It’s no secret that I love LEGO® colours. I have been seen immersed in Dark Azure here in the past, but recently I joined New Elementary for some colourtastic fun at Bricktastic, which is a great show because there are lots of young, excited LEGO fans, no barriers around the models and plenty of time and space to interact.
17 July 2017
Bricktastic: Colourtastic (Part 1)
It’s no secret that I love LEGO® colours. I have been seen immersed in Dark Azure here in the past, but recently I joined New Elementary for some colourtastic fun at Bricktastic, which is a great show because there are lots of young, excited LEGO fans, no barriers around the models and plenty of time and space to interact.
26 April 2017
NEXOGON: The Inexorable
For this build I started with a tablescrap (a small build, normally of no particular purpose, a bit like a doodle) and that turned into an engine. More detail on that in a moment, but first let's look at the main body of the craft.
17 April 2017
NEXOGON: Flying Saucergon
As my previous builds had been, for the most part, geodesic, I wanted to start off at least by using the Nexogons as a flat building platform (of sorts). I had intended to do something other than another spaceship, but the Nexogon is just such a sci-fi looking object! Despite trying various explorations of the part, I kept being led back to all things sci-fi, in my failure to avoid another spacecraft I have built a flying saucer.
12 March 2017
Old Bricks: Brick Yellow & Brick Red
About a year and a half ago, Kevin Hinkle of the LEGO® community engagement team told us a bit of trivia he had heard from his colleagues in the Materials and Research & Development department: the reason why the LEGO colour that is commonly called “Tan” is officially called “Brick Yellow”.
07 March 2017
NEXOGON: Platform and Slugship
Normally, I get referred to as "the mecha guy", since giant robots tend to dominate my displays at public events... but I welcome the opportunity to flex my creative muscles, and the NEXOGON parts festival has given me the opportunity to do just that!
30 January 2017
Old Bricks: 5 Classic LEGO® Colours
The LEGO® logo has changed many times over the years, and around 1963-1965 they adopted the square shape that it still has today. Next to this square you could find another one, with a "rainbow" made of five coloured stripes: yellow, red, blue, white and black. These five colours were used together with the LEGO logo until 1973 and they kept using them for years even after that, without the LEGO logo.
But what are these colours? You might have read a few different explanations for them, but more often than not these explanations are incorrect or only partially correct.
08 January 2017
Old Bricks: LEGO® Minitalia
In 1970 a new LEGO® theme debuted in Italy, and only in Italy. It was called "Minitalia" and you might have heard of it or stumbled across a few bricks from those sets... strange bricks that don't really look like LEGO bricks, even though they're perfectly compatible. It's very easy today to find people, even here in Italy, finding some of those bricks and asking what kind of strange clone they are. They aren't, they are 100% LEGO.
18 December 2016
Bravo Three One Eight
04 December 2016
Old Bricks: Jumbo Bricks
A few days ago I bought some Jumbo Bricks on eBay, so I thought to devote a few words about these strange, old LEGO® bricks, since all the information about them I could find is scattered all over the web and I haven't found a good roundup.
The LEGO Group (TLG) has always been interested in pre-school toys... now we have DUPLO bricks, which are twice as big as regular LEGO bricks and compatible with them. But before that? There were a few predecessors... among them, these so-called Jumbo Bricks that were marketed in America by Samsonite starting in 1964 up until the end of their contract with TLG in 1972.
18 September 2016
Seventh Heaven
Today we have an extensive review of the parts that come in LEGO® Ideas 21307 Caterham Seven 620R, peppered with comments from the designer of the original concept, Carl Greatrix. I could not be happier for Carl, who is a top bloke and a remarkable builder. He’s also fun at parties.
19 August 2016
Neo-Nexo Ice Planet Knights
This made me wonder what a modern-day AFOL of super Space-building skills... say, Tim Goddard... might create for Ice Planet using Nexo Knights pieces. Thanks (once again) to the excellent support of the AFOL Relations & Programs team at the LEGO Group and Tim's incredible building skills, the idea has now come to fruition... so let's see how he got on!
I was given an interesting brief for this article: “the Nexo Knights range has a definite flavour of Ice Planet 2002: explore”. There is no denying the colour palettes overlap greatly; you just need a little white to mix with the blue and orange shades and you are almost there, albeit with a medieval twist to the theme. So I have created a few models investigating how the new pieces in the range can be used to add a bit of frostiness to spacey creations, how useful these new moulds are, plus a few other observations along the way.
13 August 2014
When LEGO® was never just bricks
I had a mild argument with a (non-AFOL) friend earlier this year. He swore blind that when he was a kid in the '70s, he only had about seven different types of LEGO® parts; all basic rectilinear bricks. He liked to build windmills. "How did the windmill turn?" I asked. He conceded that he must have also owned wheel parts.
The release of 21050 Architecture Studio in the UK this month seems to have sparked another glut of ill-researched articles spouting the same old lines that bore every AFOL that reads them to tears... or rather, to online ranting. My turn today!
14 May 2014
Benny's Neo Classic Space Ship
Of course, I'm biased because this set represents the ultimate in nostalgia for me, but that also brought a huge weight of expectation to this build. Could a modern set really evoke the kind of love I felt for my Space sets as a kid? I was really worried it wouldn't capture the intangible magic of Classic Space and just leave me feeling like it was any other modern-day Space set but in blue/grey/trans-yellow. I'm happy to report that this was not the case at all.
28 March 2014
You raise me arch
Over the last five years or so, the family of arched bricks have been altered and I was prompted to write this post because what I think/hope is the last of these, the 1X8X2 arch, has now begun to appear in its new form. The essential change to arched bricks is that they are being "raised" - the interior curve no longer sits flush to the bottom of the brick.
20 March 2014
Super Surma Bros.
I've mentioned in the past; one thing which really interests me is when fans push their love of LEGO® into original, unusual territory. I was simply going to post a link to these guys from New Elementary's Twitter account, but I couldn't really compress my love for them into 140 characters so here's a proper post instead.
The Surma Bros. are Marcin and Przemek; two Polish comic illustrators
who, as the name suggests, are brothers. For two years they've been
posting an illustration of an old LEGO set every Sunday on their blog, Sur m'ale Gobros.
I only found them after they posted on Eurobricks recently, although I
see they got some love from The Brothers Brick back in 2012. While
disappointed I'm so late to the party, it does mean I've been gorging
myself for hours on dozens of beautiful images.
01 December 2013
New legends
29 October 2013
Peter Reid's favourite Classic Space LEGO® elements
NCS is showcased in the new book LEGO® Space: Building the Future, which (just in case you missed it) I published a cool little teaser trailer for yesterday. Although I’m yet to see an actual copy, I'm expecting a science fact/fiction narrative that builds on the disparate stories suggested by those original Classic Space sets, all richly illustrated with the exquisite models of Peter Reid and Tim Goddard - as you can see from this exclusive preview image of a perfectly-formed little shuttle; the LL-290. Click/tap to enlarge.
22 October 2013
To be or notch to be
Aeroplanewing 4X9
Design ID 14181
Colour White | Element ID 6040362
Colour Black | Element ID 6048849
Colour Light Bluish Gray [BL]/Medium Stone Grey [TLG] | Element ID 6048848
A new design (shown here in Light Bluish Gray) for the old part 2413 (shown here in White) began appearing in sets this year. Viewed from the top, they appear identical but seen from the bottom the change is obvious; notches have been added along the diagonal edges so that they can now be attached to elements underneath. It appears in five sets so far (but may also be used in older sets as the previous version runs out). White is in 60012 Coast Guard 4x4 & Diving Boat and 9664 First LEGO® League Challenge 2013 Nature's Fury. Black is in 76007 Iron Man": Malibu Mansion Attack and 76001 The Bat vs. Bane": Tumbler Chase. Light Bluish Gray is in 60015 Coast Guard Plane.
Decisions about whether or not to use notches have a long history at LEGO. At the time when System in Play began in 1955 you could buy little spare parts boxes of 'macaroni', the 2X2 round corner brick (part 3063), but this part came in notched and notchless versions simultaneously. Not like Schrödinger's cat though. Distribution of the two versions was seemingly random, just like when parts get new moulds today and you're unlucky enough to get both types in your set. Although the notchless version certainly looks nicer, its limited ability to attach to elements below meant a swift death, in 1957. Also killed was the larger macaroni sister, the 2X4 semi-circular version, also available with and without notches - but even the notched version was deleted, deemed superfluous. This left only the classic 2X2 notched macaroni to survive (until a somewhat irritating redesign in 2008, but let's not go there right now).
04 September 2013
Walkie Scorchie vs. LEGO®
17 August 2013
Don't fence me fence in
Fence 1X8X2 2/3
Design ID 6079
For me, this part has long languished in my mental category of "parts that can only be used for one thing, and a rather dreary thing at that". But recently I noticed the amazing geometry of this part makes it far more flexible than I had imagined. It cropped up on some Pick A Brick Walls in UK Brand Stores last year, and after I employed that useful self-justification "why, I'm sure I'll need to make a big long fence one day", plus some egging-on from