So 2025 has been and gone, the dust has settled from the New Year’s celebrations, and the last of the champagne has just about left our systems. But we have one final bit of business to attend to from last year: the coronation of the Brothers Brick’s LEGO Builder of the Year! As a reminder, our shortlist is over here. And man, what a stacked list! How do we pick out a winner from that? Well, our builders of the year tend to cover a lot of bases, and often their achievements extend beyond merely making great LEGO models. Ultimately, it’s about consistency across the whole year. And the key to determining this year’s Builder of the Year actually came while curating our Creations of the Year shortlist, as our victor had several builds that could’ve made the cut for the shortlist alone. The Brothers Brick are delighted to crown Seigo...

This new LEGO retro robot from Shannon Sproule fills me with joy as I remember childhood cartoons. He takes us to a time when, thanks to relaxed regulations, every cartoon was a 30 minute advertisement for some toy or another. Us kids in the 70’s and 80’s were brainwashed consumer minions and we liked it, by golly! Some deep diving into Diaclone stuff has Shannon in the mood to build some blocky mega robots in all their primary-colored glory. We’re here for it, Shannon! King Oberon here triggers some happy memories of imported Japanese cartoons like Battle of the Planets or G-Force: Guardians of Space fill the ol’ reptile brain. Who cares if the plots didn’t make any sense. So what if the titles were kinda clunky and ill-translated. So long as parents had jobs and there were birthdays and Christmas, we were getting some cool giant robot toys. The post...

With the exception of Notre Dame, LEGO has shied away from depicting places of worship in official sets, leaving AFOLs to provide religious buildings for minifig believers. Church mocs are quite common, as evidenced by our extensive archive, and lately we’ve been seeing a lot more mosques as well, but synagogues are rarely seen in brick. Builder Matthew Sklar provides a rare look inside a LEGO synagogue from the medieval era, based on the Talmudic Academies of circa 10th Century Babylonia. The Torah ark, framed in blue tiles, is beautifully constructed, but it’s the stained glass windows that shine brightest – fitting as Matthew created this model for the Colossal Castle competition’s stained glass category, as well as Brickscalibur’s Arabian Knights theme. The post Talmudic Academy in LEGO celebrates stained glass and tradition appeared first on The Brothers Brick. Original linkOriginal author: Jake Forbes (TBB Managing Editor)

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) isn’t the usual venue for LEGO to break big news – techies love displaying LEGO, but the bricks themselves aren’t your typical cutting-edge gadgets. That’s about to change with the announcement of the Smart Play system. Smart Bricks communicate with Smart Minifigures and Smart Tags that integrate sensors and spatial awareness into your builds, thanks to microchips smaller than a single stud. You can read about LEGO’s design process for the Smart Brick here. As rumored, the new system debuts with the Star Wars theme with three all-in-one sets coming this March. Each of these will include a Smart Brick, charger, and at least one Smart Minifigure and Yag. The all-in-one sets include: 75421 Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter (69,99 EUR / 69,99 USD / 59,99 GBP), 75423 Luke’s Red Five X-wing (89,99 EUR / 99,99 USD / 79,99 GBP), and 75427 Throne Room Duel & A-wing...

Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 recently arrived on the Nintendo Switch, and Sakiya Watanabe (N.A.B.E_mocs) has already marked the occasion with a new build featuring one of our favorite enemies from these games. The Dino Piranha is a piranha plant variation that resembles Petey Piranha (first introduced in Super Mario Sunshine), but the difference is that these guys hatch from eggs and have dinosaur features – because of course they do. The Super Mario Galaxy games were revolutionary for the franchise and took every enemy, world, and gameplay element to the next level, and Sakiya has done the same with this build. The 2×2 round brick tube (part 65473) has proven to be the most essential piece for Super Mario builds, and is predominantly featured on sets like The Mighty Bowser, the Spiny Shell, and the Piranha Plant. Sakiya used the same part here in different colors to capture the...