A Service Truck? 2015 City Preview

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Portaloo

One of our “volunteer” Elves has just returned from his mission over the wall into LEGO’s headquarters. He got a bit lost on his way to the Technic area that we really care about and stumbled into the “City” products. Fortunately he evaded the guard dogs and returned home carrying two new 2015 sets.

First up is the 60073 “Service Truck”. LEGO seems to be having trouble naming its products at the moment. We all know that the 42024 “Container Truck” is actually a skip lorry and surely 60073 should be the Portaloo? Perhaps LEGO couldn’t get a licence agreement or maybe they thought that mums and dads wouldn’t want to buy the set for their kids? But we all love a bit of toilet humour and LEGO’s photographers seem to be no exception, with a minifig in the cabin caught doing his business, on the box top.

The errant Elf also brought this rather lovely 60083 “Snowplow Truck”. Whilst it might not have the functionality of the 8110 Unimog, it certainly looks the part, with its orange snowplough blade and grit hopper. Both new sets will reach stores in early 2015.

Unimog

Tonight on Top Gear… Picture Special

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Lego TopGear Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond James May

 …Jeremy will be mildly offensive, James will wear a wooly jumper, and Hammond will indulge in some bad acting. But we’ll still love it.

BBC’s Top Gear began way back in 1977 as a fairly straight-laced motoring magazine, updating the great unwashed on the latest new cars and motoring news (remember; no internet in 1977!). The original show helped to launch the careers of many TV motoring journalists, including the brilliant Tiff Needell and Quentin Wilson, and of course a certain Mr. Clarkson and Mr. May.

Lego Top Gear Studio Jeremy Clarkson

Top Gear evolved during these first decades becoming more humorous and politically incorrect, helped largely by the arrival of Quentin and Jeremy whose reviewing style could make-or-break a new car. After a one particularly damning review Peugeot famously declared that they were removing all of their adverts from the BBC – but of course due to the unique way the BBC is funded, Top Gear and everything else broadcast contains no advertising at all anyway. Take that Peugeot!

Lego Top Gear Richard Hammond

In 2000 however, the BBC canned Top Gear and sold the production (but not the name) to Channel 5, and Fifth Gear was born. Most of the presenters moved across to the new show and we’ve had to read uninformed ‘This is Fifth Gear you dumb %$@£!’ comments on YouTube (when a video correctly shows old Top Gear) ever since.

The BBC held onto the name for good reason though. In 2002 Top Gear returned, with a new format, new presenters, and – for the first time – an actual studio! Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and Jason Dawe fronted this first season, before Jason was replaced by James to give us the genius line-up that has been in place ever since.

Top Gear’s new format has proved wildly successful, with over 350million viewers from 170 countries tuning in every week. And that’s not counting the re-runs showing every hour on Dave.

Lego TopGear Jeremy Clarkson

Such success has led to mistakes though, as Top Gear has become less genuine and more scripted over the years in a quest to recreate past (naturally occurring) glories. It’s also given the presenters an opportunity to make other programmes, and ‘Richard Hammond’s 5 O’Clock Show’ is an abomination that will be forever etched into a dark corner of the televisual hall-of-shame. Thankfully it only lasted a month, and James May’s independent presenting more than makes up for Hammond’s. James even built a house out of LEGO.

Lego James May TopGear

So what next for Top Gear? Well there are now live arena shows once a year, spin-offs for Australia, Russia, Korea, America and others, a new DVD each Christmas, and there’s a whole world of slightly crap merchandising. Andy Wilman (Top Gear’s producer) admits the show – at least in its current format – is probably nearer to the end of its life than the start, but we expect to keep watching for little a while yet. Onwards to season 22!

All of the photos in this post were produced by the exceptionally talented Stephan Sander, who has lovingly recreated Jeremy, James and Richard in brick form.  He’s also constructed superb Lego models of Jeremy’s Citroen Motorhome, a trio of Jaguar E-Types, three Ferraris, three Lotuses and the famous Top Gear studio – complete with a wonderfully diverse audience! We highly recommend a trip to Stephan’s MOCpage to see all the photos. Back to the studio…

Samurai!

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Lego Suzuki Samurai

As regular readers of TLCB will know, we’re not a fan of a particular American ‘SUV’. But we are fans of SUVs that do it right, and the tiny Suzuki Samurai is one such vehicle.

Powered by a dinky 1300cc engine the little Suzuki is not going to win any tug-of-war competitions. Or drag races. Or towing challenges. But what it will do is climb up a trail that a will leave a Hummer far below looking very fat and just a bit ridiculous*.

TLCB favourite piterx‘s fantastic Technic recreation of the little Japanese off-roader is packed full of Power Functions goodness to ensure it can do the same to plenty of overweight Lego Truck Trial creations. Inside are two L motors, a servo for steering, and all-wheel-drive with live axel suspension.

Lego Suzuki 4x4

Best of all piterx has created his Samurai from the dark blue parts (and the off-road components) found in LEGO’s 41999 RC Crawler set, of which many examples are sitting unopened in the lofts of speculators. For that, we salute you piterx – you’re welcome here any time!

You can see all the details of piterx’s Technic Suzuki Samurai, including the all-important chassis images, via the Eurobricks forum; click the second link in this post to join the discussion.

Lego Technic Suzuki Samurai 4x4

*Like your Mom

Hipster House

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Lego Camper Bike

If there’s something more painfully hipster than this Camper Bike, we’re yet to see it. We’re not sure whether owning this pedal-powered home would make you look; a) very cool, b) like a failing meth cook, or c) like some kind of human snail. Whichever it is, Ultimate Design Bricks is the builder of this whimsical contraption, and you can see more of his creation on MOCpages here, or on Flickr here.

SHIPtember 2014

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Eye of Misfortune

The great Sci-Fi Building race that is SHIPtember is now officially over and has given way to Ma.Ktober. 105 monster spacecraft, each over 100 studs long and each a Seriously Huge Investment in Parts, were completed. Many SHIPs also fell by the wayside, as their builders struggled to find building time, inspiration, a suitably strong enough Technic skeleton or waited nervously for Bricklink orders. There were some awesome thin-ships, bulky battleships and variations on the Classic Space, Blacktron and Homeworld themes. Some builders chose to tackle the challenge in novel and unusual ways and we thought that we would feature these builds in this post.

At the top of our post is Jonathan Walker’s beautiful “Eye of Misfortune” . This has been built using “brick bending” type techniques to achieve its smooth curves and is greater than 100 studs “in some dimension”. It nicely complements his SHIP from 2013 and we wonder if Jonathan has a special deal on white bricks at his local LEGO Store.

ChrisR18t

Whilst most SHIPs fall into the big & grey category, Chris Rozek’s “Yagami-Maru II” stands out in its red and white livery. Being a car blog, this reminded us of Starsky’s Ford Gran Torino, with its white vector stripe, which made us especially happy.

Halfbeak 01

The next SHIP excited the Elves, as it contained something designed to be eaten, that wasn’t LEGO. SHIPtember’s rules state that builders should only work during September. Canadian builder Halfbeak was also out in his sunny garden, germinating camomile and mint on first aid dressings to go into the biomes on his “Pathfinder 4”. In addition to this novelty, Halfbeak has included a bunch of details in authentic NASA style, including the Canadian built manipulator arm.

Halfbeak 02

Having recently featured Bionicle for the first and probably last time on this blog, we now come to the first and probably last Duplo creation to be featured here. Wm Byron Duncan’s “8-Belle” is a mind-boggling 100 Duplo studs long. His Flickr Photostream is well worth a visit to see his other Duplo spacecraft and tips on DUPLO SNOT techniques. This SHIP is 100% Duplo, which does unfortunately mean that it isn’t swooshable, if you could pick it up to start with!

DUPLO SHIP

One builder who had to endure a nervous wait for several Bricklink orders was Jacob Unterreiner. His Tron themed “Solar Sailer” features 96 identical modules and a beautiful brick-built sail.

Solar Sailer

Our penultimate SHIP is Karen Quinn’s colourful “Queen of Hearts” whose distinctive stripes give it the look of a spaceborne mint humbug. Karen has succeeded in creating an interesting shape from some of LEGO’s bigger chunks of plastic, which is a tough thing to achieve. The Queen of Hearts also features lots of playable features and an unusual domed front windscreen, complete with eyelids.

Queen of Hearts

Last up is Peter Mowry’s “Battle Scarred Hexan Battleship”, built in his trademark style. Although a few SHIPs did suffer accidental collapses and crashes, Peter has deliberately broken his SHIP to make this unusual presentation.

Hexan Crashed

We’ve featured just a small portion of the 2014 SHIPtember builds. To see more, click this link to the SHIPtember group on Flickr, where you can also vote for this year’s People’s Choice Award. Congratulations to all of the builders who completed a SHIP this year: the SHIPtember 2014 poster is going to be awesome!

Smooth Operator

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Tridder Rotary Supreme

MOCpages based builder Turbo Charger has a big portfolio of virtual supercars, including some fantasy six-wheelers but he has switched to real bricks for his “Rotary Supreme”. It’s a well known fact that The Lego Car Blog Elves don’t like virtual creations, preferring something that they can really get their teeth into. We’re a bit worried that they might be addicted to the taste of LEGO, especially those chewy Technic flexible axles.

Although the Tridder “Rotary Supreme” is mainly of conventional construction, the careful use of curved bricks has created a car that to quote Blaine R., “Looks like it’s going 200 miles an hour sitting still.” and has a super car meets spaceship quality to it. The pictures are also a good example of photographing black LEGO, which is always a difficult task. To see more, including how the cockpit opens, click this link to MOCpages.

New LEGO Technic! 2015 Preview (Part 2)

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New LEGO Technic 2015 42039 Race Car

It’s time to reveal the final new LEGO Technic sets bound for stores in 2015! Yesterday we previewed five of the eight new Technic models due at the start of next year, including the new 42037 Formula Off-Road Racer.

Today we move on to the bigger stuff, including the rather lovely looking green endurance racer above. But more on that in a bit. Firstly, let’s look at two wheels…

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42036 Street Motorcycle

New Lego Technic 2015 42036 Street Motorcycle

We start with the smallest of the more complex 2015 Technic sets, the 375 piece 9+ 42036 Street Motorcycle. 42036 looks a nice mid-range set, featuring working front and rear suspension, steering, and (we suspect) a chain driven two cylinder engine. It also comes in a rather attractive light blue hue and includes the common-for-2015 decals seen on many of the new sets that add a bit more visual interest.

Downsides are the matching tyres front and rear – which isn’t particularly realistic – and (possibly) the longevity of those aforementioned decals on the large curved Technic panels. Overall though we like the look of 42036 – a good effort from The Lego Group.

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42038 Arctic Truck

New 2015 Lego Technic 42038 Arctic Truck

We’re now into the big sets! New for 2015 is this, the 42038 Arctic Truck, aimed at ages 10+ and containing over 900 pieces – many of which are in the ace 8110 Unimog orange. 42038 goes back to the days of good old fashioned mechanical Technic, and fits a wealth of functionality into its 40cm length, including a linear-actuator operated crane boom, suspended tracks and working steering.

As with some of the other new Technic sets for 2015, LEGO seem to have upped the detail level, possibly at the cost of robustness (how long is that communications ariel going to stay in place for example), but this does look to be a conscious effort to make Technic more visually appealing to those progressing from LEGO’s simpler product themes.

The 42038 Arctic Truck set will reach stores next year, and like most of the new LEGO Technic sets it includes a colourful sticker sheet plus instructions for a second vehicle.

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42039 24 Hours Race Car

2015 LEGO Technic 42039 24 Hours Race Car

And finally, the flagship new Technic set for 2015, the 1,200 piece 42039 24 Hours Race Car! We’re not sure what 42039 features in the way of technical functionality, apart from steering and an opening engine cover, but we’re hoping for pushrod suspension and a big piston engine – it’s aimed at ages 11+ after all!

However, we can tell you that 42039 does feature some as-yet unreleased parts/colour combinations that will probably get certain quarters of the online Lego Community very excited, though we’re just happy because it looks a bit like the incredible Toyota TS040, Audi R18 and Porsche 919 hybrid racers from this year’s LeMans endurance race (although LEGO have missed the regulation stabilising fin from their version).

Like the other new sets for 2015 42039 includes a colourful set of stickers as well as instructions for a second model, although perhaps more surprisingly it contains no Power Functions electric components. This means that there are no new motorised sets in the 2015 LEGO Technic line-up at all – something that we’re in no doubt change mid-way through the year.

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So until then, which is your favourite? As always our resident experts may review some of these sets after their release (plus you can check out all The Lego Car Blog’s reviews of sets past in the Set Review Library), and if you missed Part 1 of our preview detailing the first five new Technic sets for 2015 you can catch up here.

Gettin’ Dirty

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Lego Tatra T148 Truck Trial

HorcikDesigns‘ likes to get his Lego dirty. Truck Trial is his chosen method, and the Tatra T148 is his chosen vehicle. Featuring two Lego Buggy Motors for drive, a Power Functions M Motor for steering, and fully independent half-axel suspension Horcik’s recreation of the famous off-road truck is perfectly equipped to tackle the rough stuff. You can see more of the T148 on Flickr at the link above.

Featured Blogs – The “Concept” Group

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Concept Collage

So you’ve 29,243 Lego pieces, perfectly stored in a wall of plastic draws, plus a custom building table and lightbox waiting for your finished creation. The only problem is what to build? How can you deploy that new gearbox or SNOT technique that you’ve invented? Where can you get some inspiration for a new style of Technic supercar or whatever this month’s sci-fi theme happens to be?

Fortunately Igor Tkac has come up with a family of blogs that feature the best of concept art from around the internet. The first blog, Concept Ships, was launched in August 2007 and was included in Wired.com’s list of best art websites that year. This blog was followed by ones for vehicles, robots, tanks, guns and aliens. The pages can be a bit slow to download but it’s worth the wait as the art is displayed at full resolution, so you can zoom in to the details.

We’ve only spotted one Lego post on any of the blogs (Jon Hall’s aeroplanes, below), so it’s still worth visiting The Lego Car Blog to see what the Elves have found on the web. If you’ve some spare time at home, or an idle moment at your desk, click the links in the paragraph above and be prepared to be inspired.

Jon Hall Aircraft

New LEGO Technic! 2015 Preview (Part 1)

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New LEGO Technic 2015 42035 Mining Truck

It’s time! As is customary at this time of year we recently launched several randomly chosen Elv… er, we mean ‘brave volunteers’, over The LEGO Group’s perimeter wall by way of the office slingshot. Their job; to dodge the guard dogs and return with images of next year’s brand new Lego Technic sets.

Most of this crack team returned a week or so ago, and we’ve been sitting on their scooped images until now. Today though, we can bring you Part 1 of the 2015 LEGO Technic line-up!

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Construction Equipment

First up is LEGO’s yearly default in the range; construction equipment. Pictured above is the new 42035 Mining Truck, aimed at ages 9+ and featuring 362 pieces, whilst pictured below is the smallest and simplest new set for 2015, 42031 Mini-Cherry-Picker for ages 7+.

New LEGO Technic 2015 42031 Cherry Picker

42035 features steering and a tipping bucket, whilst 42031 doesn’t really feature anything at all, save for some mechanical movement of the crane boom.

What is a little surprising is just how ‘Town’-orientated these two sets look, with studded parts, lights and even twelve grill tiles on the front of 42035. We’re not particularly excited by this development, as for us Technic should be about technicality, but we’re sure that The LEGO Group knows what appeals most to their younger audience.

Onwards to the second Technic category guaranteed to be included each year, the racing…

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Racing

New Lego Technic 2015 42034 Quad Bike

We remain at the ‘starter’ end of the 2015 LEGO Technic range with the two new racing-related sets. Above is the set with the lowest part count of the 2015 Technic line-up, the 148 piece 42034 Pull-Back Quad Bike. As you probably deduced, this LEGO set includes a pull-back motor for added zoominess, and it looks quite a fun toy for younger Technic fans and Elves alike.

New Lego Technic 2015 42037 Formula Off-Road

This though, is a model more to our tastes, the wonderfully garish 500 piece 42037 Formula Off-Roader. Underneath the bright green bodywork 42037 features the first proper Technic functionality in the 2015 range, with working steering, suspension and a 4-cylinder engine up front. That engine is perhaps a little small for a Formula Off-Road racer, as they are usually fitted with nitrous-equipped 900hp V8s, but it works so we’ll take it! Both sets include some nice bright stickers and squishy tyres, and look robust enough for some stacked-book living room jumping.

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Tracks

Lego Technic 42032

The final set in LEGO’s 2015 Starter Technic range is this, the 252 piece Compact Tracked Loader. Like the other small sets in the 2015 line-up, 42032 appears a little more ‘Town’-orientated than past Technic offerings, but it does look quite refreshing in white rather than the usual yellow.

With many of the loader’s 252 parts used to create the two tracks upon which it rolls there probably weren’t many left for LEGO to work with, but nevertheless 42032 does feature a mechanically operated bucket and compacter, which seems about right for the 8+ target.

Like all-but-one of the other new Technic sets previewed here, 42032 includes instructions for a second model, and will reach a store near you in early 2015.

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So that’s the small sets out of the way;

What about the big stuff?

Join us tomorrow for Part 2 of the New LEGO Technic 2015 Preview to find out! 

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The LEGO Movie, Movie

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Bricks in Motion

We loved The Lego Movie here at TLCB. In fact we quite like Lego movies in general – and there are some great short films made from little plastic blocks on the ‘net. Bricks in Motion aim to bring us another one, and in Inception-like ‘dream within a dream’ madness their Lego stop-motion film is about Lego stop-motion films.

You can wrap your head around it via their introductory video below, and if you’d like to support the Bricks in Motion project you can join them via Kickstarter – there’s just a few days to go!

Creations for Charity 2014

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Creations for Charity

Creations for Charity 2014 is here!

The amazing annual charity event Creations for Charity is here for 2014! Over the coming weeks some of the best builders in the Lego Community will be donating their own creations that you can bid to own! All the proceeds from the sale of these creations go towards funding a huge* stash of LEGO toys that are distributed to children in need around the world. How cool is that!

Get involved!

You can help this incredible initiative in a number of ways; by publicising Creations for Charity, donating a creation, or bidding on one of the awesome creations available in the auction. Donations open today – if you’d like to give away one of your creations that you think could raise money for children who have nothing then get in contact with the Creations for Charity team, they’d love to hear from you!

The Creations for Charity 2014 store opens on October the 15th, so check in regularly to see what’s available and get ready to bid!

*Over $20,000 worth of LEGO was distributed to children in need across three countries in 2013!

Danananana….

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Lego 1966 Batmobile

It’s the end of SHIPtember in the online Lego Community and Flickr is awash with giant spaceships that we – being a car blog – don’t really understand. So whilst the proper blogs get busy with the sci-fi, here’s a 1966 Batmobile!

Before Batman got the Tumbler, he and Robin had to ride around in this. Rumour has it that the constant derision from Gotham’s general public permanently unhinged then-Batman Adam West, and he’s now seeing out his time as a Mayor of a fictional New England town. Still, better than being Robin.

Flickr’s Orion Pax is the builder of this mini-figure version of Batman’s 1966 wheels, and it’s available for your viewing pleasure at the link.

Pre-Piano

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Lego Morris Minor

As viewers of BBC’s Top Gear will know, the Morris Marina is fit only for death-by-piano. But what you may not know is that the Morris Marina wasn’t actually that terrible. Underneath it was in fact a Morris Minor, a car widely loved by the motoring public. How fickle the winds of fate have been to those two stalwarts of the British auto industry.

This convertible version of the British classic is the work of TLCB regular Ralph Savelsberg. You can see more of his Lego recreation via his photostream, and you can check out a much more massive Minor (and one that’s far more our bag) here.

Can You Dig It?

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Volvo Digger

You might have noticed that we haven’t been posting as frequently as we normally do at The Lego Car Blog. The Elves have been struggling to find suitable MOCs and have started to look a bit hungry. Fortunately we’ve been able to give out a shiny yellow Smartie today, thanks to this yellow monster from Marek Markiewicz. The lucky Elf has kindly split his reward with his colleagues but a single Smartie will only go so far between 213 Elves. Hopefully they’ll find more MOCs in the next few days, or we might have to actually feed our workforce for free.

Marek’s Volvo L250G is built at 1:20 scale, using the bucket from the 42030 Wheel Loader and is even more impressive than his previous Liebherr L580. It’s beautifully detailed, including fully glazed instead of implied windows on the driver’s cab. The loader is also fully remote controlled, via two IR receivers with an L motor for traction, an M motor for steering and L & M motors to control the bucket. You can see full diagrams of the internal working of Marek’s loader by clicking this link to its MOCpages listing. Marek also has an impressive back catalogue on his Flickr Photostream.

Volvo Digger 02

N.B. In an attempt to be more environmentally friendly, TLCB has started recycling. We’ve already used this title twice before. Cut and paste it into the “Search” box, at the bottom of the page, to find out where.