An interesting piece of news that came out from the recent San Diego Comic-Con is that LEGO has extended their partnership with Mojang in regards to LEGO Minecraft. We have known for some time (see: LEGO Minecraft Minifig-Scale Sets Coming!) that LEGO is planning to release a series of minifigure-size LEGO Minecraft sets, but according to this latest piece of new the relationship may extend even further. 🙂
ToyNews reported the following based on an article by Richard Milne in the Financial Times: LEGO and Mojang are extended their partnership to bring a full range of LEGO Minecraft sets to market. The Danish toymaker already teamed with the popular videogame franchise to release four Minecraft sets following the success of a fan suggested play-set on LEGO Ideas (then LEGO CUUSOO) in 2011. However, the pair now plans to launch a full range of LEGO Minecraft sets, in similar scale to that of normal products lines such as LEGO Star Wars.
“Credit to LEGO: they could see us as competition and not work with us, but they’re basically just embracing it and putting a lot of effort in to this project,” said Carl Manneh, chief executive of Mojang. LEGO has even adopted the strategy of collaborating with Minecraft players themselves for inspiration for the project. “One of the things that LEGO did that was kind of unprecedented for them in their long history was to reach out to the community for feedback directly on how the characters should look,” added Vu Bui, Mojang’s chief operating officer.
Players helped decide the look a characters including the Creepers alongside a host of animals and objects, such as the mine cart. Brian Eskilden, senior marketing manager at LEGO, said: “There’s a lot of similarities between the two experiences being about building and being creative with blocks and it is amazing to see what Minecraft has done with the community aspect.”
As mentioned above, LEGO has been tremendously proactive, reaching out to the LEGO and Minecraft communities to basically co-create the sets. You can visit the LEGO Minecraft Facebook Page for updates and to participate in the development with your feedback and ideas.
I find it interesting that the original LEGO CUUSOO submission was in fact minifigure scale, but LEGO decided to redesign it to micro-scale, and now after four micro-sets, they are going back to minifig scale. I like the LEGO Minecraft Micro World sets, and I have reviewed them before (see links at the end of this post), and I’m looking forward to the minifigure size versions as well. (See original LEGO CUUSOO submission below.)
There are some pictures circulating of the possible upcoming LEGO Minecraft sets, including: #21113 LEGO Minecraft The Cave, #21114 LEGO Minecraft The Farm, #21115 LEGO Minecraft The First Night, and #21118 LEGO Minecraft The Mine. You can see images of them in the video-preview below. Please note that these may be prototypes and not the final sets.
I’m also pretty sure that the introduction of the minifigure-size LEGO Minecraft sets will be the end of the LEGO Minecraft Micro World line. So if you are a Minecraft fan, and would like to collect something unique, the four LEGO Minecraft Micro World sets are a good and (not so expensive) option. They are available at the Online LEGO Shop.
So what do you think? Are you looking forward to the LEGO Minecraft sets and minifigures? Feel free to share your thoughts and discuss in the comment section below! 😉
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Neat! Brian of The Brick Show just started uploading Minecraft Videos, so this was perfect timing for them!
To be fair, that story is mine from the Financial Times http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6c3cd314-11aa-11e4-b356-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl
I enjoy reading your stuff so keep it up.
Richard, thanks for the update. That’s awesome! I can’t see your article though as a big pop-up hovers over it that I need to subscribe. I’m adding the link in the article in case somebody already has a subscription and would like to read it. 🙂
Another Lego article by Milne that seems to be freely available…
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/ee8941f8-01c5-11e4-ab5b-00144feab7de.html#axzz38x0E8UDM
Nice find! And yes, I can read that one! 🙂
I’m going to start spending a lot of money this season now… XD
I have to find a way to buy any micro set in Croatia
Lego online store doesent ship to croatia and there isnt a store that sells them (in croatia)
I tried ebay but the price of shipping and the set would be so high that is cheaper for me to fly to Denmark and buy it there 😀 hahaha
If anyone has any idea please tell me
Thanks ahead 😀
Dominic, really sorry to hear that. Do you have any friends or relatives that can bring you some LEGO sets from their travels? Also, you might consider shopping on Amazon. I have heard that Amazon France has excellent prices on LEGO and shipping is very reasonable.
hey admin
i dont have anyone in any of those countries(and noone really travels much :D) that lego ships out
and i didnt check out amazon yet but i will now 😀
thanks for advice
Another place you might consider is local toy-stores. You may not have an official LEGO store in your country, and LEGO may not ship there directly, but I’m pretty sure you would have local small and large toy shops that sell LEGO. No?
yes i do have quite good stores that sell legos(best one is the German store muller) but they dont sell minecraft sets :/
i think they got every other lego set 😀 (pretty much from lego movie sets to castle sets)
so yea… i will try amazon maybe but im not sure taxes are quite a bit for croatia
Dominick, if there are stores that carry LEGO, you might be able to ask them to special order the Minecraft sets for you. They probably don’t carry them because they feel the demand is not that great. Most stores don’t carry them here either. However since they have an established relationship with LEGO already, they should be able to get the sets for you with no extra cost. I would suggest you try that first. 😉
Oh wow didnt really knew that
Thanks admin 😀
Im on vacation atm but when i get back home ill try it
Thanks :))
Never mind
I just read that lego store is opening in zagreb in septrmber(its the first one in SE europe) so there will be something to pick out 😀
That’s nice! There is nothing like visiting an official LEGO store! 😛
Minecraft as a game is OK but Minecraft sets to me seem pointless because Minecraft is already essentially virtual LEGO. Steve’s head looks cool though.
And also, I’m surprised you haven’t done a post about the leaked BIONICLE images. Also the recently released image of the Erebor set from the Hobbit.
I’ve only seen one Bionicle image, so there isn’t much for admin to write about. I’ve also linked to the Hobbit set image on here, and there is an article on Brickset to read about it. 😉
There are two. One in black and white and one in color.
TBB is a blog, not a news site. I prefer to wait until I can write a worthy article about something, not just a 2-line sensational news blurp with very little details and which every LEGO news site have already written about. Having said that, one of our readers is already working on an article which is more in-debt about the upcoming resurrection of Bionicle. 😉
Keeps me up to date anyways because I don’t check into much anyways 😛
Admin, is the article in debt because it placed unpayable bets that Bionicle wouldn’t come back?
I don’t know because I’m not writing it, but I assume it is, because the author told me he was over 1,000 words last time he checked with me and he was wondering if that was okay. 😉
Fair enough. Of course, there is always the ‘speculative’ blog post =P
Yeah, sometimes it is unavoidable. If I feel that a subject has enough substance to write a blog post (even if it is speculative), and especially when I see our readers repeatedly talk or ask about something, I publish an article to fulfill their interest and give them a venue to discuss the subject. It is a delicate balance. If it would be my way all the way I wouldn’t talk about newsy stuff at all. But our readers want it I’m happy to support them when I can. And then I also sneak in my interests to keep the inspiration going. 😉
I think Minecraft as minifigure scale sets will be cool because Lego bricks will be able to capture the way Minecraft is as a game to a near perfect extent. It will be interesting to see how much of a perfectionist the Lego Group will be when it comes to things like scale, or block for block representations of stuff. I think that the minifigures should have the correct pixels printed on them. And on a different note, if Bionicle comes back, I will be a huge fan. I remember seeing Bionicle on store shelves as a kid and looking at them. Lot’s of good Lego stuff happened when I was a kid, I was just to young to realize it! I just hope Bionicle sticks to it’s awesome roots, instead of being more like Hero Factory. I would think it would have to, unless the former line will be going soon.
I think Bionicle likely will replace Hero Factory, albeit using several of the molds invented for HF.
That’s my feeling too. I don’t think it would make sense to run both themes at the same time. They are too similar. One thing I’m not sure about though is how well HF is doing. Did it ever get the same popularity as Bionicle with the young generation that is growing up now? I always see HF sets scattered on the shelves at stores, but the fact is I have also seen the same with Bionicle.
Yeah. The only issue I had with HF is the lack of an actual story. Bionicle had one of the best stories LEGO has ever come up with! 😀
They should make a lego minecraft video game
I f bionicle comes back, I hope it will have a different storyline that HF.
dumbest thing in the world >:(