The biggest LEGO event of the year: the New York Toy Fair 2016 began Saturday, February 13th at 7AM EST! Just like last year, I was at the press event in the morning, posting images, articles and videos from the show as fast as my little fingers could! But if you want to see them, most of our coverage won’t be here on Bricks And Bloks–because the grand opening of our rebranded site has arrived–our LEGO Toy Fair 2016 coverage will be taking place on our new site, Brick Toy News! Earlier today I posted my thoughts on the just-announced LEGO Marvel Summer 2016 sets over on my Marvel blog, and now it’s time to take a (textual) look at the Distinguished Competition with this summer’s wave of DC Super Heroes. There’s not a lot to be excited about quantitatively in the LEGO DC Summer 2016 sets–there’s only three sets and one is a Juniors set–but there’s plenty to get psyched about qualitatively! Coming this summer: all-new minifigures including Blue Beetle, Katana, Killer Moth, redesigned Killer Croc and Scarecrow, and more!
LEGO is a worldwide phenomenon as far as toys go, and that means that new sets are discovered all over the world all the time–not just in “the usual countries” like England and the United States. And the newest example of this is a previously-unseen (and totally cool) LEGO Marvel set that’s just turned up for sale online in the Republic of Croatia: the LEGO Spider-Man vs. The Venom Symbiote 30448 Polybag set! Although I really liked the adventurousness and the colors and elements in the LEGO Elves theme when it debuted last year, I didn’t outright love any of the actual sets in the theme just yet. But all that’s changing with this year’s fresh wave of Elves sets! Whereas most themes have already had their first wave of new toys released earlier this month, Elves fans are going to have to wait a wee bit longer. But it’s going to be worth the wait, as evident by the LEGO Elves Fire Dragon’s Lava Cave 41175 and the rest of this winter’s sets! Although “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is one of the most popular and renowned movies in the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was a pretty big let-down for LEGO fans, as there were exactly zero boxed sets released for the blockbuster movie.
But TLG isn’t making that same mistake again, as they’ve got three sets on deck for “Captain America: Civil War”–and the LEGO Black Panther Pursuit 76047 set will give us our first mass-release Winter Soldier and Black Panther minifigures! After having just been blessed with dozens of new sets being released last week, it seems a little bit perverse to be thinking of next month already–but hey, when you’re a LEGO collector, you’ve got to be constantly looking ahead, right? TLG certainly is, as they’ve once again shared next month’s store calendar a full month early. And according to the February 2016 LEGO Store Calendar, next month we can look forward to a new free promo set, a Double VIP Points offer and more! We may have just had a mother lode of new sets released this past week to kick off 2016, but that’s not all for the January 2016 LEGO sets hitting stores! There’s something for those who prefer small sets and impulse buys as well, as the long-awaited LEGO Creator Tiger 30285 Polybag and the new LEGO City Sports Car 30349 sets are now finally arriving in stores!
Because I am a crazy person, despite the fact that I stayed up last night and bought the new LEGO Brick Bank Modular Building from [email protected] at the stroke of midnight and ordered most of the rest of the new LEGO 2016 sets from Amazon with free shipping, I still set my alarm clock for bright and early so that I could be at the nearest LEGO Store first thing in the morning. So that I could take photos of all the newly-released sets, of course! (And, well… maybe so my resolve could soften and I could pick up a few that I didn’t want to order online and have to wait for…) UPDATE 1/1/2016: The new year has now arrived–and so has the Brick Bank! The LEGO Brick Bank 10251 is now available for order online with free shipping! As we are not fast approaching the holiday shopping season, get ready for things to kick into high gear with LEGO 2016 sets being revealed and announced at a crazy pace over the next two months! And leading the charge on January 1st, 2016 will be the latest addition to the ultra-popular modular buildings line: the LEGO Brick Bank 10251 modular building set has now been fully revealed!
UPDATE 1/1/2016: Something weird that looks really good is now available for shipping to your neighborhood–the LEGO Ghostbusters Firehouse set is now available for order online! Anyone wanna take bets on how long this is available before the initial shipment sells out? All of the waiting for the biggest LEGO release day of the (next) year is about to come to an end, as we’re just a few hours away from all of the January 1st 2016 sets going up for sale! But as always, some sets have slipped out early, and today I came face-to-face with most of the first wave sets for the newest LEGO theme on the block: the LEGO Nexo Knights sets have now begun to hit stores nationwide! I had been planning on not discussing the final Winter 2015 LEGO DC Superheroes set until more than one photo of the set had come out, but sharp-eyed readers noticed the set right away in my photos preview of the DC Mighty Micros sets yesterday and demanded to hear more. And thus, though we only have one image to go on–for now–let’s take a look at the sole comics-based LEGO Batman set coming this winter: it’s the Suicide Squad-inspired LEGO Batman Gotham City Cycle Chase 76053!
Over the weekend, I posted my photos preview of the LEGO Marvel Mighty Micros sets over on my Marvel Toys blog. While the Star Wars Micro-Fighters really grew on me, I thought the Marvel Mighty Micros were a bit too, well… wacky. But it turns out that while most Marvel fans weren’t thrilled about it, many LEGO fans are pretty excited about this new sub-theme, so now, let’s take a look at the trio of LEGO DC Mighty Micros sets! LEGO Elves got off to a good start this year, but I was wondering what compelling twist TLG could put on the theme in order to keep the momentum going strong in 2016. Well, the simple answer can be summarized in one word: Dragons! The LEGO Elves 2016 sets definitely won’t just feel like slightly more colorful Friends set with 2016’s heavy emphasis on brick-built Dragons!Five women scientists will receive the rare honor of being immortalized as inch-tall plastic figures with claws for hands. Lego announced Tuesday that a new set will feature some of the pioneering women who played vital but sometimes under-appreciated roles in the U.S. space program.
The figures have been commissioned under the toy maker’s Lego Ideas series that allows fans to propose concepts for new sets. The “Women of NASA” set was designed by science writer Maia Weinstock, the deputy editor of MIT News, and pitched with the headline “Ladies rock outer space!” Among Weinstock’s figures are Sally Ride, the first American woman in space; Nancy Grace Roman, who’s known as the “mother” of the Hubble Space Telescope; and Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space. Also included are Margaret Hamilton and Katherine Johnson, whose work helped put the first people on the moon. Weinstock said the set celebrates the NASA scientists’ careers and “provides an educational building experience to help young ones and adults alike learn about the history of women” in science and technology. Lego has been criticized in the past for a lack of professional female characters, most famously in a letter from a 7-year-old fan in 2014.