Yesterday in Billund at the LEGO House, adult LEGO fans from all over the world gathered to celebrate the first birthday at the Home of the Brick in a special, invitation-only event. With the Skærbæk LEGO fan event just around the corner over the weekend, featuring LEGO creations from fans who’ve traveled from more than 25 countries, the timing is perfect to bring everyone together for a celebration.
Read more about the LEGO House’s first birthday party in Billund
LEGO has revealed a new experimental product line designed for adults called LEGO Forma. The first wave of small-batch sets produced under the LEGO Forma line will be kinetic sculptures of fish, created with a moving Technic core and wrapped with four “skins” made of foil to represent three types of Koi and one shark.
The core set, 81000 Koi Model, contains 294 pieces including the Technic base and a single life-like koi skin. The model measures 10 inches high (27.9 cm) and 11 inches long (12.7 cm). The initial wave of LEGO Forma sets are available for pre-order on Indiegogo as “backer perks” from now until November 6th or whenever product runs out. The base set sells for $45 USD and is only available in the United States and United Kingdom for the time being. If the project meets its funding goals, the sets will ship in early 2019.
Click to reveal more about LEGO Forma
LEGO has announced it is going green with the re-release of an old fan-favorite set currently owned by very few: the 10268 Vestas Wind Turbine. The original set (numbered 4999) was released a decade ago as a limited production run for Vestas, a sustainable energy company, and never saw wider availability. That changes on Black Friday.
Following in the path of the last year’s re-released 10256 Taj Mahal, LEGO is “opening the vault” once again with a slightly updated rendition of the Creator Expert Vestas Wind Turbine. The set comes with 826 pieces (11 more than the first version), three minifigures, a dog, and Power Functions motor and lights, as well as the first spruce tree element made from plants available in a retail set.
The set is slightly more than three feet tall (one meter) and will retail at $199.99 USD from LEGO (coming in at $249.99 CA and £159.99 UK respectively). It will be available for purchase by everyone starting Friday, November 23 (also known as Black Friday).
Click to take a closer look at the Vestas Wind Turbine
There’s only 1 week remaining to build an entry for our Microscale Magic contest and have a chance to win the biggest Harry Potter set of them all, the massive 6,000-piece 71043 Hogwarts Castle! There are some great entries already, but we think our readers might have a few more excellent scenes up their sleeves, or maybe even still in your imaginations. So don’t delay, as the contest ends before the stroke of midnight Sept. 30.
We have two categories for you to enter with big or small creations, each with their own awesome prizes. And the person who builds best in both categories will get their very own 71043 Hogwarts Castle, the largest LEGO Harry Potter set ever.
Be sure to read the full contest rules, and put your entries in our flickr group here.
In addition to the amazing LEGO models created by builders all over the world, The Brothers Brick brings you the best of LEGO news and reviews. This is our weekly Brick Report for the fourth week of September 2018.
TBB NEWS & REVIEWS: Christmas is coming early with a few holiday themed sets as well as other news, sales and some instructions.
TBB CONTESTS & COLLABORATIONS: We are running a giveaway, collaboration and contest! Read these articles about how you can get involved.
OTHER NEWS: There were a few other interesting LEGO news articles from around the web this week. Here are the best of the rest:
Check out the other LEGO news of the week
With only a few weeks until BrickCon 2018, we here at The Brothers Brick are super excited by the tremendous positive response to our collaborative public display! With over 30 contributors signed up to participate, it is shaping up to be one of our larger projects! For more information about the project, check out our original announcement feature. Also, be sure to check out our recent feature on building the lower level of Ninjago City. There is still time to join the fun if you are registered to attend the private convention from October 4-7 in Seattle. Check out the Flickr group to join the project, or to see more photos by contributors.
Just be sure to register your creation by Sept. 30th so we can be sure to have enough space allocated for the display.
A couple times a year, our friends over at Citizen Brick open their vault and pull out all the prototypes and other rare pieces that they’ve only produced in limited amounts. Because their quality is indistinguishable from official LEGO products, we’ve been huge fans of Citizen Brick for many years. As always, one-off items will be released every couple of hours, and tend to disappear quickly, so check CitizenBrick.com regularly to pick up unusual items that may never be produced as products.
Full disclosure: Citizen Brick is an advertising partner of The Brothers Brick. However, our advertisers have no influence over The Brothers Brick’s news coverage.
Today LEGO has announced LEGO Cube, the first fruits of their partnership with developer Tencent Games, part of the massive Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent. The new video game is an open-world, sandbox game and is designed for mobile platforms. LEGO expects the game to be publicly available before the end of the year, though they’re not yet ready to announce specifics yet, such as whether it will work on both Android and iOS, and how much players can expect to pay, including whether or not it will feature micro-transactions.
The initial launch appears to be focused on the Chinese market, but LEGO is calling the Chinese release a “preview” indicating that there may be plans for a wider release down the road. The game joins several other new properties developed in partnership with Tencent, including The LEGO Video Zone, an online safe harbor for children’s digital entertainment and featured on Tencent Video.
It remains to be seen exactly how this game will differ from LEGO’s current open-world, sandbox game, LEGO Worlds, or whether Cube is simply a mobile port of that existing game. Watch the Chinese trailer here, and you can read the full press release below.
BrickCon 2018 in Seattle is about two weeks away, and we are giving away tickets to the public exhibition! Come see the amazing LEGO creations that builders from all around the world have brought to BrickCon. (You may even see some of your favorite writers from The Brothers Brick roaming around in our bright green shirts or hanging around the massive Ninjago City we are building!)
The BrickCon 2018 Public Exhibition is open Saturday Oct. 6 and Sunday Oct. 7 from 10am to 4pm, located at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall. You can get your tickets online now, but they will sell out soon.
The Brothers Brick is giving away three family packs of four tickets each, good for entry on either Saturday or Sunday at any time. The contest runs from today for a week until 11:59 pm on Wednesday, Sep. 26. Leave a comment below about what you are most excited to see at BrickCon 2018 to enter.
We’ll randomly select three entries Thursday morning and then notify the winners. Winners will be able to pick up their tickets at the will call window at the BrickCon Exhibition Hall beginning Saturday morning when the exhibition opens to the public.
The Brothers Brick is an official sponsor of BrickCon.
Today LEGO has unveiled a special pair of Christmas holiday BrickHeadz, 40274 Mr. and Mrs. Claus. The cheery duo are dressed in red and surrounded by holiday decorations, including presents and a Christmas Tree for good ol’ Santa, and fresh-baked cookies and a wreath for Mrs. Claus. The set is a two-pack, and it will be available Oct. 1 for $19.99 USD. The set has 341 pieces.
The Christmas set follows the special autumn holiday sets of 40272 Halloween Witch, available today, and 40273 Thanksgiving Turkey, available beginning Oct. 1.
Click to see more of all 3 new BrickHeadz
In addition to the amazing LEGO models created by builders all over the world, The Brothers Brick brings you the best of LEGO news and reviews. This is our weekly Brick Report for the second week of September 2018.
TBB NEWS: This week was relatively quiet for news, seeing only two large sets becoming available for purchase, and the announcement of Bricklink’s new design program.
75222 Betrayal at Cloud City and 10263 Winter Village Fire Station available – Whether you’re already prepping for Christmas or just want to see Han Solo dunked in a vat of Carbonite, LEGO’s two newest sets are ready for you this week.
Bricklink announces AFOL Designer Program – LEGO partners with Bricklink for the latest way for LEGO fans to have a chance at their designs becoming official sets.
TBB Reviews & Features: This week’s reviews were all about Star Wars, and we reviewed two sets from their respective trilogy’s middle movies, The Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi.
Review of LEGO Star Wars 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City – We do a deep-dive in this hands-on review, examining every aspect of the first-ever LEGO Star Wars Master Builder Series set.
Review of LEGO Star Wars 75230 Porg – We’re taking a look at LEGO’s first-ever life-size creature from Star Wars, the cute Porg.
Love them or hate them, Porgs are one of the most iconic creatures from the new Star Wars sequel trilogy. Nearly universally loved for their cuteness, the tiny feathered creatures have featured prominently in promotional materials and scores of toys from The Last Jedi right from the beginning. The first minifigure-scale LEGO Porgs appeared in the 75192 UCS Millennium Falcon last year, but LEGO is now releasing a life-size sculpture of the fuzzy birds. 75230 Porg contains 811 pieces, and we believe it will retail for $70-$80 USD beginning in October, but LEGO has declined to confirm either the price or the availability date at the time of publishing.
Update Oct. 1: The set is now on sale from LEGO for $69.99 in the US ($89.99 in Canada | £59.99 in the UK).
Update Sept. 17: LEGO has confirmed that the official release date for 75230 Porg is Oct. 1, and it will retail for $69.99 USD.
Original update on Sept. 16: We have personally observed this set being sold in retail stores, where it’s priced at $69.99 USD. Obviously, that also means that it’s already available, at least in some markets.
Click to read our full, hands-on review