Our virtual LEGO Advent Calendar series continues on Day 3 with a new mini-kit from Star Wars and Friends.
We’ll be unveiling the mini-kits or minifigs from each Advent Calendar around this time every day, and we won’t ruin the surprise — you’ll need to click through to reveal the LEGO behind the tiny doors.
Click to see the Day 3 mini-kits!
The highly anticipated new Star Wars movie opens in just two weeks – as if anyone actually needs reminding of that any more. So what better excuse to whip you all into a frenzy, dear readers, than by having a Star Wars themed TBB cover photo all month! And this previously featured AT-AT habitat by markus19840420 seemed like the perfect choice:
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Because we here at The Brothers Brick have a time machine, we feel that there’s nothing particularly odd about starting our coverage of the new LEGO Advent Calendars a day late.
Each day until Christmas Eve, we’ll be revealing the mini-kits and minifigs from that day’s LEGO Star Wars and Friends Advent Calendars. Why not LEGO City? Because meh. To keep the secret alive, we’ll be posting pretty late in the day here on the US West Coast (GMT -8:00), and we’ll put that day’s reveal after the jump.
This isn’t really a review — we’ll save our thoughts until the end — more of a virtual Advent Calendar we can all enjoy together. So, follow along, and let us know what you think about each kit in the comments.
Click to see the Day 1 & 2 mini-kits!
Over the past few days, a bevy of new LEGO Star Wars sets have been revealed. It’s no surprise that these include sets from December 18th’s The Force Awakens, but there are also a number of sets from the previous six movies as well. We’ll keep all of The Force Awakens sets below the jump, so that you can avoid spoilers if you wish.
75137 Carbon-Freezing Chamber is an altogether new set. The only time we’ve seen any of Episode V’s Cloud City interiors previously was in 2003’s extremely rare 10123 Cloud City, the set that precipitated LEGO’s shift to flesh-colored minifigs. This set includes the new highly detailed Boba Fett and carbon-frozen Han Solo, with the Boba nearly identical to the one available in the Ultimate Collector’s Series Slave I but without arm printing. It also features a brand-new Ugnaught, one of the few characters from the original trilogy to not yet have a LEGO minifigure.
75138 Hoth Attack is a refresh of 2009’s Echo Base, and takes advantage of some newer curved slopes and LEGO’s newer, more detailed minifigure printing.
75135 Obi-Wan’s Jedi Interceptor is the third version of the Episode III-style Jedi Starfighter, following versions in 2005 and 2007. It looks snappy in Obi-Wan’s dark red and grey livery, versus Obi-Wan’s previous blue and Anakin’s yellow.
75136 Droid Escape Pod is also the third iteration of this brief scene in Episode IV, following versions in 2001 and 2012, and adds more detail and a pair of roaming Jawas this time around.
2016 will bring us another wave of the popular Star Wars chibi-sized Microfighters ships, beginning with this adorable 75129 Wookie Gunship.
See the rest of the 2016 Star Wars LEGO sets below! [The Force Awakens Spoilers]
The cheap brick just keeps coming, with more Black Friday LEGO sales from both the LEGO Shop and Amazon.com. Here are a few more I hadn’t noticed when I wrote my earlier LEGO sales & deals on Amazon roundup.
60080 Spaceport is $20 off, bringing it below a hundred bucks.
75101 First Order Special Forces TIE Fighter from The Force Awakens is 20% off, at $55.99.
Click here to see more LEGO sales & deals
Star Wars is clearly a hot topic at the moment and Rhys Knight has created his LEGO weapon of choice, Han Solo’s DL-44 Blaster.
The BlasTech Industries DL-44 heavy blaster pistol was a powerful sidearm from the time of the Galactic Civil War. It was the weapon of choice for Han Solo and the Rebel Alliance and also wielded by Luke Skywalker throughout The Empire Strikes Back.
Rhys’ 1:1 model has a raised scope, and he shared with TBB that as the model is primarily black, he wanted there to be a clear separation. He notes that the ‘fiddly’ aspect of the build was the rear of the telescopic sight as it had to be circular, but also flare out. The trigger guard is actually upside down, and is attached to the grip via Part 60470 (1×2 plate with double clips) and attached to the power cell via a simple slot for the guard.
Best part for me — it cocks!
2015 is an exciting year for Star Wars fans, with The Force Awakens coming to theaters and a long-awaited new entry in the Star Wars Battlefront series of games. I’ve been having a blast playing the new Battlefront on Xbox, so I was inspired to expand my arsenal of gaming weapons with the classic E-11 Blaster Rifle.
Battlefront was lovingly crafted by EA Dice to be true to the Star Wars original trilogy (they took 3D scans of the original props to create their digital counterparts), so I trusted that their in-game model of the E-11 was accurate enough to build from. For scale reference, I used the dimensions of a Sterling SMG, the gun from which the original E-11 film props were built. Working features on the LEGO replica include a moving trigger and a folding stock.
Finally, I’ll leave you with a first person perspective view. It should appear familiar to those who have played Battlefront.
Star Wars microfighters — although being a fine source of minifigures — aren’t always the best in terms of both collecting value and building experience, mostly because of their size and scale. We all know: if you’re looking for aesthetically pleasing models, you should go in for sophisticated UCS-sets. I have been sharing this opinion, but only til last night when my eye was caught by a couple of CHIBI (cute-huggable-idiotic-baby-inspired) spaceships by Kim Do-hyun.
Building large Star Wars ships in such a peculiar scale and style is an advanced challenge in itself. However, Kim nailed it — and not at the expense of elaborate greebling. All the dished and tiles on Millennium Falcon are pretty familiar and look absolutely cute. At the same time, the Imperial Shuttle is genius in its simplicity. It’s just a couple of regular and curved slopes and a wedge at the nose that make the shuttle so recognizable. A slight disproportion in the size of its parts gives the model its totally adorable look.
I just want to take both ships in my hands, embrace them softly and never let them fly away. Full stop. Sorry, ewoks, you’re not my favorite any longer.
The Speeder Custom Body Shop Kitchen is getting busy as our Pimp Rey’s Speeder Contest picks up speed. We welcome all interpretations, but these two delicious builds got our taste buds watering.
First, straight from the freezer, is Koen’s ‘Ice Pop Speeder’. Koen was clearly concerned about Rey coping with the hot deserts of Jakku and pimped her a chilled ice pop complete with Ice Cream vendor… not sure how she will feel about him taking a quick bite first!
Next comes the ‘Hot Dog Speeder’ dished up by Jabberwokka. Hot dogs are always a tasty fast food, and this Hot Dog Speeder is served in a neat napkin with some condiments. Let’s see if he can mustard up the speed to ketchup with the other pimped Speeders!
Polybags of Finn from The Force Awakens are starting to show up at brick-and-morter stores, and one of the interesting things about these small, early sets is that they include a foldout with the first good, official photos of 2016 LEGO Star Wars sets. Brickset has gotten ahold of one of the fold-outs.
The photos show several Battle Pack sets from both the Classic Trilogy and The Force Awakens, along with the first views of a Carbon Freezing Chamber set (75137), Rebel emplacement on Hoth (75138), and another redesigned escape pod with more figs than just the usual Artoo and Threepio (75136).
The back of the foldout reveals better photos of the individual minifigs that come in these sets.
We’ll share more news about 2016 LEGO sets as good-quality information emerges.
Remember Han Solo being proud of his Millennium Falcon — that she made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs? I wonder what he would say about this beauty by Jeo Gan. I’ve never seen a racing makeover of the Falcon before, but Technic panels from the Grand Prix Racer look like pure genius; not only do they perfectly recreate the overall shape of the ship, but also stickers grant an iconic spaceship with a brand new style. Moreover, bent gray baseplates in the background are an unusually designed part of the Mos Eisley Spaceport setting.
The folks over at WIRED seem to have found a niche in the LEGO community. While the tech site usually creates content around, well, tech, we assume someone convinced their boss to buy them LEGO for “work”. Then, with certain Star Wars sets, they do the unthinkable (for some people, at least) by building them up, and the destroying them. One of their most popular was a Super Star Destroyer meeting its end, all filmed at 100 frames per second. Now they’re back, and have gone to the forest moon of Endor to beat up an AT-ST walker.
Recreating that iconic scene from the movie when Ewoks crush the poor chicken walker between two logs, it’s quite expertly done and great fun:
Though, we’re going to have to deduct some points for not making the background and logs out of LEGO. 7/10.