Another Way to Stay Engaged with Bricks - "Beyond the Brick"

Back in September 2018, I wrote about my favorite Brick podcast called “The Bricks King Podcast.” You can read my post about it here. I found the podcast to be a great way to keep up with my LEGO addiction while doing other things like driving or chores around the house. In my search to find even more, I looked for video options. And let me say, thank goodness for the invention of on demand content. YAY! Sites like YouTube are full of folks who post videos about their LEGO addictions, review sets, and provide information about the hobby. My favorite Brick inspired channel on YouTube thus far has been Beyond the Brick. Apparently many others are fans too as they have many hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

“Beyond the Brick” was started as an audio only podcast by LEGO fan Joshua Hanlon in November 2011 as his “About” page states. He has long since moved to YouTube and now runs this channel as a full time job. If you go to his videos page, you’ll see that he is releasing new content just about every day. Having watched some of Josh’s earlier videos you can see that he’s come a long way since his early days. His interviewing skills have gotten better and he’s done a better job editing videos as well (in my opinion). You can tell that he is getting good at interviewing LEGO fans who can often be introverts who don’t like to talk to audiences on camera.

“Beyond the Brick” is different from many brick content type channels on YouTube or other platforms as Josh travels. He videos at LEGO conventions sometimes giving multi-hour long tours of a convention in case you couldn’t make it (like Brick Fair 2018 in VA) or sometimes spending a few minutes at a notable build this this recent video of a huge recreation of a bell tower in Florence, Italy. He’s been to BrickLink HQ to get an inside look at how the operation is run and has a full tour of the LEGO House in Denmark on his channel as well. He’s interviewed countless LEGO fans, LEGO company designers, LEGO Ideas designers, and many others. He’s shown us through LEGO theme parks around the world to include Japan and Denmark. Do I need to continue? If you’re a fan of the LEGO brick and you can’t find content that “Beyond the Brick” has released that you like, then you need to question whether you are actually a fan of LEGO or not.

I’m not endorsed by anyone or getting paid to say nice things so don’t worry about me leading you astray. “Beyond the Brick” has done a great job and I hope they continue to put out stellar content for many years to come. Thanks “Beyond the Brick” and keep up the great work!

Update - 15 Jan 2019

Beyond the Brick posted an interview of its founders Joshua and John Hanlon. It was done at the Skærbæk Fan Weekend 2018 in Denmark. You can see the view on YouTube here. They talk about how they got started, how they make money, and where they plan to go in the future. It’s a great interview if you’re interested in the inner workings of their YouTube channel.

The Bugatti Chiron in the Wild...

In case you didn’t see my last post, I’m in the process of building the LEGO Technic #42083-1 Bugatti Chiron. With that being said, I was walking down the street last week and a car caught my eye. It looked very familiar to a Bugatti Chiron, but I figured it couldn’t be. Most people don’t just park their $2.5M+ car right there on the street. I had to go over and take a look.

Okay, maybe I should be a little more specific. If you’ve read the blog, you know that my non-Lego job has taken me to Germany so I had to shut down sales. Living in Europe, my family has done some traveling and recently we took a couple days to go to the Alsace region of France. While there, we stopped in Strasbourg for the Christmas Market (if you’re an American and you celebrate Christmas and you have never been to a true European Christmas Market, they are pretty cool). Strasbourg happens to be near Molsheim, France (about 20 minutes away) and Molsheim is where the Bugatti factory is located.

Back to the car… no it wasn’t just sitting there. It was in a glass enclosed case and there was a security guard outside as well. None the less, it was still the real deal. I never thought I would see a Bugatti Chiron up close and personal or at least as close as the glass would let me. I talked to our host at the B&B we stayed at and he said Bugatti factory tours are only available for car buyers and friends of workers. Good luck getting to see inside the factory.

Back to the car… Next to the car was a sign.

The sign is in French on the left, German in the middle, and English on the right. In case you can’t read the picture I posted, it reads:

“We are proud of our company roots in Molsheim, about 25 km away from Strasbourg,
where our headquarters are still today.

In 1909 Ettore Bugatti founded our company here in Alsace, and to this day Bugatti
represents the pinnacle of the automotive world.

Like the Strasbourg Christmas market we combine tradition with a clear vision.

All qualities and know-how of our company accumulated in 110 years of our existence are
contained in each and every one of the only 500 BUGATTI CHIRON going to be built..”

The sign then gives some of the stats on the vehicle.

Engine:
-8 Litre 16-Cylinder-engine
-4 turbochargers with Bugatti 2-stage turbocharging

Power:
1,500 HP (6,700 U/min)

Torque:
1,600 Nm (2,000 - 6,000 U/min)

Acceleration:
0 - 100km/h 2.4 sec (that’s roughly 0 to 60 mph)
0 - 400 km/h 32.6 sec (that’s roughly 0 to ~250 mph)

Vmax:
420 hm/h (electronically limited) (or around 260 mph)

Enough blabbing, here are a few more pics of the car. The front was white and the back was a navy blue or darker blue type color. The blue color looks similar to the blue of the LEGO version.

So I wouldn’t be interested in this vehicle if it weren’t for the LEGO version. I’m not a gear head, but I’m a huge fan now that I have a LEGO version and was super excited to actually see one of these.

But that’s not all…

If you purchased the set you saw this picture in the instruction manual.

It’s a picture of the actual car and the LEGO version with an offset in front of the Château St. Jean in Molsheim, France.

On our drive home from the Strasbourg area, I was conversing with my Non-LEGO Spouse (NLS) and talking about Bugatti and how the plant was nearby somewhere. Using the power of the internet she looked it up and told me it was about 2 minutes away. So we came upon a traffic circle, I went straight instead of turning and…

Tah-dah! Okay, we had to take a few passes to get the picture just so, but thankfully it was a Sunday and there wasn’t a lot of traffic. So there’s the full building. Just no cars in front.

Here’s a sign near the Château.

We figured the factory had to be close by and sure enough it was. We hit a traffic circle and took a different exit and saw the factory. It’s not very big although if you’re only building 500 of a vehicle and you probably take your time building it, you don’t need a big facility. We didn’t take pictures of the signs in French telling us it was private property and to not trespass. We just took our pictures and turned around. My NLS questioned why the workers didn’t have better cars. My guess is the employee discount doesn’t take much off the $2.5M price tag.

Hope you enjoyed some additional info on the Bugatti Chiron. I don’t think I’ve seen a set review or LEGO blog yet that showed pictures of the actual car or the factory. I’ll claim to be the first to include pictures of both in a LEGO review.

Happy building!

Sign Ups are Open for the LEGO® Inside Tour 2019

Have you ever wanted to get inside the factory in Billund, Denmark where LEGO bricks are made? Do you think it would be cool to get to spend time with LEGO designers. Would you like to have the opportunity to shop at the employee store? Are you a LEGO fanatic and would eat, breathe, and sleep LEGO given the opportunity?

If you said yes to any or all of those and you can cough up over $2,000 (not including transportation), then sign up for the LEGO® Inside Tour. Sign ups started today (29 Oct 2018) and end 2 Nov 2018 at 1000 AM CET (Denmark time). The tour is 2.5 days long and the funds you spend include meals, lodging, and some cool freebies (or not really free because you paid for them). If you want more details or if you want to sign up, go to the LEGO House Website. Also, do a web search on your favorite search engine for write-ups and videos from previous attendees.

It used to be a first come, first serve kind of thing and sign ups ended in a minute or 2. Now it appears to be a lottery system where everyone can sign up and they pick people out of that pool. I looked at a number of reports from previous attendees and they said over 5,000 applied for around 175 slots. I’m not sure how accurate those numbers are, but it’s probably fairly close.

There are 4 tour dates listed:
8-10 May 2019
12-14 June 2019
11-13 September 2019
18-20 September 2019

The form you fill out to register lets you select dates. I selected all 4 as right now I am available for any of them. If you know you can’t make one or another, don’t select it. The rules say you have a 3 day period once selected to turn it down so you are not locked in right away. The form asked for some basic information (name, contact info, age) and it asked some LEGO info. Are you in a LUG? What is your favorite theme? What do you like to do with LEGO?

I’m curious to see how they narrow it down. Or we’ll never know.

Good luck if you sign up. I hope you can attend. Or maybe I’ll get picked and I’ll see you there. Since I can drive there, it makes attending a bit more affordable. If I don’t make it and you do, let me know how it goes.

Happy building!

Train Related Idea Reaches 10,000 Supporters - LEGO Ideas

A while back I wrote a post about the need for another LEGO train related set. You can find it here. I don’t know how many people read my article and then acted, but one of the sets I recommended achieved 10,000 supporters! It’s the Chemical Plant by Ymarilego. At ~1,900 bricks, it would be a pretty big set, but the LEGO Ideas set #21311-1 - Voltron is 2,321 pieces so there’s a chance that LEGO will release another big Ideas set.

The next review cycle should look at projects that reached 10,000 supporters between the September and January time frames (if LEGO follows what they did in the past). Now we just have to sit back and wait to see what they do. As far as I know, there is no way to lobby LEGO to pick one set over the other. I’m hoping this one is easier as it doesn’t have any licensing concerns to worry about. Also, it’s built in Octan colors and it would be great to get another Octan related set.

While you’re waiting, there are a few more to check out…

The Continental Comet by NickBr1cks is low on the votes (under 1,000), but looks pretty awesome as an Amtrak engine with a car. I would like to see a US based, modern train model again.

The Motorized Union Pacific SD40-2 and Cooling Wagon by Bricky_Brick is at under 1,000 votes as well. LEGO has done a BNSF set and I think a Union Pacific set would be a great addition. This one has a lot of great details too.

There are a lot of great steam trains in the running, but this one stood out to me. It’s called the Blue Tornado and it is by user dylanfarrow. Maybe it’s the color scheme used, I don’t know, but I think it looks pretty awesome. The scenery around it looks great too with the plants and track ballast. You could use this as a display model or run it on a track. It also opens up a lot of potential for making your own passenger or freight cars.

Please help bring more cool train sets to LEGO’s lineup!

And come one LEGO!!! Pick the Chemical Plant for the next Ideas round!!!

Happy building!

Listening to Bricks - A LEGO Fan Podcast

Hello again!  It's been a long time since I posted.  I finished my move to Germany and it took a long time to get established.  For those of you in the US who complain about the cable and internet companies with bad customer service, we had to wait over a month to get internet and then have 2 visits from company technicians to get it set up correctly.  It was pretty painful, but thankfully we are now connected and ready to go!

While waiting for internet and for the part of my LEGO collection that I shipped here to arrive, I got to stay connected to the Lego fan community through a different medium.  A few years ago I got into listening to podcasts.  I found that driving around in my car and listening to local radio stations was getting annoying.  I could never find a station that I was willing to listen to for more than a few minutes.  With smart phones now and the ability to link them into your car, I can now listen while driving which is awesome.  The best part is that there are a huge amount of options for shows you can listen to now. 

While it's not the first LEGO themed podcast out there, a few months ago I stumbled upon the "Bricks King Podcast."  This podcast is run by LEGO fan Matt King.  As he states on his site, "We dig deep into the Lego world and interview Lego artists, and review Lego models."  I'm a few episodes behind right now, but so far I have had heard about new sets coming out, some information about what members of the LEGO fan community are doing, information about some of the builders made popular on the web, and a few interviews with the BrickBlogger's Will Reed.  While often the sets Matt introduces are not new to me, it is interesting to hear someone else's take on them.  He's been overly excited about a few sets that I am not interested in at all so hearing a differing opinion has been a good balance for me.

Overall, I am a fan!  Especially with the move that I have gone through recently, the Bricks King podcast has been a great way for me to stay connected to the LEGO fan community.  I enjoy being able to hear about LEGO despite driving in my car or doing work around my house.  If you're looking for a podcast to check out, definitely give the Bricks King a listen.  

You can find him on PodBean here or on iTunes here.  The podcast is on other platforms too, but I'm not going to list them all.  If you are not quite sure yet, you can check out his Twitter page or YouTube page or FaceBook page.  And if you don't want to take my word for it, Will Reed wrote an article about the podcast on the BrickBlogger so you can read his opinion.

Thanks Matt for the great work and keep publishing more!

BRICKS FOR BRICKS STORE ANNOUNCEMENT - CLOSING 31 MAY 2018

It is with great sadness that I announce that the BrickLink.com store for Bricks for Bricks will be closing on 31 May 2018.  My non-LEGO job is pulling me away (from Bricklink, but closer to Bilund).  I have an amazing opportunity that I couldn't turn down, but I will be unable to run the business while I'm away.  I will keep the website running as well as I can and I hope to be back in business in a few years.

Thanks to everyone who supported all of the great groups that we've worked with over the past 4 years.  We're at over $120 for Brick Dreams this drive with one month to go.  I will post the final number when we get there.  Happy building!

The (Not So) Secret Way to Buy Discount LEGO Sets (2018 Update)

Back in 2016, I wrote a post with some references for where you can find LEGO at a discount.  It's time for a update.

LEGO Shop @ Home: Buying from the source can sometimes be a good deal.  This however is not always the case.  For most of the year, they throw a lot of sets up for sale that they weren't able to sell.  There are a few key times however.  The Star Wars set sales during the May the Fourth sales and the Brick Friday Sales offer some great deals.  Often they throw a few other sales in there, but you need to pay attention to them.  If you get on their mailing list, you can get notices of when they are coming up.

BrickSet.com - Amazon.com deals in the US: Amazon has kept a good deal of discounts on sets.  If you pay attention, they have a great deal of some of the main lines (CITY, Friends, Star Wars, etc.) at a 20% discount.  As they approach Christmas time, they often increase sales to include discounts of 30% or more.  It's definitely worth it to check this site out before buying a LEGO set to see if there's a discount.  BrickSet used to have a Walmart sales site, but that one has since been shut down.  

BrickPicker.com: As mentioned last time, BrickPicker is more of a resource for those who collect, invest, and sell on the secondary market.  It focuses on LEGO sets that have long since retired and where people are willing to pay big money for some of the rarer sets.  They do show some current discounts on Amazon in various countries and if you follow the forums, you can see what deals people are finding at some of the big brand stores.

Walmart and Target: Both of these retailers have either pushed all of the fan sites to take down their sales searches or people took them down on their own.  I'm not sure what happened, but I have yet to find an easy way to find the LEGO deals at these stores.  Has anyone found something useful out there?  If so, please let me know.

Ebates.com - Okay so this is not a way to save money buying LEGO in a direct way.  However, there are a few ways you can take advantage of it.  For those of you not familiar, Ebates is a website where you sign up, go to the website before you shop, and then Ebates and you get a cut of the total sale when you are done.  If you sign up, you get spam emails every day.  The good news is, you can use it to buy LEGO.  LEGO Shop @ Home is currently (as of 30 March 2018) offering 2.5% cash back.  You place an order, they hold onto 2.5% of the sale, and then they return it to you in quarterly payments.  You can receive a check or link it to your PayPal account.  Before Christmas time 2017, Ebates had a 7.5% cash back deal on LEGO Shop @ Home.  Combine that with Double VIP points and it was a pretty good deal!  Also, you can share their site with friends and get a $25 referral payment.  The link I placed is just to the site and not an attempt to get the $25 referral payment out of you.  Amazon.com and Walmart are linked to Ebates too, but often they are linked to specific categories of products.  I have yet to see them give cash back for toys.

One final note is not related to discounts, but finding those hard to find sets.  Right now, it has been a challenge to buy the Millennium Falcon (#75192).  There are a number of websites out there that help you track inventory.  I have been watching zoolert.com.  You can set it up to track a product and get notifications on availability and pricing.  For the Falcon, it shows availability (or lack thereof) at Walmart, Target, Toys R Us (for a bit longer), Lego, Amazon.com, and EBay.  It does not show BrickLink.com or other LEGO secondary market sites.  If there is a set out there that you are looking for (maybe the Falcon), it may be worth it to use a site like this one.

What else am I missing?  Feel free to comment on any sites I'm not aware of or you can email me here.  

I'm not an affiliate to any of these sites and I am not paid to endorse any of them.  If you want to support Bricks for Bricks, please check out my BrickLink store.

The Downsides of Amazon!

A word of caution if you plan to buy LEGO sets from Amazon.com (in the US).

I placed an order for some LEGO sets through Amazon.com and then through LEGO Shop at Home and both of them arrived on the same day.  When I opened the two, I was shocked to see the differences in the two packages.

The package on the left is from Amazon.com.  I ordered three LEGO Star Wars sets.  As you can see they arrived in a fairly large box and there was a small sheet of brown paper tucked in with it.  There was a large amount of open space in the box where the sets could shift around during shipment.  I was thankful to see that the sets were not damaged when I opened the package.  The previous two orders I've had from Amazon.com with large LEGO sets have suffered damage and have required me to send them back for a new set or to just deal with having a damaged box in my store.

The package on the right is from LEGO.  You can barely even tell that it is the new modular building, the #10260 Downtown Diner, is in the box and you can see the 60th Anniversary Lego set (#40290).  The team at LEGO packaged it up good with a lot of air packs to make sure there was no damage.  The sets arrived in great condition as they always do.  

So why is this?  I checked in with a friend who spent some time at Amazon and learned why.  My thought was that some worker didn't seem to care or maybe Amazon is trying to save money by not using as much packaging.  I was wrong on both accounts.  From what I learned, everything is automated.  The items are picked by robots off of shelves and the computers tell workers at the very end what box to use.  There are then machines that spit out the appropriate amount of tape and the packaging to use.  So workers don't even have a choice.  They take the materials they are given, package them, and send the box on its way.  

My question was, wouldn't they be concerned about items getting damaged and having to deal with returns?  Well the goal is speed.  Get the packages out as quickly as they can.  Amazon has such a huge volume of orders that they can't take the time to carefully package items.  

LEGO... well I don't know anyone who works at LEGO.  My guess is that they are interested in sets arriving in good condition.  They don't want to pay for returns and they know that they have fans who are interested in collecting sets that arrive with boxes in good condition.

So some advice...
     -If you want to buy sets in good condition for the purpose of collecting, I recommend
     buying them directly from LEGO unless you can pick them up from a store in person.
     -While Amazon often has some great deals on sets, buy from them only if you plan to build
     the set and don't care what the box looks like or if you don't mind a set arriving damaged.
     -Amazon has a great return policy, but keep in mind that you might not always be able to
     get a replacement set.  You can always get your money back, but I have had a number of
     occasions where they would not offer me a replacement set based on the price that I paid.  I
     could buy another set, but not at the same price.

What are your thoughts?  Do I have Amazon completely wrong?  Does LEGO not care as much as I think they do about damage during shipping?  Is it really just UPS or FedEx or the USPS damaging boxes along the way?

We Need Another LEGO Train! Any Good Ideas?

If you've read through many of my posts, you'd know that I'm a huge fan of LEGO trains and of creating cities around those train sets.  While LEGO has released a freight train and passenger train along with the CITY line every few years, it has been a while since they released a CREATOR EXPERT themed train.  Here's the history:
     -2009 - #10194 Emerald Night
     -2011 - #10219 - Maersk Train
     -2013 - #10233 - Horizon Express
Unfortunately, LEGO didn't follow the trend in 2015 or 2017.  I haven't seen anything official as to why.  If I had to guess, the train line wasn't profitable for them.  I get that they have to run a business, but it leaves us fans out of getting new sets every few years.  

So if you're like me, what are your choices?

You can build train MOCs of your own.  That's an obvious choices, but if you're like me and you're not the best builder in the world then it's not the best option.

The option I'm going for is getting the fan community to vote in a train on the LEGO Ideas platform.  If you're not familiar with it, here's how it works.  Fan builders submit their set designs to LEGO.  They can actually be built or can be built using a digital design tool.  Once uploaded, you get to post some information about the set you've built and why you think it's cool.  Then from there it's out there and people can vote on them.  If it gets 10,000 votes, LEGO considers it for a production run.  If it is selected, your set is sold, you get 1% of the earnings, and people get to buy it.  YAY!  

Here's what I think... we get some of the talented builders out there to post some awesome looking train designs and we vote them through.  Then hopefully LEGO will put one into production.  So what's out there?  I did a search through the LEGO IDEAS system and picked out a few you could vote for.

The first one is "US Train" by user "papat08" and it was posted in November 2017.  Here's a picture of what is being proposed.

It includes a diesel engine that can be modified to add a Power Functions motor, 3 intermodal rail cars with shipping containers, track with ballast, and a level crossing.  The engine is designed like a BNSF engine and is an improvement from set #10133 from back in 2007.  This set is pretty awesome in my books and I would gladly plunk down some funds to pick one up.  If you feel the same way, definitely go give it support.  At the time of this post it is at under 400 supporters, so a ways to go yet.

Another one is titled "Glacier Express" and was submitted by user "OrientExpress."  This one was posted in January 2017 and has over 400 supporters.  Here is what the user is proposing:

The set includes a steam powered engine that can be motorized with Power Functions and a passenger car along with some track.  It has some similarities to the Emerald Night set, but I like it.  Maybe an additional passenger car would help?

And finally... I've shown 2 trains so to switch things up a bit, user "Ymarilego" submitted a Chemical Plant idea on 15 January 2018.  It has over 2000 supporters at the time of this posting.

It includes a tank car with track, a tanker truck, and some pretty detailed chemical plant infrastructure along with a bunch of minifigures.  This one is another one to go out and support.

Let's bring another train set back to the Creator Expert line!  What are your thoughts?  Are there any other train sets out there I should go vote for?  

Merry Christmas 2017

Merry Christmas from Bricks for Bricks!  Hope you got all of the bricks you were looking for this Christmas.

There's a simple LEGO Train display under my tree.  It is #10233 Horizon Express pulling up to the Winter Village Station (#10259).  In front is the City Tanker Truck (#3180) and a car from... I have no idea what old set it is... a town set from the 1990s most likely.

Happy building!