Brickcon 2022 - Registration Open

Brickcon 2022 is happening again this year in Seattle, WA on 1-2 October 2022. If you are an AFOL, you can register to attend the AFOL Fan Convention which starts on 29 September. They have limited in-person attendance for 500 people so sign up sooner rather than later if you plan to be in person. Registration is online here. For those of you who can’t make it to Seattle, you can still participate virtually. For a $25 registration fee, you can access presentation live streams, online games, tours, the private BrickCon Discord server, online social meet-ups, virtual door prizes, as well as a virtual exhibition with awards. A limited amount of swag bags, merchandise and commemorative models will be made available for purchase at a later date which is awesome. It’s not the full experience, but the hybrid option isn’t bad if you don’t live in the area or can’t fly to Seattle for that weekend.

I attended Brickcon 2020 or should I say virtually attended Brickcon 2020. It was fully virtual that year due to COVID so this will by my first hybrid experience. You can learn about my experience here: My experience. You can also read a quick intro here Intro and Swag and see a review of the convention set here: Convention Set Review.

I have not been able to attend a convention in person, but would like to some day. In the meantime, this is a great alternative option. I enjoyed the last time and I’m looking forward to this year. I’m hoping to be able to volunteer again like I did last time and with any luck, I’ll be able to purchase some swag as it included some cool stuff during my last venture to Brickcon. If you’re like me and can’t make it in person, but have the time to attend virtually, go for it!

The keynote speaker for this year is Angus MacLane who was the Director for Pixar movies like “Finding Dory” and “Lightyear.” The Brothers Brick site has a good write up about it here.

Hope to “see” you there!



What do You do if Your Set is Missing Stickers?

There is much rejoicing when I open up a new LEGO set and there are no stickers to apply. Printed pieces work for me. I am terrible at putting stickers on bricks. They always end up just slightly off center or crooked.

However some sets just don’t look the same with the added detail that stickers provide. If the stickers happen to be missing, what do you do?

I’ve had a few instances of missing stickers very recently actually. One was #60326-1: Picnic in the Park and the other was #76398-1: Hogwarts Hospital Wing. In both instances, I didn’t see the small sheet and it was either stuck in the box after I dumped the pieces out or I missed them initially. Whoops!

A lesson learned from the Bricks for Bricks BrickLink store… Someone recently purchased set #75276-1: Star Wars Stormtrooper helmet from the store (I have one more available at the time of this post if you are looking for one). When they opened it up, there were no stickers. When the buyer contacted me about it, I mentioned checking the box and build area to make sure they didn’t pull a mistake like I did. Then I mentioned they should call LEGO Customer Service to see if they could get a replacement sticker set. This was a real shot in the dark here as the set retired in the US on 20 January 2022 in the US according to Brickset.com.

We got some good news! LEGO Customer Service told them that they try to save the sticker sheets for around two years after a set retires to have on hand in event people buy some of the last inventory out there and need stickers. So they are sending one to the person who supported our latest giving campaign. Sweet! So keep that in mind if you have a sealed, retired set that you open up only to find no stickers. At some point, it will get too old and your chances are slim, but it’s good to know the option exists.

Has anyone else had this experience with missing stickers from a retired set?

Happy building!

Just so you don't think I'm slacking off...

I try to put out a blog post once a week. Someday I’ll work to put out more, but for now with all of the other life commitments, we’ll stick to one. This one will be short as I’m busy with some new arrivals.

The first one is #21333-1: Vincent Van Gogh - The Starry Night. I was excited to see this one come out and I really liked the final design they came up with. I’m mid-build right now so no spoilers before the final review, but so far so good. I managed to pick it up with some VIP points and when #40567-1: Castle Hideout was the promotional set so I can’t complain.

And then in my building backlog…. I also picked up a copy of #42143-1: Ferrari Daytona SP3. I want to say it’s a Technic Supercar, but the official branding is now “LEGO Technic Ultimate Car Concept Series” so let’s get it right. My version is way easier to say. Thanks to a whole bunch of VIP points and then the recent double VIP point period, this one wasn’t so painful to get. I’m looking forward to digging into this one and I promise to get a review out.

Have you grabbed any of the newer sets that have come out over the past month or two?

Happy building!

Edible Minifigures

My NLS (Non-Lego Spouse) isn’t a huge brick fan, but she is very artistically talented. When my son asked for LEGO themed cookies for his birthday, using some cookie cutters we were gifted, she took the challenge on. She used our sugar cookie recipe that we usually use for Christmas cookies and got some made some royal icing (I was not aware of royal icing… she made a frosting and added special food coloring to it).. We’ve made these sugar cookies before so I knew they were good and usually you can’t go wrong with frosting, but they just look so fun!

The gift we were given came with three cookie cutters. One was a full minifigure, one was a minifigure head, and the other was a 1x4 brick. The full minifigure had issues with the hands. They were just too thin to last and either broke off while cutting the dough, while cooking, or when they were removed from the cookie tray. Other than that, there weren’t issues. Before I go on, I did a search and apparently these were from Target. It doesn’t look like they are available anymore, but you can find them online at places like eBay if you still want them.

For the icing, my NLS found examples online of various faces and went to work. She did an awesome job! She tried adding a black outline to show texture on one of the full minifigures (above) and one of the bricks below, but it was a lot of work, for not much gained. In the end, the main customer was very satisfied and everyone enjoyed devouring minifigures.

Here’s a few more of the heads and full minifigures.

Here are a few more of the 1x4 bricks.. You can see the one she outlined in black icing. I don’t think it added much to the look in my opinion.

Have you made these before? We enjoy them.

Happy eating and building!

Classic Space and Castle Themes Back to Drain Our Wallets

If you follow any of the LEGO Fan Media sites or LEGO itself, you saw that LEGOCON 2022 had some big set announcements. I was surprised at the number of announcements and also the scale of some of the sets. It wasn’t like an introduction of the LEGO CITY line for the next year. There were some big drops which is pretty cool if you ask me.

The set I’m most excited about is #10497-1: Galaxy Explorer. This is probably because I was a big LEGO Space fan as a kid (M-Tron was one of my favorite themes), but it is cool to see a set like this show up. It has four minifigures, 1,294 pieces, and with a retail price in the US of $99.99, it works out to $0.08/piece which isn’t too bad. It’s available starting on 1 August 2022, but you can pre-order it on LEGO.com now.

The box design is reminiscent of the sets of the past with the yellow coloring and packaging design. This started with #21322-1: Pirates of Barracuda Bay and returns here. I’m looking forward to putting this set together some day.

LEGO.com

LEGO.com

The other big reveal was #10305-1: Lion Knights’ Castle. This one will also be released on 1 August 2022 in the US and I don’t believe there is a pre-order option. The set will contain 4,514 pieces and will retail for $399.99 in the US. That will work out to $0.089/piece which isn’t too bad. I count 21 minifigures which may or may not be accurate, but is pretty darn close. This one is pretty pricy, but it’s great to see Castle finally come back in a big way. I suspect this one will fly off the shelves and will be hard to get for a bit.

LEGO.com

LEGO.com

Andres Lehman from Zusammengebaut.com just recently posted an interview he did with the set designers from LEGO. Mike Psiaki and Milan Madge are well known from previous set designs they’ve had and they show some of the cool details and functions of these sets. It’s worth the just under 16 minutes of your time to see what is up.

Happy building!

How Do You Sort Your Bricks?

Does anyone know how many different types and colors of LEGO pieces exist out there?

I have no idea, but there are a lot and when you have bags of unsorted pieces, they become kind of useless if you can’t find the pieces you need to build what you want. Especially when you have a bunch of plastic bags full of random parts like me.

Let me back up a minute. I move a lot if you don’t follow my blog. A few years back, I had a decent space where I had some trays and my parts stash was separated by… um… random categories that I made up limited by the number of tray spaces I had. The space I have now still has the same trays and drawers, but not as much space to get to them. I just assumed I would not do much free building until I move to a better bricking space (some day). Then I got some of the train kits from Brick Model Railroader. The kits come with a few unique parts and instructions, but you have to provide the pieces.

So there is my dilemma… I want to build from some instructions, I don’t want to go out and buy all brand new pieces (especially if I already have them), and I don’t have my parts separated so I can actually figure out what I have.

Time to do some research..

Okay, first off, this is a definite no. 159 bins and 189 drawers. Really? How practical is this? I’d need a map of the room just to figure out where everything is and would spend most of my time searching for what I needed. Sure it “looks” great for TV, but come on!

Former LEGO designer and now YouTuber Tiago Catarino has a good video on sorting. I agree with him that sorting by color will only get you so far. I also agree with his point that having a lot of tiny drawers with each part will take you a long time to find what you need. I don’t have an Ikea nearby anymore, but the big drawers he has with all of the compartments look awesome and seem to be really useful when you build.

AFOL Tom Alphin from Brick Architect has some good points on sorting as well. In particular he offers a file you can print to help label drawers. The article where he links to his labels is here. He has a section on sorting your bricks as well. His guide breaks it down by the size of your collection which is useful, but he still recommends some of the smaller drawers versus the larger ones Tiago Catarino recommends. Back to the labeling, I could see that as very useful and have even seen people attach one of the parts on the outside of the drawer to show what is inside.

Those are just a few examples and thoughts. Do you have any suggestions or other resources I should check out when I go to sort out my bags-o-bricks? Put them in the comments or shoot me an email. I’m always curious to learn how I can better set up my parts for future building. Thanks!

Happy building!

A new Giving Campaign Starts - 1 June to 31 December 2022 - Brick Dreams

If you’ve followed Bricks for Bricks for a while or have spent some time on our site, you’ll see that we had campaigns for Brick Dreams in 2017 and 2018. Well after a few years, I looked and they are still at their awesome work. So why not send some bricks their way so they can use them to help others?

In case you didn’t click the link above, Brick Dreams was founded in 2012 with a goal of collecting used bricks and giving them to kids in need. They made kits for kids in foster homes and those who get moved around by Child Protective Services a lot. They are still doing it today.

From 1 June 2022 until 31 December 2022, 15% of the profits from sales at Bricks for Bricks will go towards Brick Dreams. Instead of sending them three boxes of new Bricks, let’s see if we can send them 30 or 50 or 100…

By the way, you can support them directly too if you want. Go to their site here to see how you can give bricks or cash to support their efforts.

Thank you for support! Happy building!

More to Give! Another Campaign Wraps up

We did it and thank you! The most recent campaign closed that we ran from 1 December 2021 to 31 May 2022. 15% of our profits went to the Doolittle Institute which runs FIRST® LEGO® League programs throughout northwest Florida. That final number came out to be…

$848

Thank you so much for helping to support STEM education in Florida. Our donation should help them support at least three full teams to include equipping them with robots, covering registration fees, and other costs involved.

Happy building!

Another Technic Supercar is Announced!!!!!

I by no means am the first one to announce this, but I am super excited that on 1 June 2022, the next LEGO Technic supercar will get released. Okay actually we are now referring to them as being a part of the “LEGO Technic Ultimate Car Concept Series.” Either way, a sleek red Ferrari will be a great addition to the existing sets. This one is #42143-1: Ferrari Daytona SP3. I will contain 3,778 pieces and retail in the US for $399.99. That works out to $0.106 per piece. Here are some of LEGO’s promotional shots of the model.

The packaging looks impressive from LEGO’s promo shots and some of the video reviews I have seen online. For $400, the packaging had better look awesome, right?

As per usual, we have a promo shot from LEGO by the real car. Some good photography here although they should have edited out the TV dish in my opinion. I couldn’t tell you much about the real car other than I’m sure it goes fast and I’m sure I can’t afford the real one.. Along with this set, LEGO is releasing a limited run book (5,000 copies) that highlights the set and LEGO’s relationship with Ferrari. I believe the book will be priced at $70. In my opinion, the set is expensive as it is, I don’t need to dump more money into a book.

This set is pricy and I’m not sure when I’ll pick it up, but I will at some point using VIP points to help lessen the blow. I’m looking forward to lining it up next to my other vehicles. You can see my previous reviews here:

#42056-1: Porsche 911 GT3 RS

#42083-1: Bugatti Chiron

#42115-1: Lamborghini Sian FKP 37

Happy building!

2 June 2022 update: LEGO released the designer video yesterday. Here it is in case you missed it.

I Made it into a Popular Youtube Video (sort of... okay, not really)

I did it! My store got featured by a famous AFOL in the Fan Media who called me out by name to say thanks for getting him the set he needed to finish the coolest video ever!

Or not so much…

Okay… in the video below, David of Solid Brix Studios, builds a LEGO Star Wars MOC only using sets from LEGO without any additional pieces. If you skip to the 3:20 mark, he holds up set #75098-1: Assault on Hoth. So yeah, he bought it from the Bricks for Bricks BrickLink store. I get it, you watched the video and he said none of that so I could be making it all up, but you’ll just have to trust me on this one.

So thanks David for supporting Bricks for Bricks and our efforts to give. The current campaign ends in 10 days so we appreciate all the orders and for helping us to help others.