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!
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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® Creator Expert review: 10269 Harley-Davidson Fat Boy

Just announced, LEGO® Creator Expert 10269 Harley-Davidson® Fat Boy® will be available directly from LEGO exclusively for LEGO VIP members from 17 July 2019, with general availability beginning on 1 August. The price will be £84.99/ US$99.99/ CA$139.99/ DE€89.99/ FR€94.99/ 799DKK. We asked Ben Davies (ProfessorBrickkeeper) to take it for a spin to see what new and recoloured elements it includes.

Until now, the LEGO® Creator Expert vehicles subtheme has focused purely on four-wheeled vehicles. The newly announced 10269 Harley-Davidson Fat Boy marks a departure from this, by using bricks to depict the popular motorcycle.

LEGO® Braille bricks

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.

New Elementary are spending three days gathering news stories and interviews at the Recognised LEGO® Fan Media Days in Billund, Denmark (thanks in part to the help of our 40 magnificent patrons on Patreon). On Day 1, Stine Storm of The LEGO Foundation showed us a prototype of their new product: LEGO® Braille bricks.

The LEGO Foundation own 25% of The LEGO Group (TLG), and that means that when TLG are doing well, The LEGO Foundation have money for exciting projects like LEGO® Braille bricks, announced earlier this year. The sets will be given to blind and visually impaired children for free, with the first round of markets launching in late 2020. The LEGO Foundation will work with a blindness association in each country to administrate this. Therefore the sets will be owned by individuals rather than schools or organisations. The Foundation hope the sets will be passed from child to child as each progresses from the bricks to regular Braille.

75253 LEGO® Star Wars™ BOOST Droid Commander announced

For this year's Star Wars Day, The LEGO Group have just revealed a really cute new set, 75253 LEGO® Star Wars™ BOOST Droid Commander. This is the first time the company have combined their LEGO BOOST coding technology with a licensed product.

The set has 1,177 pieces and will be available globally on 1st September 2019 to tie in with the release of Star Wars Episode IX. Prices were not provided.

The set comes with the Mouse Droid, R2-D2 and the GONK Droid – "with their own personalities, skills, and authentic Star Wars sounds and music" – in order for each of them to complete over 40 missions.

There's a new mould on R2's head; 4x4 quarter domes. Teal fans will be on a mission to get their hands on those nice new large parts in Bright Bluish Green [TLG]/ Dark Turquoise [BL] – I believe I see 2x14 plates and an 8x16 tile.

LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Prime: New Elements

Yesterday LEGO Education announced SPIKE Prime, the newest product in the LEGO Education hands-on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) learning portfolio. They tell us that SPIKE Prime brings together LEGO bricks, a programmable, multi-port Hub, sensors and motors all powered by the SPIKE app based on the Scratch coding language.

© LEGO Group

Of particular interest for New Elementary is that SPIKE™ Prime also brings new elements and we have been playing 'spot the new element' in some of the images and videos released by LEGO as part of their announcement yesterday.