LEGO® Ideas 21315 Pop-up Book

Sven Franic takes a peep inside the latest LEGO® Ideas set, 21315 Pop-up Book, and discovers a set that is beautiful in its design, mechanics and overall creative concept. 





The LEGO® theme without a theme, also known as LEGO Ideas, has given a traditional object a fresh brick-based perspective. Pop-up books embrace a combination of the intricate arts of bookbinding, illustration and origami, resulting in an interactive, palpable storytelling medium. If only there was a toy today that could do that ;) 



PdC Parts Fest 2018: Triangle tile

At Paredes de Coura (PdC) Fan Weekend in Portugal in June 2018, New Elementary ran a workshop where 25 builders were given 11 of the new LEGO® parts released in 2018 to experiment with. With the clock running, they used these in combination with general part stock (provided from the magnificent collection of Comunidade 0937) to create as many ideas, tablescraps, techniques and small MOCs as they could and we’re sharing the most interesting and useful ones with you.

The triangle tile (Design ID 35787, aka Tile 2X2, W/ Deg. 45 Cut or Tile, Modified 2 x 2 Triangular) was introduced early in 2018 within the Speed Champions theme and is already a firm favourite with fans. Let's see what our fan builders came up with.

Some builders used the tile to represent things... beautiful things!

(CW:HP) LEGO® Fantastic Beasts: new bricks and bits of beasties

We thought that it was time to take a look at the remaining new elements in the LEGO® Fantastic Beasts sets that were released last month as part of the Wizarding World theme. Editorial note: Although views expressed by Harry Potter's creator do not align with that of New Elementary, we continue to cover HP sets. Read about our stance here.

There are two sets in the LEGO® Fantastic Beasts range: 75951 Grindlewald’s Escape which has 132 elements, two minifigures and a price tag of  US$19.99/£19.99/29.99€ and 75952 Newt’s Case of Magical Creatures with 694 elements, four minifigures and costs US$49.99/£44.99/49.99€.

New parts in 75951 Grindlewald’s Escape 

Within Grindlewald’s Escape, there are two elements that are completely new moulds and both belong to Thestral, the flying horse creature.

2018 Parts Fest #1: Steve Guinness in space

We sent a varied selection of new LEGO® parts to some fan builders to explore techniques and models. This time we have the talented Steve Guinness: one half of the team who won Series 1 of Channel 4's LEGO Masters who now undertake commissions as The Brick Guys.

Clockwork Robots 

When I saw the 1x3 jumper plate (Design ID 34103) I liked the unusual pattern on the underside, as it has no anti-studs or pegs. The tiny triangles reminded me of teeth so I came up with these Clockwork Robots.

LEGO® Unikitty: The 3x5 Cloud

Today we start a series of four posts where Sven Franic examines some fascinating new elements from the LEGO® Unikitty! theme.

The piece used as a collectible minifigure stand for the 41775 Unikitty! blind bags is called 'Design Plate 3X5, No. 1 Tile' by TLG, and 'Tile, Modified 3 x 5 Cloud' by BrickLink. The Design ID is 35470 and it comes only in White as Element ID 6223667

. I guess that's because the weather is always gleaming in Cloud Cuckoo Land which, if you ever watched The LEGO Movie, you will know is a very vibrant place gushing with rainbows and covered in ice cream sprinkles. 



2018 Parts Fest #1: Tim Goddard's Engaging Elements

In addition to our Portugal workshop we also sent a varied selection of new LEGO® parts from 2018 to some fan builders, and in an occasional ‘parts festival’ series over the next month or two we’ll be showing you the techniques and models they came up with. First up, our good friend Tim Goddard, co-author of LEGO Space: Building the Future.

At Bricktastic in Manchester this year Tim J mentioned he had a selection of new parts and would I like to explore them for New E. Being the parts monkey that I am, I of course said yes, and what an interesting selection of parts I got!

Let's start small... possibly the smallest LEGO element to date (I am saying this knowing that New E readers will correct me if I am wrong) are the Infinity Stones, which I was supplied with in Transparent Yellow (Element ID 6223002 | Design ID 36451).

Fairy Bricks: Bikes to Billund!

In order to raise money to buy LEGO® sets for sick children, four LEGO fans (including two New Elementary contributors) are cycling all the way from London, UK to Billund, Denmark! That's nearly 1000 km (620 miles). They leave this Thursday 20 September and at time of writing are close to raising £3,500 – let's get them to £4,000!

All this is in aid of New Elementary's favourite charity, Fairy Bricks.

"Fairy Bricks has one very simple objective: to give LEGO to children in hospital. When we tell people that, they often pause before they respond, anticipating for us to say something else but that really is it."

Kev Gascoigne, Founder

PdC Parts Fest 2018: Neck bracket with 4 bars

At Paredes de Coura (PdC) Fan Weekend in Portugal in June 2018, New Elementary ran a workshop where 25 builders were given 11 of the new LEGO® parts released in 2018 to experiment with. With the clock running, they used these in combination with general part stock (provided from the magnificent collection of Comunidade 0937) to create as many ideas, tablescraps, techniques and small MOCs as they could and we’re sharing the most interesting and useful ones with you.

Today we look at a very unusual new part; a new neck bracket for minifigures that comes in Black (Element ID 6215458 | Design ID 36452) which BrickLink call 'Minifig, Neck Bracket with 4 Angled Handles' and TLG 'Mini Back Plate,W/3,2 Shaft'.

Here are three of them attached together with two straight droid arms (Design ID 59230). The shape from which the bar connectors project is roughly pentagonal, but sadly not perfectly. However there's a reason for this, and it's to do with the System.

(CW:HP) LEGO® Harry Potter and the Enlightening Elements

Following on from our in depth look at the Wanderful Wand and Spurious Sprue, Elspeth De Montes takes a look at three enlightening new elements that appear in the recent LEGO® Harry Potter Wizarding World releases. Editorial note: Although views expressed by Harry Potter's creator do not align with that of New Elementary, we continue to cover HP sets. Read about our stance here.

Appearing for the first time is Lamp, No. 1 “lantern” in Titanium Metallic [TLG] / Pearl Dark Grey [BL] (Element ID 6234116 | Design ID 37776). This was actually introduced in three Elves sets released this summer: 41157 Rapunzel's Travelling Caravan, 41195 Emily & Noctura's Showdown and 41196 The Elvenstar Tree Bat Attack which all contain one Black lantern element and it also appears in the new 40312 Xtra Streetlamps polybag released this month.

LEGO® BrickHeadz: Marcos Bessa interview part 2

In the first part of this interview with LEGO® BrickHeadz design lead Marcos Bessa, Are J. Heiseldal asked him about the advantages and the complexities of working with multiple intellectual properties (IPs), and the inherent limitations of the BrickHeadz concept itself. Today he asks about the new and recoloured parts as well as the production process... and which character is Marcos' favourite!

At New Elementary, we love new parts so the two new types of glasses that we got in the Go Brick Me set are particularly interesting for us. What can you tell us about the development process of those?
Marcos: The brief for the BrickHeadz line actually came with a request to do something like this. The idea for the Go Brick Me set came very early, in early 2017, so the brand was just about to come out officially on the market. We were already planning what to do for 2018 and so the importance of customisation, allowing people to represent their features was of key importance for this. So we immediately started looking into what that would mean in terms of new elements –  how to make glasses, do we need something new? I started exploring and came up with a whole lot of variations of new elements that we could make, trying to come up with something that would work and fulfil the brief for this purpose, but become a versatile enough element that it could become interesting for other uses. And I think we ended up finding something that is pretty cool for what we do in the set, but also offers a lot of other opportunities, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.