“M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!” Thanks to Shawn Snyder, one of Walt Disney’s most beloved cartoon characters comes to life in LEGO-form. LEGO Mickey is instantly recognizable, right down to his red trousers and white gloves. In particular, I was impressed by Shawn’s use of a wide variety of angles to form the shape of Mickey’s head and facial features. Finishing off the build is an elegant black and gold base which would make this model a perfect fit for Disney Store shelves!
Fall has arrived, and along with it a small wave of twelve new LEGO sets. Star Wars gets the prime treatment with some holiday flair for good measure. This wave is smaller than the 58 new sets from late summer we posted about before, but we have your guide right here to each and every new set as we head into the pre-holiday season.
Along with the new sets, LEGO has a gift with purchase for Star Wars fans: an exclusive Han Solo Mudtrooper minifigure. To get him, you have to spend more than $35 on LEGO Star Wars sets. The promotion runs through the 14th or while supplies last.
See all of the October 2018 wave of LEGO sets available now
Patty Rau has launched Cinderella into space aboard the FGP When You Wish Upon A Star. There’s a lot to love about this LEGO spaceship. The bulbous midsection is a great nod to the vehicle’s origin as a pumpkin. The ship also contains elements from all three minidoll-scale versions of Cinderella’s carriage: printed inverse slopes from Cinderella’s Carriage (2016), printed curved slopes from Cinderella’s Dream Carriage (2014), and gold filagrees from Cinderella’s Enchanted Evening.
It seems like Patty is doing a series of Disney Princess spaceships, as she has also created one for Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. Apparently Sweet Mayhem isn’t the only minidoll with a spaceship.
“Well, some people use their imagination.” Mike Nieves has used his imagination to create a wonderfully whimsical representation of Belle from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Mike’s character build may not have a defined face, but the pose and setting is iconically Belle. Thanks to her outstretched hand and head tucked in a book, I can almost hear her singing.
Thanks to an extensive use of curved and angled slope elements, Mike has done a great job of capturing the look of Belle. As we can see in this shot, sloped elements are also used to convey a sense of motion with the flow of Belle’s dress. There is some incredibly nice detailing here, including the clever ribbons for the hair and dress.
If you like Mike’s model of Belle, you won’t want to miss his other LEGO Disney character builds.
Back in 2016, Koen treated us to his magical take on Disney’s iconic Mouse. Two years later, in a response to LEGO’s own BrickHeadz versions, he’s redesigned his model of Mickey as well as adding Minnie to the mix. It just goes to show how much a year or two means in terms of the evolution of LEGO elements; Koen improving on the rounded shaping of the characters’ heads with new curved tiles as well as using the printed eyelash piece for Minnie’s eyes. The design of Minnie’s bow, with its single stud polka dots, and her brick-built shoes, demonstrate some seriously clever building too. The result: a brilliantly realised recreation of our favourite cartoon couple.
Disney’s Frozen joins the growing ranks of pop-culture BrickHeadz now available from LEGO. 41617 Elsa is available by herself, along with 41618 Anna and Olaf, who come in a buddy pack. Elsa comes with 130 pieces, and retails for $9.99, while her sister Anna and her childhood friend Olaf come with 201 pieces, and retail for $14.99. They are numbered 52, 53 and 54 in the BrickHeadz series and both sets are available now.
Read on for our full review of these two sets
I’ve always wondered about whether Mike from Monsters, Inc. would have problems depth perception and balance, since he only has a single huge eye. Maybe having a larger eye enables him to compensate. This build by Palixa And The Bricks features Mike Wazowski and Boo, two lovable characters from the movie Monsters, Inc. Mike is instantly recognisable with his handsome blue eye and white teeth (first introduced in the LEGO Mixels line back in 2014). And Boo, well, is playing peek-a-boo as she always does.
Ariel and Ursula recently joined the ever-growing ranks of Disney LEGO characters available in Brickhead form… but today we’re talking about a very different version of these two iconic characters from The Little Mermaid. Mike Nieves has built a well-crafted model of Ariel dramatically posed as she expresses her longing to be part of the world outside her beloved ocean. Her flowing red hair looks very much like it’s on-screen inspiration, and the use of several green curved tiles along her lower body creates the perfect scaly look.
Of course, Ariel is just the start of Mike’s Disney character lineup.
See more of Mike’s sculpted Disney characters
This microscale model by Koen Zwanenburg is of Agrabah, the fictional city from the Disney animated film Aladdin, and serves as the perfect bird’s eye view to the minifigure-scale scene we highlighted earlier today. The numerous tower tops using a variety of pearl gold domes and curved elements are well designed, and the inkwell part ties them all together nicely. One of my favorite missable details is the use of 2×2 macaroni tiles facing each other to create those lovely dark pink and teal stripes in the three larger towers. It also takes some clever brickwork to pair eight of the pearl gold 3×3 quarter domes together into a solid sphere.
And if you liked this microscale Agrabah, be sure to check out Peter Ilmrud’s minifig-scale Agrabah we featured earlier today!
“Welcome to Agrabah. City of Mystery, of Enchantment, and the finest merchandise this side of the River Jordan…” This cool little LEGO Disney diorama by Peter Ilmrud captures both the exotic atmosphere of Aladdin’s hometown, and a real sense of action and excitement with characters leaping around the rooftops and the magic carpet soaring above. With multiple minifigures crammed into its tight circular footprint, the model has some nice detail in the framing walls. I particularly like the use of panel pieces to provide architectural texture to the top of the buildings. The only slightly jarring note for me is the mixing of regular minifigs with Friends-style mini-dolls — a form of LEGO heresy in some parts — but the overall scene is so nice we’ll let it slide.
Although LEGO hasn’t yet officially announced or listed these online yet, we picked up two new LEGO BrickHeadz sets, 41624 Mickey Mouse and 41625 Minnie Mouse at our local LEGO Store today. Both sets retail for the usual $9.99 in the US (Canada: 12.99 CAD | UK: £9.99). Mickey includes 109 pieces and Minnie includes 129 pieces.
Read our hands-on review of LEGO Disney BrickHeadz 41624 and 41625 Mickey and Minnie Mouse
If there really was a theme park with cloned dinosaurs, who do you think would own and operate it? Considering Walt Disney Parks is the world’s largest theme park company and Disney has a history of purchasing competitors, it’s not a huge stretch to imagine a T-Rex sporting Mickey Mouse ears. Paul Hollingsworth and his team at Digital Wizards Studios explore this hypothetical scenario in their clever brickfilm, Jurassic Disney World.
Paul and team have done a great job integrating official sets such as Cinderella’s Castle and the Jurassic World gyrospheres with custom builds like Jurassic Park jeeps and a bubblegum tank for Minnie Mouse. Every scene is densely packed with clever gags, impressive animation, and easter eggs (such as a brief cameo by a mutant dinosaur from the short-lived Dino Attack theme). Be sure to watch it twice to appreciate the finer details.