LEGO® Super Mario 2020: The Many Moulds of Mario

Today, Ben Davies provides our first look at LEGO® Super Mario: the incredible array of new pieces that have been developed for, or appear for the first time in, this exciting new theme. (Or jump ahead to Ben's later articles covering the existing pieces that come in new colours, and the printed and stickered parts including LEGO Super Mario barcodes.) Products were kindly supplied by LEGO; all content represents the opinion of the author. 

One of the most curious new LEGO® themes in recent memory is undoubtedly LEGO Super Mario, which combines Nintendo’s famous plumber with the LEGO Group’s plastic bricks. Ahead of the August launch of the theme, we here at New Elementary had an opportunity to get hands-on experience with some of the upcoming sets, and examine many of the exciting new moulds introduced by the theme.

Mario

The most prominent new moulds are those used for the theme’s eponymous hero. He’s received a bit of a make-over for his LEGO debut, appearing considerably more blocky than usual.

Mario consists of three all-new primary pieces (body, hat, and overalls) plus 1x1 round tiles for ears and buttons.

LEGO® Disney 43179 Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse: new set reveal

Following an accidental leak last week, the proper announcement of upcoming LEGO® Disney set 43179 Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse Buildable Characters is now here.

The set is on its way to us for review but we couldn't resist posting about it straightaway, as not only are there some really fascinating, useful new moulds but also the first pieces cast in a new 'colour' (or to describe it more properly, an 'effect') that was spotted on the LEGO palette earlier this year.

LEGO® Brick Sketches: Interview with Chris McVeigh

Questo articolo è disponibile anche in italiano su ITLUG

Chris McVeigh, now a LEGO® Designer after many years as a freelance creative and fan, spoke to us at Fan Media Days about the new range just announced: LEGO Brick Sketches.

Chris, can you start by giving us a bit of a rundown on how this new series of models that you originally designed as a fan came to be an official product? Did you bring it to LEGO or did they suggest it to you? Because a few people have been like, “oh, we saw that coming. That's why TLG hired him…"

Chris: It certainly wasn't like that! Everything I've done with the company has been by the standard processes... there hasn't been any anything that's just like "hey yeah, let's do this because we like what you do”. So it was me who brought it to the company. When you first get to LEGO, every day, every week, it's a new adventure. So after I had been there a couple of months, people started to get excited about this event. It’s what we call Creative Boost, and it's where we designers can propose different ideas and whatnot. And I thought, I don't have time, I'm invested in what I'm doing right now, I’ll just have to wait until the next one... but towards the end of week, I said to myself, no, just remake some of your Brick Sketches!

LEGO® MINDSTORMS® 51515 Robot Inventor: reveal and interview

The new LEGO® MINDSTORMS® has just been revealed, however we were lucky enough to be 'present' at the digital launch event at LEGO Fan Media Days a couple of weeks ago. Lena Dixen, Head of Product and Marketing Development and Dan Meehan, Creative Design Lead talked us through set 51515 Robot Inventor and answered a few questions from the LEGO fan media present. It has 949 pieces and will be available "sometime in early Q4 2020", priced £329.99/ US$359.99/ €359.99.

Lena Dixen:
"We're very excited about the launch we're here to talk about today. We want to share with you, up front, that we had planned for this awesome new product to be ready to go on sale in August this year. Unfortunately we've experienced some unavoidable delays in product development and as a result, we've decided to delay the launch until later in 2020.

"Here it is: the latest addition to the much loved LEGO MINDSTORMS. The new Robot Inventor 51515 unleashes a new world of creative coding possibilities that we believe provides the ultimate playful learning experience. Builders can create and code one of the set's five personality-packed models, or build and bring to life anything they can imagine.

An anniversary and an au revoir

One of our rare 'admin' posts today to say, firstly, hey it's our birthday! Seven years since I started getting super-nerdy about new elements. Some 630 posts later (177 since our sixth birthday - that's a new post every other day on average), things have changed a bit! We are among the first Recognised LEGO Fan Media and now have a team of amazing writers and builders from around the world who create quality original content for you in their spare time, and of course we also have the brilliant models you all make for our contests and parts festivals, to inspire and educate the community.

LEGO® Disney review: 43182 Mulan's Training Grounds

Today we are examining a LEGO® Disney set which, for its size, packs in a lot of interesting parts: 43182 Mulan's Training Grounds.

It is not to be confused with the first Mulan set, 41151 Mulan's Training Day, which was released in 2018 and was swiftly followed by… no more. Until 2020 that is, when she was granted a Storybook Adventure (which includes a training ground) and today’s focus, Mulan's Training Grounds. That Mulan, she loves the training. 

Switch My Lantern Up: The winners

It is finally time to reveal which five LEGO® creations from our contest, Switch My Lantern Up, will be receiving the prizes of LEGO® Fiat 500s! We were going to announce them yesterday but it has been such a tough one to judge, and there were 88 models submitted using the Super Heroes lantern (part 65581).

This time the judges were Victor Pruvost and Tim Johnson from New Elementary, and none other than the LEGO Senior Designer who actually designed the lantern piece, Esa Nousiainen! We were honoured to have him and he was really impressed with what he saw:

Switch My Lantern Up: The entries (Vol. 3)

Today we reveal the final 25 entries to our LEGO® building contest, where you had to find a new use for the Super Heroes lantern (part 65581). The judges' decisions will be published on Saturday, unless we argue about it for too long! Hard when there are so many awesome ideas!

Old Diving Suit by GSCLD

Switch My Lantern Up: The entries (Vol. 2)

Today we continue revealing the entries to our LEGO® building contest, where you had to find a new use for the Super Heroes lantern (part 65581). Let's see what the next 30 entries were!

Peacock by Krakenbrix

In this build, I used the seed part as feathers for a peacock. The feathers are attached to a wedge belt tire (part 2815 and 4185) to obtain the radial design.

Switch My Lantern Up: The entries (Vol. 1)

Our LEGO® building contest, where you had to find a new use for the Super Heroes lantern (part 65581) has now closed, so while our judges are getting all judgey and deciding which five win the LEGO Fiats, let's look at all the entries we received!

There were a whopping 89 fabulous creations submitted by you lot, and we will reveal them over the course of three days, in the order we received them. Thank you all, for sharing these wonderful ideas.