This Actually Playable LEGO Tetris Set Celebrates the Digital Game’s 40th Anniversary

Not only does this LEGO set let you slide bricks into place, it comes with a randomized brick generator, and even a scoreboard to capture your score!

A perfect tribute to one of the world’s most influential digital games (with perhaps the most riveting backstory of any game ever), this LEGO Ideas set comes from the mind of LEGO Builder ‘victorvey300’ who wanted to pay a hat-tip to Tetris on its 40th anniversary which first made its appearance in Russian game circles back in the early 80s, finally finding its way to Nintendo’s first Game Boy in 1985. The LEGO set comes in the form of a box with a lid that doubles as the game’s screen. Bricks sit in a container below, controls can be found on the bottom right, and the top right acts as a leaderboard. When all’s done, the box closes shut, ensuring that bricks don’t get lost.

Designer: victorvey300

Not to spoil the AppleTV+ movie for you, but the Tetris game has one of the most nail-biting backstories of all time. Developed by Alexey Pajitnov, a resident of the Soviet Republic in the 80s, Tetris was circulated heavily within the USSR on bootlegged floppy disks and finally made its way to an American sales representative for a gaming company. What ensued was literally Cold War espionage at its best. Henk Rogers, the American rep who discovered Tetris tried to buy the rights to the game on behalf of Nintendo, which was working on the first Game Boy handheld console. Tetris was to be a part of this revolutionary portable gaming device, but the Soviets weren’t ready to sell Tetris to any outsider without putting up a fight (all hardware and software sales outside the Union were controlled/authorized by a government agency). In the end, Pajitnov managed to escape Russia and also ended up selling the rights to Tetris, which featured on the first Game Boy, becoming the global sensation it is today. As a tribute to this story and to Alexey himself, the LEGO Ideas kit also comes with a minifigure of Pajitnov standing beside an old-school computer!

The beauty of this LEGO build lies in just how much attention to detail it has. The vault-shaped kit has Tetris graphics on the outside (with branding), and the inside is simply filled with features and details that allow as many as 6 players to actually play a full game of Tetris, complete with brick generators that tell you what the next brick should be.

Playing the game is delightfully simple. Bricks sit in a bin at the bottom, the playable area or the matrix grid is right in front with vertical channels to slide bricks down, and a treadmill-shaped panel on the bottom right lets you scroll to see what your next brick should be. Scroll with your right hand, find the corresponding brick with your left and drop it down the channel of your choice. It slides down instantly, landing in place just the way it would in a game. The only real difference is that you need to choose each brick’s orientation and position before you drop it into the channel. Pieces don’t rotate or move once they’ve been slid in.

A game of digital Tetris can go on for HOURS because every time you complete a row, it disappears, helping clear out a part of the screen for more gameplay. That feature doesn’t exist in this LEGO version, which makes for a fairly shorter game… but calculating scores is much easier, allowing you to correspond the uppermost complete row to the line on the scoreboard right beside it. You can, however, reset the entire game in a flash by hitting the red Reset button on the left side of the matrix grid and have all the bricks drop down into the bin below. The alternative would be to manually lift each brick out of the lid, which sounds a little too problematic…

The Tetris bricks are referred to as tetrominoes, and come in 7 shapes that correspond with letters of the alphabet (I, O, T, J, L, S, and Z). The bricks are color-coded to make things easier to understand (after all, we recognize colors MUCH faster than we do shapes) for all people, and the game allows as many as 6 players, with colorful studs that you can press into the scoreboard to mark your highest scores.

This LEGO kit comes from the mind of independent builder victorvey300, who put his passion for LEGO and his love for Tetris together to create this incredibly comprehensive MOC (my own creation). Victor’s submission is a part of LEGO’s Ideas forum, a community-driven site where passionate LEGO creators build their own structures and users vote for their favorite ones. With over 5000 votes, this LEGO Tetris set is cruising comfortably to hit the 10,000 vote mark, which is then followed by LEGO’s own internal team reviewing the submission before turning it into a retail set. If you want, you can vote for the LEGO Ideas Tetris set too simply by visiting the LEGO Ideas website here.

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This LEGO Mechanical Heart Beats Just Like A Real Heart Would

A real heart beats at roughly anywhere between 60bpm or 100bpm on average… LEGO builder Anatomical_Brick’s ‘Motorized Beating Heart’ outputs 55bpm, providing a near-perfect replication of what an actual beating heart looks like. The coolest part, the entire thing is made from LEGO bricks and is powered by a set of replaceable batteries.

Designer: Anatomical_Brick

At the heart of the model lies a LEGO Technic frame equipped with two interlocking slider mechanisms and a scissor element. This ingenious design allows for dynamic adjustments to the width and height of the central structure. A flexible outer shell, crafted from interconnected segments joined by rubber bands, envelops the core frame. This construction creates a captivating illusion of movement as the structure expands and contracts. The entire model is roughly 3x in scale (to make sure the heart moves effortlessly), and is powered by a motor linked to a battery pack, bringing it to life.

“I initially wanted to make a heart for Brickvention due to my fascination in the organ and had never seen it done using LEGO pieces. When telling others about this project, the reoccurring feedback was that it should move. They were absolutely right! After many months of trial and error, I’m finally happy with the results and so were the people at Brickvention,” said Anatomical_Brick.

The final result is a marvel of technology as well as biology. Sure, LEGO bricks only get you so much realistic detail, but watching the heart beating feels nothing short of captivating, The auricles and ventricles of the heart expand and contract, simulating the effect of blood being pumped through the organ. The red part of the heart indicates where oxygenated blood passes through the organ, whereas the blue part shows the passage of deoxygenated blood.

Currently a submission on the LEGO Ideas forum, Anatomical_Brick’s MOC (My Own Creation) is gathering support from the broader LEGO community. With more than 700 votes under their belt, the submission is en-route to the coveted 10,000 vote mark, following which LEGO’s internal team will review it before turning it into a buyable box set!

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This LEGO version of the Portal 2 Gun won’t help you teleport, but it looks stunningly real

Arguably one of the best games from the last decade, Portal 2 still holds its own against games today. Sure, it isn’t open-world, doesn’t have NPCs, and the graphics aren’t bleeding-edge, but the game is a brilliant combination of storytelling, premise, and clever gameplay. For the uninitiated, Portal 2 is a game that has you escape from a dystopian prison using nothing but a teleportation gun. You can create portals that allow you to ‘tunnel’ through reality, and the game relies on your understanding of physics and geometry to help you navigate this futuristic labyrinth filled with occasional surprises and enemies. The portal gun is all you have, and it’s arguably the only thing you need.

Now sure, such a gun clearly doesn’t exist in real life, but this LEGO recreation from Hooded-Blaze sure has captured our fancy! Styled to be a perfect replica of the cyberpunk quantum gadget from the game, the Portal 2 Quantum Tunneling Device is made entirely out of LEGO bricks, and comes with its own stand, as well as the ability to alternate between shooting blue or orange tunnels, just like in the game!

Designer: Hooded-Blaze

Although Hooded-Blaze doesn’t specify how many bricks are used to build this MOC (My Own Creation), chances are the portal gun is just a smidge tinier than the real deal. With its cyberpunk stylings, the gun boasts a uniquely blobject-ish form, looking almost like a stormtrooper ant, with three pincers right in front of the repulsor. The repulsor feeds off a cell that sits in the middle of the gun, and altering the cell allows you to switch between blue and orange portals.

“This would be no doubt a fantastic LEGO set because of how large the Portal community is. Since its release, over 40 million players have played Portal 2 worldwide,” says LEGO builder Hooded-Blaze. This isn’t the first time they’ve submitted the portal gun to the LEGO Ideas forum. The previous fan-made submission crossed the coveted 10,000 vote mark on the LEGO Ideas website with overwhelming support from the communituy, but was rejected by LEGO’s internal team. “Since the last time this LEGO Ideas project was released, it has been redesigned to be stronger internally and externally and more aesthetically pleasing, with some key components staying the same,” Hooded-Blaze mentions. “I have built a physical prototype of the Portal Gun from what LEGO I had. I have learnt a lot from the mistakes I made on the previous version, and it has been significantly improved since.”

With over 7,000 votes, the LEGO Ideas Portal 2 Quantum Tunneling Device is well on its way to crossing the 10,000 vote mark yet again. You can vote for the entry on the LEGO Ideas website too. Maybe this time the LEGO gods will listen to us and turn this into a box-set that we all can buy and secretly ‘pew-pew’ with when we’re bored!

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The Iconic ‘Girl With A Pear Earring’ Painting gets immortalized with its own LEGO build!

You may not be familiar with Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer’s entire body of work, but chances are you’ve definitely seen one of his paintings. About as iconic as Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, or Munch’s The Scream, ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ is just one of those paintings that’s entered the hall of fame for being one of the most memorable paintings ever. The artpiece features a chiaroscuro-style artwork of a girl in a headgear and a pearl earring, with dramatic lighting from one side that creates dramatic contrast and highlights/shadows. It’s a remarkably captivating painting, and an impressive one at that, considering it was painted in 1665. After getting its own Scarlett Johansson movie in 2003, the iconic painting gets its own fan-made LEGO set! Designed by LEGO builder ‘alanboar’, this MOC (My Own Creation) features roughly 1600 bricks, and comes with a Vermeer minifigure to match!

Designer: Alanboar Cheung

Built from precisely 1619 LEGO bricks, the set wonderfully replicates the painting, bringing it to life by giving it actual depth too. Of course, the use of LEGO bricks results in a lack of fine details, but therein lies the charm! The girl in the LEGO set mimics her inspiration beautifully, with the same blue and yellow headscarf, contemplative expression, and that gorgeous pearl earring that is easily a highlight of both the painting as well as this set.

Alanboar’s little brick mosaic utilizes LEGO’s art bricks, which allow making intricate colored artpieces without those studs getting in the way. The final set measures 17.6 inches tall, and 15.1 inches wide, and even features a uniquely baroque frame to go with the painting. I’m not entirely sure whether LEGO manufactures silver hemispherical bricks, but it’s possible that Alanboar took a few liberties with the pearl earring part.

The entire set comes with a plug-to-assemble design, and even features a miniature replica of the painting along with the Vermeer minifigure and a tiny pedestal that aptly labels the mini diorama. The LEGO Girl with a Pearl Earring is currently a fan-made submission to LEGO’s Ideas forum, an online platform for LEGO enthusiasts to build and showcase their own unique creations or MOCs. Users can then vote for their favorite MOCs, which LEGO then reviews and turns into box-sets that anybody can buy. If you want to vote for Alanboar’s entry, visit the LEGO Ideas website here!

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Top 10 LEGO Creations Inspired By Your Favorite Movies

LEGO has spread its wings in almost every genre and arena. And if you’re a movie lover, then this list is for you! Some of your favorite movies have been immortalized in LEGO form! And, we’ve curated a collection of immaculate and precise LEGO builds inspired by and based on your favorite movies. From a Godzilla in LEGO form to a LEGO build of Kung Fu Panda – LEGO has managed to incorporate your favorite movies in LEGO format. Which LEGO build would you want to try at home?!

1. LEGO Godzilla

LEGO builder Matthew Esposito decided to make a LEGO version of Godzilla since we almost have ten or more movies, but not a single LEGO Godzilla! It is a small-scale version of the city-smashing reptile, and it is modeled after the ‘King of Monsters’ Godzilla’ (from the 2019 movie). It stands only a few inches tall, but it is amped with a hefty body and, a super long tail, and can blow blue flames in any direction, burning down entire cities in minutes!

2. The Sorting Hat

If we’re talking about LEGO builds from our favorite movies, then we obviously need to include something from Harry Potter! The LEGO Group finally launched the Sorting Hat! It is a dedicated LEGO version with a concealed sound box that will let out loud and randomized phrases in English, which we’ve all heard before. It stands at 9.5 inches tall and is 7.5 diameters in length, and can be displayed proudly on a stand that features Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw house symbols.

3. LEGO Kung Fu Panda

This submission to the LEGO Ideas Forum features a LEGO Kung Fu Panda from the first movie in the franchise! The adorable Po is armed with a dragon scroll, and a bowl of noodles, and he can even perform the epic Wixu Finger Hold. The brick character has a completely positionable body with movable hands, legs, head, fingers, and even eyebrows. In fact, Po even has a jiggling belly that bounces if you touch it!

4. Seven Dwarf’s Cottage

LEGO has brought the Seven Dwarf’s Cottage from the iconic Disney animation The Snow White movie to life! The lavish and intricate build is made using 2228 pieces and features 10 mini figurines. The cottage has been detailed with a lot of care and precision, creating an intriguing little structure that reminds us of all the interesting and memorable bits of the tale. The LEGO house is also equipped with Snow White’s glass coffin, the Evil Queen with the forbidden red apple, the Prince, and of course the Seven Dwarfs.

5. LEGO Captain America Shield

This life-size LEGO Captain America shield is built using 3000 pieces and measures almost 18.5 inches in diameter. The shield is also accompanied by a tiny Captain America Minifigure! The shield isn’t made from vibranium, of course, but it really does look and feel like the real deal, and if you’ve ever accidentally stepped on a LEGO brick, you know it is as tough as vibranium when you take the shooting pain that courses through your body in consideration.

6. LEGO Dobby

LEGO immortalized another beloved character from the Harry Potter world! Dobby the House Elf got his own little LEGO kit. It is built using only 403 bricks, making it one of the easier LEGO builds. It features a few heartwarming and distinct design details, such as moving limbs, a rotating head, adjustable ears, and repositionable fingers that let Dobby snap fingers, point at things, look around, or even grip little items like the sock that freed Dobby.

7. The LEGO® Jurassic World Dinosaur Fossils: T. rex Skull

The LEGO® Jurassic World Dinosaur Fossils: T. rex Skull (76964) is a fantastic LEGO set intended for museum-like display. In fact, it is one of the first Jurassic World sets designed for such a style of display. It includes 577 pieces and contains a T. Rex skull with an opening jaw and a stand to present and display it. It includes an info plaque, an amber piece at the back, as well as an intriguing fossilized footprint.

8. The LEGO Avengers Set

The LEGO Avengers set is 35.5 inches tall and was designed as a part of the 60th anniversary of the Avengers. It is meant to be one of the tallest sets when it is put together. If you look closer, you will notice the Quinjet, Leviathan, and two Chitauri flyers from the 2012 Avengers Assemble. The interior showcases scenes from the Infinity Saga, Age of Ultron party, and Endgame.

9. LEGO Quidditch Trunk

The LEGO Quidditch Trunk may not be the most complex or difficult Harry Potter build, but it is quite interactive and entertaining! It involves 599 bricks and features a comprehensive Quidditch setup that includes various brooms, players, hoops, and a launcher that allows you to shoot disc-shaped qauffles through the hoops.

10. LEGO Miller’s Planet Scene

Designed by LEGO builder Minibrick Productions, the iconic Miller’s Planet scene from the Interstellar movie has been immortalized in this little LEGO-based build and showcases the ranger aircraft, astronauts Cooper and Brad, and the shapeshifting robots TARS and CASE. The two robots feature repositionable arms that let them walk like humans, while Hathaway and McConaughey wear their space suits.

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LEGO unveils 3,745-brick Dungeons & Dragons Set for the game’s 50th Anniversary

If you personally asked me, LEGO and Dungeons & Dragons are a match made in heaven – both have existed for decades, are infinitely customizable, and have a highly loyal and dedicated user base that’s constantly helping the artform evolve and expand. It took nearly half a century, but the two have finally come together in a glorious collaboration, marking DND’s 50th anniversary. The LEGO® Ideas 21348 DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Red Dragon’s Tale is a stunning 3,745-piece playable box-set, designed by LEGO-builder Lucas Bolt and submitted to LEGO’s Ideas forum, where it was picked up by LEGO’s internal team and realized into a box-set. It features a bustling tavern, a mysterious dungeon, and a towering wizard’s tower – all begging to be explored. But the real star of the show is the gigantic Cinderhowl, a fearsome red dragon that builders can pose and wrap around the tower, recreating countless heart-pounding encounters.

Designer: Lucas Bolt for LEGO

“LEGO bricks and DUNGEONS & DRAGONS have been used by fans to generate stories and build adventures for so long that bringing these two creative brands together during our 50th Anniversary felt like a no-brainer,” said Dan Rawson, Global Play Lead on DUNGEONS & DRAGONS and RPGs.

This set captures the essence of the Dungeons & Dragons experience marvelously. Included are six minifigures – a brave party of adventurers ready to face any challenge. From the stoic Dwarf Cleric to the nimble Orc Rogue, each character embodies the diverse and fantastical world of D&D. To add to the atmosphere, the set also features iconic monsters like the mind-flaying Beholder and the ferocious Owlbear, making every build a thrilling adventure.

The LEGO Ideas team also partnered with Wizards of the Coast (a Hasbro subsidiary specializing in building role-playing, trading card, and digital games for all genres of players) to create a custom Dungeons & Dragons adventure specifically designed for the Red Dragon’s Tale set. This unique story adds a whole new layer of play, allowing fans to weave their own tales and relive epic D&D campaigns brick by brick.

“The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS theme combined with my love of history, fantasy, and making games, inspired me to create a playable layout with different challenges and routes to explore. I had so much fun designing this piece, and it is a real privilege seeing my design developed into a detailed LEGO set to celebrate 50 years of the iconic game”, said Lucas, referencing his combined love for DND and LEGO bricks.

Whether you’re a seasoned Dungeons & Dragons player or simply a LEGO aficionado, the Red Dragon’s Tale set celebrates creativity and a collaborative spirit. Build the game together with your friends before spending the next couple of hours playing the game. It’s an experience that’s highly rewarding, and while most LEGO sets are designed to be assembled and then just preserved as is, this particular set actually encourages constant tinkering, rebuilding, expanding, and hands-on gameplay! So gather your party, sharpen your axe, and get ready to embark on a legendary quest! And if you’re in Amsterdam or Milan on the 6th or 12th of April respectively, LEGO is also hosting a meet-and-greet where you can get your copy of the Red Dragon’s Tale signed by designer Lucas Bolt himself!

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Adorable LEGO Feng Shui Fortune Cat can wave its hands to give you good luck!

In Feng Shui, the lucky cat, also known as the maneki-neko or fortune cat, is a Japanese figurine that represents good luck, wealth, and prosperity. The figurine depicts a cat, usually a calico Japanese Bobtail, with a raised paw in a beckoning gesture. LEGO builder ‘2PPL’ decided to give this cultural icon its own brick build. Meet the LEGO Ideas Maneki Neko, an adorable sitting cat that waves its hands at you, practically giving you blessings for a more prosperous life!

Designer: 2PPL

“Distinctive features of the Maneki Neko include the raised paw, which can be either right or left depending on local tradition or belief, and it often wears a decorative collar or necklace with a bell,” says 2PPL. “The color of the Maneki Neko also has symbolic meanings: white is associated with purity and happiness, black wards off evil, gold symbolizes wealth and success, and red is linked to love and relationships.”

Although it’s entirely unclear how the Maneki Neko waves its hands, it’s likely to rely on a mechanism similar to the one found in the original. The original Maneki Neko uses an electromagnetic coil and a pendulum-style mechanism powered by a battery – it isn’t inconceivable that this LEGO one does so too, although making the mechanism out of LEGO bricks may be a bit challenging.

However, with over 2,300 supporters, the Maneki Neko is surely prospering on the LEGO Ideas forum, where fellow LEGO builders and enthusiasts gather to vote for their favorite fan-made creations. If a creation reaches the coveted 10,000 vote threshold, it’s sent to the LEGO internal team for review, following which it gets turned into a buyable box set. The LEGO Ideas Maneki Neko definitely has a long way to go till it gets to that mark, but if you do fancy a perpetually waving LEGO feline, head down to the LEGO Ideas website to vote for this project!

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LEGO Kung Fu Panda comes with a posable design, a jiggling belly, and a Tai Lung to battle with!

Armed with a dragon scroll, a bowl of noodles, and the ability to perform the epic Wixu Finger Hold, this LEGO Kung Fu Panda is ready to bring the battle to Tai Lung! Based on the first movie in the franchise, this submission to the LEGO Ideas Forum brings the adorable Po to life using LEGO bricks. The LEGO brick character features an entirely positionable body with movable hands, legs, fingers, head, and even eyebrows… and if all that wasn’t enough, Po even comes with a jiggling belly that bounces if you touch it! Talk about commitment to detail, right?!

Designer: Brixter

Designed by a LEGO Builder by the name of ‘Brixter’, this MOC (My Own Creation) features Po the panda and Tai Lung the snow leopard. The first movie was based on a journey of discovery, culminating in a battle for who would be the ‘Dragon Warrior’. The movie ends with Po performing the legendary Wuxi Finger Hold on Tai Lung – a frame so iconic Brixter even recreated it using the LEGO set below!

Skadoosh!

Although it’s unclear how many pieces are required for the LEGO build, the final figure stands at just roughly 3-4 inches tall, using LEGO Art Set bricks to create the final design. This is what gives the characters their distinct almost pixelated effect. The Po figurine comes with movable body parts, letting you make him look around, change facial expressions, practice kung fu, and even chow down on noodles and soup after a grueling training session!

But more notably, Po comes with a potbelly that actually jiggles when touched. Visible in the video above, you can press the belly inwards, or move it around, simulating the feeling of a large belly that moves around under its own weight!

Tai Lung, on the other hand, comes with a more muscular design, mimicking the physique of the snow leopard from the series. He’s got red eyes, a menacing glare with adjustable eyebrows, and a slightly tilted grin that comes with the hubris and confidence that Tai Lung had, believing he was destined to be the Dragon Warrior.

Brixter’s submission to the LEGO Ideas Forum managed to grab the eyes of LEGO’s internal team, which awarded the MOC a ‘Staff Pick’ badge. With just over 500 votes, Brixter is looking to get support from the broader LEGO community to help turn this into a retail box set. You can vote for the LEGO Kung Fu Panda on the LEGO Ideas website here.

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LEGO Godzilla might be smaller than its living counterpart, but it’s just as ferocious

It’s strange that we’ve got probably around ten or more Godzilla movies, but no Godzilla LEGO set yet. Hoping to change that, LEGO Builder Matthew Esposito decided to make a small-scale brick version of everyone’s favorite city-smashing reptile. Modeled after the ‘King of Monsters’ Godzilla (from the 2019 movie), this tiny terror stands merely a few inches tall, but encapsulates every inch of its original form’s grandeur, with its hefty body, incredibly long tail, and the ability to blow blue flames in any direction, razing cities down in mere minutes with zero regret.

Designer: Matthew Esposito

“I was really blown away by the new look of the Godzilla in these newer movies. I was fascinated by how this new iteration of Godzilla was designed, and I thought that this new look would translate incredibly well into LEGO,” says LEGO builder Matthew Esposito. “This model would make a great LEGO set because I believe that, with the new movie coming soon into theaters and onto streaming services, I believe that many people would be hyped and excited to watch this new movie, as well as have their own buildable Godzilla at hand to play with.”

Esposito doesn’t mention how many bricks his build uses, but it’s probably in the ~500 ballpark (I could be completely wrong). The Godzilla features multiple moving parts, including opposable hands and fingers, a moving jaw, adjustable legs, and even an adjustable tail (which does need its own separate support given the Godzilla’s strange CG). Esposito employs the use of grey bricks, which lends itself well to the iconic monster, and even uses bricks with cracks at certain intervals, highlighting Godzilla’s imperfect skin. The LEGO brick bumps are visible across the body too, almost acting like scales!

This build also comes with its own rich blue fireball that fits right in Godzilla’s mouth, making it look like it’s shooting flames at a building or a nearby helicopter.

Esposito originally built this LEGO version of Godzilla back in 2021, gaining massive support from the LEGO Ideas community who rushed to give him the 10,000 votes he needed to enter the review stage of the LEGO Ideas process. Sadly, the internal team at LEGO rejected the submission at the time, but Esposito resubmitted his MOC (My Own Creation) to the forum again this year, already garnering over 3,400 votes. If you want to see the LEGO Godzilla turn into a retail box set, head down to the LEGO Ideas website and give Esposito your vote!

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This LEGO Vintage Radio lets you actually play music through your smartphone…

With 25 submissions to the LEGO Ideas forum (5 of which crossed the 10,000 vote mark), LEGO builder Dimexart is somewhat of a veteran when it comes to putting plastic bricks together. The brick aficionado’s latest creation combines LEGOs with the real-world in the form of a vintage radio that actually plays music. Made from over a thousand LEGO bricks, this vintage radio has a secret flap on the back that lets you slide your smartphone in. Switch on Spotify or YouTube, select your favorite track, and hit play as you pop your phone into the LEGO Vintage Radio and it recreates the feeling of having an antique radio playing your favorite tracks! The best part, Dimexart’s build comes with functional knobs and buttons that you can twist and press, moving sliders inside the gizmo just like you would with an authentic AM/FM radio.

Designer: Dimexart

Strangely enough, Dimexart made a radio back in 2021 out of LEGO bricks, and it did cross the 10,000 vote mark too, but was rejected by LEGO’s internal team. Unfazed by this, Dimexart went back to the drawing board and decided to tweak the radio to make it even better. The new MOC (My Own Creation, as it’s called in LEGO parlance) now features a flap on the back that let’s you slide any smartphone in, using the phone’s speakers and the acoustic chamber of the empty LEGO radio to create that warm, slightly twangy audio associated with radios of the past.

In Dimexart’s demo, he even uses the phone screen to mimic the warm backlight seen in most radio control panels. Given that they were sometimes used at night too, radios came with lights in their gauges so you could see which station you were on. Dimexart’s build uses light from your smartphone’s screen to create a similar experience.

The dials on the left and right are both functional and cause sliders inside to move left or right to indicate the station/frequency or the volume. There are dials/knobs and buttons on the bottom too, which are functional in that they can be interacted with – but that’s about all they do. It’s a fun interaction, however, and recreates the real tactile joy of the radio, which firmly belonged in a much more hands-on era long before touchscreens dominated our lives. The radio comes with a wood-inspired aesthetic, a rather realistic set of grills, and that gorgeous control panel on the bottom that I’m sure you won’t be able to get enough of.

Dimexart’s entry currently has 3,228 supporters as of writing this article. If you want to vote for the entry (and hopefully see it turn into a retail box set), vote for it on the LEGO Ideas website here.

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