Lego

71462 LEGO Super Mario Piranha Plant Revealed

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Every year, around this time, we see an adult focussed set drawing inspiration from LEGO Super Mario: be it the Retro TV, the Mario 64 Question Mark Cube or the Mighty Bowser. These sets have drawn heavily on nostalgic aspects of the Super Mario games, to present an artefact that has certainly been a talking point in many households around the wolrd. Each of these sets has had a suitably impressive price tag attached, too (priced from 300-400AUD This year, perhaps as a sign of the times, with cost of living being what it has become in 2023, the scale has been somewhat reduced. This year’s adult focussed LEGO Super Mario set is a shelf sized model of the Pirhana Plant. With 540 pieces, the set will be released on November 6th and priced at $AUD94.99/$USD59.99 / €64.99 / £57.99.

Over recent years, the LEGO Group have been responsive to the cries of adult fans – Give us more, give us bigger – and now it has become apparent that the major problems that these large LEGO sets have give AFOLS are related to two major factors:

  • one is cost with the previous adult focussed Super Mario sets, we have seen prices starting at $USD199.99
  • another is display space. I love the look of the new Concorde, but at over 1m in length, there is no doubt that I have nowhere to reasonably build it or display it without causing major disruption to the family living spaces.
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10325 Winter Village Alpine Lodge Revealed.

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We are approaching the end of September, and around the world, people are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the annual Winter Village set. Today we can reveal that the set for 2023 is a warm and cosy alpine lodge. Over the last few years, we have gone from the fantasy of the Gingerbread house and the Elves clubhouse to the urban reality of Santa’s Visit, and the holiday main Street. This year, we are headed out of town, as we move towards the Alpine Lodge. With 1517 pieces, 5 minifigures and a brick built outhouse, the LEGO® Icons Winter Village set will be available for LEGO insiders from 1st October 2023 at www.LEGO.com/alpine-Lodge and LEGO Stores for all from 4th October 2023 priced at €99.99 / £89.99 / $99.99/ 899.0 CNY/ 169.99 AUD /129.99 CAD.

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New ways to Play with the LEGO® City 60367 Passenger Airplane

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Aircraft are vital for creating connections between cities – both in real life and LEGO® Form. The first Minifigure Scale passenger planes debuted in the mid 1980s, and were relatively similar in design until 2006, with the arrival of large scale wing elements.

The New LEGO City 60367 Passenger Aircraft builds on the revitalization of the LEGO City reboot that we have seen this year. It brings us details that we have never seen executed in any of the dozens of airplane sets over the years, be they in Town, City, Friends or DUPLO. We have new livery, vehicles, uniforms and even a couple of characters that can be found in other aspects of LEGO City.

Join me as we check out all the new features and new ways to play with a LEGO Airplane.

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Jurassic Jeeps And Other Designer Insights [Designer Q&A]

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A little earlier this year, I put the two 2023 Jurassic Park sets containing the iconic Jeep Wrangler side by side, as a comparision of building techniques. I found the jeeps to be sufficienty different in the way they were constructed that it raised a few questions for me. I had the chance to put a couple of these questions to members of the design team, thanks to the LEGO Ambassadors Network. It was initially intended to address these questions at a round table meeting, but for various reasons, we ended up getting questions answered by email. I’d like to thank the team for taking the time to answer these.

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21342 LEGO® IDEAS Insect Collection Unveilled

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I hope that this is not just a cloned version of Ramblingbrick .com, listed atanother site. If the words ramblingbrick.com are not in the address bar, you have been misdirected. I have no idea why they chose to clone my site.

Last September, it was revealed that @hackiruko42’s Insect submission to LEGO® Ideas was going to be progressing to the development stage. Today, we can present the final set, due for release on September 4 2023. With 1111 pieces, the set brings us a Morpho Buttfly, Chinese Mantis and Hercules Beetle. The set will cost $USD79.99/ €79.99/ £69.99 / $AUD124.99 / 33990.0 HUF / 2033.9 TRY /$CAD99.99. The three models within each set each come with a separate manual, to allow you to build with friends.

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Take Off with the LEGO® ICONS 10318 Concorde

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Growing up in the 1970s, it was apparent that the world was getting smaller: not so much by cumulative erosion by billions of residents shuffling along in their daily lives, but rather as air travel was becoming faster and more efficient. While air travel from the Antipodes to the rest of the world was most likely to be restricted to to 747 Jumbos and their variants, travelling at around 1037km/k (mach 0.84) my library books focussing on The Way Things Will Be In the Future reported that the Concorde has just started to fly across the Atlantic at over twice the speed of sound!

Concorde. by Eduard Marmet (retrieved 2023, August 10). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde

The product of a collaboration between Sud Aviation/Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation, the first prototypes started test flights in 1969. In 1975, it received its airworthiness certificates, with commercial flights taking off in 1976 . The Concorde fleet flew passengers for British Airways and Air France between London/Paris and the United states – particularly Washington and New York. Typically carrying between 92 and 128 passengers. In July 2000, an Air France flight crashed shortly after takeoff killing all on board.The fleet was grounded for a period while safety modifications were rolled out. The Concorde Fleet was retired in 2003, with the final flight in November.

And so…20 years later, the LEGO Group have announced their latest ICONS set – a 2083 piece model of the Concorde. Over 1m long, this scale model will be available in September (4th September VIPs/7th September Everyone Else). It will be priced at $USD199.99/€199.99/£169.99/299.99 AUD/1699.0 CNY/4474.7 TRY/84990.0 HUF/259.99 CAD.

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3660 LEGO Fabuland Fisherman’s Wharf [Retro Review]

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If you have been following the Rambling Brick for a while, you might know I have a penchant for nostalgia. If you have seen my Instagram stories looking at market finds, perhaps it becomes more obvious that 80s and 90s LEGO fascinates me now more than it did at the time. Perhaps I am seeking something more than a nostalgia fuelled dopamine kick: also looking for a feeling of relaxed contemplation while living in an increasingly complicated world. During that period of LEGO History, the typical LEGO sets maintained a degree of simplicity while still being able to produce some substantial models with relatively few elements.

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71461 Fantastical Tree House [ Hands On Review]

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As a kid, I loved the idea of a treehouse: a place to escape and refashion the world in my image, where my dreams could come true. As my kids grew up, they would have great fun hiding out with their cousins in the Treehouse my father built for them. I suspect this love of arboreal habitation is not restricted to my family, as we have seen multiple LEGO treehouses popping up every year for the last decade. They ensure Kids have a place to call their own and think big.

The 71461 Fantastical Tree House is another of the heroes’ location sets, released as part of the first wave of LEGO DREAMZzz in August 2023. These builds are set in a dream world, where objects are shaped by the imaginations of the dream-crafting heroes of our Story, Izzie and Mateo and their friends. With 1257 pieces, this is the second-largest set in the wave. It has 4 minifigures, 3 ‘li’l guys’ and two buildable characters. With multiple rooms, personal spaces and striking blue foliage, this set has a lot to offer.

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Enter the Nightmare King: 71457 Pegasus Flying Horse [Hands On review]

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We are days away from the official release of LEGO DREAMZzz. One of the great things about the theme is the appearance of the villains. We have discussed the appearance of the Grimspawn and Night Hunter previously, but with this set, we finally meet the Big Bad of the series: The Nightmare King. This is one of my favourite minifigures of the theme. This set also brings us Zoey and Nova minifigures and the ‘advanced grimspawn’ Susan. But is this striking Black and Pink horse enticing for shoppers? Or will they overlook it in favour of the major set: Nightmare Shark Ship, which also comes with the Nightmare King, Nova and Susan? Read on to find out.

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Friends + Elves = DREAMZzz? 71459 Stable of Dream Creatures Review

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LEGO® DREAMZzz is shaping up to be one of the most colourful and eclectic themes that we have seen for some time. So far, we have looked at sets focussing on Creatures and Vehicles imagined by some of our heroes: Bunchu, Z-Blob, Space Bus and the Croc Car, to say nothing of the evil Grimkeeper. Today, we look at one of the first sets based on LOCATIONS in the LEGO DREAMZzz range: the Stable of Dream Creatures brings us a farmhouse and stables, which at first inspection feels like it might have come from LEGO Friends. On closer inspection, however, we see imaginative creatures and a colourful building with a warm palette and magical touches.

With 681 pieces, 4 minifigures and 3 of the little guys, along with some brick-built magical creatures, this set brings us a place for our heroes to chill out without any of the Nightmare King’s forces anywhere in sight.

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