Tag Archives: Christmas

Close Encounters of the Holiday Kind

You think it’s hard getting home for the holidays? Try having to traverse the galaxy. After all, it’s Christmas time in space, too. And Santa Claus is busy enough trying to hit all the houses on Earth. Which means it’s up to this dedicated gray alien to deliver presents on their planet. Thankfully, Frost has constructed them a vehicle suitable to the task. We’re assuming Earth reindeer can’t breathe the atmosphere, so a heavy-duty pair of treads and skis will have to do instead. And no need to check the list again, because I’m certain that radar dish is able to detect the naughty/nice levels of the local population.

See more of Frost’s out of this world holiday scenes

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Creating cozy Christmas memories in LEGO

Lucy1021lego is a Japanese builder who reconnected with the hobby, like so many adults, during the pandemic, when lockdown had us nostalgic for cozier times. Since then, Lucy has been photographing scenes of everyday life filled with amazing brick-built decor and the occasional non-brick detail, most starring her freckled Paradisa sigfig. Christmas scenes have been a staple of every year’s creations, so with the holidays approaching, what better time to cozy up with Lucy’s many holiday memories?

The weather outside is frightful. Come on in, won’t you?

See all of Lucy’s holiday memories after the jump

Don’t meet me under the missile toad

We all know the rules. During the holidays, if you get caught under the mistletoe, you get kissed. But get caught underneath this polar projectile by Trevor Pearson-Jones, and you might just kiss your butt good-bye. In addition to being a perfectly rendered visual pun, we appreciate the sense of motion instilled in the build. That festive fella really looks like he’s holding on for dear life. But we guess Kermit takes all the really good holiday jobs for amphibians, and this guy’s gotta take what he can get.

24 Days of Brickmas – A holiday challenge for builders of all ages starts today!

Opening advent calendars is one way to celebrate the holidays with LEGO (which you know we love!), but at The Brothers Brick, we’re even more excited by fans who use the occasion to create their own jolly builds. The 24 Days of Brickmas challenge on Instagram is a tradition about just that! Organizer Jessica (@dontbrickmedown) provided a list of daily prompts if you want to join in!

There are plenty of prizes for participants, including some exclusively for children. The Brothers Brick will be contributing two sets of six collectible Minifigures from the upcoming series – one set for AFOLs, one set for KFOLs (Kid fan of LEGO). It’s not too late to try for a 24-day streak, or pick your favorite themes and join in the fun for a snow day.

Here are a few of the early entries for this year’s challenge for inspiration:

snarkybrixx offers up this delightful greeble mosaic full of holiday cheer.

Here are a few more Bricksmas builds that have us seeing red!

LEGO Star Wars 40806 Gingerbread AT-AT: a sweet deal for Life Day [Review]

Ever since its first Advent calendar back in 2011, Star Wars has been a regular feature of LEGO’s holiday season offerings. Even so, in the last few years, it’s felt like they’ve been ramping up the Life Day celebrations. We (well, LEGO employees) got to see an extremely limited candy cane X-wing in 2019. In 2023, it was a small diorama with Finn, Rey and Chewie to coincide with an animated Christmas special. And this year, we get 40806 Gingerbread AT-AT – a set as unique as it is festive! We haven’t been entirely complimentary of this year’s Star Wars sets; can we end on a high note?

LEGO Star Wars 40806 Gingerbread AT-AT | 697 Pieces | Available October 1 |US $59.99 | CAN $79.99 | UK £54.99

The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

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LEGO Icons 10361 Holiday Express Train: all I want for Christmas is... 3D printed LEGO? [Review]

Isn’t it weird how trains and Christmas seem to have such a close association? Whether that’s down to unwrapping a train set on the big day, or Santa Claus becoming a railway magnate to help distribute presents, we couldn’t say. Either way – festive trains have also been a regular feature of LEGO’s product lineup over the years, including two at minifigure scale. This October 4th, you’ll be able to add a third engine to the Winter Village train shed, for the princely sum of US $129.99 | CAN $149.99 | UK £109.99. In some ways, it’s the same old story – but at the same time, there are big changes afoot among this set’s 956 pieces. Got your tickets ready? We’re travelling first class on the TBB Review Special of 10361 Holiday Express Train!

LEGO Icons 10361 Holiday Express Train | 956 Pieces | Available October 4 | US $129.99 | CAN $149.99 | UK £109.99

The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

All aboard to read our full review!

LEGO 41843 Family Christmas Tree – A holiday tradition in the making [Review]

Designed with collaboration in mind, the festive LEGO 41843 Family Christmas Tree invites families and friends to build together. With split instruction booklets, modular sub-builds, and clever engineering, the set allows for simultaneous progress, turning construction into a shared experience. In our house, that meant an all-hands-on-deck build session with both kids and grown-ups chipping in for a bricktacular afternoon of holiday fun. Packed with whimsical minifigures, hidden play features, and a finished design that’s perfect for display or imaginative play, this is a set that brings holiday magic to the table in more ways than one.

LEGO Family 41843| 3172 Pieces | Available October 1 to Insiders, Oct 4 to all |US $329.99 | CAN $379.99 | UK £269.99

The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Come along as we unwrap LEGO’s biggest holiday set together

A Christmas morning to remember

Santa’s not getting any bigger. It’s the chimneys that are getting smaller, honestly! A Christmas crisis is averted in this LEGO scene by Jérôme Barchietto as the local fire crew turns up just in time to extract jolly ol’ Saint Nick from a tight squeeze. Hope the family at 10267 Gingerbread Lane left out extra cookies for Santa. He’s had a rough night!

Happy Holidays from us all at The Brothers Brick!

The Christmas good, the bad, and the ...huh?

LEGO builder Kristel Whitaker presents a sweet little Christmas vignette of a reindeer barn. First we have the good, thich is getting to pet a baby reindeer. Very nice! Next is the bad, which is having to scoop the poopy. I wonder what that elf did to get on the naughty list. Finally we have the…ugly? The funny? The weird? We’re not too sure how to categorize this one but Santa is napping on the roof with what appears to be a liquor bottle and a pizza. There’s no judgements here. We’ve all been there, right?

This is sort of tangentially Christmas-related but here is another vignette that we noticed earlier this month of Mrs.Gingerbread baking some delicious heart cookies. Perhaps they’re laced with a little something extra, which could explain why Santa is napping on the roof.

Yo, ho, ho, ho, me hearties!

If ye be dreamin’ of a white Christmas, legend has it that there’s an uncharted isle where snow falls but once a year. Ye don’t believe me? Well, Jo Marte captured the whole jolly affair in LEGO! Featuring crows nests, skull-shaped caves, and shipwrecks, the scene bears all the trappings of classic Pirate, only things are looking a lot merrier for this motley crew of scallywags.

Swap yer grog for eggnog and cozy up by the fire as we await the arrival of White Beard’s booty. Here comes the jolly devil himself on his dolphin-pulled skiff. “On Flipper! On Skipper!” the festive freebooter calls.

Ye best be staying silent about what you’ve seen. Dead men tell no tales. “Now swim away, swim away, swim away all!” Until next year.

2024 TBB custom LEGO advent calendar – Day 24 [Feature]

All year-round, we here at The Brothers Brick spend our time featuring amazing builds made by the LEGO fan community. But we figured, for the holiday season, it would be great to build something together. For each day from December 1st through the 24th, we’ll be posting instructions to a custom TBB advent calendar build, one part each day. Want to participate? You can find all the parts you’ll need for the TBB Advent Event from our announcement in November. Read on to see what we’re building today!

One last set of instructions on the 2024 advent calendar

2024 TBB custom LEGO advent calendar – Day 23 [Feature]

We’ve now arrived at the penultimate day of this advent calendar