Category Archives: News

Stay current on the latest news and information about LEGO, from sales & deals to new set announcements. We also cover LEGO events and conventions all over the world.

Announcing the 2016 LEGO Military Build Competition [News]

After a two-year hiatus, the annual LEGO Military Build Contest is back. If, like me, you are a (part-time) military builder and remember the contests from a few years ago, you’ll be excited, because the models that did well in previous contests were some of the best military models around and several ended up being blogged here. This year’s competition is being run and judged by Magnus Lauglo, Justin Vaughn, Evan Melick, Aleksander Stein, and last but not least , Andy Baumgart, who designed the exceedingly cool contest poster.

You can enter in five different categories, that cover a wide variety of scales and possibilities, from serious scale models and designing your own IFV to something slightly wacky:

IFVs: Come up with an original design for a new minifig scale Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) for the fictional country of Azmir.
20th Century Battlefields: Build a diorama representing an actual battle that took place in the 20th Century.
World of Tanks: A good chunk of us Lego Military Modellers enjoy building tanks, so why not give you all a chance to strut your stuff? The massively popular video game World of Tanks is the inspiration behind this Scale Model category.
Naval aviation: This category invites you to build a scale model of any naval- or maritime aviation aircraft
Springfield’s Citizen Militia: In an effort to bolster civic pride, Mayor Quimby has called upon the citizens of Springfield to participate in the town’s very first Military Parade! Help your benevolent leader to make this a ‘Show of Power’ that nobody shall soon forget.

Be sure to check out the details of each of the categories in the military contest group on flickr before you start building or ask your question/ find your answer in the Q&A thread. You have until the 15th of August to complete your models. Rest assured that at TBB we will be keeping a close watch on this year’s entries.

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.

New 10252 Volkswagen Beetle LEGO Creator Expert set revealed [News]

Update: Read the full review of 10252 Volkswagen Beetle here on TBB!

One of the most iconic cars of all time is returning to the brick. Today LEGO has unveiled a spiffy new version of the famous bug, 10252 Volkswagen Beetle. The Beetle comes fully outfitted for a day at the beach with a surfboard, cooler and even a beach towel. It includes license plates for the USA, UK, Germany and Australia, as well as new large curve elements for the wheel arches and loads of new parts in azure. The set will retail for $99.99 USD when it goes on sale Aug. 1, and contains 1,167 pieces. The LEGO Beetle’s larger sibling, the VW Camper Van, is one of the longer running products in LEGO’s catalog, though it will likely be retiring soon in favor of this new addition to the LEGO VW family. Read the full details about the new Beetle set after the jump.

Click to see more of the Volkswagen Beetle

LEGO Dimensions Trailer introduces new characters including E.T., Sonic the Hedgehog [News]

Yesterday’s news about LEGO Dimensions was exciting, with the set images for Ghostbusters, A-Team, Mission Impossible, Harry Potter, and Adventure Time. This morning brings us the official trailer for the next wave of characters, and there are some fantastic ones!

Click to meet some of the new characters!

LEGO announces The Beatles Yellow Submarine and Apollo 11 Saturn V as next LEGO IDEAS models [News]

The LEGO Ideas team has announced the winners of the third 2015 LEGO Ideas Review. Nine sets were up for consideration, and two were selected. These projects will now proceed through a design phase, where LEGO designers will tweak the designs. They will then become available as official LEGO sets.

UPDATE: 21306 LEGO Beatles Yellow Submarine is out now!

The Beatles Yellow Submarine by Kevin Szeto

Apollo 11 Saturn V by saabfan and whatsuptoday

We’ll update you on official pictures and pricing once those become available.

The next round are currently in review, and we expect to hear on those in Fall 2016!

New LEGO Dimensions packs revealed including Harry Potter, A-Team, Mission Impossible, Adventure Time and Ghostbusters [News]

A whole new wave of LEGO Dimensions expansion packs have been revealed, bringing several new licensed themes to the LEGO universe in Story, Level, and Fun packs. If you’ve always wanted a LEGO Mr. T, now you can make your dream a reality. And if you still haven’t delved into the fantastic world of LEGO Dimensions, now is a great time since many of the original wave of Dimensions packs are nearly 50 percent off.

Click to see all the new LEGO Dimensions packs

Ghostbusters 3 Ecto 1 & 2 [Review]

The long-awaited third Ghostbusters movie is due to première in about five weeks. The first trailer quickly became the most disliked movie trailer on YouTube and the second trailer strikes me as particularly unfunny too. Oh dear. Of course I’ll have to withhold judgement on whether the movie is any good until after it hits the discount DVD bin. And this is not a movie review site, of course, but there is at least one interesting thing that has already come out of this movie so far: a brand-new LEGO set, 75828 Ghostbusters ECTO 1 & 2.

The set was announced in February, is due for release in the Summer, and will retail in the US for $59.99. The goodie bag I received during my recent trip to Billund contained an early release copy of this set, which gives me the opportunity to review it.

Read the full review after the break

The Brothers Brick visits LEGO headquarters in Billund, Denmark

LEGO recently invited The Brothers Brick to their headquarters in Billund, Denmark, along with various other fan-run online groups, websites, and print media about LEGO. I was the lucky guy who got to on behalf of the Brothers Brick.

In our lives we all play a variety of roles, often without thinking. A list of mine would include (mad) physicist, prematurely grey and pasty white Dutchman, university lecturer and, of course, one of The Brothers Brick and Adult Fan Of LEGO. In the last few days, at least two new roles were added: reporter and interviewer. This is one of those occasions were being European, or more precisely, in Europe was an advantage. I’d been to Denmark once before, on a beer-fuelled student trip to Copenhagen 20 years ago, but this was going to be very different and, dare I say it, even more fun.

I arrived in Billund early in the evening on Wednesday and quickly realized that everything in this town revolves around LEGO. I passed the entrance to LEGOLAND on the way to my hotel, which was next to the LEGOLAND Village and, according to a sign on the door, was guarded by LEGO Security. No, really! After some dinner (no LEGO in that, fortunately) I took a stroll to see where I was expected the next morning, past the LEGOLAnD hotel to reach the LEGO Systems’ headquarters. Billund is very quiet, green, leafy, tidy and pleasant and it’s considered completely normal to walk around with a LEGO logo on your outfit.

Read the full report after the break

Incredible 11-foot-long LEGO Spaceship is fully outfitted to explore the unknown

A pillar of the classic LEGO Space community, Mark Neumann has emerged from myth and legend to bring us Universal Explorer LL2016. This 11-foot-6-inch behemoth of a ship is complete with giant guns, a science module, a motorized ring, interior lights, a huge cargo bay big enough to fit most official LEGO sets, and over a dozen smaller vehicles stored on board. We’ve sat down with Mark to learn a bit more about this incredible creation and Mark’s journey to build it.

Click to read our interview with Mark!

Announcing “WW2 1949” at BrickCon 2016 in Seattle [News]

It’s just four months to BrickCon 2016 in Seattle, and TBB is gearing up for our hometown LEGO convention. For our annual collaboration this year, we’re going to be putting together a dieselpunk display called World War II 1949. With the aircraft, vehicles, and buildings you contribute, you’ll help answer the question, “What if WW2 had not ended in 1945, and technology had continued evolving rapidly through the end of the decade?”

As these fantastic creations by master LEGO dieselpunk builders Jon Hall, Fredo Houben, and Jeff Churill demonstrate, there’s a huge variety in the theme.

Click through to learn more about WW2 1949 at BrickCon 2016

LEGO Shop sales & deals for June 2016 [News]

The LEGO Shop is also making room for the summer sets by discounting a number of great sets, with some cool promotions this month. VIP program members get free shipping on all orders over only $35 rather than the usual $75, with a cool LEGO City fountain on orders over $75

Lots of sets are on sale, though the highlight for many of our readers is probably the LEGO Ideas set The Big Bang Theory (in case you didn’t pick it up after our review last year).

If you haven’t joined the VIP program yet, you can earn an extra 100 points toward a future discount. Click the banner below to see all the details about this month’s promos.

Enter to win the LEGO Star Wars Shuttle Tyderium from TBB [News]

Back in April, TBB gave away the Millennium Falcon to one lucky reader in Texas. We took a breather from our giveaways in May, but we’re diving back in now by giving away 75094 Imperial Shuttle Tydirium! It’s a lovely set with a great set of minifigs and some fantastic play features. Click here to enter!

If you want to see more giveaways like this, you can support TBB by buying your LEGO after clicking through from Brothers-Brick.com.

Fine print: In order to make a global contest manageable, TBB uses the Contests app on Facebook. As a result, this contest is limited to TBB readers with Facebook accounts. Yes, we still love if you you’re on G+. For winners in locations that are very expensive to ship to, TBB reserves the right to substitute a monetary value equivalent to the cost of the set in your country. We’ll send you a cool TBB T-shirt either way.

LEGO Technic 42056 Porsche 911 GT3 RS: Breathtaking perfection [Review]

Every once in awhile a LEGO model comes along that makes you pause, a little slack-jawed, and then scramble for your soon-to-be-empty wallet. There are a lot of cool sets in the LEGO lineup, but a rare few are targeted at adult builders with a larger budget and a thirst for a premium experience and finished product that serves as an office-decor talking piece. These are sets that aren’t just large and complex, but sets that can be called a work of art; an ABS sculpture. Few sets that I’ve encountered fit this bill better than the new Technic 42056 Porsche 911 GT3 RS. It has 2,704 pieces, and it’s available beginning June 1 online as well as in select markets. It will hit store shelves in the USA in August, where it will retail for $299 USD.

Read the full review