Lego isn’t just for kids: the latest news for nostalgic adults and adult budgets

Lego’s last Mars Rover was a little simplistic (pdf) — so I’m glad to see that the new Lego Technic NASA Mars Rover Perseverance, just announced today for $100, puts more of the real rover’s engineering front and center.

With the flick of a lever, the rover’s iconic six-wheel suspension spins a set of ball-tipped gears — to turn four of its wheels inward so you can spin the entire craft 360-degrees. You can switch back and forth between that 360-degree mode and a normal driving mode, much like you can see in the NASA JPL video here:

Lego has announced a new premium set based on 1980s arcade classic Pac-Man. The 2,650-piece set is designed to recreate a Pac-Man arcade cabinet, complete with an illuminating coin-slot, four-way joystick, and a mechanical chase.

There’s a crank on the side of the cabinet which you can turn to move the characters around the game’s maze, and the set comes with a diorama of a figurine playing a smaller version of the arcade cabinet. On top of the cabinet sit rotating versions of Pac-Man and the ghosts Blinky and Clyde.

Today, five Lego fans are experiencing a dream come true — Lego will turn their design into an official limited-edition Lego set and pay them 5 percent of the proceeds when the sets go up for preorder (limit 20,000 each) in February 2024.

Here are the sets that the internet (and Lego’s panel of judges) have chosen to produce:

Donkey Kong has been around as long as Mario himself, but this August will be the first time he’s officially appeared in Lego form — on August 1st, the Danish toymaker is adding four Lego Donkey Kong sets to the ever-widening Lego Super Mario lineup.

They aren’t filled with ladders, hammers, and fireballs like the original arcade game, mind; these sets are straight out of Donkey Kong Country, with the gorilla’s relatives along for the ride.

Nick Lever, video editor and Lego Masters Australia finalist, has recreated the original Nintendo Game Boy in bricks — and with such droolworthy depth that I hereby petition Lego to make it into an official set.

It’s just 364 pieces, only 115 different parts, most of them common enough you can find ‘em dirt cheap. Almost every recognizable facet of the Game Boy is represented, from the angled rice-grain Start / Select buttons to the distinctive tint of the screen — achieved here by placing lime green tiles underneath a trans-blue window.

This is the third time we’ve seen the T-65 X-Wing Starfighter in brick form, and it’s Lego’s most detailed yet. The 1,949-piece X-Wing costs $239.99 and joins the other sets in the Lego Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series, which include the behemoths that are the 7,541-piece UCS Millennium Falcon and the 6,785-piece UCS AT-AT.

Equipped with 4L4 fusial thrust engines and the KX9 laser cannons, the design of Lego’s latest UCS X-Wing kit doesn’t deviate much from its previous iterations. However, it does feature several hundred more pieces when compared to the 1,304-piece X-Wing set released in 2000 and the 1,559-piece one from 2013. The new X-Wing measures 10.5 inches in height and 21.5 inches in length once complete.

Lego teased a collaboration with BTS earlier this month and, needless to say, the fans had questions. Would the set come with photo cards? Will Jimin play with it on a livestream? Does this mean we’ll see BTS in the next Lego Movie?

We don’t have all the answers to those questions yet (although I need an answer on the Lego Movie stat). We have, however, finally gotten our first glimpse of this highly anticipated Lego set, which (fairly accurately) replicates the set of the “Dynamite” music video, complete with mini-figs of the seven group members.

Frodo, Samwise, Merry, Pippin, Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, Aragon, plus Elrond, Arwen, Bilbo, and more — there’s room in Lego’s just-announced 6,167-piece elven sanctuary Rivendell for the entire Fellowship to debate The One Ring, and the shards of a particularly noteworthy sword.

Not a lot of room, mind you. The $500 set obviously has nothing on the legendary 200,000-piece recreation of Rivendell by Alice Finch and David Frank that’s been the centerpiece at multiple fan conventions.

For nearly a decade, Lego has welcomed your ideas for what might become official Lego sets — but not ones based on The Legend of Zelda. Since 2014, it has rejected eight Zelda sets that gathered the required 10,000 votes for consideration, even as Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser, and the original NES console have all come to Lego. In 2022, the company even straight-up banned Zelda submissions due to a “license conflict,” making the community think some other toymaker locked down the IP.

But according to Promobricks, one of the foremost Lego leakers, a Legend of Zelda set appears to finally be in development. If true, perhaps it might release alongside the Breath of the Wild sequel this May?

Have you ever wanted to be a Lego designer? Now’s your chance — if you create an original Lego set and submit it here starting February 1st, 2023, you can compete to be one of up to five unofficial sets that Lego will officially produce. Up to 20,000 of your set will be sold to fans around the world, and you’ll even get paid — designers get 5 percent of the proceeds.

They won’t come in a traditional Lego box, mind you, and they won’t be sold in stores. They’ll exclusively be part of the online “BrickLink Designer Program,” where the boxes look like this: