BrickLink announces removal of part variants

Posted by ,

BrickLink has announced their intent to merge variants of certain parts into single catalogue entries from the 1st of February.

While understandable in some respects because the differences between part variants tend to be subtle, this will make it more difficult to acquire the correct elements when buying replacement parts for older sets, or ensuring consistency on a MOC. You can view all the affected pieces here.

Sellers will be able to highlight different versions of parts in their descriptions, but I imagine the change will still cause problems, as sellers may choose not to add extra information.

Do you think this will be a positive change, or do you see the potential for issues? Let us know in the comments.

Continue reading »

Super Battle Droids: 2002 to 2024

Posted by ,

There has been no shortage of Battle Droids in LEGO Star Wars sets, although the Super Battle Droid appears less frequently than the standard Battle Droid and not at all since 2015.

75372 Clone Trooper & Battle Droid Battle Pack introduces a new version and the differences between the current droid and its predecessors are more extensive than I envisaged. This article examines those differences in full.

Continue reading »

The Big Brick City Survey is back

Posted by ,

Richard, organiser of the survey, writes:

The Big Brick City Survey is back, asking LEGO city builders worldwide to tell them about their LEGO city or town and with a chance to win a £100/€100/$100 LEGO.com voucher.

Last year, the survey discovered that the most popular LEGO city name in the world is LEGO city, and this year’s LEGO city builder questionnaire aims to build a bigger picture of trends over time, as well as asking for your biggest inspiration, and the largest change within your city in the past year. You can see more data from the 2022 survey on the Big Brick City website, which is cleansed and analysed before publication.

Created by the LEGO-loving team at Bricks McGee, the Big Brick City Survey is open to all aged 18 and over. The survey takes around 5 - 15 minutes to complete, and you can take part until Friday, 26th January 2024. You can take part in the Big Brick City Survey 2023 here.

Continue reading »

Merry Christmas!

Posted by ,
Santa's Workshop

Santa's Workshop

©2022 LEGO Group

Christmas Day has arrived in the UK, so Merry Christmas from the Brickset team! We hope you have a great day and receive some presents with the familiar rattling sound of LEGO!

At the time of writing, Brickset members own 40,481,689 sets in total, so it will be interesting to see how much that figure rises in the coming days, as new sets are added to collections.

Huw, Chris, Megan and Alice -- the Brickset team.

Continue reading »

Return of the Goat

Posted by ,

Whether commanding high prices on BrickLink, grazing in the fields of MOCs or hanging from bonsai trees, the LEGO goat has developed an interesting reputation among LEGO fans! This doubtless relates to its extraordinary price on the secondary market nowadays, having only appeared once, in 2011's 7189 Mill Village Raid.

After hinting towards its return with a poster in 71799 NINJAGO City Markets, the animal has finally reappeared in the latest series of Collectable Minifigures, which will be released in January. Our full review of the series is coming soon, but first, we are focusing on the goat alone and comparing the new piece to its popular predecessor.

Continue reading »

Paper bags are here at last!

Posted by ,

It's not the first time I've written an article with that headline, I did so back in October 2022, but back then it turned out that it was a false alarm.

However, as seen in benbacardi's review of 31148 Retro Roller Skate published earlier today, paper bags inside boxes are now starting to appear at last: we've also found them in some of our other 2024 review sets, including Dreamzzz and Technic as well as Creator.

In this article I have a look at those that I've encountered, and introduce a new feature that I think may be useful, particularly in years to come.

Continue reading »

2023 press release poll analysis

Posted by ,
Eldorado Fortress

Eldorado Fortress

©2023 LEGO Group

We've been adding polls to the bottom of press releases to gauge interest in new sets for a while and, now that all of this year's large sets have been revealed and released, it's a good time to analyse the data to find out which sets released during 2023 made the best first impression and which ones were considered to be duds.

As has been the case in previous years, I'd like to be able to tell you that the results are surprising to encourage you to continue reading, but actually they are very predictable, on the whole!

Continue reading »

BrickLink designer program series 3 finalists announced

Posted by ,

The five designs that have been chosen to progress to the crowdfunding stage of BrickLink Designer Program series 3 have been announced.

Don't get too excited just yet, though: that stage of the process does not begin until October 2024, so it will be well into 2025 before they are produced as sets.

The timetable for all three series is as follows:

  • Series 1: Crowdfunding in February 2024, shipping in July
  • Series 2: Crowdfunding in June 2024, shipping in November
  • Series 3: Crowdfunding in October 2024, shipping in March 2025

View the five winning designs after the break then let us know in the comments which ones you are most excited about.

Continue reading »

Sneaky Secrets: Easter Eggs in LEGO Sets

Posted by ,

This article has been contributed by BenBuildsLego:

You can call me the Easter Bunny because I love Easter eggs! Mind you I'm not talking about the Easter eggs filled with hidden candy (though they have their own charm) - I'm talking about the concept of "Easter eggs" as hidden or subtle elements placed within a work of art, such as books, movies, TV shows, or video games.

In this article I examine examples of those found in LEGO sets and my own models.

Continue reading »

The Clone Trooper Conundrum

Posted by ,

Clone Trooper minifigures are extremely popular and therefore draw particular scrutiny when new designs are produced. The revised Phase II Clone Trooper helmet has certainly proven divisive.

The updated helmet incorporates holes on either side, accommodating the accessories developed for Phase I helmets in 2008. While this improves the range of possible characters, some of whom need helmet accessories, the helmet's shape has also been affected.

This article discusses the problems with the helmet and how LEGO could potentially improve Clone Trooper minifigures in the future.

Continue reading »

This year's Creations for Charity fundraiser has begun

Posted by ,

This year's Creations for Charity, the annual event that raises money to buy LEGO for underprivileged kids, has just begun.

Organiser Nannan Zhang writes "The Creations for Charity 15th annual sale starts today! From now until November 30, you can purchase a one-of-a-kind custom creation donated by builders around the world. Check back often as new items will be added regularly to the store during the next six weeks.

"To donate a creation yourself, please fill out a donation form on creationsforcharity.org and we will list your MOC in the store and notify you when it's time to ship to the buyer. For the first time this year, builders will also auction their creations throughout the 24-hour live stream on Beyond the Brick's YouTube channel starting at noon EST on November 24. We look forward to seeing you!"

Head on over to the website to donate a MOC or to buy one, and view a selection of the items available after the break.

Continue reading »

Blind box carnage

Posted by ,

Marvel series 2 minifigures have only been on the shelves for a few days, but already there are reports of boxes being ripped opened in store, either to loot the contents or identify them.

The main picture was posted on Reddit by u/nitramekaj showing the scene he encountered in a US store, and there are plenty of other examples on social media.

In UK supermarkets CMFs are often put in locked plastic CD/DVD cases to prevent fiddling, so this practice might not be so prevalent here. Either the US stores will need to follow suit, or perhaps even consider them to be more trouble than they are worth and not stock them in future.

As buyers, the solution is to get them from a shop that has already opened and identified them and will sell you exactly what you want, such as Automattic Comics in Corsham, Wiltshire. [1]

Have you come across carnage like this in your local store?

Continue reading »

BrickLink designer program series 2 finalists announced

Posted by ,

The five BrickLink designer program series 2 finalists have just been announced and thankfully Jonas Kramm's Mushroom House is among them.

The designs will now be refined and crowdfunding will commence in June next year, with production and shipping following in November.

Find out the other four that made the cut after the break, and read more about the process at BrickLink.

Continue reading »

A look at the Pick a Brick cardboard boxes

Posted by ,

Earlier this year LEGO conducted a trial in the Berlin and Bluewater brand stores, replacing plastic tubs with cardboard boxes for pick-a-brick purchases. Presumably it was deemed a success because they'll be appearing in all stores later this year, although we've not been informed exactly when.

LEGO has kindly sent us some to examine prior to their roll-out.

Continue reading »

Build Together sets now identified in the database

Posted by ,

You may recall that a feature called Build Together was added to the Builder (nee Instructions Plus) app back in 2021, which facilitates building sets collaboratively. We tested it with one of the sets that was included in the pilot programme (10270 Bookshop) and had great fun doing so.

Since then 180 sets have been added to the app and LEGO has just provided a list of them. So, I've tagged them in the database and you'll find them all listed here.

Have you had an opportunity to use the feature of the Builder app to construct a set with others? Let us know how you got on in the comments.

Continue reading »

We're on Threads

Posted by ,

Twitter seems to be on an unstoppable downward trajectory to oblivion thanks to Elon Musk's persistent meddling, so Meta's new text-based conversation app Threads that launched today stands a good chance of filling the void.

We have signed up, and you'll find us at Bricksetofficial, the same as our Instagram name. We'll start to post links to our news and reviews on the platform, so we hope to see you there.

You can download the app from the App Store and Google Play, although it is not available in the EU yet due to regulatory concerns.

Incidentally, we have had to remove the Twitter widget from the sidebar of the home page that showed our recent tweets because it seems that recent changes made by the platform have stopped it from working.

Continue reading »