Several months offer the launch in the USA and Europe, IKEA Australia have now announced that the Bygglek collaboration with the LEGO group will be available for purchase, in store and online, from February 17th 2021.
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This week, around about afternoon tea time on Thursday, we celebrate 10 years since Ninjago made its debut on Cartoon Network. Today saw the release of the latest Ninjago® City set: Ninjago City Gardens. An epic modular set, following in the tradition of 70620 Ninjago City from 2017, and followed up in 2018 by 20657 Ninjago City Docks. Chances are you have seen the images elsewhere, so I’ll take a quick dive into what we have seen in the set, and point out some of the obvious highlights.
For reasons best known to the LEGO marketing team, first official images for this set came from the North American Shop at Home print catalog. Why does an online store still get a print catalog in this day and age? Are there that many sales that are placed by phone? These images were followed up with a scattering from the LEGO Certified Store in Singapore. Finally, on Wednesday, the LEGO online store listed the set, going on sale on Thursday 14th January. So, by the time you have read this, it has been available for the better part of a day depending on where in the world you are standing! (so long as you are a VIP at your local LEGO retailer, and they had stock in a timely fashion.)
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Back in 2017, The LEGO Group released the NEXO Knights Power suits range. This was essentially a dumbed down range of Mech suits, which incorporated a new cockpit element for the seating of of the pilot. Fast forward to 2020, and there was a new series of inexpensive mech suits featuring Marvel characters: Iron Man, Spider Man and Thanos. I missed these, for no good reason. However, this year, we have another three Marvel Mech Suits released: 76168 Captain America; 76169 Thor and 76171 Mile Morales. the sets have around 120-135 elements, and retail for $AUD19.99/$USD9.99/9.99€/£8.99.
I am grateful that The LEGO Group sent these three over for me to take a look at: I have been curious to learn a bit more about mech building, and I am keen to see what these sets might teach me about designing a custom mech suit in the future.
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There is no doubt that Spiderman is a popular hero. Indeed, he is the LEGO Marvel equivalent of Batman. What I don’t really understand is why he seems to be almost always presented in LEGO form with some form of vehicle or another. There are three new sets containing the traditional Spiderman figure, each with vehicles.
We are going to take a look at 3 of the sets released on January 1 2020, with a variety of villains, allies and vehicles. Some of which feel appropriate. Others less so…
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The recently released LEGO® Botanical Collection has certainly got a lot of people excited about having a bunch of flowers on their shelf that won’t require water to to keep them looking fresh and colourful. But, One thing became apparent to me: Being able to arrange them in a vase is just as important.
There are so many ways in which flowers can be displayed, as my Mum’s collection of vases demonstrated the other day. But, when your flowers are going to live forever, you perhaps shouldn’t remove the valuable glassware from circulation permanently. And so I would like to launch my first competition for the year:
Build a vase, using LEGO bricks to suit LEGO Flowers: builds can be real or digital, and should suit the LEGO Flower Bouquet. You don’t need a copy of the set to enter. Digital entries should be rendered as .jpg or .png files.
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It’s finally over: the dumpster fire train wreck of a year (at least it feels a bit that way) that was 2020 has come to an end. And with the arrival of 2021, comes a swath of new LEGO® sets to see the new year in. With over 100 new sets available in the LEGO® catalog, and Christmas still a recent memory, the online store, and LEGO Brand Retail stores(but not LEGOLAND parks, discovery centres or Certified stores) have added a little sweetener to entice you to shop. (Let’s hope the stock lasts long enough for the promotion to run its course). The Vintage Car 40448 has come from a LEGO Ideas contest run in 2019, which asked AFOLs to design a vintage car to cruise the mean streets of your Modular City.
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One of the big changes to the way the LEGO® sets have been marketed to AFOLs during 2020 has been the introduction of the 18+ branding on sets that are predominantly aimed at AFOLs. This labelling has been applied to sculptures, vehicles, Fairground rides, UCS Star Wars, Modulars, Mosaics and even the Winter Village. Most of these have had precedents in previous ranges. After releasing 23 sets during the course of 2020, I wonder if we should brace ourselves for an onslaught of such sets in 2021.
On January 1 we will se the first sets in a new 18+ ‘Collection’: the Botanical Collection. Designed for adult builders, not so much because of the technical challenge, but more the subject matter, these sets have around 750-850 elements, and will retail for around €49.99/$USD49.99.
The first of these, 10280 Flower Bouquet, presents us with a 756 part set, and the makings of five different flowers, as well as some ornamental leaves and grasses. The designers, Anderson Grubb and Astrid Sundorf Christensen came to the project in different ways: Anderson is a designer with the LEGO Group. Astrid has been involved in making brick built decorations, including flowers, in LEGO headquarters, as part of a return to work program. Her involvement here led to becoming involved with this project.
I was fortunate to be sent copies of the first two releases in this collection for review, by the LEGO Group. We will look at the parts included in the sets, the individual flower builds, and the challenges in making all these flowers sit in a regular vase.
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For the last couple of years, the larger of the Spring festival sets has been one of the highlights of the building year for me. Last year’s 80105 New Year Temple Fair is one of my favorite sets to build ever, between the details of the maket stalls, the characters , the different produce, and the temple itself.
This year, we are looking at the 80107 Spring Lantern Festival: traditionally on the 15th day of the Lunar New Year, it marks the final day of celebrations for the Lunar New Year period. This year (2021) it will fall on February 26th. The lunar new year starts with a new moon – a moonless sky. On the night of the lantern festival, we expect to see a full moon.
I cannot recall any LEGO set that focusses on external landscape in any detail with the possible exception of the LEGO Ideas Treehouse, and in that situation, the landscape, apart from the tree and treehouse itself, was fairly limited. In this set, designer Justin Ramsden presents us with a masterclass in landscape design.
This is a larger set than 80106, with 1793 parts. It will cost $AUD169.99/USD119.99/GBP89.99/CAD159.99. It is due for release in the Asia Pacific region on January 1, and throughout the rest of the world on January 10.
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Since the LEGO Group sent over some pre-release copies for me to review, I have spenty a little bit of time looking at LEGO® Harry Potter Hogwarts™ Moments Sets. These four sets each encompass activities in a single Hogwarts classroom, and come with an interesting collection of fittings and Furniture for the different classrooms. They also come with one teacher, as well as a couple of students. And if that’s not enough, they all get bundled up into book form! Last time, we reviewed the built in scenery, some of which could be great for your own Hogwarts MOC. Today, I would like to look at the individual items of furniture, as well as any interesting accessories, as well as the minifigures.
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Earlier in the week, I previewed the Hogwarts Moment sets: playsets, each depicting a class from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Today, I would like to take a look at the artwork included in the sticker sheets, as well as the fixtures within these neat little sets.
Today, we are looking at the internal artwork, as well as the fittings. Next time we will take a look at the furniture and the figures.
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