Welcome to Tuesday! Since we've reached this weekly milestone yet again, it means we get to play some LEGO videogames tonight! We'll be booting up the Xbox 360 and heading over to the BZPower Twitch channel at 7:30 PM Eastern to play more LEGO The Lord of the Rings. We're in the home stretch, having made it to the events of The Return of the King and getting closer every minute to throwing the One Ring into the fires of Orodruin! Let's see how far we can make it tonight!

Last week, after episode three of LEGO Masters aired, BZPower, The Brothers Brick, Brickset, and True North Bricks had the chance to talk to the eliminated team. Avoiding spoilers, we won't tell you who it was until you read on, but we did our best to learn about them and their passion for the brick. Continue on to learn all about them! And if you have any questions you'd like to hear asked in future interviews, let us know in the Talkback!  

During the heyday of Bionicle, many fans created their own computer games based on the universe to tell their own stories and adventures. As websites and file hosts have come and gone, many of them have been lost to time, but if you've been wanting to play some of them then you're in luck! Former BZPower Staff Member Emzee has recently posted Cyan Games + More, which contains over ten games from days of yore for you to play. It's great to see that some of these have been saved and are still available, and amazing that they still work on modern computers! Many thanks to Emzee for sharing these!

Continuing our Toy Fair 2020 coverage, we're taking a look at Friends next. It was once of the few themes that had unreleased sets on display, namely the second way of Play Cubes - which are a bit reminiscent of Polly Pocket if you're looking for a comparison. We're not going to go into a huge amount of depth, but you can still check out what the original minidoll theme is up to.  

Marvel Superheroes has fallen under a few banners recently: Marvel Spider-Man and Marvel Avengers specifically. With multiple sources to draw from, from MCU movies to television cartoons, as well as set designers' imaginations and inspiration from the comics, there are plenty of sets to get excited about. Here we can see the new sets that have just been released as well as a look at things to come for fans of Mark Millar's Old Man Logan comic.  

Love it or hate it, LEGO Star Wars is here to stay. I happen to love it, so I'm always excited to see what LEGO comes up with for Star Wars sets each year. As you'll see with most of our Toy Fair coverage, what we saw was primarily sets that are already on store shelves, which is unfortunate, but there were three sets that aren't available yet, including one that had not even been announced at the time of the show! To learn about them all, read on!  

Bricks Cascade LEGO Fan Expo returns to Portland, OR, this coming weekend, Feb 29 and March 1, at the Oregon Convention Center. Growing in attendance and quality year after year, Bricks Cascade has established itself as a premier fan convention for the West Coast. It is a great opportunity to visit and see countless impressive MOCs, including tables full from BZPower members in attendance. Several teams from the LEGO Masters show will also be exhibiting, building, and hanging out! Mark your calendars and prepare to pick your jaw up off the floor several times as you enjoy the MOCs on display.

Earlier this week, the LEGO community lost the great mind behind our most recognizable icon: Jens Nygaard Knudsen, who created the LEGO minifig, passed on Wednesday, February 19. He was a Chief Designer at LEGO. As Mark Stafford tweeted, "He leaves a loving wife, 3 children, 2 grandchildren, and over eight billion little plastic people infused with life by children’s imaginations." That's quite a legacy. Thank you, Jens, and may your imagination inspire us all.

Last night the annual Toy of the Year award winners were announced, and LEGO cleaned up with three wins! You can see all of the winners on The Toy Association's website, but here are the ones you really care about:

• Construction Toy of the Year: LEGO CITY Deep Space Rocket and Launch Control
• Specialty Toy of the Year: LEGO Stranger Things The Upside Down
• STEM/STEAM Toy of the Year: LEGO BOOST Star Wars Droid Commander

Congrats to LEGO on the 2020 TOTY wins! BZPower's Toy Fair coverage is just beginning, so make sure you keep coming back to check it all out!

LEGO is dropping some more news in advance of Toy Fair New York starting this weekend. This time we get our first look at sets based on the upcoming Minions: The Rise of Gru film, coming out in July. While most of the sets seem to be targeted at younger kids, there are some nice new parts and I think the brick-built Minions set looks pretty cool. Read on to see some pictures and read about all the fun features the builds contain!  

BZPower is on its way to Toy Fair 2020! There's already been some news released in advance of the show, and there's plenty more to come over the next week or so. We'll be sharing a lot of our initial pictures and updates on social media, so make sure you follow us on Instagram to see things as quickly as possible, followed shortly thereafter on Twitter and Facebook. As we start posting our coverage, we'll be adding it all here so you can find it in one place. Let us know what you're most interested in seeing in the Talkback topics and on social media. Let's see what there was to see!  

In advance of Toy Fair starting this Saturday, LEGO has shared some details on two sets coming out later this year based on Star Wars: The Mandalorian - the Disney+ series that helped launch the streaming service. Making up for the initial dearth of baby Yoda the Child merchandise, we're getting a BrickHeadz set of the cutie and the titular Mando, as well as a set of the hero's ship, The Razor Crest. To check out some early pictures of the sets and learn all about their design and play features, read on!  

Sometimes builders go out of their way to take 'specialized' or 'single-use' LEGO elements and incorporate them into MOCs. Recently CZQ and StevetheSquid shared their Metroid fan-designed Powerups which take things to the extreme, using Kraata canisters, rubber band holders, 2001 Toa torsos, and Star Wars CCBS blaster pieces in a variety of interesting ways. I'm particularly a fan of the Technic ribbed tubing coiled up inside the Kraata tub and think it's a great effect. Go check out the MOCs for yourself, see if you can learn any cool techniques from them, and let them know what you think about their creations!

It's that time of the week again! I'm pretty sure I've used that line before, probably many times, but it's still technically accurate. That time is Tuesday, which means we'll be over on the BZPower Twitch Channel tonight starting at 7:30 PM Eastern to play some LEGO videogames. We'll be diving back into LEGO The Lord of the Rings, after surviving the battle of Helm's Deep last week, and seeing what they throw our way this time. I'm looking forward to the fun-filled action and the seeing you all there!

Last week BZPower, The Brothers Brick, Brickset, and True North Bricks had the chance to talk with the host of LEGO Masters - the one and only Will Arnett! Sadly our time with him was short, but we did our best to learn what it's been like for him to host a reality TV show, what his time on the set was like, and what sort of impact he sees it having on his career. Oh, and also how often he uses the LEGO Batman voice. So what are you still reading this for? Go check out the interview!  

I came across an article today that's a little on the old side but no less relevant than when it was posted back in September. Over on Sifted, Maija Palmer has written about 7 ideas you can steal from Lego's intrapreneur [sic] in residence, based on an interview with David Gram. Through it, you learn a little bit about the backstory of the LEGO Ideas platform and, more importantly, the concepts the team used to make the service viable and eventually successful. I especially found the idea of 'pretotypes' interesting and helpful, but each one certainly seems like it could be useful in innovation. Give it a read for yourself and see what you can learn!

On the first episode of LEGO Masters, BZPower member Nuju Metru (Aaron on the show) and his teammate Christian dazzled the judges with their Dream Park Theme Park Spaceland. Now, Aaron has given us an inside look at the creation of this enormous diorama that took 30 man-hours to assemble. Check out his blog for a behind the scenes look at the builds and the thought process to bring it from a generic theme park to an alien-filled Spaceland. He also gives us an in-depth look at Space Smash, their space station designed to explode in last week's episode. Will they build another sci-fi creation this week? Check out LEGO Masters in Fox every Wednesday at 9pm e/c.

LEGO World in Copenhagen, Denmark started earlier this week, and LEGO had a bit of a surprise there. The Lead Users Lab, which aims to find partners to create products that fill niches LEGO currently doesn't, has displayed mock-ups of lighting kits for sets like the Downtown Diner, Treehouse, and Ford Mustang. They're not for sale - the Lab is just using this to gauge interest in the concept and get feedback - but it's certainly an interesting development and one I look forward to seeing progress. If you want to see more about these mock-ups, head on over to Brickset to check them out!

Yesterday BZPower, The Brothers Brick, and True North Bricks had the awesome opportunity to interview two of the contestants from LEGO Masters - the two who were eliminated in episode 2! We won't spoil who they were here, but you can read on to learn more about their experiences on the show, what it was like working with Will Arnett and the other competitors, and about their personal LEGO interests. Hopefully we'll be doing more of these interviews each week, so let us know in the Talkback what you'd like to hear from other contestants!

 

We're going to be trying something a little new with our streams this weekend. Next up on our build list, based on your feedback, is the Creator Expert 10262 James Bond Aston Martin DB5. Instead of one build session, however, we're going to have three, with the first being tonight at 7:30 PM Eastern on the BZPower Twitch channel, followed by streams on Saturday and Sunday at the same time. We expect each one to be about an hour, and we'll still be doing giveaways as always. We'd love your feedback on splitting things up like this and look forward to seeing you tonight!

After the livestream yesterday, Hasan from the LEGO Ideas team has announced the Second 2019 Review Results. Two projects made it through the gauntlet and will be turned into LEGO sets in the future: Medieval Blacksmith by Clemens Fiedler (aka Namirob) and Winnie the Pooh by Ben Alder (aka benlouisa). Both of them look like fantastic models that I look forward to building at some point. I'm bummed by a couple of the models that didn't make it through, but getting ten thousand votes is still an achievement! The Ideas team has also announced that the third 2019 Review Results will be coming this summer, which will include The Legend of the BIONICLE project!

If there's one thing I've learned about LEGO fans over the years, it's if there's a subject or topic worth diving into, someone out there will make it their passion. Every LEGO color ever made? It's out there. The exact specs of every LEGO motor? That's there too. One thing I have not seen discussed too much, and what BZPower member fabSheers is looking to learn about, is the distribution of Bionicle masks in mask packs. They recently started the topic Percent odds for Kanohi mask/krana/kraata packs 2001-2003 to learn more. I feel like someone out there has to have some good data or information/insight into this, and hopefully they're able to share it with everyone. Head over to see what you can add to the conversation or learn from it!

After some unfortunate technical issues last week, we're going to try our hand at streaming some LEGO The Lord of the Rings action again tonight. Come on over to the BZPower Twitch channel starting at 7:30 PM Eastern as we hopefully get through more than one level in a reasonable amount of time. I'm looking forward to getting to chop up some Orcs this time and if I see an Ent I'll be super stoked. Looking forward to seeing you all there!