Anniversary

Happy 10th Birthday Rambling Brick!

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Celebratory image for the Rambling Brick's 10th birthday featuring four LEGO minifigures and a birthday cake with candles, alongside '10' made of colourful LEGO bricks.

Hi Folks, just a quick post to acknowledge that this weekend, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our first post. What started as a whim one Saturday afternoon blew out over the following 10 years to over 1300 posts on WordPress (including this one), more than 2080 posts on Instagram, and an indeterminable number of posts on other platforms, which I just haven’t got my head around.

This journey would not have been possible without the support of our regular team members – Ann, the Knoller-In-Chief who lays out the elements in our reviews for your enjoyment and Branko, who joined me a couple of years ago when the number of sets coming by to review was outnumbering the number of hours in the day. I also need to thank my children – Harry, who writes up our game reviews, and Tash, who has accompanied me to LEGO events, ensuring that I remember to hydrate and occasionally eat. She is also responsible for the update to Bailey Fullarton’s original logo for the site. I would also like to thank all of you who have followed me, whether in recent times, or for the full decade. What’s your favorite memory from our content?

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What’s Changed with LEGO sets?

Over these past 10 years, we have seen the LEGO Company moving from its focus from children’s toys, to marketing toys and sets to just about everyone. You used to be able to count the number of ‘adult-focussed’ sets released each year on one hand. Now I struggle to keep up each month.

We have seen an explosion of third party IP from Star Wars, Disney and Super Heroes to include franschises from Film, Football and Video games.

When I started writing, Space and Castle had all but vanished and NEXO Knights was just beginning. Nexo Knights has gone, but Castle and Space sets still come our way from various directions.

We have seen different technologies put forward: Mindstorms; Spike Prime, Powered Up; Super Mario, Vidiyo, and Hidden Side. Some of these have been embraced by consumers. Others have fallen by the wayside.

Creator 3in1 has embraced detailed creature builds, with studs becoming an almost optional extra.

Why am I still here?

Three LEGO minifigures in various outfits, standing in front of colourful number '100' against a green background. The characters include a knight, a construction worker with a shovel, and a space explorer.
Over the years, we have thought about the LEGO Group’s Past, Present, and Future.

My love of LEGO comes from trying to understand what makes it all work, and how it has come to go this way. Over the years, we have taken a few deep dives, particularly with the storytelling themes in years gone past. Occasionally looking at other statistics within the World of LEGO Bricks. My writing style has evolved, for better or worse, but this does represent nearly 20% or my total life span.

Over the years I have had the joy of joining the LEGO Ambassador Network, meeting fan communities and Fan Media from around the world, and traveling to events around the globe. I am fortunate to have been given the opportunity to meet designers, historians and leaders within the company. I am grateful for the friendships I have formed around the world as the result of my love of the brick: building with LEGO takes on a whole new meaning.

Extra Pieces – the podcast we have made with Jay’s Brick Blog should be back this year. A lot has been going on making it tough to record new content recently. Look for it on your favorite podcast platform. [ special shout out to Jay for his support over the years.]

Finally, I still love LEGO toys, Old and new. I am looking forward to the future, and can’t wait to see how the forthcoming SmartPlay rolls out.

This will be a year of celebration. Over the course of this year, I hope to bring a couple of building challenges along: we missed out for a couple of years there. I also intend to finish up a couple of series that I began a while ago. I would love to know the types of post that you have enjoyed reading here, and what you would like to see more of.

Why don’t you leave your favorite Rambling Brick memories in the comments below,

In the mean time, if you are new, follow the Rambling Brick by signing up to our mailing list, or following us on Facebook or Instagram. YouTube and TikTok get occasional content, but rarely anything exclusive. Finally, thanks for reading this far, and for your support. And thanks to Ann, Branko and my kids for their support and encouragement.

And until next time,

Play Well.

Four LEGO figures celebrating a birthday with a cake and candles, alongside the number 10 in colourful blocks against a green background.

20 years of LEGO® Santa Claus in LEGO City Advent Calendars: An Incomplete History

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Three LEGO minifigures depicting various versions of Santa Claus and holiday characters, with the title 'Twenty Years of LEGO® Santa Claus: An Incomplete History' in the background.

If you happened to drop by a Build a Mini station in a LEGO® Store during the run up to Christmas in 2025, you may well have found the parts for a Golden Santa Claus. If you were lucky, the staff had already assembled them for you. If you have been following some of the long-running minifigure play sets, you have probably seen the tendency of golden minifigures to turn up in commemorative sets during anniversary years, in both Ninjago (10 years, 2022) and Harry Potter sets (20 years,2021).

Three LEGO Santa minifigures displayed against a dark background: one in a traditional red suit, one in a golden suit, and one in a modern red suit with a bag.

While golden Santa appears very similar to the current Santa minifigure, which debuted in 2024, he didn’t always look so fine. Read on to find out more.

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Happy LEGO® Patent Day

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January 28, 1958, 1:58 pm CET, a Patent was filed: That day, an express courier walked into the office of patent agency Hofman-Bang & Boutard in Copenhagen, with a piece of paper, on which was drawn the specifications for the LEGO brick – all studs and tubes, and a hand glued mock up of the 2×4 brick.

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Happy Micropolis Day!

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[Edit: I may have originally posted this implying the 15th anniversary. That will be next year. I will now have a soothing cup of tea, before going to bed…]

I was having a chat with my friend Sue Ann the other day, and she asked ‘Did you realise it is the 14th anniversary of Micropolis this week? I thought you’d be interested because you have been promoting some other community building standards lately.’

Cultural Arts Centre with Hotels estate: by Sue Ann Barber at Brickvention 2014.

14 years already? It felt like only a couple of years since I first built a couple of modules using the collaborative city plan standard at Brickvention in 2013. Perhaps it was longer than I realised, as I wandered back through my Flickr gallery. ‘I don’t really know much about where it came from Sue Ann. Can you help me?’

And so, an hour or two later, she sent me this…

August 17th is Micropolis Day! On this day in 2008, Max Braun first presented the Micropolis concept to his local LUG, TwinLUG, and the standard was created.

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90th Anniversary of LEGO®: Fan Vote for a Nostalgia Laden, Adult Focussed Set.

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The LEGO Group will turn 90 years in 2022. That’s still a year away, but in the mean time, LEGO Ideas are sunning a survey to select a classic theme to be revived as a single set in the Adult/18+ portfolio in 2022. The topic will be selected from a selection of 30 LEGO Themes from over the years. LEGO Ideas ran a similar survey last year, to help select a LEGO Star Wars UCS set for release later this year – we are currently anticipating a Republic Drop Ship.

As I write this, I don’t know the exact themes of choice, but it is probably safe to presume that they will be retired ‘in-house’, unlicensed themes, to be represented with a modern twist – not dissimilar to the Pirates of Bucaneer Bay that we saw released through LEGO Ideas Earlier this year. earlier last year.

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