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.

LEGO 30% off for Amazon’s deal of the day (Mar 20) [News]

Amazon’s Deal of the Day for today is LEGO, with about fifteen sets as much as 30% off, with lots of Friends, Superheroes, and Duplo sets heavily discounted.

76021 The Milano Spaceship Rescue is 33% or $25 off at $49.99.

76021 The Milano Spaceship Rescue

41058 Heartlake Shopping Mall is 22% off at $85.53.

41058 Heartlake Shopping Mall

See the full list of sets on Amazon.com.

As always, a portion of anything you buy on Amazon — at no cost to you — after clicking through from Brothers-Brick.com goes to support giveaways like the Batcave this month, prizes for contests like the LUGNuts 100th Challenge, and sponsorship of events like BrickCan and BrickCon.

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 Digital Designer updated [News]

LEGO has released an update for LEGO Digital Designer (LDD), the company’s proprietary virtual building program. Update 4.3.9 is available for free on both OSX and Windows operating platforms. If you already have LDD, the latest update will install automatically when connected to the internet. The update is approximately 275MB in size and includes over 300 new parts such as CMF Series 15 minifigure parts, Speed Champions, Elves, Jurassic Park, Nexo Knights and so on. The new parts are available by opening a project using LDD’s Extended tab.

LEGO Digital Designer Update

After bringing you the news that LEGO Digital Designer was officially defunded and unsupported back in January, it’s safe to say that this latest update was unexpected. It is hard not to believe that the huge backlash in response to that sudden announcement of LDD’s demise was a factor in the decision to now release a long awaited update.

Since the LDD community has waited over 2 years since the previous update, there is no doubt that the new one will be well received. Enjoy the update, there’s no knowing when/if another update will be released in the future. Flickr user Nachapon S. has put together an image showing all the new pieces.

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 Ideas: 21305 Maze [Review]

The latest product of LEGO Ideas has arrived, and unlike many of the previous Ideas sets, it’s not a pop-culture reference. LEGO Ideas is the company’s crowdsourcing initiative, and this set was originally designed by LEGO fan Jason Allemann. It is a classic two-axis ball maze familiar to kids and frustrated adults everywhere. We highlighted Jason’s original LEGO Ball Maze way back in 2012, and now almost four years later LEGO Ideas 21305 Maze will hit shelves April 1. The Maze contains 769 pieces for $69.99 USD. LEGO has provided us with an early copy to review, so let’s dig in.

LEGO Ideas 21305 Maze

Click here to read the full review

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.

Interview with Carl Greatrix, creator of the Caterham 7 LEGO Ideas set

Carl Greatrix‘s Caterham 7 was recently revealed as the next LEGO Ideas set. The announcement was met with almost universal approval, mixed with some surprise that such an obviously adult-oriented and complex model had made it through the review.

Caterham 7's

The Brothers Brick got in touch with Carl to get some of his thoughts following the announcement…

TBB: So, you’ve got to be delighted about the news. How does it feel to have an official LEGO set coming out?
Carl: I’m obviously super-excited. It means that everyone who wanted one, will now be able to get one. The realization is slowly but surely sinking in — the fact there will be an official LEGO set, available in practically every LEGO shop around the world, it’s quite a humbling thought and feels like a huge achievement.

Click through to read the rest of the interview

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 Ninjago 70604 Tiger Widow Island [Review]

By now, everyone is familiar with Ninjago’s new Skybound theme. We’ve already reviewed Zeppelin Raid and Misfortune’s Keep and today, we’d like to share our review of 70604 Tiger Widow Island. The set includes 450 pieces, 5 minifigs, and retails for $49.99. The instructions were clear and easy to follow and, except for the tricky chain connection holding up the “teeth” of the cave, the build was relatively straightforward.

70604 Tiger Widow Island

Click through to read the full review

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 announces Adventure Time and Caterham Super 7 to become official IDEAS models [News]

The LEGO Ideas team has announced the winners of the second 2015 Review round. These projects will now proceed through a design phase, where LEGO designers will tweak the designs, and then they will be available to the public as official LEGO sets.

Adventure Time, by aBetterMonkey
ideas2

Caterham Super Seven, by Carl Greatrix
ideas1

There is no word yet on pricing or availability; we’ll be sure to let you know when we find out!

The announcement also noted LEGO has reviewed the Star Citizen F7A Hornet the last two review periods; this time, the decision was made not to consider the project further.

The next review round is underway, with an announcement anticipated later in the spring.

Congratulations to the selected projects!

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.

To be highly organized is, I should fancy, the object of man’s existence: 5 tips for keeping your LEGO collection sorted [Essay]

The quote above is from The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde and it’s the epigraph for The Ideal Order, a recently published novel written by Christoph Bartneck. (You can find my review of this book on Goodreads.) The story is centered around the life of a troubled AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) named Rob, who, like all builders before him, eventually realizes that his LEGO collection is virtually useless when stored in one big cardboard box and thus sets out on a quest to find (you guessed it) “the ideal order” for sorting his LEGO collection. (Spoiler alert! No such order truly exists.) I sympathize with Rob’s predicament, because I’ve been there. There’s nothing worse than trying to build an old set by fishing pieces out of the rainbow-colored abyss of plastic that is an unsorted box of LEGO. So we sort.

Sorting MOC
The possibilities are endless when deciding how to sort a LEGO collection and what’s right for one person is not going to be right for another. However, there are certainly some agreed upon standards that most builders share when sorting. For example, sorting by color alone just doesn’t cut it. On the other hand, it’s nearly impossible to have a separate space for each unique piece. So what is the best method?

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.

LUGNuts contest winners: a lot of class and a touch of gas [News]

In early February we announced that LUGNuts, which is the online group for LEGO car lovers, was celebrating its 100th monthly challenge by organising a car building contest. Prizes were sponsored by TBB, among others. The cars to be built were randomly assigned to the contestants from a list compiled by LUGNuts admin Lino Martins. He has announced the winners to the group’s members and it is my pleasure to present them here to you.

In first place: Firas Abu-Jaber with the very classy Rolls Royce Springfield Silver Ghost Playboy Roadster.

Rolls Royce Springfield Silver Ghost Playboy Roadster

Thanks to a certain magazine, its name may not sound particularly classy nowadays, but it’s a beautiful car that is well built and very well presented. If you think you’ve seen it before, this may very well be because it was featured in a post by Elspeth little more than a week ago.

The entry that won the second prize is a bit gassy rather than classy: “El Laxante” by Andy Baumgart (D-Town Cracka). His assignment was to build a Chevrolet El Camino, which he brought to another level by putting it on tracks, among other things. It’s crazy, over the top and in real life would probably be smelly and very loud, but it’s fantastic.

'El Laxante' - '74 Chevy El Camino SS

Showing a degree of prescience, Elspeth’s earlier post also included the 3rd prize winner: Martien Nijdam (Pino) with his rendition of a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. It’s another classy classic car.

Rolls Royce Silver Ghost

These winners were decided by combining top five lists of each of the five group admins and moderators.
The contest got an impressive 77 eligible entries and there were a lot of great models to chose from.

Other entries that were on several of the judges’ lists, but that didn’t quite gain enough points to end up among the prize winners, were the Volksrods by _Tiler, the Chrysler Town and Country woody by Velocites and the studly Ford F100 by TechnicNick. On behalf of TBB and LUGNuts, I’d like to congratulate the winners and thank everybody who participated for making this the best LUGNuts challenge to date.

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 and Space: Minifigs on the International Space Station [News]

While it’s not the first time an astronaut has flown with LEGO into space, it’s always exciting to LEGO and space travel make the news for the same reason. Back in September, we reported that Denmark’s first astronaut, Andres Mogensen, flew with LEGO up to the International Space Station as part of Expedition 44.

It’s been exciting first week of March for space travel as American Astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth after 340 days in orbit as part of ongoing scientific studies for long-term spaceflight. They left behind minifig doppelgangers of themselves, courtesy of Tim Peak from the European Space Agency.


Picture courtesy of ESA/Tim Peake

Click for more spacey goodness!

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 Ideas 21305 Maze by Jason Allemann finally unveiled [News]

It’s been nearly four years since we first highlighted Jason Allemann’s LEGO marble maze, and nearly a year since the LEGO Ideas team announced that Jason’s project had been approved as a future LEGO set. Jason Allemann and his kinetic sculptures will be familiar to regular readers of TBB — it seems like not a week goes by when we don’t highlight one of Jason’s amazing LEGO creations, so we’ve been excited about this set for some time. But good things come to those who wait, and LEGO has finally unveiled LEGO Ideas 21305 Maze.

LEGO Ideas 21305 Maze

The set will include 769 pieces and retail for $69.99 in the US and $89.99 in Canada, due out on April 1st. We’ll have a pre-release review of the set to share with our readers in a couple of weeks.

Click through to see more photos of this new LEGO set

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 Ideas 21302 Big Bang Theory 20% off [News]

LEGO is clearing out some of its older sets, presumably to make room for all the March 2016 LEGO sets released yesterday. While the selection isn’t huge, one highlight is 21302 Big Bang Theory.icon

21302 Big Bang Theory was one of our best-reviewed sets of 2015, and you can pick it up for $47.98 rather than the quite spendy $59.99.

21302 LEGO Ideas #10 The Big Bang Theory

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.

March 2016 LEGO sets now available: Ninjago, Captain America: Civil War, Star Wars & more [News]

While LEGO builders in many other parts of the world have been enjoying the first quarter LEGO sets since January, LEGO is finally releasing about 45 new sets on March 1st in the US. In addition to the Captain America: Civil War and Elves sets we’ve known were planned for release on March 1st, we finally have the official release in the US of the new Ninjago “Skybound” sets, Star Wars battlepacks, and LEGO Super Heroes Mighty Micros.

As always, a portion of everything you purchase by clicking through from TBB goes to support contests like Space Chefs and giveaways like our March LEGO Batcave giveaway (along with the humdrum business of running a high-traffic website).

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Captain America: Civil War

76051 Super Hero Airport Battle includes 6 minifigs and 807 pieces at $79.99. Look for our review here on TBB soon.

LEGO 76051 Super Hero Airport Battle

76060 Crossbones’ Hazard Heist includes 3 minifigs and 179 pieces at $19.99.

76050_alt1

76047 Black Panther Pursuit includes 3 minifigs and 287 pieces at $29.99.

76047_alt1


LEGO Star Wars

75137 Carbon-Freezing Chamber includes 231 pieces at $24.99. (Read our review of 75137 Carbon-Freezing Chamber.)

75137 Carbon-Freezing Chamber

Click through to see more of the March 2016 LEGO sets

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.