What do you get what you cross a burger truck and a monster truck? Well, there’s no mystery and that’s not a trick question: you’d get a Burger Monster Truck. Today we get hands-on with the 499-piece 31104 Burger Monster Truck and share our thoughts. The set will be available starting in January, comes with 499 pieces, 2 minifigures and will retail for US $49.99 | CAN $69.99 | UK £44.99
I felt a great disturbance in Billund, as if a handful of voices (in a boardroom) suddenly cried out in glee and were jumping with joy. Yes, you heard that right; Disney expanding the Star Wars lore can only mean that LEGO will get to cash in on more ideas for vehicles including the new space vehicle called the Razor Crest from the Disney+ hit show, The Mandalorian. An official set has yet to surface, but this build by Michał M. is enough to fill the void for now, capturing the essentials from the show’s now-iconic ship.
Click to see more of this magnificent Mandalorian ship
With a bit more than a week left until Christmas, Santa will need to up his game if he wants to deliver toys to all the good children of the world (except, of course, those who don’t have Santa in their holiday traditions). Thankfully Ian Ying has a solution with this extra blingy Rudolf Hot Rod. It has all the horsepower (or deer-power) needed to get the job done and there is enough custom and official LEGO pieces in shiny chrome to make any hot rod enthusiast’s heart go pitter-patter. The red-nosed deer skull hood ornament offers a clue as to what became of Rudolf. Good riddance, I say! I just wish it had more trunk space. I don’t know about you but the list of toys I want is quite long and I’ve been such a good boy this year…at least on the books anyway. Also it seems this Santa bears a striking resemblance to this Wilford guy.
When the official LEGO 10265 Ford Mustang set was released a while back, it received high praise as being one of the best LEGO cars ever produced. The strong lines of the classic muscle car translated well into brick form. But what about the more modern Mustangs, which, though they do hearken back to some of the angular aesthetics of the muscle car heyday, are more curvy and seductive? Well, builder Firas Abu-Jaber took it upon himself to create an updated version of the set, and the resultant Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 looks amazing!
More amazing than the way it looks, though, is the fact that this is made with only the parts contained in set 10265; no outside parts were used, other than the different wheels (though the wheels from the set fit fine, they just don’t match the styling of contemporary cars, so you could make it without updated rims if you wanted to). That means, if you have that set at home, you could build this one, too. The scales are slightly different, with the set being roughly 1:13 and this being about 1:15, but that’s a small difference when it looks this slick. Despite this being a “B model” from the original set, I’d give this an A+.
Do you love this car? Check out a Bugatti and a Ferrari by the same builder.
LEGO has explored underwater themes a few times over the years. In particular, I have a fondness for the mid-1990’s Aquazone line. It featured bright yellow colors, exploration-based vehicles, and some pretty cool builds. Finnish builder Tino Poutiainen has also taken the yellow submarine concept to heart with Expedition into the kelp forest. This classy undersea build features a vessel with some very good natural camouflage. That is, assuming fish don’t have a particularly good sense of scale. Based on the image description, the divers are looking for the “incredibly rare yellow-finned bladderwrack fish.” It doesn’t seem like they’re looking too carefully, though, as I think I spotted a couple on my own.
I like how the sub isn’t the usual short-and-flat glider style you often see in craft like this. Instead we have a tall and narrow vessel, complete with impressive vertical fins sloped at interesting angles. The mimicry between the sub and the sea-life makes this little scene one you can quickly tell your own fish stories around. (You should hear about the one that got away.)
As the population of LEGO Gingerbread Land grows, it’s important for all gingerbread people to know they have options when it comes to gingerbread transportation. If every seat on the Gingerbread Railroad is booked, hop on board CTR69 Bartosz’s delicious-looking Gingerbread Man Christmas Vehicle.
This 10,000 reindeer power hybrid snowmobile-train can haul gingerbread people, supernatural beings, and cargo with ease. Icing drifts are no match for this ride – the giant wheels and treads pack enough power and traction to plow right through anything that comes in its way. But even with all that power and speed, the ride will still be smooth enough to not put out the flame on your giant candle. Don’t hesitate, book your trip to Gingerbread Land today.
You’ve heard of concept cars, but how about concept construction vehicles? Builder Pierre E Fieschi built just that with his slick, orange Liebherr Tunnelier. This tunneling powerhouse looks capable of boring some serious holes, perfect for starting your own subway system or mineral excavation. I love the modern look of Pierre’s model, which features tread links around each individual wheel as opposed to a continuous tread along each side. If this isn’t enough Liebherr for you, be sure to read our review of the LEGO Technic Liebherr R 9800 Excavator!
I was recently at the Caterpillar Visitors Center in Peoria, looking at the big construction vehicles made for shaping the Earth in a profound way, from the gigantic mining dump trucks to the tiny little excavators. Somewhere in between are the bulldozers, offered in nearly a dozen sizes. The biggest Caterpillar, the D11, is one huge rig, but shockingly it isn’t the biggest dozer around. That title belongs to the Komatsu D575A-3 Super Dozer, weighing in at 336,400 pounds and measuring 38+ feet long, 24+ feet wide at the blade, and 16 feet high. While Beat Felber‘s LEGO model is not quite so large, it is not small, either. The builder has a whole series of 1:28.5 scale machines, from dump trucks to mining shovels, and the Super Dozer is a super addition to the lineup. The little kid inside of me is drooling all over the keyboard as I look at this beast, because this is the bulldozer every kid imagines driving as a construction worker.
Click to see more, including a video of the dozer at work
Here’s something you don’t see every day. That is precisely how John O’Shea started his write-up, which is fortuitous for me as it offers a neat segue into the rest of this article. Lazy writing? No, call it “opportunistic”. This model is based on the Cuthbertson tracked Land Rover created by J.Cuthbertson in Scotland. Here we see it employs tank tracks bolted onto an extra frame beneath the vehicle. This setup allowed Scottish farmers to navigate through uneven boggy terrain as they tended to their farms. The idea was so popular that it eventually became a factory option.
This particular Land Rover is equipped with spotlights on the roof as well as a snorkel just in case the farmer gets into some deep doo-doo. Topping out at a little over 20 mph (32 kph) this wouldn’t make an ideal getaway car but if the aforementioned deep doo-doo is in your cards, then the snorkel shall accommodate nicely.
Do you like the LEGO automotive work of Firas Abu-Jaber? Do you enjoy everything Bugatti has to offer? Do you have $8.9 million burning a hole in your pocket? Well, two out of three isn’t bad. Only ten of youse with deep pockets would have already placed your order for the 2020 Bugatti Centodieci, the rest of us average schlubs will just have to settle for drooling over Firas’ stunning LEGO rendition. I’m particularly fond of the turntable plates that comprises sort of a “cheese grater” vent at the B-pillar, which is an obvious nod to the Bugatti EB110SS supercar of the 90’s but the larger iconic horseshoe grille is reminiscent of the more modern Veyron and Chiron. Complex and subtle curves is what gives all of Firas’s work his signature style.
The 2020 Centodieci is so new and so rare that Firas had to guess how the doors and engine lid opened as there are no photographs online yet showing how it all works. He made an educated guess that it would go something like this.
No matter how the doors open in real life, the 2020 Bugatti Centodieci is a nod to its own legacy and is one of many, many reasons our hearts go pitter-patter whenever we see Firas’ work.
When Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled the Cybertruck recently the world let out a collective sigh of…what the hell were you thinking? Elon himself even uttered an unpublishable expletive when a shatter-proof test didn’t go as well as planned. While the electric pickup indeed boasts some rather impressive stats, (like winning a tug-of-war with a Ford F-150, ranging 250-500 miles without charging and doing 0-60 mph in 2.9 seconds) the overall angular design resembles something out of a bad 80’s movie. Quickly the jokes and memes flourished with a common theme being a kid could have drawn it. I’m pretty sure ten year old me made quite a few concept drawings that were similar to it. No stranger to dreaming up concept automotive designs both in childhood and adulthood is Ford engineer and prolific LEGO car builder Peter Blackert. While he is also aware of the jokes, Peter is an opportunistic builder who sees the positive in a lot of things, even this Cybertruck.
As odd as it may be, Peter captures the shape very nicely as evidenced by this particular digital render.
Just for fun, Peter has also rendered a Classic Space version!
Admittedly, the Cybertruck is like nothing else Tesla has to offer. Elon and his companies specialize in shaping the future and, according to him anyway, the shape of the future is a throwback from the 80’s. After getting over the initial shock, some, including Peter, have warmed up to the design. Should we trust his instincts and follow suit? As an automotive engineer and a passionate, prolific LEGO car builder Peter surely knows a thing or two about automotive design and what the future may hold.
The gritty vision of a major metropolitan city after a mass-migration off-world is just one of the stunning visual elements in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. What is left behind is a world filled with the poor and downtrodden remnants of humanity struggling to eke out a living among crumbling infrastructures, lawlessness and an everyone-for-themselves dystopia. But at least they have flying cars, as depicted in this wonderfully detailed LEGO scene built by Keiichi Kamei. Keiichi’s scene features the classic flying car more commonly referred to as the Spinner, which is how the few police that are still around get a bird’s eye view of the city. It’s also perfect for dropping in and out of potentially dangerous situations.
The builder uses custom stickers to give the police vehicle it’s signature details, and I love the brick-and-slope-built steam clouds that really give the scene a dynamic aesthetic.
