Everyone remembers when the little green aliens stole the show after Buzz Lightyear and Woody found themselves trapped in an arcade claw machine. Now, David Roberts is giving those little aliens a claw they can take outside Pizza Planet with this handy hover machine, suitable for lifting and transporting all manner of items. David has a knack for primary-colored sci-fi vehicles with strong geometric patterns built into them, and that’s a style that suits these little Pixar aliens just right.
With the Lightyear movie’s release right around the corner, it’s great to see a build of everyone’s favourite spaceman action figure. Choi Dambaek has constructed this adorable model of Buzz Lightyear, complete with wings on the back. The short stocky proportions combined with the oversized head provide the build with a style similar to LEGO’s BrickHeadz sets, however, this creation has more articulation thanks to the use of ball joints. The striking colour scheme of the character is perfectly recreated and also features the assortment of buttons on Buzz’s chest plate. Angled wedges form thick eyebrows which are settled across Mixel eye plates. Let’s hope we see a Woody in the future!
I love Iron Builder! It usually means job security for us here at TBB, loads of awesome LEGO entertainment for you, and stress, horror, and depravity for the poor sods who have to build for it. Take this pointy starship built by Joe (jnj_bricks) for example. It’s pretty neat in its own right, but knowing full well you gotta crank out a bunch of quality builds in short order while your competitor does the same gives me heart palpitations just thinking about it. As per the rules of Iron Builder, you gotta cleverly use a seed part or another. We’re supposed to be impressed by Joe’s use of the required hexagonal blabitty-blah but I’m more smitten with the hidden Woody figure from Toy Story. Can you spot it?
Pixar and Disney may have put the toys down to tell us the story of the real Buzz Lightyear, but when builders like Peter Zieske see a ship in a teaser trailer, it becomes a call to arms. We may not know much about the film yet, but it has certainly created a…buzz amongst fans. While we wait to see how it fits into the Pixar Theory, we can have our fun. Peter based the Star Command XL-15 on the few images of the sleek starship seen in the Lightyear trailers. Toy or person, Buzz always gets the coolest ships.
In 1995, Pixar revolutionized the look of animated feature films with the release of Toy Story. In 2016, LEGO put a whole new spin on buildable figures with the release of the first BrickHeadz. Now, in 2022, these two aesthetic milestones are coming together to give us sets 40552 Buzz Lightyear & 40553 Woody and Bo Peep, These are BrickHeadz numbers 158, 159, and 160, respectively. Both sets will be available on February 1st. Buzz Lightyear is a 114-piece set available for US $9.99 | CAN $12.99 | UK £9.99. Woody and Bo Peep is a 296-piece set that will retail for US $19.99 | CAN $24.99 | UK £17.99. But how does the BrickHeadz format do at translating these iconic animated characters? Let’s dive into Andy’s toy box and find out.
The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
Toy Story Mania! is an interactive ride based on Pixar’s classic film franchise that you can experience at three of Disney’s parks around the world. But you can only enter the attraction through the gaping maw of a giant Woody head at DisneySea in Tokyo; an experience that has been replicated in LEGO form by builder nobu_tary.
This build does a fantastic job of capturing the spirit of the location. The white, tan, and azure color scheme is a spot-on match for the park’s American Waterfront land. Park details like the lamps and roof spires are properly represented. The ride’s logo is effectively built into Woody’s hat. And Woody’s head is pleasantly detailed, from the cattle horns used as his eyebrows, to the row of teeth set just behind his upper lip. I am surprised to see that Buzz has to wait in line, though. You’d think he’d have some sort of VIP Fast Pass.
“Reach for the sky”, Star Wars helmets; Woody and Buzz can take it from here. Pixar fans will love these fun Toy Story builds from Rokan Cheung. Woody’s hat is a good blend of different shadows of brown, with Studs Not On Top approach. The eyebrows are a good choice, adding some life to the build, and the pink cheeks bring it all together.
Again, Rokan is killing it with the eyebrows. Using a whip for Buzz’s dimple (or beard? sound off in the comments!) is also great. The purple and green really sell this as our intrepid Space Ranger. I’d love to see Rokan continue the line with the rest of the Toy Story crew.
I love it when an entire LEGO theme gets reduced to a float, an attraction, or, in this case, a funfair attraction. Bricksized used the western part of the Toy Story theme for a funfair shooting range. Which is an excellent theme for a shooting range. Even though this creation only uses the Woody hat from the Toy Story theme, this part is so iconic that the entire creation reeds Toy Story. A lot of quarter round tiles and half round tiles have been used to make 2D shooting targets like hills, cacti and clouds. Have you also spotted the Mid-Length hair with Part over Right Shoulder got used as cotton candy, which to me screams pure win!
Things that entertained kids in the ’50s were simpler. The original Mr. Potato Head came with accessories but no plastic potato body. Since potatoes were a staple of the American diet back then it was assumed each household had scores of actual potatoes you could pin plastic eyes, noses and ears into. Complaints of rotting vegetables and stricter food safety regulations put a kibosh on all of that and so Hasbro began including the plastic potato body within the toy set starting in 1964. Modern diets have changed, and thanks to my ever-expanding, aging waistline, I have not had a heavy starch in my house in maybe years. Mr. Quinoa Head or Mr. Tofu Head just doesn’t have the same ring to it but thankfully Elijah Bormann buttered our nostalgic appetites with this LEGO version of the iconic toy.
If you liked this you should check out Elijah’s other stuff as he tends to tickle one’s nostalgic fancy. Mr. Potato Head’s silly face takes me back to a simpler more care-free time when…whether fried in oil, baked with butter and chives or roasted and seasoned with salt and rosemary, I could eat potatoes with impunity. Man, I miss potatoes!
What’s the only way to make a T-Rex more fearsome? Place him at the controls of a giant Godzilla-esque mechanoid! If you take a close look at the pilot’s cockpit of Simon Liu‘s impressive LEGO technobeast, you’ll spot Rex from Toy Story at the helm. You don’t need to get this little joke to be impressed by this creation and its wrecked-city diorama surroundings, but it’s details and touches of humour like this which elevate the best LEGO models into something special. The texture and mechanical-looking greebles prevent the central robot from just being a big mass of grey (always a danger with a one-colour model), and the ruined buildings are brilliantly done, creating an appropriate sense of urban destruction. The addition of Buzz Lightyear facing down Rex’s new toy, along with a bunch of fleeing claw-machine aliens, adds some welcome splashes of colour amidst the rubble.
Live from the show floor at the 2019 New York Toy Fair, we’re bringing you all the new product reveals from Toy Story 4, available starting in April. The sets include carnival rides, an RV adventure, and characters new and old. (EDIT: These sets are now available from LEGO.)
See our complete coverage of the LEGO sets from Toy Story 4 at the 2019 New York Toy Fair
Matt De Lanoy (Pepa Quin) built Andy’s room in minifig scale – Toy Story minifig scale, that is. This magnificent build is a full 30″x30″. Scaled to real world sizes, that makes Andy’s room 16’x16′. That’s a pretty decently sized room!
It’s the details that make this build particularly impressive – and deceptive. Thankfully, Matt’s photographed some of the best parts of the room so we can get a good, up-close look at the details. Check the photos out, along with a toy’s eye view video, below the jump!