LEGO® Trolls World Tour: Jonas Kramm's Temple of the Blue Sea

Jonas Kramm returns today to reveal the alternate build he created using only sets from the controversial LEGO® Trolls World Tour theme!

My analysis of the new pieces in the LEGO® Trolls World Tour sets revealed many colourful elements so it’s no wonder that my alternative build turned out pretty flashy too. Let’s dive in and discover the Temple of the Blue Sea!

LEGO® Trolls World Tour: the new parts

It's hard to ignore LEGO® Trolls, and in fact there are a lot of interesting things going on with the parts from this new 2020 theme. To kick our coverage off, Jonas Kramm examines the new, recoloured and printed elements (and foam ones!) to be found in four of the sets from this theme.

Glitter and bright colours! The new series of LEGO® sets dedicated to DreamWorks’ Trolls World Tour movie are here. To the adult eye they might seem a bit crazy, but we got them anyway… to investigate in true New Elementary fashion by seeing what new pieces and colours they bring and how those might be used.

Iron Builder: the LEGO® building contest is back

Iron Builder returns! And you can participate. This is great news for anyone who is still looking for advanced LEGO® building challenges (if Ryan Howerter’s REC puzzles and New Elementary’s “Switch Up My Lantern” contest aren't enough for you, that is!).

We love Iron Builder for its mind-blowing NPU and cheeky sense of humour and we intend to share a lot of news about it here on New Elementary. To kick things off, we figured it has been gone for a while and many of you may have no idea what we are talking about. So we collared two of the Iron Builder admin team, Simon Liu and Markus Rollbühler, to give us the lowdown on IB 2020 and how – for the first time ever – anyone can get involved.

Minifig Posing Stand: Pierre-E Fieschi's starfighters

This year we have been examining an interesting new LEGO® part: the new posing element (Design ID 65578) known as "Handle, No.1", "Minifigure, Utensil Posing Stand, Bar with Hollow Stud" or "Bar, Angled with Stud on End". Following on from Jonas Kramm's and Kevin Levell's analyses, our final article reveals what gaming concept artist Pierre-E Fieschi (see his Instagram, ArtStation) created using the posing stands we sent him.

Mini LEGO TIE interceptor

I had the idea to make a mini TIE interceptor from Star Wars - which is one of my favourite TIE designs – using the 45° trans-clear thingies instead of the usual hinge/clip assemblies for the wings.

LEGO® Reverse-Engineering Challenge: Days 6-17

We are a little behind with sharing Ryan Howerter's REC puzzles with you (been too busy organising our own building contest!) so here is a bumper crop to give you a challenging LEGO® challenge to fill your days. Want more? They appear on Ryan's Instagram at 11am Mountain Time every day (and we also try to publish them on New Elementary's Twitter at the same time).

Welcome back to the Reverse-Engineering Challenge, or REC for short. Simply look at these small LEGO builds, and try to figure out how they are built. Always assume the hidden side is identical. The colours are irrelevant. No rubber bands and no flex tubing allowed! It's not a contest, there are no prizes – think of it more like a daily crossword puzzle. Solve as many as you like, at your own pace. Solutions are posted every Sunday at https://linktr.ee/rhowerter.

REC17 Halhi141 

Bottom looks like the top.

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

Following his examination of the new parts, Inthert returns today to report on the actual build of LEGO® Creator Expert 10271 Fiat 500. (And don't forget, you could win a copy of the set in our latest building competition!)

While the most striking thing about the LEGO® Creator Expert Fiat 500 is unquestionably its Cool Yellow/ Bright Light Yellow base colour, the set has much more to offer than just recolours! Today we’ll be delving deeper into the build process before taking a look at the completed model.

Contest: Switch My Lantern Up

This contest is now closed. See the amazing entries here!

Time to see what you readers can build; yes it's a new LEGO® building competition!

We're asking you to make an amazing creation using a new piece; we want you to "switch up" the lantern element from the DC Comics CMFs by building something completely different with it. Don't use the lantern as a lantern – instead, impress us with your imagination and ingenuity!

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® NINJAGO™ Arcade Pods: Victor Pruvost's Computer and Rover

2020 seems to be a bit of a year for LEGO® pods. The Friends, Ninjago and Trolls lines all feature large two-piece containers that you might struggle to think of uses for. Today, Victor Pruvost examines the second of these: the LEGO NINJAGO Arcade Pods which come in sets 71714 Kai Avatar, 71715 Jay Avatar and 71716 Lloyd Avatar.

Breaking away from the usual spinners, flyers and other Spinjitzu-related entry-level sets, LEGO® released three Arcade Pods as part of the latest Ninjago wave, which is inspired by video games. Like the new Friends Play Cubes, these Arcade Pods are built around two specialized new parts, which we’re examining today.

Those two elements are:

• Arcade Front (Design ID 65067), which comes in the three classic colours Bright Red/ Red (Element ID 6287556), Bright Blue/ Blue (6287557), and Dark Green/ Green (6287559). It is called Design Element, Front, 6X6X7 by TLG/Brickset, Minifigure, Utensil Arcade Game Cabinet Body by BrickLink and Pod, Arcade Machine by Rebrickable.
• Arcade Back (Design ID 65068), which is only available in Dark Stone Grey/ Dark Bluish Gray (Element ID 6287562). It is called Design Element, Back, 6X8X1, W/3.2 Shaft by TLG/Brickset, Minifigure, Utensil Arcade Game Cabinet Back by BrickLink and Plate Special 6 x 8 x 1 with Bar, Door by Rebrickable.

Interestingly enough, Element IDs 6287558, 6287560 and 6287561 aren’t assigned, so I wonder if there could be more Arcade Pods in the future for the other Ninjas, with different colours.

LEGO® Reverse-Engineering Challenge: Days 2-5

On the weekend we mentioned Ryan Howerter is running an advanced daily building challenge and showed you the first one. They appear on their Instagram at 11am Mountain Time every day but we know not everyone uses Instagram, so we've started publishing them on New Elementary's Twitter and now here are a bunch of them for those of you who are yet to catch up! We will try to keep this up but if not, there's always Ryan's Instagram!

Welcome back to the Reverse-Engineering Challenge, or REC for short. Simply look at these small LEGO builds, and try to figure out how they are built. Always assume the hidden side is identical. The colours are irrelevant. No rubber bands and no flex tubing allowed! It's not a contest, there are no prizes – think of it more like a daily crossword puzzle. Solve as many as you like, at your own pace. Solutions are posted every Sunday at https://linktr.ee/rhowerter.

REC5 by Ryan Howerter

LEGO® Creator Expert review: 10272 Old Trafford - Manchester United

Today Ben Davies plays with a set the size of a football field! LEGO® Creator Expert 10272 Old Trafford - Manchester United clearly has a target audience of certain football fans, but will certain LEGO fans appreciate it for its techniques and many parts, including new moulds? The set is priced £249.99 / $299.99 / 269.99€.

With the exception of the occasional LEGO® Friends set, the last time LEGO tackled the subject of football (or for our American readers, soccer) was in 2006 for the LEGO Sports theme. That changes with 10272 Old Trafford - Manchester United, introduced in February to the LEGO Creator Expert line.

Old Trafford stadium was first opened in 1910 in Greater Manchester, England, and since then has served as the home stadium of the famous Manchester United Football Club. It is currently celebrating its 110th anniversary, which LEGO is capitalizing on with the release of this set.

LEGO® Reverse-Engineering Challenge: Day 1

If you’re looking for some fun and good LEGO® building challenges and ideas, we can help! Today there’s a piece of great news for advanced LEGO builders: our friend and contributor Ryan Howerter is launching a daily building challenge on their Instagram. It will give your LEGO brain a good workout and definitely teach you new techniques.

It’s called the Reverse-Engineering Challenge, or REC for short, and you may be familiar with the concept already as four of these have been run on Flickr in the past. Here’s how it works.

Ryan posts a small LEGO build, and you try to figure out how it is built.