Source: Flickr I didn’t play many playground games as a kid and certainly never played the Telephone Game. Like most things in my life, I learned about it through TV. What is the Telephone Game? In a circle or line, one person whispers a phrase into another person’s ear and they must repeat it to the next person, continuing the sequence until everyone has heard the phrase and shared it. The final person in the sequence says aloud what they heard, which is often met with a hilarious result, as by the time the initial word or phrase is whispered to the entire group, it often changes completely. Now, what is the Starfighter Telephone Game? The idea of the game is simple: someone builds a starfighter, gives the model to the next builder, and then they build a new iteration of it. Similar to the kid's game, as the build gets...

A new month is upon us which means more competitive building! Are you ready? Here’s the latest bunch of LEGO contests and challenges from all around the AFOL community for July 2024 to help you find some inspiration and motivation to build! There’s nothing quite like a theme or a prompt to take you out of your comfort zone and give you something new to try. Besides, contests are the perfect place to interact with other contestants and judges and get to know your fellow builders. And if you’re like me, a deadline helps make sure you actually finish! We’ve listed them in order of deadline so you can plan your building time to the best advantage. Make sure to check the LEGO activity calendar for local challenges and events near you. Here at BrickNerd, some of our fondest memories, greatest building achievements, coolest trophies, and best friendships came from LEGO...

Nostalgia is a funny thing, to say the least. It clouds one’s judgment of the past and creates a rose-tinted lens over things that may or may not even be good if viewed with an objective, critical eye. It can also create disdain or prejudice for what is new or does not align with what nostalgia deems as valuable. Many fans of LEGO who grew up in the 80s and 90s want to see Classic Space or early Pirates sets take over shelves again, and licenses like Star Wars or superheroes fall to the wayside completely. Much of the Bionicle community of the 2000s longs for its hay day again. Before CCBS and Hero Factory, and certainly before its revival ended earlier than projected. I was a kid in the mid-to-late 2000s—too young for Bionicle when it was in full stride, but just the right age for a marketing campaign that...

Source: Yuan He, Flickr Oh, it’s out there, alright! It’s World UFO Day, earthlings… um… BrickNerd fans—or UAP as it’s currently known in official government circles. In fact, there have been Congressional hearings on the subject in recent months, lending some credence to those of us on the fringe since the X-Files days. (I would also like to recommend a series that was on the History Channel called Project Blue Book based on a real Air Force investigative program.) But to mark World UFO Day, we are rounding up some stellar LEGO UFOs that are sure to abduct your imagination. They are out of this world! LEGO Admits UFOs Exist! In the late 1990s, LEGO had its own series of UFOs as a sub-theme of LEGO Space. I picked up a few of the sets back in the day, mainly for the nifty saucer pieces and neon yellow windshields. As it...

Illustration by Joe Meno On July 1st, 2013—eleven years ago—Tommy Williamson debuted Nerdly, the glasses-wearing mascot of a site called BrickNerd he started six months before that. The bespectacled red 2x2 brick has since become a symbol for all things nerdy about the bricks, popping up in contests and countries all around the globe. To mark the occasion, we are going to re-publish last year’s article about Mega Nerdly, the crazy oversized collab that created something beautiful… and ended with a bang! But fear not, because this time, the story has a happy ending! Happy Birthday, Nerdly. Turn it up to eleven! History to Live Up To To celebrate BrickNerd and Nerdly’s birthday, we wanted to go big! The plan was to build a 10x size Nerdly to premiere at Brickworld Chicago and then tour around LEGO fan conventions to encourage readers to participate in the BrickNerd Brigade, showing off how...