Tag Archives: Moko

Happy Plant Madness takes cuteness to strange new places

LEGO Botanicals 10349 Happy Plants is a truly delightful set, and one that invites creative builders to remix in their own way. Our reviewer swapped out the shrubs with custom bonsai, for example. But why stop there? Why not replace your plants with toast? Or… tentacles? For the #happyplantmadness collab some AFOL friends decided to push the set’s cuteness to its limits with custom creations. Keep your green thumbs inside the vehicle as we tour these madcap flowerpots!

Thundrabuilds turns the blue planter into an adorable toaster. The little fella is ready for his bath. I’m sure this will go swimmingly.

The prolific and wickedly funny Trevor Pearson-Jones shares a version of the blue planter who never skips leg day. Yellow planter is still smiling even as it’s reduced to its buff buddy’s loincoth.

The happy plants keep smiling after the fold

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Moko’s LEGO Dragonzord merges with Mighty Morphin’ Megazord

While 10358 Soundwave is making waves as LEGO’s best transformable bot to date, old-school AFOLs know that when it comes to poseable and functional mecha, Moko‘s models can’t be beat! Last year Moko wowed us with an uncannily accurate Power Rangers’ Megazord in LEGO. Enter the Green Ranger as the Godzilla-esque Dragonzord roars in as Moko’s latest Morphin’ mech. Standing an impressive 44cm and weighing 2kg, the Dragonzord is comparable in size to the retired LEGO Voltron.

This “DragonCaeser,” as it’s known in Japanese, is looking sharp with its high degree of articulation and shiny gold accents, and standing on its own is nearly as large as last year’s Megazord…

But the laurels go to Moko for how the metal beast combines with his previous Zord lineup using only the hinges and rotations integrated in the model.

The Dragonzord’s combiined forms follow after the jump!

Custom Minifig creations with Hollywood LEGO hero stuntmanbrick [Guest Feature]

Hi there! I’m Aidan, you may know me as @stuntmanbrick on Instagram, and I’m fortunate enough to be TBB’s guest writer today. A little about myself – I’m a screenwriter based in Los Angeles and I just graduated from USC with a master’s degree in writing. I write mostly family/adventure/sci-fi-type features, and I say all this because film is one of my two passions – the other, of course, being LEGO.

A lifelong fan of the plastic, I’ve been running my LEGO Instagram page for about six and a half years now, accruing over twenty-thousand followers in that time. My work mostly focuses on recreating pre-existing characters from movies and television, whether it’s 1902’s A Trip to the Moon, this year’s Sinners, or anything in between. With that, let’s talk LEGO customs.

The story continues…

Jumpei Mitsui rings out the end of an era with a massive Danjiri shrine

When we first featured builder Jumpei Mitsui 18 years ago, he was the fresh-faced star of Japan’s LEGO King Championship TV show and, soon after, the youngest person to earn the title LEGO Certified Professional builder. Now, on the eve of returning to school for a master’s program in artistic expression, Jumpei reveals his latest creation, a nearly life-size Danjiri cart buitl entirely of LEGO bricks. Carts like these, modeled on shrines, are paraded around town during Danjiri Matsuri festivals where different neighborhoods compete in pulling their decorated cart through the streets while chanting furiously. Jumpei recreates the intricate hand-carved woodworking in brick, as well as lantern decorations with flower prints and kanji script.

Jumpei, who specializes in large-scale creations (like this jaw-dropping model of the battleship Yamato), starts with a sketch, but then free-builds everything by hand. This project, consisting of over 200,000 bricks and weighting over 200kg, took six months to complete. When working on large-scale projects, Jumpei has an assistant who should be quite familiar to fans of the site – Moko – one of the most prolific and impressive mecha builders around whose we’ve featured going back nearly 20 years!

Jumpei’s creation is currently on display at the Sumiyoshi Danjiri museum in Kobe. Congratulations on this masterpiece, and best of luck in the next chapter of your art education!

Making mech heads in LEGO with Moko [Building Techniques]

When it comes to building LEGO mechs, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone with as much experience and expertise as Moko. The Japanese builder has been posting and sharing robotic creations with us for 20 years, going back to 2005 and this sad little Gundam! Moko’s latest big project, this incredible combining Mechazord, was one of our most popular articles of 2024. Today Moko is sharing techniques for building mech heads like these.

Follow along as Moko guides you through the advanced techniques used to build heads like these from simple parts you probably already have in your collection.

For more mech head tutorials, check out Moko’s previous video with four different styles.

Run ‘n gun – the best of both worlds

Unparalleled play features and an eye for form make Moko‘s LEGO builds easy to spot but hard to imitate, and the fully transformable battle-ready beauty Vehichle-Bot 03 is no exception. Sand green is not exactly a rare color, but certainly harder to come by than some, with the available part selection used to great effect here. And that’s not to mention a well placed Technic gear differential housing used for the gun barrel. While the aforementioned cannon suggests a battlefield role of raining down on enemies from afar, the chest guard, resembling a truck’s cattle pusher (AKA moose bumper or ‘roo bar, depending on your region) boasts the brawn to mix it up if any bot rolls up close enough to trade some paint.

Speaking of rolling, if you’re curious about the transformation feature head over to the Moko Brick Laboratory Channel to see the full transformation sequence, and many shots of this build in other poses and from alternate angles – one revealing a clever use of LEGO crowbar elements for texture.

Been living under a rock and haven’t been introduced to this builder’s exceptional work? Check out Moko’s transforming police motorbike, including a video featuring Vehicle-Bots 01 and 02, or Vehicle-Bot 03’s apparent spiritual predecessor the FabuSoldier 01.

LEGO Megazord is a Mighty Morphin’ Masterpiece

Move over LEGO Voltron, there’s a new combining mecha king in town and the power is on their side. Builder Moko has been impressing us for nearly 20 years with LEGO mechs that mix style with unmatched play function. Moko’s latest masterwork will be instantly familiar to any ’90s kids and sentai fans: the Megazord from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers (Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger in Japan). Moko recreates each of the five Dinozords that transform and combine with functionality to rival the best mech toys around.

Standing 18″ (46cm) tall, the Megazord falls between the heights of Voltron and the Hulkbuster. It’s remarkable how much articulation and detail Moko achieves at this scale while also achieving a studs-free look. The model is also impressively sturdy in all three forms, with joints that allow it to hold dynamic poses. It’s easier to fully appreciate Moko’s craft by seeing the model posed and transformed in action.

Go, go power on for more pics of Moko’s Megazord! !

A ray of inspiration

If you told me that TBB regular Moko had made a LEGO stingray mech suit, I’d think it was a suit in the shape of the flat fish. But never one to conform to expectations, Moko’s mech is actually piloted by a stingray, who looks right at home inside the blue suit, even sporting a HUD over one eye. As usual there are lots of great techniques and interesting pieces that make it worth your while to spend some time picking this one apart, but the best are the Hero Factory jumper shells used for the toes.

LEGO Creation of the Week (#12): Kantam Robo by Mono

Every week readers of the The Brothers Brick Telegram channel choose the Creation of the Week: one project that impressed all of us the most. You don’t have to be a fan of Japanese anime mechs to fall in love with Moko’s latest build — which grabs the last week’s Creaton of the Week award! Clap-clap-clap!

Meanwhile, the new vote is already on! Join our Telegram channel to follow all the best LEGO creations, latest news, and, of course, vote for your favorites. See you there!

The cleanest, green-est lines are on this LEGO Kantam Robo

Peeled from the pages of Crayon Shin-chan is this intense rendition of Kantam Robo by Moko. I’ve got to say, this robot sports some incredibly clean lines, utilizing a wide variety of studless slopes and tiles to adult-ify the character from the manga by Yoshito Usui. All the contours and sharp corners along the build help to add depth to a creation that’s primarily green, creating pockets of shadow and bright reflective surfaces. But my favorite bit has to be the detail put into the mouth grill of the mech. It utilizes, among other parts, the minifig shirt collar to get the perfect spacing. Overall, it’s a significant step up from Moko’s first attempt at the character almost a decade ago (which was already pretty awesome).

Mess with him and you’re in for a ruff time.

This bulldog is the latest recruit in the series of animals in mechsuits by Moko, and it’s one of my favorites. The medium nougat dog really pops against the dark green and grays, and the eight stacked bars slotted into the shoulder cannon is an inspired technique I hadn’t seen before. Plus, the flaming skull on the asymmetrical shoulder shows that this is a watchdog you’ll want to watch out for.

Fabulous + soldier = Fabusoldier?

When it comes to arming animals, Moko is one of – if not the – best in the business. We’re big fans of his work, and apparently so are the residents of Fabuland. They’ve moved on from the happy-go-lucky bright colours of the 1980s and are upgrading their armory. After Peter Pig and Lionel Lion, Bonnie Bunny is the third character to get their own mech, and this one gets airborne! There’s some serious Apache helicopter vibes here – the olive green looks great. And there’s in-flight snacks! It seems even a mech-suit army still marches, and flies, on its stomach.