LEGO® Ninjago MOCs: 70687 Spinjitzu Burst - Lloyd

Recently Inthert took a look at the parts in LEGO® 70686 Spinjitzu Burst - Kai, in particular the strange new plate with 4 handles. Now, Aron Gerencsér (@_pohaturon) focuses on the other new mould present in these Spinjitzu sets and uses it in his own creations. The products in this article were provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

Occasionally the LEGO Group releases a highly specialised part designed, very pointedly, to fulfil a specific role in a play feature – with versatility taking the back seat. Naturally, we then do our absolute best to subvert that specific role and find other uses for them. 

One such part is Function Element W Hinge, aka Energy Burst with Wide Clip (Design ID 66960) appearing in three dual-moulded colour variants throughout this year’s Ninjago Spinjitzu Burst sets. I was sent 5 copies of 70687 Spinjitzu Burst - Lloyd, each including 4 of them in Silver Metallic with Transparent Bright Green (Element ID 6322846), giving me 20 of these to mess around with!

LEGO® Overwatch review: 75976 Wrecking Ball

LEGO® Overwatch 75976 Wrecking Ball is one of the two Overwatch sets released in October 2019, selling for £17.99 / US$19.99 / 19.99€ although perhaps you may now be seeing it on sale. We've taken a different approach to this review: both Jonas Kramm and Inthert received copies and have each built alternate models with the set! But before we reveal those, here is their shared review, starting with Jonas.

The Build

The model represents the playable vehicle from the game, piloted by Hammond, a hamster. Depending on the situation on the battlefield the mech can transform between two different modes.

Gun-Mode

In gun-mode the mech has four stubby legs and deploys two assault cannons on each side.

Jonas Kramm's alternate build of LEGO® Overwatch 75976 Wrecking Ball

Last time, LEGO® Overwatch 75976 Wrecking Ball was reviewed by both Jonas Kramm and Inthert but we had a further task for these two champion builders: create an alternate model using only the 227 pieces in the set! Here is Jonas' creation, and come back tomorrow for Inthert's. The set is priced £17.99 / US$19.99 / 19.99€ although perhaps you may now be seeing it on sale.

For my alternative creation with the pieces from the Wrecking Ball I started with the most prominent pieces: the dishes. I wanted to find a good and creative use for these. First thought was to build a motorcycle, but I couldn't find complimentary pieces to build the wheels. However the thought of building something to ride was still in my mind and so the idea of a hoverbike was born.

LEGO® Xtra: Inthert tackles 40375 Sports Accessories

Sometimes The LEGO Group offer us polybags from the LEGO® Xtra range to review, and although these don't contain completely new elements or recolours we still love the challenge of figuring out what to do with them! In the past Tim Goddard has taken on the challenge but this time we've asked another UK Spacer, Inthert, to get creative with them. 

Unless you’re willing to purchase multiple sets or rummage in the build-a-minifigure section in store, obtaining a good selection of themed parts direct from LEGO® can be tricky. At least that was the case before the LEGO Xtra polybags hit shelves. Each bag typically consists of a handful of accessories along with a few basic bricks that can be used to make a suggested small build or two. Today we’ll be focusing on 40375 Sports Accessories; we’ll look over the parts included, then dive into some MOCs I made using the bag’s contents as seed elements.

LEGO® Star Wars parts review: 75290 Mos Eisley Cantina

Thomas Jenkins (on Instagram) has written for us previously, revealing his Iron Builder techniques, and today joins us as a regular contributor! He's facing 3187 pieces in LEGO® Star Wars 75290 Mos Eisley Cantina and so we're dividing his review; starting with the elements today. The set is available priced US$349.99/ CA$449.99/ £319.99. If you're buying this set, consider using our LEGO Shop at Home affiliate links: USA or UK. New Elementary earn from qualifying purchases. The product in this article was provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

There’s a lot of excitement surrounding the release of LEGO® 75290 Mos Eisley Cantina largely thanks to some long-awaited fan-favourite characters making their first appearance in ABS form.

But what other new LEGO parts can builders look forward to when they step inside this “wretched hive of scum and villainy”? There aren’t a lot but there are a few treasures to be found among the sea of tan bricks!

LEGO® Star Wars review & original builds: 75272 Sith Tie Fighter

Inthert (on Instagram & Flickr) returns today not only to review LEGO® Star Wars 75272 Sith Tie Fighter but to also use its parts, along with his own collection, to create his own fantastic original Star Wars models! The set has 470 elements, three minifigures and is available now priced at £64.99 / US$79.99 / 69.99€.

The Parts

Upon its release at the start of 2020, the Sith Tie Fighter was one of two sets to feature some new wedge plates (alongside Speed Champions 76898 Formula E Panasonic Jaguar Racing GEN2 Car & Jaguar I-PACE eTROPHY, which Duncan Lindbo previously reviewed).

October LEGO® Article Digest

We published so much in October – 15 articles across 17 posts, plus another 10 for our Patreon supporters – we figured a bit of a catch-up might be good in case you missed any!

New LEGO® sets now available

• LEGO Ideas set 21324 123 Sesame Street was reviewed over two posts by Tim Johnson, and it is available to purchase as of today! If you're buying this set, consider using our affiliate links to LEGO Shop at Home in the USA or UK. New Elementary earn from qualifying purchases. 
• Now that The Mandalorian Season 2 has aired, LEGO Star Wars 75318 The Child is available too! Check out our review by new contributor Zachary Hill, or head straight to purchase via our affiliate links: USA LEGO Shop at Home, USA Amazon, UK LEGO Shop at Home, UK Amazon. 

Forbidden Elementary: Sticker sheet cardboard box

Inthert (on Instagram) returns today with a wholly (and holey) different idea for a New Elementary post. Welcome to Forbidden Elementary, where we look at elements that aren't elements. Heresy!

Designed to withstand even the most enthusiastic play, the average LEGO® brick doesn’t typically require individual protective packaging. However, some of the more fragile, non-standard elements like rubber bands, string and cloth pieces need exactly that and so are placed in small cardboard boxes to keep them safe from factory to consumer.

This particular specimen comes from the Speed Champions polybag 30342 Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo Evo which was available for free with qualifying purchases from LEGO in June and August 2020. Unusually, it does not contain one of the vulnerable element types listed above; instead it protects the tiny sticker sheet from getting crumpled in the bag. Before diving deeper into the wonderful potential of cardboard LEGO elements, let’s take a brief look at the model itself because without it, I wouldn’t have embarked on this bizarre endeavour.

2019 Parts Fest #1: Jaap Bijl - week 2

Time for another update of what's been going through Jaap Bijl's (jaapxaap, found on Flickr and Instagram) head as he is faced with the various LEGO® parts in our Parts Festival.

There was one piece in the parts selection that was just weird to me. It's a white piece with some strange holes and details that didn't feel like LEGO to me. I was wondering why it even existed and why they would make such a part. But hey, if I think a piece doesn't deserve the name LEGO, I feel like that's enough reason to use it.

While looking at the piece, it suddenly came to me that it looked exactly like a security camera. So I took some bricks together and made a little scene to prove that even this piece is useful.

Inthert's alternate build of LEGO® Overwatch 75976 Wrecking Ball

Our little fiesta of LEGO® Overwatch 75976 Wrecking Ball finishes today with original alternate models designed by British builder Inhert, using only the pieces found in this set. The set is priced £17.99 / US$19.99 / 19.99€ although perhaps you may now be seeing it on sale. If you missed our Wrecking Ball review by Inthert and Jonas Kramm, check it out here.

Alternate builds are tricky enough with the majority of sets but with 75976 Overwatch Wreaking Ball containing only 227 parts, I was a little doubtful I could make anything half-decent without dipping into my existing collection. As a safeguard against that temptation, I decided to take this challenge on holiday! Four days in a log cabin with LEGO bricks seemed like the perfect setting, with plenty of time to come up with ideas - my thought being I could come up with one alternate build per day.

Day 1: Bipedal Mech

Build & Fix contest: the winners

At last the time has come to reveal the most innovative uses of  'Ship Front 12X12X1 1/3' (Design ID 43979), as created by our readers. Our judges Sven Franic and Jonas Kramm had tough decisions to make, so without further ado let's see who their favourites were.

The five equal winners

In no particular order... the five builders each winning 70828 Pop-Up Party Bus and 70841 Benny's Space Squad are...

The Cheese Slicer, by Bas van Houwelingen

LEGO® Element Development: the Porsche Bows – Interview with Stephan Breum Steen

Tom Loftus (@inthert.lego) continues our series of LEGO® Element Developer Q&As today with Stephan Breum Steen, Senior Mechanical Engineer in the Novelty Element Development department at the LEGO Group. As explained in the first article, element developers are one of the many, many different roles in the LEGO Group who work together to create each new element. They receive the brief from the product designer or element designer, and when complete the mould developer continues the work. Today, Stephan answers our questions on a particularly curvy element, then Tom provides additional analysis and MOCs. Transcripts were edited for clarity, readability and narrative flow.

Commonly known as ‘Porsche bows’, having first appeared in 10295 Porsche 911, today’s subjects are Left Shell 2x10x2, Outside Bow, W/ Cut in White (6336752 | 77180) and Right Shell 2x10x2, Outside Bow, W/ Cut in White (6336754 | 77182). They have since appeared in 21327 Typewriter in Sand Green (Left 6359067, Right 6359068) and have just become available in Dark Red (Left 6359689, Right 6359690) thanks to 10290 Pickup Truck.

Stephan Breum Steen has been involved in the development of over 100 elements and is one of the marvellous minds who takes a new element design and makes it a reality. It's a process that involves careful consideration of countless factors, but most relevant to us today is how an element will be moulded and how well it fits in with existing LEGO parts.

2019 Parts Fest #1: Inhert's Splat Gear Experiments

Back to the Parts Festival fun today as our LEGO® fan builders find uses for 2019 parts. Following his discoveries with the big yellow star, Inthert returns today with fascinating analysis of the gear wheels.

Perhaps it was their bright colours or unusual shape but the three sizes of the affectionately dubbed ‘splat gears’ immediately caught my eye as I emptied all the parts onto my build table.

• Vibrant Coral Gear Wheel 6X6, Z14 (Element ID 6258385 | Design ID 35446)
• Dark Stone Grey [TLG]/ Dark Bluish Gray [BL] Gear Wheel 4X4, Z10 (6252371|35443)
• Medium Lilac [TLG]/ Dark Purple [BL] Gear Wheel 2X2, Z6 (6238330|35442)

LEGO® DOTS review: 41908 Extra Dots - Series 1

A range of new sets from LEGO® DOTS hit the market earlier this month, and one set that looked interesting to me was 41908 Extra Dots - Series 1. These little packs are advertised as containing 109 colourful tiles, with "10 surprise charms included" so we thought we would open some up to see what we got.

Each pack is priced at  £3.99 / US$3.99 / 3.99€ which works out at 3.7 pence/cents per tile, although it works out slightly less than this due to the inclusion of spare pieces.

The LEGO® 5x5 Curved Plate

What's this? A chopped-up blue onion? Nope, it's a handful of Plate Round 5 x 5 Macaroni (80015) - a new LEGO® element for 2022, and the subject of today's article. 

2019 Parts Fest #1: Jessica Farrell's animals

The next Parts Festival participant to introduce you to is Jessica Farrell from Ireland, a member of Brick.ie. You may have first seen Jessica's work when her LEGO® version of Her Majesty's Theatre in London gained widespread coverage back in 2015. She runs her own nursery and so you you can expect organic builds from her, and today is no exception as we look at the animals she created from the parts selection we sent her.

I felt genuine anxiety when I received my sealed box of new elements. I had already discovered that, to my chagrin, my creative brain stubbornly does not work this way! When I build a model, I choose the elements to suit the build rather than chose the build to suit the elements. I’d happily put all these new elements away in a drawer somewhere until, one day, I’m puzzling over a tricky, fiddly bit of some enormous model and suddenly a bell rings in my head and I know just the part to fit... but Tim said “Just go and build stuff, I have faith in you,” so (gulp) here goes!

GANDER

Old Elementary: The 1x2 plate with handle

Let's take a momentary break from our amazing Parts Festival to enjoy another look back into LEGO® element history. Skye Barnick suggested we discuss a tiny change to a familiar piece that occurred in 1983 and stepping up to the task we have Inthert, a UK-based builder who participated in our earlier Parts Festival this year.

Coming alongside the introduction of the beloved minifigure in 1978, the 1x2 plate with handlebars (Mini Handle - Design ID 3839) was among the first LEGO® elements to feature 3.18mm diameter bars, essentially meaning it was perfect for being held by tiny minifigure hands… or was it?

LEGO® Creator Expert review: 10271 Fiat 500 – The Parts

The annual LEGO® Creator Expert vehicle is a treat to many and brings exciting new elements to all, and 2020's 10271 Fiat 500 is no exception – in fact its vast raft of recolours is astonishing and will open up new building opportunities with one of the less-common LEGO colours, as Inthert discovers in the first part of his review today. 

LEGO® Trolls World Tour review: 41258 Vibe City Concert

Today Tom Loftus (Inthert on Flickr) completes our LEGO® Trolls World Tour coverage – that we began back in April 2020! – with a review of the parts in 41258 Vibe City Concert. If you're buying this set from USA Amazon, consider using our affiliate links - New Elementary may get a commission. The products in this article were provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

The explosion of colour that is the LEGO® Trolls World Tour theme concludes with its final encore: 41258 Vibe City Concert. With 494 pieces, five weird and wonderful minifigures and an original retail price of US$59.99 / £54.99 / 58.48€ it is the largest set to come from this theme.

LEGO® Xtra: Inthert uses 40376 Botanical Accessories as seed parts

You may recall we recently challenged Inthert to get creative with a couple of polybags from the LEGO® Xtra range. We already published his creations based upon 40375 Sports Accessories and today comes the other bag: 40376 Botanical Accessories which has 32 pieces and is priced £3.99 / $3.99 / 3.99€.

 

For the green-fingered among you, there is 40376 Botanical Accessories (not to be confused with 2018’s 40310 Botanical Accessories).