House of bricks

Today I cracked open 4000010 LEGO® House and figured I'd review it - given that the set is not readily available, has a rather interesting inclusion, and of course to shoehorn in a reminder that New Elementary's LEGO House competition closes in 9 days! Fret not - I didn't open the copy sent by the Community and Events Engagement Team which remains safely mint in sealed box for the winner. It's another copy I bought on a recent trip to Billund, which is the only town on Planet Earth where the set has been made available for sale. This limited release is a gesture from The LEGO Group (TLG) to local businesses, in light of the disruption being exacted in the centre of town to construct the real LEGO House which will be a museum, or rather an "interactive experience centre" in modern-day parlance. When I was there, the last of the existing buildings on the site were being torn down.

LEGO® House & UN HQ up for grabs

New Elementary's building competition is underway and our first entry has been posted! There are still three weeks left for you to build a small model of your interpretation of what a museum for The LEGO® Group could look like - if you were the architect! Sorry - this is open to 18+ only. You can read how to enter and terms and conditions here but today I'm proud to be announcing the lineup of good folk who will be judging the competition.

You're lucky, he's lucky, I'm lucky, we're all lucky!

The largest set in Friends' winter 2014 range with over 700 pieces, 41039 Sunshine Ranch has some exciting basic new parts, plus some useful new elements (by which I mean existing parts in new colours). I settled down this Easter to build it and play with the new parts.

LEGO® Ideas Exo Suit: the logo

Exciting news today; the LEGO® CUUSOO team have given New Elementary readers this exclusive first look at the official logo to be used on their forthcoming set, the Exo Suit! The set will be released in August 2014. Knowing how special the Exo Suit is to the fan community, the CUUSOO team took the unusual step of deciding to work hand-in-hand with AFOLs to decide how the set should be packaged and marketed. So the designer of the original Exo Suit, British AFOL Peter Reid, assembled a team and I was fortunate enough to be included.

Competition: LEGO House

I’m excited to announce New Elementary’s first ever competition! The fantastic team at LEGO®’s Community and Events Engagement Team have provided these wonderful prizes:

First prize: LEGO House
This exclusive set is only for sale in LEGO’s home town of Billund, Denmark. It’s a model of the new tourist destination currently being built there; an interactive museum showcasing The LEGO Group’s history, products and ethos.

Second prize: UN Headquarters
This recent Architecture set is an excellent build, and contains 155 Trans-Light Blue 1X2 plates! Sweet. You can read my review of it here.

Take thou thy plate of flesh

New-fangled parts are very exciting, but perhaps more important are the simple parts at the core of the LEGO® System that arrive in new colours. Today I highlight basic bricks and plates that have been released in new colours in 2014.

You raise me arch

There are many reasons why LEGO® parts get redesigned, for example to strengthen a part or to improve the moulding process. But sometimes a whole 'family' of parts will get redesigned, and this process can take years for TLG to roll out because moulds need to reach the end of their working lives before the expense of replacement is undertaken.

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.

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.

The Princesses and the frog

A weird new part for you today, named Brick, Round 2 x 2 with 4 Petals Base on BrickLink and Plate 2X2,2/3 W/Krydshul\U0026 Crown Leaf by TLG, which so far has only been released in two 2014 Disney Princess sets in Medium Azure (Element ID 6058746 | Design ID 15469). However I've taken to calling it the Kermit, which is a really terrible name, but once the vague similarity to the collar of that Muppet had entered my mind, I couldn't shake it.

The lost world of Sand Blue

2014 has been packed full of new elements, yet all we've been doing here on New Elementary is going on about Architecture and The LEGO® Movie sets. Time to redress the balance and one particular category of 2014 elements I was very glad to see on Brickset are the ones in the lovely colour of Sand Blue.