game’s record-breaking sales. The original LEGO Minecraft set I helped design back in 2011 as part of LEGO’s early Ideas platform was microscale, mostly due to the steep constraints of hitting a roughly $30 MSRP target. Later, that first wildly successful set was followed by more microscale sets, and finally in 2014 the theme got upgraded to our original vision by introducing minifigure-scale sets. Recently, LEGO bumped up the scale a bit with 41612 Steve and Creeper BrickHeadz. Now LEGO Minecraft is upping its game once more with a new line called Big Figs, and we’ve got the first series comprising three sets to review: 21148 Steve with Parrot, 21149 Alex with Chicken, and 21150 Skeleton with Magma Cube. Each of the sets contains a large figure paired with a small animal from the game, and will be available January 1 for $14.99 USD.

Click to read the full hands-on review

To boldly research where no one’s researched before

We’re going far away from civilization into the cold reaches of space with this LEGO ship by Chris Perron. But it’s not for fame or glory — no, this ship has a more noble goal: to research! Even Chris admits he’s not quite sure what it’s researching, but one thing is clear: it looks awesome outfitted with highly scientific doodads and whatsits. And there are lots of interesting techniques, from the mix of struts holding up the large side-mounted instruments to the cheese slopes crammed into the front of the ship’s long probe.

The one thing that worries me, though, is that the ship doesn’t look big enough for an airlock, which might be bad news for the astroscientist doing an EVA.

Smooth sleek spaceship soars the solar system

Give me a sleek looking ship in black and white any day and I’ll fall for it – just like the Ranger from Interstellar or the classic NASA Space Shuttle. This build by Oscar Cederwall stands out strikingly with some red highlights over a classic black-and-white design. I really love the effort of the arrowhead detail at the front of the ship, formed so perfectly with cheese slopes. Hardcore LEGO fans would also notice two very rare parts – the red X-pod lids on the wings and the extremely long boat hulls that appeared only once in a LEGO Speedboat set.

Here’s another look at the ship without special effects added to the scene.

LEGO Speed Champions 75890 Ferrari F40 Competizione [Review]

LEGO owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen is famous for his love of Ferraris, and has been known to show local Danish LEGO fans around his garage full of them. So it’s no surprise that LEGO has had a longstanding partnership with the Italian supercar maker, going back more than 20 years and spanning multiple themes and even systems, from Duplo to Technic. The 2019 Speed Champions 75890 Ferrari F40 Competizione features the sleek supercar built between 1987 and 1992. This version includes 198 pieces and retails for the usual $14.99 (£12.99 in the UK and $19.99 in Canada).

Read our hands-on review of LEGO Speed Champions 75890 Ferrari F40 Competizione