This was a slowish week on the video side with "just" 10 videos released in 7 days.  With the transition away from release season I completed one MOC (for now), made good progress on a new one, and did all manner of cleanup & important foundational chores around New Jang City. Videos:LEGO City Off-Road Chase review! 60170Custom LEGO intermodal container gantry crane (STS) MOC complete! (also previous WIP update)One unexciting LEGO city update after hours of work! Jan. 23 2018Work In Progress: New custom LEGO passenger train MOCMega Construx Halo Fireteam Castle set reviewLEGO parts order unboxing from Bricklink.com ? #216LEGO Technic 1:10 scale Rally Car review! 42077LEGO Build My City Accessory Set review ? 40170LEGO Star Wars The Last Jedi DJ polybag review! 40298With those couple boxes of parts received from Bricklink, I've since finished paneling off my elevated rail track and dove back into the terrain work for the Planetary Defense...

At long last, I have a functionally complete ship-to-shore crane in New Jang City!  I previously did a few progress videos, plus a few updates on Instagram, but now there's a single video to show the last additions plus the basic operations of the whole thing.Videos: Custom LEGO intermodal container gantry crane (STS) MOC complete!Work In Progress: LEGO Container Gantry Crane (STS) update Jan. 21, 2018Work In Progress: LEGO Container Gantry Crane (STS) build update Jan 19, 2018Work In Progress: LEGO Container Gantry Crane (STS) MOC beginsWant to see the earliest suggestion of one of these types of cranes coming to my LEGO layout?  You'll have to go all the way back to my June 2013 city update!  Ha!!  On to the next thing, and here's hoping whatever that is won't take almost a half-decade to turn into reality.Original linkOriginal author: theJANG

Take a peek back, if you will, at my original undersea display that I put together in 2015.  It brought great personal joy to me, satisfying my love of underwater scenes that previously surfaced in my first LEGO city in the year 2000 and my zoo's aquarium in 2014.  Once I dedicated a whole table to this theme, though, I just couldn't stop thinking about it.  I doubled its size in 2016 and added a shipwreck in 2017. Behind the scenes, though, I was desperate for more.  I've given very serious consideration (and dedicated plenty of research) to all manner of techniques to add more depth & "life" to these displays, but it wasn't until today that I realized I should just add... a display.My very first flat screen TV, now over a decade old, hasn't gotten much use in the past couple of years though it still works fine, making it...

This evening I completed my review of this beautiful, well-constructed, practically 1:1 realistic scaled collectible display piece.Video: LEGO Ideas Ship in a Bottle review ⚓ 21313To my utter shock, I'm seeing a lot of fan negativity towards this wonderful fan-inspired product.  While I agree that the ship in original Ideas submission looked much nicer, there were some pretty strong & inescapable factors that made duplicating it completely unreasonable to expect:Total ~1,800 pieces, which would have made it a $140+ USD set, twice as expensive and accessible to a fraction as many potential buyers.Bottle diagonal dimension of 9" (double) vs. this 4.5", and a similar (if not greater) difference in ship sizeFully glued masts to cheat away the inherent instability of the designUse of numerous cut pieces (clearly illegal)Use of discontinued pieces (not available to use)Complex string rigging (completely out of the realm of allowed techniques for LEGO's techniques)The original looked way better, unquestionably,...

For those who have been for the LEGO Star Wars Darth Vader Pod (5005376) that’s supposed to come out later this month as a promotion, I’m sorry to say that the product has been cancelled. I’ve known this information for a few days now but LEGO has released an official statement of why the promo will not be happening. Star Wars Pod No. 5005376 We have to inform that as part of our internal quality screening process, we have found that the Star Wars Metalized Pod 5005376 does not meet our strict standards. As you know, we take the quality and safety of our products extremely seriously, and so out of an abundance of caution we have decided not to launch the Star Wars Pod. We are committed to continuing support for our Star Wars promotion, and will offer consumers 10% off across all LEGO® Star Wars products from 18th –...