This June, Michael Keaton will don Batman’s cape and cowl for the first time in 30 years with The Flash. Equally exciting in my humble opinion: Lego is commemorating the occasion with a truly incredible Batcave set partly based on 1992’s Batman Returns.
Lego isn’t just for kids: the latest news for nostalgic adults and adult budgets
July 14, 2023
Lego isn’t just for kids: the latest news for nostalgic adults and adult budgets
Pin PINNEDMay 16
Lego is releasing an incredible 3,981-piece Batcave from Batman Returns
Hit the button to watch the video! It’s called the Lego Batcave Shadowbox, and that’s because it’s designed to be both a toy and a display piece for your shelf: the space-saving diorama swings open to reveal an entire cave playset with the spacious, suspended-over-a-pit feeling I associate with Batman’s lair.
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Jul 13
The Internet Archive is hosting instructions for thousands of Lego sets.Did you know you can freely download instructions for loads of Lego? The Lego Group has its own searchbox, and the Internet Archive now hosts an easily browsable backup of 6,854 sets (via Hacker News).
Neither has my childhood favs yet, but Lego’s scanning in new instructions all the time — you can already recreate the Black Seas Barracuda or the valuable Cloud City sets. Bricklink fan designs have downloadable instructions too.
LEGO Building Instructions[archive.org]
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Jun 29
Last chance to vote on these limited-edition Lego sets.Papa wants an Exoplanet Explorer to go along with the reimagined OG spaceship. You’ll help me out, right? Or maybe a literal sub sandwich shop. Or a working desk fan. Or an amazing arcade. Or a gorgeous train station. You’ve got till 12PM PT June 30th to vote on your fan-designed favs.
Here are the previous winners.
Brent Waller’s Exoplanet Explorer. He also designed the arcade that’s up for voting. Photo: WallerCustoms -
Jun 14
Lego remade the Eldorado Fortress from 1989.This was one of my “sets that got away,” so I’m overjoyed it’s coming back — particularly now it’s composed of several modular islands with their own secret underground passages instead of a single rigid baseplate. (You can “unfold” it kind of like the Lion Knights’ Castle.)
It’s coming July 7th for $215, and I can’t wait to pair it with Lego’s Black Seas Barracuda remake when I find the cash.
Video: Lego, GIF by The Verge -
Jun 12
Go vote on new Lego sets?The second round of voting in Lego’s 2023 BrickLink Designer Program has just begun, meaning another chance for you to help Lego pick five fan-designed sets to produce. Fingers crossed for the Sub Sandwich Shop to shine this time! I would also happily own a Galactic Medical Transport or this mobile-home-on-a-big-rig, though.
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Jun 12
Lego Hocus Pocus.The latest fan design to become an official Lego set: The Sanderson Sisters’ cottage from Hocus Pocus. It’s a little less spacious than the original Lego Ideas submission, but still sure to put a spell on a certain persuasion of grown-up ‘90s kids! It’s $230, coming July 4th. Yes, Mary can fly the vacuum.
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May 23
Lego’s Mars Rover Perseverance has 360-degree steering and a swinging arm
Image: LegoLego’s last Mars Rover was a little simplistic (pdf) — so I’m glad to see that the new Lego Technic NASA Mars Rover Perseverance, just announced today for $100, puts more of the real rover’s engineering front and center.
With the flick of a lever, the rover’s iconic six-wheel suspension spins a set of ball-tipped gears — to turn four of its wheels inward so you can spin the entire craft 360-degrees. You can switch back and forth between that 360-degree mode and a normal driving mode, much like you can see in the NASA JPL video here:
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May 22
Pac-Man is the latest video game classic to be lovingly recreated in Lego
Lego’s new Pac-Man set. Image: LegoLego has announced a new premium set based on 1980s arcade classic Pac-Man. The 2,650-piece set is designed to recreate a Pac-Man arcade cabinet, complete with an illuminating coin-slot, four-way joystick, and a mechanical chase.
There’s a crank on the side of the cabinet which you can turn to move the characters around the game’s maze, and the set comes with a diorama of a figurine playing a smaller version of the arcade cabinet. On top of the cabinet sit rotating versions of Pac-Man and the ghosts Blinky and Clyde.
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May 8
See the first five Lego sets designed in a competition anyone can enter
Image: BrickLink Designer ProgramToday, five Lego fans are experiencing a dream come true — Lego will turn their design into an official limited-edition Lego set and pay them 5 percent of the proceeds when the sets go up for preorder (limit 20,000 each) in February 2024.
Here are the sets that the internet (and Lego’s panel of judges) have chosen to produce:
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May 2
This Lego bus is also a food truck that’s also a flying turtle.Lego Dreamzzz is one of the most imaginative series of sets the company’s come up with in a while. (I’m also partial to the school-bus-turned-spaceship and nightmare shark pirate ship.) They’re all tie-ins for a new Lego show coming May 15th to Netflix, Amazon, and streaming to YouTube for free. The sets won’t arrive till August.
Click here for the full box art. Image: Lego -
Apr 28
Here are the first Lego Donkey Kong sets
Donkey Kong peeks out of his Lego tree house. Image: LegoDonkey Kong has been around as long as Mario himself, but this August will be the first time he’s officially appeared in Lego form — on August 1st, the Danish toymaker is adding four Lego Donkey Kong sets to the ever-widening Lego Super Mario lineup.
They aren’t filled with ladders, hammers, and fireballs like the original arcade game, mind; these sets are straight out of Donkey Kong Country, with the gorilla’s relatives along for the ride.
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Apr 19
Sonic The Hedgehog can actually spin in Lego’s new sets
Lego Sonic can spin. GIF: Sean Hollister / The Verge, video by LegoLego has made another fan toy dream come true: its new Sonic The Hedgehog sets actually let you send Sonic spinning through an entire miniature level.
This isn’t the first time Sonic has been recreated in Lego form — we got a picture-perfect recreation of Green Hill Zone in 2021 that’ll look great on a bookshelf and a tie-in for the Lego Dimensions video game in 2016. But if you want a playset like Lego’s Mario line, that’s just now happening for the very first time.
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Apr 13
The perfect Lego Nintendo Game Boy doesn’t exist…
Nintendo Game Boy, Lego edition — not authorized by Lego or Nintendo. Image: Nick LeverNick Lever, video editor and Lego Masters Australia finalist, has recreated the original Nintendo Game Boy in bricks — and with such droolworthy depth that I hereby petition Lego to make it into an official set.
It’s just 364 pieces, only 115 different parts, most of them common enough you can find ‘em dirt cheap. Almost every recognizable facet of the Game Boy is represented, from the angled rice-grain Start / Select buttons to the distinctive tint of the screen — achieved here by placing lime green tiles underneath a trans-blue window.
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Apr 5
Lego’s X-Wing Starfighter gets a refresh in time for Star Wars Day
Image: LegoThis is the third time we’ve seen the T-65 X-Wing Starfighter in brick form, and it’s Lego’s most detailed yet. The 1,949-piece X-Wing costs $239.99 and joins the other sets in the Lego Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series, which include the behemoths that are the 7,541-piece UCS Millennium Falcon and the 6,785-piece UCS AT-AT.
Equipped with 4L4 fusial thrust engines and the KX9 laser cannons, the design of Lego’s latest UCS X-Wing kit doesn’t deviate much from its previous iterations. However, it does feature several hundred more pieces when compared to the 1,304-piece X-Wing set released in 2000 and the 1,559-piece one from 2013. The new X-Wing measures 10.5 inches in height and 21.5 inches in length once complete.
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Mar 30
You’ve got less than 24 hours to vote for the next fan-designed Lego sets.375 designs — and Lego will turn five of them maximum into limited-edition sets. Vote by 12PM PT on March 31st.
Personally, I’m pulling for:
The Sub Sandwich Shop, this tricky Japanese castle, an incredibly detailed Victorian home, a working mini golf course, this Space Museum (for Lego Space), a badass Boogie Boombox, a simple Snack Shack that reminds me of Hawaii, and this decadent Parisian Street.
Bricklink Designer Program[www.bricklink.com]
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Mar 8
And speaking of Lego…Today’s the day you can begin voting in Lego’s BrickLink Designer Program, where 375 designs are competing for the chance to become a limited-edition Lego set and earn their fan designers 5 percent of sales. Here are a few of my very early favs!
BrickLink Designer Program[www.bricklink.com]
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Mar 7
Leaked Lego Indiana Jones looks like fun!Somehow, these ones made it to stores before they were even announced — and @echoalive122_ has already built ‘em for us. More at their Instagram.
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Feb 23
Five days left to design an official Lego set.I told you about the Bricklink Designer Program in January, but this weekend is your last. February 28th is the deadline to submit your design to be judged by peers and by Lego. You can make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars if your design is one of the five winners.
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Feb 16
BTS now has their very own Lego set — with figures of all seven bandmembers
You, too, can recreate Jimin’s dance break. Image: LegoLego teased a collaboration with BTS earlier this month and, needless to say, the fans had questions. Would the set come with photo cards? Will Jimin play with it on a livestream? Does this mean we’ll see BTS in the next Lego Movie?
We don’t have all the answers to those questions yet (although I need an answer on the Lego Movie stat). We have, however, finally gotten our first glimpse of this highly anticipated Lego set, which (fairly accurately) replicates the set of the “Dynamite” music video, complete with mini-figs of the seven group members.
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Feb 12
Tipping away the moments that make up a dull dayThis is, to me, a perfect Lego video — just a person putting bricks together to make a fun and clever idea, then showing it in action.
PS: if anyone wants to take this concept and slow it down to make a clock, that would be extremely cool.
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Feb 7
Lego returns to The Lord of the Rings with a $500 Rivendell set
Image: LegoFrodo, Samwise, Merry, Pippin, Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, Aragon, plus Elrond, Arwen, Bilbo, and more — there’s room in Lego’s just-announced 6,167-piece elven sanctuary Rivendell for the entire Fellowship to debate The One Ring, and the shards of a particularly noteworthy sword.
Not a lot of room, mind you. The $500 set obviously has nothing on the legendary 200,000-piece recreation of Rivendell by Alice Finch and David Frank that’s been the centerpiece at multiple fan conventions.
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Feb 1
After years of rejections, The Legend of Zelda might finally become a Lego set
For nearly a decade, Lego has welcomed your ideas for what might become official Lego sets — but not ones based on The Legend of Zelda. Since 2014, it has rejected eight Zelda sets that gathered the required 10,000 votes for consideration, even as Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser, and the original NES console have all come to Lego. In 2022, the company even straight-up banned Zelda submissions due to a “license conflict,” making the community think some other toymaker locked down the IP.
But according to Promobricks, one of the foremost Lego leakers, a Legend of Zelda set appears to finally be in development. If true, perhaps it might release alongside the Breath of the Wild sequel this May?
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Jan 5
The first official Lego Dungeons & Dragons set will be a castle.621 sets vied for your vote, and a winner has now been chosen: Lego will be producing a version of BoltBuild’s Dragon’s Keep: Journey’s End as its first Dungeons & Dragons set. Lego designers will take it from here, so the final result might not look exactly like the pics — but it’s confirmation that the Lego Castle renaissance will continue.
Image: BoltBuilds -
Jan 5
Lego will let you — yes, you — compete to design a limited-edition Lego set
The Modular Lego Store, one of the first official unofficial Lego sets. Image: KrisnowHave you ever wanted to be a Lego designer? Now’s your chance — if you create an original Lego set and submit it here starting February 1st, 2023, you can compete to be one of up to five unofficial sets that Lego will officially produce. Up to 20,000 of your set will be sold to fans around the world, and you’ll even get paid — designers get 5 percent of the proceeds.
They won’t come in a traditional Lego box, mind you, and they won’t be sold in stores. They’ll exclusively be part of the online “BrickLink Designer Program,” where the boxes look like this:
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Jan 3
Here are the next 36 fan builds that could become official Lego sets.My favorites are The Travel Suitcase and the Japanese Castle, though I’d be happy with many of them! Here’s the full list.
Don’t get your hopes up for a Zelda castle or the house from Up, as Lego has repeatedly rejected designs like those before. And since Lego’s new Jazz Club already has a pizza parlor, I’m afraid the amazing Modular Arcade might not make the cut.
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