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.

HispaBrick issue 24 now available [News]

Another issue of online LEGO fan magazine HispaBrick is now available for download. In this edition, the Arvo brothers present their stunning ALIEN building project book. There are interviews with epic diorama builder Michał Kazmierczak and Kevin Hinkle, Community Manager for LEGO’s Community Engagement division. Set reviews include the Brick Bank and Imperial Star Destroyer. Building guides covering such diverse topics as trees, modular landscaping, and WeBo robotics. There’s also a peek inside the new LEGOLAND Discovery Center in Osaka, and a whole lot more. So download it today!

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Official details of March 2016 Ninjago sets revealed [News]

In advance of our coverage from New York Toy Fair this coming weekend, LEGO has provided us with some details missing from previous coverage of the 2016 Ninjago line, including full product descriptions, higher-res images, and confirmation of a March release date. When LEGO had sets like 70605 Misfortune’s Keep and 70603 Raid Zeppelin available in mid-December to send us for review, we were actually expecting a January release, but January has come and gone somewhat to our confusion, so it’s good to finally have confirmation of the real street date.

Final product descriptions follow each image below, but be sure to click through to Flickr and check out the first full-res images of the 2016 Ninjago sets.

70604 Tiger Widow Island (450 pieces at $49.99)

Mighty Dogshank is approaching carrying her huge anchor weapon. Fight back with Nya’s katana and drop coconuts on Dogshank from the tower and Sensei Wu’s hot air balloon. Watch out for Sqiffy’s pirate flyer and make the palm tree fall to knock him off the ladder. Hide out in the cave — and beware of the giant venomous spider roaming the island! Defeat the pirate invaders and free trapped Lloyd from the special Djinn Blade!

70602 Jay’s Elemental Dragon (350 pieces at $29.99)

Jump into the dragon’s saddle and grab the reins. Snap the jaws and adjust the head, wings, legs and tail for awesome battle poses. Dodge Cyren’s harpoon hook shooter and the pirate flyer’s six-shooting rapid shooter. Fire the spring-loaded shooters to take down the flyer and then release Nya from the Djinn Blade!

Click through for complete coverage of the March 2016 Ninjago sets

Announcing the Speeder Bike Contest ’16 [News]

It’s shaping up to be a busy month for contests this February with TBB’s Space Chefs, LUGNuts 100th challenge, and of course the annual FebROVERary challenge. And now there’s one more addition to the collective building pot:

It’s been four years since the last Speeder Bike Contest, which I remember well …mainly because I didn’t have time to take part, and was going to do the next one. It took 4 years, but Cole Blaq and _zenn are back, and I’m not missing my chance this time.

The three builds pictured above are the actual prizes for this contest (plus polybags). The first prize winner gets Cole Blaq’s amazing custom chromed speeder, shown below. Check out the Speeder Bike Group for full details. And since it is competing with so many other contests, the organizers have extended the deadline an extra day, to February 29th.

LEGO Speed Champions 75871 Ford Mustang GT [Review]

LEGO has an all-new wave of Speed Champions planned for 2016, bringing some American muscle to a party that has so far been dominated by European supercars like Porsche, Ferrari, and McLaren. European cars are still in the mix for this year, but first off the starting line for the Americans is a 2016 Ford Mustang GT, a killer car in blue with a classic white stripe.

Click to read the rest of the review

LEGO Announces 75828 Ghostbusters 3 Ecto-1&2 set [News]

Following hot on the heels of the release of the Ghostbuster’s Firehouse, this morning LEGO announced a tie-in set for the upcoming Ghostbusters 3 movie. The set will feature a revised version of the Ghostbusters famous ride, called the Ecto-1&2. It will also feature the five new Ghostbusters as well as an imp. LEGO says it will be available this summer, and is slated to retail for $59.99 USD, though no word on the part count yet. Be sure to also read our review of the original LEGO Ghostbuster’s Ecto-1 so you can spot the differences in the new model.

Click through to see more photos

Birds from Bricks book by Thomas Poulsom available for preorder [News]

Thomas Poulsom, the fan builder behind the LEGO Ideas Birds set has just announced the upcoming release of his new book, Birds from Bricks. Tom is a bird and wildlife enthusiast, so it is no surprise that his new book follows on from the 3 lovely bird models in the Ideas set. The book has detailed step-by-step instructions for 15 more bird models, with colour photos and information about each species.

Birds from Bricks: Amazing LEGO Designs That Take Flight is currently available to pre-order from both Amazon US and Amazon UK (with free UK shipping) and a release date of 15 April 2016 in the UK, and April 1st in the US.

LUGNuts 100th challenge

For those of you who’ve been living under a rock for the last eight years, LUGNuts is the Flickr group for LEGO car enthusiasts, founded by Lino Martins and Nathan Proudlove, with Tim Inman, the impossibly prolific Peter Blackert and yours truly serving as moderators. Ever since it was founded, the group has organised a monthly build challenge centred on a particular type of car or car-related sub culture. Normally these challenges are just for the fun of it and they’ve inspired many cars blogged here on TBB. This month is extra special, however, because it’s the 100th challenge!

To mark this occasion we’ve turned the challenge into a competition, with whoppers of prizes. The third place winner gets the Technic 42050 Drag Racer, second place gets the Technic 42039 24 Hours LeMans Race Car and for the first place winner, we pull out all the stops with the Technic 42030 Remote-Controlled Volvo L350F Wheel Loader. These prizes are sponsored by The Brothers Brick, one of the biggest Bricklink stores in the US, Constructibles, and the LUGNuts Admins and moderators. Furthermore, the three winners will also receive autographed editions of The Art of LEGO Scale Modeling, courtesy of Dennis Glaasker, Dennis Bosman, and No Starch Press. Thanks to Dennis Glaasker and his equally creative daughter Stacey for making the poster.

To compete, join the discussion, pick a number, get assigned one of the individual challenges from our top-secret list of wacky cool cars and start building.

Taiwanese LEGO fan uses 15000 bricks to build 4½ foot long SHIELD Helicarrier

The most anticipated LEGO set of 2015 was the enormous Avengers SHIELD Helicarrier. As we highlighted in our extensive video review, there was a lot to like about that set, except for the relative scales of the carrier, the microfigs, and the quinjets. And while some builders have explored more ambitious LEGO Helicarrier designs within the confines of a computer screen, no-one has dared tackle the challenge of building a more properly scaled and movie-accurate version of the Avengers’ flying fortress using actual LEGO bricks …until now!

Working with nothing more than reference photos from the 2012 Avengers movie, Taiwanese builder ZiO Chao and a his friends Dada, Kimura, Kuan-Wei, Stephanie, Tiger and Will from the Formosa LEGO club spent a month and a half (and many sleepless nights) constructing this enormous and fully detailed model of the iconic Helicarrier. At 140cm x 80cm it’s twice the size of the official LEGO set, and contains five times as many pieces. At last, those “swooshable” little quinjets now actually have room to move around!

Regarding the build process, which he photographed in great detail, ZiO told The Brothers Brick: “Before I started to build it, the most annoying thing was collecting parts and classifying them. Then we used Technic beams to sketch out the skeleton of the carrier, which needed to be strong enough to hold everything together. Technic beams were also a great solution for the supporting yellow columns, the front of the carrier, and the four turbine engines.”

Click here to keep reading

Life-size LEGO BB-8 from The Force Awakens built from 11,000 pieces

Norwegian LEGO builder Henrik Lorentzen has built a life-size LEGO model of the wonderful droid BB-8 from The Force Awakens. Though not quite as adorable as a pug dressed in a BB-8 hoodie (which I saw at the dog park today), this LEGO BB-8 has all the charm of the droid in the movie.

Henrik started planning and designing his LEGO BB-8 last April, using Bruce Lowell’s sphere technique and Bram Lambrecht’s sphere generator. The finished model uses about 11,000 LEGO pieces — including a thousand white 2×4 bricks and three thousand white 1×2 plates — and weighs 10 kg (22 pounds).

With a LEGO event at his local theater in November and the movie coming out in December, Henrik gathered all the parts he needed in September and began building, finishing it just in time for the event on November 6.

First look at summer 2016 LEGO sets from London & Nuremburg [News]

Toy Fair in New York City in mid-February is usually the first time each year when LEGO unveils its planned sets for the summer and fall. However, Toy Fair NYC is preceded by industry events in London and Nuremburg, where often LEGO puts small signs banning photography next to some of its new sets while showcasing them at a public event. This tactic is apparently proving particularly ineffective this year, as numerous photographs continue to emerge from both shows, such as the LEGO Technic 42056 Porsche test car set revealed earlier this week (in that video, the LEGO rep is clearly pointing things out to the camera, so they’re obviously ok with some photography).

TBB and other LEGO news sites like FBTB will have full, professional coverage of New York Toy Fair in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime, here are a few highlights from London and Nuremburg, given LEGO’s apparent change in policy and public unveiling schedule.

Brickset has just posted box photos (photos of boxes, not the official high-res box art) for a number of summer 2016 LEGO sets. Making the rounds of news outlets this week is 60134 Fun at the Park, a LEGO City minifig-oriented set that features a minifig in a brand new LEGO wheelchair, a new LEGO baby, and the hotdog bun first noticed in the forthcoming LEGO Angry Birds sets — plus a whole bunch of useful new minifigs.

Click through to see more summer 2016 LEGO sets

Niima Outpost on Jakku

Wookieewarrior spent several months building a minifigure-scale diorama of the Niima Outpost from Star Wars, complete with a massive model of the Millennium Falcon similar to LEGO’s UCS version. It was displayed at Bricking Bavaria 2015 where for his efforts the builder was awarded “ummmmm… one-quarter portion.”

In addition to the large Falcon, the diorama includes a highly detailed market.

LEGO Technic 42056 Porsche & other Technic sets revealed at Nuremburg toy show [News]

Thanks to flickr user Jim van Gulik, we now have photos of several of LEGO’s newest big Technic sets (see the others after the jump). We can’t confirm the precise set name yet, but it’s set number 42056, and is a Porsche 911 wrapped in zebra test patterns (used by auto manufacturers to disguise the outlines of an unreleased vehicle). Some sources say that the test pattern will not be included in the final model, though. You can bet that this will be an expensive set, clocking in well over $100 USD.(Update: You can now read our review of the Porsche 911 GT3 RS.)

HobbyMedia brings us this 360 view, as well:

Click through to see more new sets