Thursday 10 September 2015

Offsite round-up: Space Shuttles and more....

Having promised a few weeks back that I'd be more proactive about posting a notification here on Gimme LEGO when set reviews and other new articles that I'd written were published elsewhere, I figured that I should let you know about some articles that I've written for Issue 4 of Bricks magazine which came out earlier this week.


As you've no doubt already guessed from the front cover above, the latest issue of Bricks is mostly concerned with various facets of LEGO space. The content spans almost four decades, with Jeremy Williams' Classic Space retrospective rubbing shoulders with an overview of the newly-released Star Wars: The Force Awakens sets and a look back at the Space Police III theme. There's also an interview with LEGO designer Mark Stafford who has worked on a multitude of space and sci-fi themes including Space Police III, Mars Mission, Exo-Force and Alien Conquest, while Exo-Suit designer Peter Reid gives us a tour of his favourite LEGO mechs.


Given the space focus I was predictably keen to be involved, and when Bricks editor Mark Guest approached me about writing a potted history of the LEGO Space Shuttle I was happy to oblige. As a longstanding fan of the Space Shuttle I've previously reviewed a number of LEGO's Space Shuttle sets including Set 6544 Shuttle Transcon 2 (below) and Set 3367 Space Shuttle. I'd also been meaning to do a round up of LEGO's Space Shuttle back catalogue for absolutely ages but had never gotten around to doing it; Mark's request was therefore just the push I needed. Anyway, it's finally done now, and at over 1,000 words it's a fairly comprehensive overview of the subject which covers pretty much every Space Shuttle that LEGO have released over the years, including some pretty obscure stuff.


In addition to my Space Shuttle feature, Bricks Issue 4 also includes my review of the recently-released City Space Set 60080 Spaceport (below) as well as a brief overview of the other three 2015 City Space sets.


Bricks is only available online at the present time, and you can order it here.