Haven’t you ever walked up to the checkout at a grocery store or toy store, looked at all the really terrible, cheaply made toys that are supposed to attract your attention and wished “Why couldn’t these be LEGO instead?! I want minifigs! With accessories!” Well, I have, and my wish has come true! Hurray!
I can’t wait for 2008!
(Via How Many Studs to LEGOLAND.)
I’ve admired Morgan19‘s minifigs ever since I noticed his great Firefly minifigs. The latest batch is a group of historical minifigs, entries for the Fine Clonier Historical Minifig Contest.
I might quibble with the “historical” nature of some of these, but it’s a great collection of minifigs, presented beautifully.
Tired of dirty, muddy, radioactive futures? Then why not step forward into the future world Hippotam imagines: Clean and shiny.
Josh’s post earlier today reminded me that I hadn’t gotten around to posting a review of the new animals from BrickForge. Let’s get started.
Three animals are available from BrickForge:
You can also buy white horns for $0.50 a pair, and pink udders for $0.50 each. (The brick and plate on the Holstein and the saddle on the steer are from my own collection.)
The Cows
BrickForge cows are comparable in size to official horses, but with shorter legs. Like LEGO horses, there’s a slot on the back where you can put a saddle (rodeo!), a hitch, or bricks to fill in the space. Unfortunately, you can’t put a barding on a cow. I tried.
The head, which is articulated, includes two holes where you can put any standard rod-sized element, such as Viking horns — and the BrickForge horns fit in holes of the same size on official elements:
The Holstein and the black cow integrate well with official LEGO, though they both feel a little lighter than a LEGO element of equivalent size. Without horns, the holes for horns look a little weird on the side of the head, but I’d rather have holes in my cows’ heads than no way to put horns on them! I think the Holstein looks great with an udder (which I haven’t tried removing, so I don’t know how easy that is), and the black cow looks great with a saddle or hitch.
Pigs and Sheep
BrickForge pigs and sheep are about the same size as LEGO dogs. Like dogs, they don’t have any articulation, but their feet fit on any sequence of 1×3 studs (or any pair of studs one stud apart). They look and feel very much like LEGO. I especially like the pink pig, and all the pigs’ curly tails:
Summary
The same fundamental criterion I used in my review of BrickForge weapons applies to these animals: “How well do these custom elements fit into my existing LEGO collection?”
My life would still be complete without historically accurate weapons or modern guns (though I think both BrickForge and BrickArms make some amazingly cool stuff), but I’ve been wanting more animals from LEGO for many years. Not only do they fit in well with my collection, these latest additions to the BrickForge product catalog fill a real gap in what’s been released so far by The LEGO Company. I wholeheartedly recommend them.
Finally, be sure to check out Mark Larson’s review on BrickZone.net, the discussion on Classic-Castle.com, and Martin Jaspers’ review on Brickshelf. Martin’s review includes color comparisons I couldn’t do in the poor lighting I’m stuck with at the moment:
I think it’s been too long since we’ve had a great big animated GIF here on The Brothers Brick. Here’s LEGO biker Noddy‘s latest:
Flashy! Thanks for the tip, Peter Edwards!
Steven Marshall is fast becoming one of my favorite builders. He’s not prolific, but what he posts is well-built and beautifully photographed.
While we’re at it, don’t miss his double-decker bus:
(Both bookmarked a couple days ago, but I’m forced to concede a “reminder-via” to the inimitable Klocki.)
Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group recently used LEGO to showcase its design for their proposed “LEGO Towers” in Copenhagen.
According to Dezeen, the LEGO version took 250,000 bricks and 5 weeks to build.
Here’s a time-lapse video of the build process:
(Via Dezeen and Gizmodo, with tips from readers Dale and Jaap.)
Janey “Red Brick” Cook celebrates the most delicious deity worshipped by Pastafarians everywhere, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (wiki-linki):
And of course, don’t miss Chris Doyle’s officially sanctified version of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster:
Zach Clapsadle takes us back to long nights sitting in front of a flickering cathode ray tube with his “Launch Arcology” from SimCity.
Chiukeung presents the Star Ferry terminal in Hong Kong.
(In addition to eating a lot of great food and following my mom around while she shopped, I rode a Star Ferry when I visited Hong Kong in 1989.)
Via MicroBricks.
Brickshelfer chiukeung has miniaturized two of my favorite sets of 2007, 10182 Cafe Corner and 10190 Market Street.
Via MicroBricks.
