(CW:HP) LEGO® Harry Potter 75978 Diagon Alley: the reveal

Welcome to Diagon Alley! Officially revealed today, we have Jonas Kramm to walk you through every shop – as well as the new moulds and each of the 14 minifigures – found in the latest LEGO® Harry Potter extravaganza. Editorial note: Although views expressed by Harry Potter's creator do not align with that of New Elementary, we continue to cover HP sets. Read about our stance here.

75978 Harry Potter Diagon Alley is the new addition to the LEGO® Wizarding World, launching on 1 September 2020, just one day after the official reveal! Measuring over 1 metre (3.3 feet) long and made up of 5544 pieces, it’s one of the biggest LEGO sets ever and will cost £369.99 / US$399.99 – to learn the price in your country, see the list at the end of this article.

LEGO® Monkie Kid review: 80010 Demon Bull King

Our coverage of LEGO® Monkie Kid continues today with Inthert taking on 80010 Demon Bull King; examining its exclusive and rare parts as well as what interest lies in the build. The products in this article were provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

The suitably terrifying Demon Bull King comes with 3 minifigures, 1051 parts and is priced at £74.99 / US$89.99 / 77.97€.

What new LEGO® pieces were released in August 2020?

We're commencing a new resource here on New Elementary for you all today thanks to TobyMac who is an inventory admin at Rebrickable. Many of you have mentioned you missed Jonas Kramm's monthly summaries of new parts at LEGO® Bricks and Pieces (and indeed a few lovely people even offered to start doing them). But Tobias has automated the process, and made it more thorough by preparing a list of all new pieces added to Rebrickable. An advantage to this list is that any elements which already existed but have been assigned a new Element ID by LEGO have been excluded from our list. We will bring you these lists every month, probably in the latter half. If you're buying from LEGO Bricks and Pieces, consider using our affiliate links: USA or UK . New Elementary earn from qualifying purchases.

Each month I'll give a short summary of new moulds that might be interesting for MOCs, and after that give a complete list of every new Element ID that has been added to the Rebrickable database so far that month. August has given us a lot of new elements; most coming from the LEGO® Super Mario theme including a lot of completely new moulds. It also gives us, for the first time on a large scale, parts with pre-applied stickers. You can read more about that in Ben Davies' article.

What's in a name? The result

This week we ran a poll on Twitter to ask opinions on how we should name colours in our posts; the TLG names, BrickLink names or continue using both? As navel-gazing as the question was, I'm glad I asked because results were astonishingly divided; close to one-third each way!

So we ran another poll here on the site. After receiving more than 400 (!) entries the poll is now closed. It is clear from the division of opinion that many will not be happy!

What's in a name?

A weird admin question for you all today, because we were divided in opinion on it so I asked this on Twitter, but everyone was really divided in opinion!

UPDATE: the poll is now closed, see the results

LEGO® Super Mario interview: Jonathan Bennink & Christian Munk

Back in May, Tim Johnson and Francesco Spreafico from New Elementary interviewed 2 LEGO® employees about the new Super Mario theme: Jonathan Bennink (Design Manager - Creative Play Lab) and Christian Munk (Marketing Director Lead - Reality & Games) including some questions from our patrons. Their answers give great insight and understanding as to why these sets were designed the way they have been! 

©2020 The LEGO Group

First, could you tell us a bit about yourselves?

Jonathan:
I'm Jonathan Bennink, I've worked at LEGO for 6 years now. I started at LEGO Dimensions but 4 years ago, I got the Creative Lead on the Nintendo collaboration. And that was just, yeah, gig of a lifetime! This is a dream I didn't even know I had – to work for LEGO, and then also for Nintendo? Super cool.

Christian:
My name is Christian Munk and I'm in marketing on LEGO Super Mario, so a part of the Product and Marketing Development team on it. I've been with LEGO for a little more than 11 years now, in various sales and marketing roles; now mainly working on gaming IPs and product lines that have technology in them, so for instance LEGO Boost and Minecraft and so on. I'm so lucky to have been working on LEGO Super Mario for the last couple of years.

LEGO® DOTS: Cole Blaq's bracelet & tile ideas

So far Cole Blaq has used the LEGO® DOTS bracelets we sent him to create viruses and sea creatures and for his final post today he presents a collection of tablescraps, techniques and smaller ideas using both the bracelets as well as the printed tiles, to inspire you. Cole is an artist and educator in Germany primarily influenced by graffiti and LEGO. The Dots products in this article were provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

I received three copies each of 41900 Rainbow, 41902 Sparkly Unicorn, 41901 Funky Animals and 41912 Love Birds. With such a limited parts selection, I concentrated on the rubber bracelets and on a few selected printed tiles. The available connections for mounting the bracelets are not that easy to integrate with the LEGO System. Therefore I had to get around this, which led to some not-so-smooth solutions. While the studs do have a firm grip, once they are bent (or have no counter-pressure from the rear side) attaching stuff to them is tricky, unstable and often disappointing.

First of all a tribar, or ‘Penrose triangle’.

Free LEGO® Braille bricks released by The LEGO Foundation

2023 Update! LEGO® Braille bricks will be available 1 September and available to pre-order now!
Please consider using our affiliate links, we may get a commission: USA LEGO Shop | Australia LEGO Shop | UK LEGO Shop.

First announced in 2019, it seems LEGO® Braille Bricks are now being made available. They are free, but will only be supplied to select institutions, schools and services who cater for the education of blind and visually impaired children in certain countries. It is intended that more countries will be included in the years to come but at time of writing the list only comprises Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the USA.

Prototype LEGO Braille Bricks showing the symbol # and the word LEGO.

If you think you might qualify to receive them, contact the official partner from the blind community that LEGO are working with in your country for information. These partners handle distribution of the toolkits as well as supporting training of the teaching concept. The partners are all listed on the official web page.

LEGO® DOTS: Cole Blaq's Beasts from Below

Cole Blaq took up our challenge of using some LEGO® DOTS bracelets in his own creations, firstly to create some intriguing abstract sculptures and today we reveal his next collection of creations. Cole is a visual artist and educator based in Germany who is primarily influenced by the mediums of graffiti and LEGO. The Dots products in this article were provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

I received three copies each of 41900 Rainbow, 41902 Sparkly Unicorn, 41901 Funky Animals and 41912 Love Birds to use as seed parts. My limited collection of the newer ‘bubblegum’ colours is rather small for exploring larger builds. I’d love to have also received the black bracelets from 41903 Cosmic Wonder as I consider those more useful due to their neutral colouring.

Ray

LEGO® DOTS: Cole Blaq's Viruses

One of the more unusual elements introduced in 2020 is the LEGO® DOTS bracelet, and we love a challenge here at New Elementary – almost as much as we love challenging others! So Elspeth De Montes asked Cole Blaq if he would take on the challenge of using some Dots bracelet sets in his own creations. If you don’t know of Cole, he’s been a legendary figure on the AFOL scene for well over a decade. He is a visual artist and educator based in Germany who is primarily influenced by the mediums of graffiti and LEGO. The Dots products in this article were provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

I was sent 41900 Rainbow, 41902 Sparkly Unicorn, 41901 Funky Animals and 41912 Love Birds. The parts selection is very limited in these sets, so I concentrated on smaller builds, initially to find useful implementations highlighting the bracelets (Design ID 66821) which are most interesting. Their flexibility really opens up possibilities. An issue however is the amount of studs, and where they are positioned. This makes these irregular parts even more irregular.

LEGO® Super Mario 2020: The Prints and... Stickers?

Today, Ben Davies continues his thorough examination of the new pieces in the LEGO® Super Mario sets including the barcodes. Buying Super Mario LEGO? Consider using our affiliate links: UK LEGO Shop | UK Amazon | USA LEGO Shop - for other countries, Change Region | USA Amazon. 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.

Following our coverage of the LEGO® Super Mario’s new moulds and recolours, today we’re turning our attention to the many new printed and stickered pieces that have been introduced for the theme.

LEGO® Star Wars review: 75273 Poe Dameron's X-wing Fighter

We're harking back to one of the January LEGO® Star Wars sets today: 75273 Poe Dameron's X-wing Fighter which has been reviewed by Ryan Welles. The product in this article was provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

Three thoughts spring into my mind when beholding yet another LEGO® Star Wars X-wing fighter: those resistance people sure like them X-wings; Poe Dameron is a lucky so-and-so for flying almost each and every one of the these; and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. That last thought is what counts most here because ever since the release of X-wing set 9493 in 2012, the design has stayed virtually the same, with its iconic white, grey and red colours. New slope, wedge and arch pieces have given the vessel a slightly more polished look and the mechanism to open the wings has altered somewhat, but the basic idea has remained unchanged for eight years.