For the grand opening of a new LEGO Store in Tainan City, two of our favorite Taiwanese builders celebrated with delectable brick-built versions of local dishes. Hsinwei Chi, fan designer of the LEGO Ideas Jazz Quartet, created a trio of dishes. Starting from the top, we have shrimp rolls, a fried snack of shrimp, fish paste, and vegetables wrapped in tofu skin. Next, shrimp rice is an iconic bit of home cooking with shrimp, shallots, and white rice stir-fried with soy sauce and rice wine. Last is a mouth-watering bowl of danzai noodles, with roasted pork, mashed garlic, and shrimp sitting atop chewy wheat noodles in a deep, savory broth. In case you’re curious where those noodles come from, they’re yellow flex tubes exclusive to the DC Heroes Bumblebee Helicopter set. James Zhan showed up with two dishes. First we have a pair of guan cai ban – Taiwanese “coffin bread” –...

With thousands of different elements in dozens of colors, some with prints, most retired, and new parts appearing every month, how best to categorize LEGO bricks in a way that is useful? For Pinar,  who runs the Buka Bricks blog (in both Turkish and English!), the answer is to approach bricks less like an engineer and more like a naturalist. For years, Pinar has written about and categorized LEGO animals with the drive of a modern-day Linnaeus, creating a taxonomy and history that is as fun to browse as it is exhaustive in its coverage. Last week Pinar updated the Brick Bestiary with a new index and updated listings through 2025 sets. Pinar’s efforts not only make it convenient to browse through all of LEGO’s cat or insect variations in a single scroll, but her scholarship and passion make the Bestiary an engaging and enlightening read. Where else will you find...

Where I live in Sweden, we’re in that time of year when day never ends, which has me craving night  Knights! For this week’s Minifig Monday, we’re rounding up enough white knights, royal champions, and bullish bruisers to surround a round table, and a strong dose of NEXO Knights! We start with Sir Candrel, the Luminous Flameknight, from Linus (minifigurebuilds). He may equip NEXO pauldrons and shield, but this knight works with wax, not wires. I love the use of Shakespeare’s neck frill atop the helmet and the fur collar on the axe for dripping wax detail. Sobek Bricks is back with Calanthia the Dragon Slayer, a half-elf knight with flower maidens to hold up her flowing cape. I don’t know what I like better about Calanthia’s combo – the curved horns on the helmet, or the winged goat by her side. Hailing from Italy, Lorenzo brings us Sir Eldran, Keeper of...

We often see collaborative projects in the LEGO community where different builders will all build within a similar theme. But it’s not often that said collab is themed around a specific builder! Steven Howad (Ghalad) and co have undertaken a “special secret collab” (his words) to celebrate LEGO designer and AFOL community stalwart Markus Rollbühler. Steven was handed five mice to get him started, but he has taken them and really ran with it – there is so much NPU here! The mice are in the beard, but we also have: octopuses and tyres for the hair; Dots wristbands for the sash and headband; lifejackets for the jacket buttons; long-haired dogs in the cheeks; and plenty more besides. But my favourite – and the most meta – are the boat hulls used for the hat and epaulettes! The post Putting the ‘rat’ into pirate – with clever parts use to boot...

Image via (archive.org) Imagine a world without the internet and social media, where you can’t just search the internet for MOCs or inspiration, and where your only source of input is two TV channels, the radio, books, and word of mouth. I know it’s hard to imagine such a world (believe me, I’ve tried several times with my kids). That world did exist, though. It is called the ‘80s, and it’s the world I grew up in. As a kid in that world, I was constantly starved for creative input for my imagination. Sometimes, if you were lucky, there was a cool TV series playing that you were hopefully allowed to watch. Toys were also a way to open up new areas in my imagination: Transforming robots!? People riding on dinosaurs!? Wind up animal mechs?! AWESOME!  Comics were very important for me and many others in this era. During the ‘80s,...