More from Lego isn’t just for kids: the latest news for nostalgic adults and adult budgets
If you’ve been sleeping on Lego’s incredible $240 Atari 2600 replica... good! You can now nab it for $192 from Lego or $202 from Amazon. I love the pop-up diorama.
The massive 21-inch tall Hulkbuster is also just $385 right now (normally $550), and the best Luke Lego Landspeeder yet is $168 at Amazon (normally $240).
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Lego has leaked its own Orient Express train set — as part of a truly excellent online catalog of its most detailed sets for adult tastes and budgets. Will those adult tastes extend to murder? It does include a well-dressed man with a walking stick — perhaps Poirot.
Here’s the fan set that inspired it; leaks suggest it’ll cost $300 for 2,540 pieces, and that it may have been delayed to 2024.
Thorston Bonsch has been building incredible Lego vignettes based on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for years, and he’s now capped it off with an incredibly detailed version of the famous Hobbit-house with the round green door where Bilbo and Frodo lived.
I particularly love the pantry and dining room — can easily imagine them full of singing dwarves! (via The Brothers Brick)
but it is Lego’s biggest Star Wars set of the year. Officially unveiled by Lego today, this UCS Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser clocks in at a massive 5,374 pieces, is 43 inches long and 22 inches high, and will set you back $650.
Lego did the DeLorean right in 2022 — with light-up flux capacitor, wheels that flip into hover mode, a tiny Mr. Fusion with a banana to throw inside, and much much more.
It’s $160 at Amazon and Walmart, the best price I’ve seen — $10 cheaper than its pre-inflation pricetag. $170 at Target, too.
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Lego VIP is now “Lego Insiders,” unifying other accounts in the process. It’s still a free signup to get first dibs on new sets and collect points.
But now, you can get points for existing sets — just 20 per instruction manual QR code you scan with your phone, which seems a tad stingy — and there’s an AR treasure hunt where you can scan a brick to potentially win $9,000 worth (in nine countries), tho it’s not working for me right now.
On July 7th, SleepyCow’s bike finally hit 10,000 supporters on Lego Ideas, which means Lego’s gotta decide whether to produce it. While most Ideas are based on existing IP, we do get some mechanical gems like the Typewriter or working Fresnel lighthouse.
Bikes aren’t just our nostalgic past, though — they’re the future too! But almost every “bike” Lego sells today is a motorbike, and it only recently began including bike lanes.
Did you know you can freely download instructions for loads of Lego? The Lego Group has its own searchbox, and the Internet Archive now hosts an easily browsable backup of 6,854 sets (via Hacker News).
Neither has my childhood favs yet, but Lego’s scanning in new instructions all the time — you can already recreate the Black Seas Barracuda or the valuable Cloud City sets. Bricklink fan designs have downloadable instructions too.
[archive.org]
Papa wants an Exoplanet Explorer to go along with the reimagined OG spaceship. You’ll help me out, right? Or maybe a literal sub sandwich shop. Or a working desk fan. Or an amazing arcade. Or a gorgeous train station. You’ve got till 12PM PT June 30th to vote on your fan-designed favs.
Here are the previous winners.
This was one of my “sets that got away,” so I’m overjoyed it’s coming back — particularly now it’s composed of several modular islands with their own secret underground passages instead of a single rigid baseplate. (You can “unfold” it kind of like the Lion Knights’ Castle.)
It’s coming July 7th for $215, and I can’t wait to pair it with Lego’s Black Seas Barracuda remake when I find the cash.
The second round of voting in Lego’s 2023 BrickLink Designer Program has just begun, meaning another chance for you to help Lego pick five fan-designed sets to produce. Fingers crossed for the Sub Sandwich Shop to shine this time! I would also happily own a Galactic Medical Transport or this mobile-home-on-a-big-rig, though.
The latest fan design to become an official Lego set: The Sanderson Sisters’ cottage from Hocus Pocus. It’s a little less spacious than the original Lego Ideas submission, but still sure to put a spell on a certain persuasion of grown-up ‘90s kids! It’s $230, coming July 4th. Yes, Mary can fly the vacuum.
It’s filled with detail — and comes with Alfred, Catwoman, Penguin, and Max Shreck mini-figs.
Lego Dreamzzz is one of the most imaginative series of sets the company’s come up with in a while. (I’m also partial to the school-bus-turned-spaceship and nightmare shark pirate ship.) They’re all tie-ins for a new Lego show coming May 15th to Netflix, Amazon, and streaming to YouTube for free. The sets won’t arrive till August.
