It's a little late, but YouTube today completed the second round of implementation of their changes to comply with the COPPA lawsuit settlement (that I've talked about quite a bit in the past) as well as some questionable add-ons they've bundled along.  The settlement was announced in September 2019 and in November we learned a lot of the specifics of what would be changing.  Now comments & end screens are completely disabled from most of my videos, and you will generally not get subscription notifications when I upload new content (not that many of you got these anyhow).  Some other features will be impacted as well.  All of this is because these videos count as "mixed audience" content according to YouTube's own definitions and had to be marked as "for kids" and restricted as such. The actual COPPA rule that YouTube flagrantly broke and is now forcing us creators to follow...

It’s not often that a LEGO set transports me back home. But regular readers of The Brothers Brick know that I was born in Tokyo and lived in Japan until I was a teenager, so I was incredibly excited when LEGO announced 21050 Tokyo. I’ve enjoyed each of the previous LEGO Architecture skyline sets I’ve built, but how does this one stack up for someone who calls Tokyo their hometown? Tokyo was revealed as part of the LEGO Architecture skyline series for 2020, alongside 21052 Dubai. Tokyo is built from 547 pieces and will retail for $59.99 USD | $79.99 CAD | £59.99 GBP. Both sets will be available starting January 1st. The packaging & instructions Looking beyond LEGO’s core market of kids and even the kind of adult builders we feature here on The Brothers Brick, LEGO Architecture sets are often sold in tourist hot spots, museum gift shops, and...

Welcome to Day 24, the last day of our LEGO Advent Calendar countdown. Each day, we’ve revealed the four mini-builds from the LEGO Harry Potter, LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Friends, and LEGO City 2019 advent calendars along with commentary from The Brothers Brick team. If you’re opening one (or more) of these advent calendars along with us, we’ve made sure the pictures and commentary on each day’s models will be behind a jump so we don’t accidentally ruin the surprise. What will we score for the final Day 24? For Day 24, we have a Hedwig and a chest of goodies from Harry Potter and a Santa Porg from Star Wars. Dave: It seems fitting that after an entire month of exclusive parts and minifigures, we end the first ever LEGO Harry Potter advent calendar with another spectacular new print, Harry’s acceptance letter to Hogwarts. While I might have expected a Santa...

You know about Bob Ross, right? If not, the short version is that he was an amazing painter, best known for his peaceful and calm teaching method. Quite often, he would fill his canvasses with “happy little trees,” conjuring entire forests with just a few elegant brush-strokes. Builder Emil Lidé (Full Plate) has a similar talent, creating trees with a flair and minimalist style that evokes nature with just a tiny selection of LEGO elements. Not satisfied with just one tree, Emil has created seven distinct varieties for us to enjoy. All seven are great, but there are a couple of standouts that I wanted to take a closer look at. (All seven are detailed in the builder’s Tree Techniques album on Flickr.) First up is this Christmas-y Pine. (Or maybe “just” a juniper bush.) Made from dark green 1×1 round plate with hollow studs and sea grass, the interwoven branches...

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hit theatres just a few days ago and LEGO fans have already started to produce some amazing creations. One that stands out is Petros Nicolaou’s rendition of Kylo Ren’s helmet. While I was a fan of how it was destroyed in The Last Jedi, I love how it was reforged in a Kintsugi kind of way in The Rise of Skywalker. The repaired helm adds an extra level of beauty and badassery. And as cool as it looks on film, it looks just as cool represented in LEGO. The shaping of Kylo Ren’s unbroken helmet would itself require some skillful parts selection to achieve all the right angles and shaping. Add in the veins of red keeping it all together, and any builder would have an extra difficult challenge of them. It seems Petros was up to the challenge though. Take a closer and see...