Review + MOCs: 31170 Pink Flamingo from LEGO® Creator

LEGO® Creator has been around for 25 years. I think that for most of this time, it has been a bit of a sleeper theme. There have been good sets every now and then, and some absolute classics during my childhood – 4508 Titan XP of 2004, for example. However, the coherence of design has bloomed during the last three or so years. Concurrently, the colour schemes of the sets have become bolder, resulting in more sweet recolours for us parts aficionados and MOC builders. 

31170 Pink Flamingo is one of those sets. Therefore, I'm taking a look at not one but two copies of this set, running through its parts of interest and presenting two character MOCs inspired by its pieces.

Thomas Jenkins' MOCs with new parts in LEGO® Super Mario™ sets

The January 2025 wave of LEGO® Super Mario™ sets introduced 4 new moulds. Mamma Mia! As we are already way over halfway through the year we thought it was about time to take a look at them. So, without further ado: Let's-a-go! 

Parts review and MOC: 42170 Kawasaki Ninja H2R from LEGO® Technic

Set 42170 Kawasaki Ninja H2R Motorcycle was the 2024 addition to the 1:8-scale LEGO® Technic motorcycle range, depicting the Kawasaki Ninja H2R, also from 2024. It is noteworthy for being the first set to feature new engine cylinder elements that have quickly spread to all kinds of sets, big and small.

Today, rather than build the bike, I'll take a look at the inventory – in particular the exclusive new mould – and come up with something else to build with it.

Tom Loftus' MOCs using May 2025 Pick a Brick parts

LEGO® Pick a Brick paused new uploads earlier this year, but they have just resumed the addition of new parts a month earlier than anticipated!

But what to do with them? I've explored the potential of some of the pieces in original LEGO build creations using my own collection.

Review + MOC: 10347 Petite Sunny Bouquet from LEGO® Botanicals

When I reviewed the LEGO® Botanicals "Four Gentlemen" sets, I was pleased to find that the company is able to release high-quality, adult-oriented sets with more affordable price tags. Available from this Thursday 1 May 2025, set 10347 Petite Sunny Bouquet continues the trend, taking the idea of a bunch of flowers without an included vessel and halving the usual price. What is the result?

Flower Pot Pals: Jonas Kramm's Pick a Brick project

The LEGO® Pick a Brick team challenged New Elementary to transform an ordinary set into something new with the help of some extra pieces from Pick a Brick online. Jonas Kramm stepped up by reimagining iconic LEGO® Botanicals set 10329 Tiny Plants as a series of Flower Pot Pals! Here's what he came up with – and you can try one for yourself by studying his breakdown.

Tom Loftus' Fractal 45 spaceship MOC

Continuing today's reflected wedge extravaganza, Arno Knobbe challenged me to dream up something swooshable using some of the geometric delights we saw in his technique article about building off the LEGO grid with reflected wedges. Let's escape the grid in a spaceship!

MOCs with parts from 10345 Flower Arrangement from LEGO® Botanicals

With 14 recoloured elements and parts ranging from butterflies to umbrellas, the latest LEGO® Botanicals set, 10345 Flower Arrangement makes for a pretty good parts pack. I recently reviewed set 10345, and now here are 2 of my own creations using parts from the set.

3x3PO Fest: Eero's "After the Gala"

The gold rush resulted in a hoard; LEGO® Star Wars™ 75398 C-3PO is a rich seam of this precious "metal". Therefore, our Parts Fest featuring creations made using Threepio's elements is about opulence, glamour and gilt. What happens after the medium-sized golden men have been handed out?

Review + MOC: 71478 The Never Witch's Midnight Raven from LEGO® DREAMZzz™

The last 2024 LEGO® DREAMZzz™ set we're reviewing is another great example of the quirky set design of this original theme: a witch's hut nested atop a gigantic raven. So far, I've been critical towards many sets of this wave due to unfocused and messy set design. I've associated this with the alternative builds. I like how these sets offer different designs using the same parts, emphasising the nature of this medium – but so far, it has deemed sacrifices on the design coherence.

Obviously, it's much easier to make one focused set design with a specific set of parts. In this respect, 71478 The Never Witch's Midnight Raven is closer to the original August 2023 wave. There is a distinct B-Model, but it shares about 85% of the structure with the main model while still supporting very different play patterns. How does the raven fare?

Mind that Banana contest: The winners

With the new LEGO® Fortnite Odyssey social roleplay experience Brick Life launching today, 12 December 2024, now's the perfect moment to announce the winners of our Mind that Banana contest and find out which original creations won the prizes of LEGO Fortnite sets! 

We asked readers to create non-banana MOCs using LEGO bananas. With 102 entries to judge, finding the pick of the bunch was no easy task.

LEGO® parts 77845 & 77850: rounded plates

Occasionally, a new LEGO® part will present opportunities that I haven't encountered before. The family of rounded plates received two further wonderful new additions in 2023, and although they’re not quite so new anymore I felt that they were worthy of some exploration.

Contest entry gallery: Mind that Banana

Our building contest – where you had to use a LEGO® banana, but were not allowed to make a banana – has finally split. Entries closed earlier today, and now it is up to our three judges to pick the most apeeling creations. In the meantime, you can enjoy all 103 entries yourself, thanks to all the wonderful participants who joined in and showed off their creative skills!

After-Party Fest: Nathan Don's MOCs

Today we welcome guest Nathan Don (woomy_world), who is our final builder in After-Party Fest, our LEGO® building challenge using seed parts of interesting moulds released by LEGO over the last 12 months. Nathan's stunning work was selected for display until September 2025 at the prestigious LEGO House Masterpiece Gallery in Denmark, where Tim and Jonas met him at the time of installation. He then attended our Skaerbaek Fan Weekend building workshop, where these seed parts came from, and we sent him home to the US with a baggie to experiment with further!

After-Party Fest: Caz Mockett's MOCs

When my allocation of the eclectic mix of  LEGO® elements from the New Elementary Skærbæk Fan Weekend workshop arrived through my letterbox, I was immediately inspired by some of the seed parts, and perplexed by others. But I do love a parts fest, so I started by noodling around with a couple of tablescraps, which is usually a good way to get the creative juices flowing. Let's see what happened.

After-Party Fest: Kev Levell's MOCs

One of my favourite LEGO® activities is a good old New Elementary parts festival. I love taking part, for a number of reasons. A bundle of lovely new parts arrive, supplied in the kind of quantities that would be prohibitively expensive for me to acquire in any of the normal ways. There are elements I perhaps might not gravitate to buying, and that's a nice challenge to face. There's a shared experience with fellow builders in the creation of MOCs that generally surprise and delight, both from my own build table and those of my co-contributors. They have become rarer in recent years and that too makes them a sweet experience. In short, even as a regular contributor to New Elementary, it's a privilege and an honour to be included.

2024 Skærbæk workshop and After-Party Fest: introducing the elements

New Elementary ran a building workshop at Skærbæk Fan Weekend in September 2024. During the event, attendees were tasked with making something using 10 elements released in the last 12 months as seed parts; we will show you some of the results in due course, but first up, it's our turn! We rounded up some of the reclaimed seed parts from the workshop to run one of our "parts festivals", and dispatched them to a couple of our regular contributors: Kev Levell and Caz Mockett, and one of the workshop attendees, Nathan Don as a guest builder.

So, welcome to After-PartyFest! For our first instalment, Tom Loftus introduces all 10 elements and to take a closer look at those that have escaped New Elementary's analytical eye so far. 

Review + MOC: 71481 Izzie's Dream Animals & 71483 The Never Witch's Nightmare Creatures from LEGO® DREAMZzz™

The first wave of LEGO® DREAMZzz™ underlined the building toy component of the theme by having different builds achieved through partial deconstruction of the first build and then adding to it with an alternate set of instructions. This idea is taken to the next level in the August 2024 wave with sets 71481 Izzie's Dream Animals and 71483 The Never Witch's Nightmare Creatures. 

With these sets only a minor part of the structure is shared between the alternative builds. Like in LEGO® Creator sets, 3 designs are offered for the price of 1 (at least in theory). How do these designs fare, what interesting parts do they consist of and what did they inspire me to build?

Review: 10370 Poinsettia from LEGO® Icons Botanical Collection

Charming festive display piece or stunning parts pack? LEGO® Icons Botanical Collection 10370 Poinsettia is both! One third of its 608 parts are rare or exclusive, all of which are integral to the plant's striking bracts, plentiful foliage and sturdy woven-basket flowerpot.

Review: 76290 The Avengers vs. The Leviathan from LEGO® Marvel

We are reviewing another August LEGO® Marvel release today, 76290 The Avengers vs. The Leviathan. The set features a foe of furiously fantastic proportions to fight, and of course a couple of superheroes from the Marvel universe ready to do battle!