Old Bricks: Jumbo Bricks

I came across a new blog the other day, Old Bricks, which I thoroughly enjoyed even though I was reading Google Translate's version of the original Italian! The author, Francesco Spreafico, is the Ambassador for ItLUG, the largest and oldest LEGO® User Group in Italy. I like to examine old parts on New Elementary, but rarely find the time. Thankfully, Francesco is fluent in English and has kindly translated a post for New Elementary readers.

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.

The New Black - Peter Reid: Blacktron Assault Tanks

I asked readers to send in pictures of models they've created that use some the LEGO® parts featured in our current parts festival, The New Black. Perhaps having got the bug when he took place in our previous parts festival, Nexo-Classic Space, Peter Reid (legoloverman) surprised me with some microscale tanks he built especially for New Elementary readers.

Blacktron Wolverine Assault Tank

The latest addition to Kazak's army of darkness, the Wolverine assault tank is a remote-controlled, mobile missile launcher. Each unit carries a devastating payload of eight tactical nuclear missiles.

The New Black - Jonas Kramm: Alien

Jonas Kramm has already created many models using new LEGO® elements for our parts festival, The New Black, and today I'm honoured to present yet another remarkable creation from him; a model of the Alien based on H. R. Giger's creepy design. The detail Jonas has achieved at this scale is incredible and the new elements he used are perfect for the model.

The New Black - Chris McVeigh

After all that London-based excitement, let's get back to our global parts festival, The New Black, with a trip to Canada. Today it is the turn of the multitalented Chris McVeigh (powerpig) to get inspired by some of the new parts and recolours that the LEGO® Group have released in 2016.

I was thrilled to be asked to participate in The New Black parts festival, but due to work demands, I wasn’t able to take on that challenge until this past week. I really wish I’d gotten to it sooner – I had an absolute blast! I love part challenges because they encourage me to build things I just wouldn’t attempt otherwise; figuratively and literally, The New Black gave me a chance to spread my wings.

Swing Set

LEGO® Leicester Square

You've most likely seen many pictures already of the new flagship LEGO® Store in Leicester Square, but I thought I would share mine too. These were taken the day before the official opening at the AFOL-only VIP event.

My favourite thing in the shop is this incredible diorama.

It's not flat; sections of it project outwards.

London Skyline: set review and LEGO® Designer interview

The LEGO® Group have released several sets in 2016 that have a British connection (which is handy given that they just so happen to be opening a new flagship store in London's Leicester Square today). We’ve had 10253 Big Ben, 21029 Buckingham Palace, 40220 London Bus as well as 21306 The Beatles Yellow Submarine and 21307 Caterham Seven 620R. Now we can reveal another: 21034 London, part of the ‘Skylines’ series from LEGO Architecture. It is now available from the Leicester Square store (limited to one per customer) ahead of its worldwide release on January 1 2017. It costs £44.99 and the designer of the set is Rok Žgalin Kobe, who I had the honour of speaking to at the special pre-opening event at Leicester Square yesterday, and he mentioned many interesting facts about the model.

The New Black: Venice 1486

Having already designed many small models that highlight new LEGO® parts for The New Black parts festival, Jonas Kramm returns today with a fully-fledged MOC, which he built with another Jonas!

The parts festivals here on New Elementary are all about sharing ideas with the community as top how new parts can be used, and it is always great to see builders with unique building styles and ideas use the given parts in different ways.

So I was glad when I got visited by the talented Jonas (Brick Vader) one weekend in August to talk about the LEGO hobby and to inspire each other. We started building a small scene from the game “Assassin's Creed 2” that takes place in Venice in 1486 and it turned out to fit perfectly some of the details I already built with the new moulds. In addition we added further details that also feature these new parts.

The New Black - Tim Johnson: Skeleton

Just a quick follow-on from yesterday's post by Tom Poulsom for The New Black where he was inspired to use the new LEGO® part Plate 1X1 Round W/3.2 Shaft (Design ID 26047) as feet. I had exactly the same thought, so this seems like an appropriate moment to post my version.

The New Black - Tom Poulsom

Our parts festival, which consists of experiments with some new Black and Transparent [TLG]/Trans-Clear [BL] LEGO® parts (as well as some Black recolours) continues today. I'm glad to welcome British builder Tom Poulsom (detomaso77) who is best-known for designing LEGO Ideas 21301 Birds but likes to turn his attention to all manner of things including cars, trains and all manner of animals, as you are about to discover...

I was very kindly supplied with some brand new LEGO elements by Tim and was really excited when I received them, as I am regularly on Brickset to keep an eye on what fancy new pieces and colours LEGO have to offer. I was sent all sorts of exciting new elements, and you can see what I used some of them for below.

Animal parts

The New Black - Jonas Kramm: Indoor items

Jonas Kramm is back with his third instalment for "The New Black", our celebration of a selection of new and recoloured LEGO® parts here on New Elementary. The ones Jonas picked for this post can be seen to the right, and as you can see he branched out to include the two Transparent [TLG]/Trans-Clear [BL] elements that I sneakily added into the mix, just because they're so lovely.

After talking about building outdoor objects in my last two posts, it's time to go indoors.

Most of the new elements used here feature the 3.18 bar attachment, which allows for a lot of possible connections when combined with clips. Some of these possibilities were used in my first idea, a chair design that was based on using the recoloured handlebar (Element ID 6078610 | Design ID 98397) as legs. This part is the centrepiece of the chair as it holds not only the arm rests but also the seat, which are made of a square street sign (Design ID 30258).