Run #01

Replacement packs have been shipped

If you haven’t gotten the notification, we’ve shipped out the replacement packs and those should be with you soon! You can check them on your updated tracking system!

Some of you may start receiving your replacement pack sometime this week so keep a lookout. We’re expecting those should all get delivered over the next couple of weeks for the majority of you.

Run #02

Batch 1 shipments are making their way over

We made the call to get them shipped as early as we could and pushed all the Specter orders to Batch 2 shipments since our scrappy voting system from last week was clearly leaning in favour of that. The good news is that it’s finally out, but we ran into a few complications, which is why they’ve only just started making their way over. We’re still expecting an October delivery so we’re hopefully still on track, just now with no buffer 😬

Who needs a buffer anyway? Amirite?

Batch 2 shipments to be locked very soon

We’ll be locking the batch and sending out an email soon for everyone to check their addresses and confirm them for us. Please do it before the deadline as we can’t make changes once the shipment leaves the warehouse.

If you haven’t yet subscribed, we recommend you do so to keep on top of the latest updates regarding the pre-order, as well as information on future developments regarding this theme.

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General Updates

Tallneck and Grazer sold out

You may have noticed that the individual sets are currently sold out, but we still have Complete Editions with Tallnecks and Grazers in them. This is because we assigned a specific amount of stock for Individual sets vs the Complete Edition and the Tallnecks are just crazy popular. Will they come back? Possibly in a future run, but not likely for Run #02. The only way you can get them is through the Complete Edition, or through some Unscrupulous Knock-off Companies (UNCs?), but we all know that those versions are inferior and unfair to the original creator.

Shipping tracker upgrades

We’ve spent a bit of time liaising with our shipping partner to get our tracker working properly. Hopefully the integration will work well for this run so you can trace you shipment from your dashboards.

Why is this specific issue so persistent? you may be wondering...

Well, as we’re discovering, the world of logistics is a complex web of systems hobbled together so it’s really hard know exactly what’s going on because that specific information may be sitting on someone’s clipboard rather than in any digital format that we can access.

We’ll keep trying to improve it, and are super committed to getting on top of all of this, which is precisely why we’ve hired Jin Jing, our Operations Specialist. Jin Jing is returning to Malaysia after spending 2 years in Hokkaido, Japan and is also ex-Lumos (what can I say, we had a good team) so we know she’s the right person to handle this. If you have any issues with your shipments or require replacements, you’ll most likely be hearing from her.

Speaking of hiring...

The team is growing further and we’ve shored ourselves up with talent to match what we’re hoping to achieve in the coming months. You’ll be seeing a few more faces beyond Sean’s in our social media videos soon :)

We’ve also moved office!

If you’ve ever visited Kuala Lumpur, you’ve most likely walked through the famous Petaling Street, which is right in the heart of KL’s Chinatown. It’s the last place we would’ve imagined ourselves moving to, but here we are, EasternBrick is now in Chinatown...very fitting.

So apparently, in Chinese culture, you go around and throw some salt mixed with rice into the corners of your new home or office to ward off bad spirits. Then once you’ve gotten rid of those pesky menaces, you roll a pineapple for good fortune. Our poor landlord had to oblige us, but at least they left with a pineapple.

Neo Bikes arriving imminently

We’ve been sending out surveys for our upcoming Creator Set, which if you haven’t seen the latest designs yet, you can check them out here.

This is our latest experiment with a 5-in-1 Creator Set, allowing you to build any one of the designs, but in providing all the necessary parts, giving you a decent library of parts to customise and maybe even design your own builds from scratch.

This is part of our bigger mission, where we’re trying to make it easier for creators to develop their own designs, by providing the parts kits, but also building the tools to help creators develop sets. We’ve gone through it ourselves and the current process of developing commercial sets leaves a lot to be desired. We’ve already made a bunch of tools that help us develop our own sets, but we’ll be packaging them up and making them available to creators to use so hopefully making MOCs and sharing them with others will become more accessible than ever.

A brand new MOC platform coming

Which brings me to an upcoming platform that we’re working on. At EasternBrick, we put a lot of effort into making our sets the highest quality they can be so we get very involved with creators in co-developing their sets. This means there are a bunch of creators who we can’t work with due to resource or commercialisation constraints. However, we want to still be able to help them however we can, and so we’re looking for creators who are struggling with turning their builds into sellable sets. If that’s you, sign-up here!

The future of Horizon builds

We’ve been getting a lot of queries about whether we’re working on more beasts. The answer to that is an unequivocal yes. As you know (and as is very overdue) there is a Ravager that’s made significant progress, but that’s just from what I’ve been working on amongst the endless list of things related to building a business. Our team has grown since then and so there are now some resources freed up to start working with our upcoming creators to bring more Horizon builds to the fans.

We just need to focus on moving the Tremortusk first!

We will have more Horizon updates once Run #02 starts coming to a close, maybe around the end of the year.

I know I’ve thrown a lot of little nuggets of information at you without a lot of meat, but let me know what you’re most interested in hearing about in the comments and I’ll make sure to include more of those updates in the next one. Until then, happy building!

Hey everyone! It’s already been a month since our last update, which felt like only 2 weeks ago, but a lot has happened, as Sean and I visited our partners in China last week and we have a lot to share, so let me jump right in!

Run #01

Final batch of shipment to Australia is nearly there

We’ve effectively completed the campaign and are just waiting on a strange Australia customs issue that’s affecting a handful of our Australian customers - Sean is constantly trying to get information, but we passed the customs inspection a while ago and the packages are just waiting to proceed to the last mile delivery. I know it’s been ages since we shipped, but it’s nearly there - thank you for all your patience!

For everyone else, we hope you’re enjoying building your sets. The reviews are steadily coming in and we’re still reading every one of them and taking note on what can be better. The updates to certain builds will come in waves as there’s still just one person making the fixes and updates (that’s me!) but they will keep coming as I’m unable to rest until the builds are the best that they can be.

Replacement sets are in production

On the replacement sets - we’ve finally found a supplier and have tested the hoses in-person whilst we were there and can confirm that it will be going into production soon. Apologies for the delay, but they should be ready to ship out in the next few weeks!

We have a small request

We’re trying to increase visibility on the latest pre-order run so that we can close the campaign faster and focus more energy on building new beasts - so we need your help to share your finished builds on social media and even on our subreddit. This is to help others see that we are delivering and to help convince them that these sets are of a much higher quality as well as the fact that the original creator is actually being paid for them - which is not true if you buy older versions of these sets anywhere else. If you’re posting your collection, just be sure to tag us and we’ll feature your build on our stories :)

Thank you all for your support - I’m still grateful for all the conversations we’re able to have and for all the feedback you’re providing through our support channels and hope to continue serving you all the best we can!

Run #02

Our visit to China last week was a necessary one as we needed to check-in with production as well as with our shipping partners, and potential new partners. As always, there’s a bit of good news and a bit of bad news, but I’ll try to lay it out as simply as I can.

Packaging samples reviewed

We’ve checked samples of the packaging to ensure they’re all good - a few tweaks here and there, but we were mostly satisfied with them given the amount of time we had to get it all done.

Production is getting slightly delayed for the Specter

We discovered that our factory has been completely busy with their largest partner in a 3 month production run. We shan’t name who it is, but they’re massive and very well-known and quite frankly, we’re surprised that the factory reserved some production capacity specifically for little EB in the middle of it all. So the SerialBuilder sets are still on track, but the Specter which was a later edition is getting pushed to the end of August, so will only be ready to be shipped in September. If you’ve not order a Specter, then there’s nothing to worry about and we’re still on track for your order.

If, however, you have ordered a Specter, there are a few scenarios we’ve been considering, but we need your input to decide on which option to go with.

Option 1 - we deliver in 2 tranches and ship out your non-Specter orders first and then the Specters when they’re ready.

Option 2 - We wait until the Specters are ready and then ship out your complete order in one batch but offer $20 in credit (credit system yet to be built out).

Both of the options are painful for us, but we think it’s important to show our commitment to giving our customers the best experience we can, even if that means we need to take a hit. We also want you all to know that we’re never withholding information and try our best to keep you as informed as we possibly can.

For your input, we’d like for all our Specter customers to vote on which option you prefer as we need to pick one and go with that. So it’ll be a majority vote based on the poll. I’ll leave 2 comments in the comments section as the different options and I just need you to ‘like’ the one that you want to vote for. I know this isn’t the most sophisticated poll, but I trust you guys to only vote if you’re a Specter customer and only vote on one option. Hopefully there’s a clear favourite and the tallies aren’t too close.

Updates to the Specter

Since we’re on the subject of the Specter, I thought I’d share the updates we made and hopefully lessen the sting as the final product will be better off for it.

With all the changes, we’ve ended up underpricing the Specter set, but that’s OK. We’re just excited for everyone to get a build designed by us from scratch! :D

General Updates

Identifying Parts Issues

I mentioned in the previous update about some customers having to hammer parts of the build together and we couldn’t quite understand why since we we’re facing the same issue. Thank you to all of you who reached out to run some tests for us - much appreciated! What we discovered was that the pins used for the production run were slightly different moulds.

The right pin has a bit more give that allows for the bar to slide through. We will be addressing that in the future by providing the pins with slots so that you can more easily slide them onto the bars - no more hammers, unless you’re an anarchist and want to smash and build again.

That probably doesn’t explain the discrepancy for why we didn’t feel the issue on our end, so my only explanation is that I’m drinking the right amount of teh tarik to give me superhuman strength or my testing team forgot to inform me that they also used hammers during their tests with the parts from their respective packs. I’ll ignorantly continue to drink my sweet milky drinks!

Other outcomes from our visit to China

Shipping partner updates

We met our shipping partner to figure out what issues resulted in delayed shipments and why our shipping tracker was not so accurate. Meeting face-to-face definitely helped uncover a few issues that were hampering our previous implementation so that should hopefully be cleared up and we can have a better shipping tracker in the future.

Closer integration and automation with our factory

We explored an integration opportunity to be able to source bricks more effectively. This probably requires it’s own post, so I’ll share more once we’ve made some progress here, but we’re quite excited for it.

A Foreigner Friendlier China

Another observation is that China in general has been opening up a lot more than in the past. As a Brit, I no longer needed a visa to enter the country, which was nice. Our partners were also very keen to share their love of coffee, which I believe seems to have replaced the older going-and-getting-drunk-together way of doing business in the past. I’m sure that’s still a thing, but now it finally feels like something I can partake in - too bad Sean’s body is a temple to which caffeine is strictly forbidden.

If anyone is curious about anything else to do with our trip, ask away in the comments section and I’ll be sure to answer.

Neo Bikes launch pushed back a little

As you know, we’re gearing up to launch Neo Bikes - our newest Creator Set for sci-fi enthusiasts who also love bikes, but we need to push the launch back a little so that we can properly test everything before committing to the set and the production run. For now, I can leave you with these teasers that we put together.

That’s quite a lot for one update, so I’ll end it here, but we’re all still very busy with what’s coming next, so do stay tuned for announcements!

Run #01 Updates

Delivery woes are (almost) over!

So the EU shipment finally, finally, finally, made it to the port and after a couple of weeks there, got released and the sets started making their way to their new homes 🎉 Almost 3 months late, we know, but we’re just relieved that they finally made it and are super grateful for all the patience you guys have shown.

Hopefully the majority of you should have received your sets by now, so unless we’re already in touch with you regarding your specific shipment, if you haven’t yet received your set, please do get in touch with us and we’ll help track it down.

Replacement parts update

We’ve been getting a bunch of questions regarding these - the latest is that we’ve just received the sample parts and have been testing them out with the builds to make sure they meet the standard we’re looking for. Unfortunately, they’re not quite there. Whilst the hoses are firmer, they’re still not firm enough and so tend to still droop over time. We’re shifting tactics and finding a new supplier for these parts. This will take a little longer to get right so we’ll need to push the expected delivery date for them, but as we’ve previously advised, if you’re wondering whether you should wait for them, I’d probably say no, go and have fun building your sets. The replacement parts will be easily changeable once you do eventually get them. When that'll be is still a bit of a question mark, but we're hoping to have found a new supplier by next month.

Thank you

Finally, I just want to again extend my appreciation to you all for taking a chance with us and believing in us to deliver you this set. It was our first attempt and we decided to do it the absolute hardest way possible, by not only offering the biggest set you’ve ever seen, but also managing all the moving parts with completely new suppliers and shipping partners. This was a 2-man effort (we don’t count 2B - besides his comfort cuddles, his input was minimal at best), and while it was a bit rocky, and there are still ongoing issues that we will be taking care of, it wasn’t a complete disaster. Most importantly though, we’ve proven that there’s a demand for what we’re building and that we’re able to reward the creator fairly whilst also removing the pain for customers who want to purchase incredible custom sets. We’re definitely thinking about how to build out this model further with more creators and will have more updates for you in the coming months.

Run #02 Updates

The order has been placed

We’ve placed the production order with the factory and the timeline has been confirmed. We’re currently scheduled to complete production on the 31st of July, which is certainly cutting it close, with no buffer, but hopefully since it’s the second run, there shouldn’t be any further delays like last time, where we were scrambling the updated parts lists for the fixes. Everything is just about on track at the moment and hopefully shipping will commence sometime in August.

Packaging design

We’ve submitted the packaging design for the new sets. Because we’re offering individual sets this time, we needed to create individual packaging for each of them. Here’s what they will roughly look like...

General Updates

More reviews coming in

Thank you to everyone for continuing to provide the reviews as you go through the builds. There’s a lot of feedback, which, I won’t deny, is a little overwhelming, but it’s exactly what we want - our plan is to compile it all together and tackle the issues in batches and make continuous incremental improvements so that the end result is of a very high standard. On that note - I just updated the Sawtooth instructions to V1.2 a few days ago and have tried to address all the feedback within the parts that everyone has available to them. Not as helpful if you’ve already built it, but hopefully all your input will be appreciated by those who have yet to tackle the build.

Taking a hammer to the Tremortusk

We’ve seen a few reports of people saying that they needed a hammer for this step. As rightly pointed out in the reviews, this is a step too far. I’m not quite sure how this happened, but I specifically updated this section as I found the original flow did indeed require a hammer. The updated one however was doable by hand, albeit a bit tight.

If you have these parts as official LEGO parts, I’d love to hear if you’re able to do this without any issues. I’m wondering whether this is a tolerance issue or whether we need to redesign this element completely. Any help would be much appreciated! 🙏

Specter update

To everyone who has pre-ordered the Specter, I’d like to let you know that we are updating the design a little based on feedback we’ve been getting. We’re updating the yellow parts to gold and because we’re no longer restricted to the parts from the Creator Set, we’re updating a few sections to make it a bit more robust. There’s nothing you need to do, but just letting you know in case you’re wondering why your Specter build is looking a bit more blingy than the photo we’ve provided on the site. I don’t have the updated photo of the build or the new gold parts just yet, since we’re waiting for them to arrive, but I’ll provide those in the next update.

Behind the scenes drama

This wasn’t something I was expecting to be talking about in this update, but it happened so recently and the trauma is so fresh that I can’t help but share with you about some of the challenges and dangers of running your own little business.
So a few days ago, if you were on the website, you may have noticed some strange issues with things not looking correct and everything being labelled as sold-out.
In a momentary lapse of focus, I ended up wiping our whole database with a super dangerous command that rebuilt our database for another creator-focused tool that we’re working on.

This was probably the most stressful event I’ve had to deal with this year. Luckily, it was recoverable even though it absolutely shouldn’t have been, but I’m not complaining, and am instead thanking my lucky stars. It required a bit of work to get back up and running and restored to how it should’ve been. That said, if you notice anything different with your instructions access or missing reviews, do let me know and I’ll see if I can track those issues down. But as far as I know, the big issue has been resolved. Ultimately no data was lost, and we don't store any payment information as that lives on Stripe or PayPal (depending on your payment method).

OK, I just wanted to get that off my chest, as that was actually quite scary. I now have a new rule of not doing any complex tasks after dinnertime. You may still hear from me through our support emails during that window though as there are times when you can’t sleep and just need something to do.

Lego building studio

We took a day off to level up our build space - there are a few easter eggs in this shot, but for anyone who’s interested in the massive metal posters - I can say that I’m thoroughly impressed with them - you can order your own from our friends at Photobook who are offering a discount until the end of June (use code: PBXEBRICK). Just make sure that the artwork you’re uploading is of the highest quality for the best results!

For the storage of parts - we’ve built out our own system out of lego parts and custom trays that pairs well with IKEA furniture, particularly the KALLAX shelves. This is something we’re considering creating a set for, but I’d like to hear from you first if there’s any interest in building your own storage units out of lego. I found it quite fun, and I quite like the idea of lego storing all the other lego. It’s all quite modular too. What are your main priorities when it comes to sorting your lego?

Is that Kaneda’s bike?

I see you’re also a person of culture. Yes it is. If you’ve been paying attention, we have a new upcoming Creator Set which we’re calling ‘Neo Bikes’. The idea here is that you can make any style of 1:5 scale bike but we will be starting with 5 specific builds that Clement has been hard at work on developing. We will reveal the actual designs soon, but for now, we’ll leave you with these. If you’re not already signed up to the waitlist for when this goes live, you can do so here.

And if you’re not into bikes and just want more Horizon beasts, fret not, those updates are coming…as soon as I stop randomly deleting things with code and focus on building things with bricks.

If you haven’t yet subscribed, we recommend you do so to keep on top of the latest updates regarding the pre-order, as well as information on future developments around the set as we’re constantly striving to make it better.

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Since not all of the sections in the updates will apply to everyone, I’ll be labelling each section with Run #01 and Run #02 so that you know if that particular section is relevant to you.

Where we’re at with shipping [Run #01]

As you may have seen through some people posting about it, around half of you should have already received your sets and many of you have already started building, some even having finished all the builds. Even though the ordered bagging significantly speeds up the time it takes to build these models, completing all of them within a few weeks is still a very impressive feat.

For our EU customers, the ship is expected to dock today(!) (Edit: 20th May) and so most of you should receive your sets in the next couple of weeks. Again, truly sorry for the delay and we thank you for your incredible patience! Hopefully not much longer to wait!

We’ve heard that a few packages have gone astray, which is just heartbreaking knowing that they got all the way across to the other side of the world and then went missing at the last step. We’ll of-course take care of these slip-ups, but unfortunately it means having to wait again for another shipment, which is just quite painful. If anyone has any suggestions for really affordable local warehousing so that we could ship a few out to handle lost packages, please get in touch with us as we’d love to explore that option.

We’ve also not been too happy with the API we’ve had access to for this round of shipping and so we will be exploring more options for future shipments to have better tracking, so that you know exactly what’s going on.

Finally, you may have noticed a “Confirm Delivered” button on your shipping card in your Dashboard. If you’ve received your set, please go ahead and press that button so that we know you’ve gotten it. We just need the extra confirmation to track to ensure everyone gets their sets. Thank you!

Replacements [Run #01]

For the replacement hoses, we’re just in the middle of confirming the order with the factory and so are probably expecting to have them shipped out by around the end of the month. We’ve had about half of you confirm your addresses for us so far. If you haven’t don’t that, please go ahead and do that or if you’ve moved within the last month, some very confused person will be receiving your hoses instead.

Mysterious bag 00 [Run #01]

Some of you have written in asking about the 00 bags for each of the builds. This was something that got left on the wayside and I didn’t properly address what these were within our updates as I was quite overloaded with all the other things we needed to get right. But better late than never, so here you go…

The 00 bags are the leftover parts from the original builds before we made the fixes to the models. Rather than replacing them completely, we thought it’d be a nice thing to include so that you had the extra parts at your disposal. A bit like when you get your tooth after your tooth removal surgery. It’s a bit useless when it’s not in your mouth, but some people find a way to put it to good use.

We know that we haven’t provided the original instructions for SerialBuilder’s builds so there’s no way for you to actually build his original version as of now. It was part of the plan for us to provide you with both versions (ours and his) but we decided that it would’ve made things a bit too complicated, so we opted for the simpler offering. On the plus side, you should have a bunch of extras in case you ever need them as spares for future sets. Or maybe we can sell them to the brick fairy.

Reviews

Thank you all for the incoming reviews! It’s been lovely reading what you’ve been writing and how most of you are enjoying the builds. We’re reading all the feedback and are making sure that we’re addressing as much of it as we can. You may have noticed that we also leave that feedback section for all to see as we want to be fully transparent and rather than hiding any issues, we want them to stay up as a reminder to our small team that there are still issues that need addressing.

Also notice that there’s an edit button for your reviews, so if we do fix an issue you’ve listed in your review and you think it’s worth updating your score, you have the option to do so.

The point of this is to hold us accountable and since we’re asian with asian parents, we hate having scores lower than 100% so it’ll keep us up at night until we get it right.

Sawtooth Issues [Run #01]

Since a lot of you are starting with the smaller builds first and working your way up, we’re beginning to receive feedback regarding the Sawtooth build, which I’d like to address here.

We’ve noticed the same issue with our set, which was frustrating since we specifically made fixes to the front legs because the original build suffered from this issue. Our ‘fixed’ prototype does actually stand well, and we’re able to even pose it with one leg off the ground, which is why we were confident about the fix and a bit dumbfounded when it turned out the way it did. So I did some digging to get to the bottom of the issue.

It turned out that the hinge part we used was not actually from our chosen supplier and instead was from one of the suppliers we were testing but ultimately rejected due to tolerance issues. If you remember back from our tests, our other potential supplier had higher clutch power for some parts. Ironically, in this case, the tighter joints is what we needed. Sorry about this mixup, but I do have a solution!

If you stick a bar part into the joint hole, it provides the tension you need hold the front arms up and pose the Sawtooth in any position. Most bar parts will work, and the longer the bar section, the more tension it’ll provide. Whilst in my personal opinion, the tooth looks the best and most inconspicuous, it doesn’t hold as well as the wrench. So I ended up choosing that part for our build. You may have some of them as they may have been included as extras, but we will include these wrench parts as replacements along with the replacement set we’re shipping out to you.

Ravager update / Sawtooth issues

I know I’ve gone on too long about this Ravager update, without providing an update, so this time, I’ve made sure I have something to talk about.

Here’s the latest version of the build, but it’s not yet complete as I’m still figuring out some details. What I have found though, is a better way to build the mane of these beasts, with the panels being a lot sturdier. We’re contemplating updating the Sawtooth build with the same technique so that we can address the few comments we’ve been seeing about the side panels still being too loose, even after our fix there.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, we really do appreciate it and listen to all the suggestions to try and build the best versions we can.

Placing an order with the factory [Run #02]

We’re currently in the process of placing the order for Run #02. This will take a few weeks as we finalise our parts lists and packaging solution to get the final quotation. Since we’re offering individual sets this time around, we need to create a whole set of packaging for each of them too. We expect this back and forth with the factory to last a few weeks before moving to production.

We’re still getting people asking whether we’re a scam

This one was a bit puzzling, but we’re still getting this query from time-to-time but we discovered that it’s mainly due to the fact that our reviews are only on our website and not anywhere else. So I have another ask - please engage with us and show us your build updates on our more public forums, particularly our subreddit.

On a final note, I’d just like to share our page dedicated to the builds you’ve been sharing through your reviews on the website. I personally love seeing these sets in environments that are not ours as it’s proof that we did a thing. Thank you all for believing in us and supporting us! ❤️

One last thing

Clement has started his own lego creator page on Instagram to document his journey to becoming a lego designer. He’s too shy to ask for followers, so do check out his page and drop him a follow if you like his builds. He’ll be designing our upcoming sets, which we’re very excited to share with you.

The Update

For what I thought would be a relatively simple update since we’re shipping and all we have to do is wait till everyone starts receiving their sets, the past month has genuinely been one of our busiest yet. There’s actually a lot to cover, so let me lay it out here…

1. Shipping updates and issues

2. Creator Set first impressions and issues

3. Build updates...and issues

4. Run #02...and - ok, you can see where this is going...

Let’s jump in!

Shipping updates

The process for shipping entails a little bit more than just putting the sets on a boat and bidding farewell and hoping for the best. The reason we give 6-8 weeks is due to 2 weeks processing time, 4 weeks shipping time (the time the shipment spends on an actual boat) and then a further 2 weeks for last mile delivery, ie to your door. These are estimates, because life is messy and unpredictable and each route has its own challenges. But we are only now able to say that all the packages are in phase 2 of the shipping process, where they’re on a ship and on their way to their respective destinations.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of the specific shipments:

Asia

The sets were mostly delivered as of the first week of April, with a few outstanding sets currently going through the respective local country’s customs

Oceania

Australian orders are being delivered in 2 batches due to container capacity issues - the first batch is now checked into a local warehouse with deliveries taking place throughout the week. The second batch’s boat has been rescheduled due to the shipping company’s boat availability, and it will only arrive at the local port on the 2nd of May.

New Zealand orders are scheduled to arrive at the port on the 19th of April.

US

The ship bound for the US docked at the destination port on the 4th of April, and has been transported to the respective warehouses since the 9th of April, with deliveries expecting to take place throughout the next 2 weeks.

UK

The ship bound for the UK departed on 23rd of March and is expected to dock at the port on 26th April. You should hopefully receive the sets by the end of April / early May.

Europe

This has been the biggest issue for us and quite unexpected. Let me start with the good news, which is that the ship has finally set sail as of 13th April and is expected to arrive at the destination port on 15th May. This is obviously much later than we had promised and we’re truly sorry for the delay. Let me try to explain what happened (according to our best understanding).

Due to a stricter inspection process at Chinese customs - increasing from a typical < 5% inspection rate to a 50% inspection rate - there began a massive backlog of goods getting stuck at the port. We still aren’t clear on exactly why there’s been a change or what caused it, but we’ve also been told that the events in the Middle East have also been causing havoc to some shipping routes and thus the ports from which the boats are departing.
Also according to our shipping partner, our shipment was checked and cleared customs multiple times whilst sitting in the dock, making the 50% inspection rate still seem like an underestimate. The issue, whatever it was, has been resolved now, and we’re hoping that’s the last of it.

Others

All of the other sets are on their way and may be delayed if they are sharing the same vessel as Europe-bound shipments.

It’s now safe to say that all ships have been launched and are on their way if not already arrived.

We’re terribly sorry about the delay not just for the EU shipment but also for other delayed shipments to other destinations - adding this additional month of delay to our already 1 month of delay is quite a lot of delay. We’re learning a lot and already have things we want to do differently next time to ensure a smoother process for future runs. But we’re hoping that once you get your set, this whole ordeal around waiting for it will be long forgotten!

Which brings me to the Creator Set itself…

Creator Set First Impressions

It may sound strange but we only just received our own finalised sample (it was one from the pre-order batch). We actually had some customers receive the set before we got ours.

We’ve slowly been going through it and building the sets again with the updated bagging and are ensuring that all the instructions are free of errors and fits the build order correctly. Full transparency, I’ve already found and rectified a few small errors for some of the builds.

If you haven’t seen them yet, the instructions are available through the dashboard. You’ll notice that some already have version 1.1. When we make big enough changes, we’ll add a new version and a tag to let you know if the version you previously downloaded is outdated. Making these edits like this is part of how we’re able to bring some of the time and cost down for building these massive sets. Hopefully you can see how this can be beneficial in the future when bigger changes may need to happen. We can simply update the instructions and redistribute them immediately.

And the big issue...

One major issue we’ve identified is that there was a mixup in the pipe parts that are used across the builds. Unfortunately, the factory ended up mistakenly applying a specification for some pipes to all of the pipes, leaving them a bit too flexible and causing the longer ones to droop.

This is obviously unacceptable and so we’re offering free replacements to everyone. We’ll just need you to fill out a form for us to confirm your shipping address. We’ll process them altogether in a monthly batch and hopefully get those sent out to you as soon as we can.

I know, some of you haven’t even received your sets yet, and the irony is not lost on me, but if you apply for the replacements now, they may even arrive at the same time you get around to building your sets.

If you’re concerned about the build experience being affected due to these parts, I wouldn’t worry about it too much as the pipes usually come at the end of the builds and are used for antennae. It’s possible to build and easily replace them later once you receive the replacement parts as they’re generally not integral parts of the build.

Build updates

It’s been a few months since the Ravager update, and I’m sorry to say that there’s still not much to update on that front just yet. But we are getting it and a bunch of other builds ready for our upcoming launch. It’s just all running in parallel right now and so all the builds will likely come at once as they’re all going through the pre-release phases.

The big issue here is just our capacity since there are only 2 builders - Clement and I - and Clement is busy working on an upcoming set of a different theme that will also be revealed in the coming months. But the Horizon builds are coming - I just need a little bit more time to get them right! And to stop being distracted by this Slickback.

Run #02

If you’ve been checking our website - and I know some of you have since you’ve already placed an order(!) - you’ll see that we’ve quietly enabled Run #02 so that orders can start coming in and we can do a bit of testing on our end. For this round, you’ll notice that individual sets have been enabled along with the Specter. We will be adding the additional builds as and when they become available.

We’ve been thinking about our Core Edition customers and whilst we don’t have an ‘Upgrade Set’ available for this run, if there is interest here, do reach out to us we’ll see what we can do. We just don’t have it online as the group of Core Edition customers is quite small. But we’ll see what we can do to accommodate you guys.

The issue

This is all happening according to our original schedule, but due to the massive delays in shipping, most of you still haven’t received your sets yet, let alone built them.

We were really hoping that you’d have had a chance to test out the builds and were able to already provide reviews and testimonials for us to share with everyone as this really helps us as a business.

As of now, we currently don’t have a single review for any build, but we know some of you have already built a few sets. If that is you, we’d be incredibly grateful if you could help us out by leaving a review of that specific set you’ve built, and then eventually of the Creator Set as a whole once you’re done with all the builds. We’ve set up a review system on our site where you can submit your feedback. To be clear, we’re looking for completely honest and fair reviews and aren’t asking for artificially glowing reviews because if there’s something that can be improved, we absolutely want to know about it. We’ve also been doing a lot of talking about ourselves, like a lot of it, but we’d love to see other people starting conversations online about the Creator Set and how we’re shaking up the whole process of ordering parts for these massive builds.

Pur-lease leave us a review

If you’re unsure about where to submit your review, you can click the button below and that’ll bring you to the review section. You’ll need to be logged into your account to pick the set you’d like to review - thank you!

Leave us a review

Let me start with the big one - we’ve just shipped out all of the sets! It’s no longer in our hands and now we just need to wait for them to arrive on all your doorsteps. I can say that it’s been quite a journey to this point, a lot of work, stress and pain, but we’re excited to finally get these sets out and moving across the globe. Like we mentioned, it’ll be about 6-8 weeks from this point, which we know is a long wait, but we’ll try to keep you entertained in the meantime.

Alright, that’s enough AI nonsense for now…

What to expect in your package

For the Complete Edition, this is what 22,000 parts looks like all bagged up.

Big changes to the Dashboard

If you’ve recently logged into the dashboard, you may have noticed some changes.

We’ve updated the dashboard to now organise everything a little better and there is a clear location for where you can find all your digital instructions ready for when the set arrives.

We’re still finalising the instructions for SerialBuilder’s sets (it was a humongous task, which I’m glad to be 99% done with) and will be releasing them for you to download soon!

You may also notice a shipping section appearing soon, which is where you can keep track of your shipment. We’re just getting the API set up with our shipping partner so that will be functioning shortly!

A note on the Ravager build

Before I start getting questions on the Ravager, I should let you know that it has unfortunately made very little progress since the last update. I wish I could blame it on 2B seeing it as a threat to his territory, but the reality is that we’ve just been so focused on getting everything else out the door. But rest assured, it’s coming.

A new Creator announcement is coming

There is some exciting news that I’d like to tease before we make an official announcement. We’re working with another very talented MOC designer who has built some excellent Horizon machines and we’re currently in the process of testing whether the builds are suitable in their current form.

Run #02 is gearing up

You may have noticed that we’ve started a waitlist for Run #02 which should hopefully launch after the majority of you have received your sets. We originally had planned for this second run to happen sooner, but we wanted to make sure that we delivered the first set before running a new pre-order. There will be a few differences this time around.

We’re still offering the Complete Edition but probably at a slightly increased price. Our initial prices were introductory and we pushed it as low as we could for you, our first time supporters. But we hadn’t accounted for the fixes and updates to the instructions so ended up cutting it a bit too close on the first pre-order, making things a little too stressful to manage, so we’re just hoping to get a little more runway for the business moving forward.

We won’t be offering the Core Edition anymore. Whilst the idea was interesting, we just didn’t get as much interest in this set to make it a viable long-term set. I’ve seen a few messages from our Core Edition customers about the option to upgrade. Since we’ve already shipped, what I would recommend for now is to wait for your set, and then if you feel like you need to upgrade to the Complete Edition, we may be able to do a custom brick order for you. Just know that it may cost a bit more than the USD200 difference we had in Run #01.

For the first time, and due to popular demand, we’ll be offering individual sets for each of the builds. If you wanted the parts for the Specter or the upcoming Ravager builds, we’ll also be making them available as individual sets.

Hopefully you’ll have had time to try out the build experience with us whilst that pre-order run is going on to help you decide whether you want to go again for round 2.

If you’re already a customer or subscribed to our Substack, you’ll get updates on when the pre-order will go live. If not, do sign up for the waitlist so you don’t miss out.

Subscribe now

It’s February already and I’m sure you’re all expecting notifications for shipments to be going out. I’d like to provide an update before you start wondering what’s going on, so I’ll cut straight to the point for this update, and give you the good and the bad news.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way

We’ve been trying to push for our production run to get completed, however a few things have resulted in a few delays on the factory side. There were a few parts that required sourcing from different suppliers due to our main factory not having the parts in stock/production. This means that we’re beholden to other factories’ timeframes to supply the necessary parts. This has meant a slight delay in the usual process for factory.

The bigger issue for us was that the Lunar New Year is coming up (Feb-17) and this is effectively the big holiday period in China. What ends up happening is that a lot of factories and businesses shut down for a few weeks whilst everyone goes back to their hometowns to spend time and celebrate with their families. Our factory told us that they will effectively close down on the 9th of Feb until the end of the month. Unfortunately for us, the sets aren’t fully produced and won’t be ready in time for the 9th due to other major orders from other companies, so we’ve been bumped to finish completion only after the break. Realistically, we’re looking at shipments beginning at the end of the month or early March.

This is obviously not the news we wanted and certainly not what we wanted to share with you. We rushed the packaging to try and make it in time too...

We’ve been working as hard as we can to help get this done, but it’s not been enough. We know how excited everyone is to receive their sets, as you’ve been writing in to us, so it just makes it so much harder to give this news of the delay. We’re very sorry about this and it feels terrible to know that our efforts to push things through have been in vain.

Whilst it would be easy for us to just attribute the delay to the factory and saying that it’s out of our hands, we were aware of the window we had with the Lunar New Year fast approaching. Had we not taken the additional 2 weeks in December for our fixes, we probably could’ve made our window. Therefore we will be taking full accountability for this delay and want to make it up to everyone with a special something...

The good news

As a way to make up for the additional delay, we’d like to offer everyone who has ordered a Creator Set an upcoming beast building instructions for free. Which beast - you may be wondering…

It’s not completed yet (since I’m pretty busy with other things) but as soon as it’s ready, it’ll be accessible from your dashboard. Since it’s heavily based off the Sawtooth build, I’m trying to ensure that it can be made with parts from the Creator Set. There might be a few coloured parts that might be off here and there, but we’re also looking into offering parts for this and the Specter, as well as any upcoming builds as individual sets in the future. Keep an eye out for them.

Whilst we know it doesn’t quite make up for the delay, we hope it shows our sincerity in doing things the right way and making sure everyone is glad that they put their faith in us. We hope the Ravager is an additional beast you’ll appreciate adding to your collection.

The famed Thunderjaw fixes are ready

So poor Sean has spent a good part of a week building up the original Thunderjaw and then swapping out the original with fixes so that we could share those with you.

These fixes were a bit more extensive due to a few issues. Let me go through them one-by-one.

1. The panels were being held by single-stud connections

When moving the Thunderjaw, we would find that it was customary for a panel (or many) to fall off making it a bit troublesome to place. Of course since these will most likely be display pieces, it’s not such a huge problem, but anything we can do to make the experience better, we will try to make it happen. So we redesigned how they’re attached so that they will stay on if bumped.

2. A very minor fix for the jaw

We added a 1x2 plate here to make this single-stud connection more solid.

3. A minor visual update for the rapidfire cannons

4. A more stable stand

The stand also got a redesign as we found that the original one wobbled too much and would make the build feel a little unstable - not to the point it was falling, mind you, but enough for us to warrant a redesign. We also slimmed it out a little.

Unfortunately we realised a little too late that we don’t have footage with the new stand (but for good reason), so you’ll just need to trust us that it’s better 😅

Which leads me to a final surprise reveal…

5. Behold! A self-standing Thunderjaw!

Now, before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, I must give a strong caution - this build configuration is super tenuous and requires a bit of skill (and a lot of patience) to get the balance just right. What we’ve done is that we’ve built-in a worm gear mechanism to lock the legs into position, which allows you to finely tune the angle of each leg separately. Because of the design of the Thunderjaw, the centre of gravity is not ideal for getting it to stand on its legs (unless those legs are purpose-built like tanks). We had to make it work with the design we have, but the image should be proof that it is possible, if you so wish, to remove the stand.

Our recommendation, however, still remains to keep the new stand intact as we’ve not been able to test the longevity of the free-standing function (so far it’s been standing like this for just over a week). It’s more of a party trick than a long-term display but we’re happy for you to help us test that when you get yours. We’ve made it so that it’s not too difficult to remove the stand if you like a bit of pain and want to attempt this for yourselves. As always, the additional parts required for all the fixes are already included in the sets.

Overall, we’ve learned a tonne from the fixes we’ve made across all the sets and hopefully will be able to bring this know-how to all future builds.

Happy Lunar New Year

Finally we’d like to wish everyone who will be celebrating a happy and prosperous Lunar New Year. Hopefully hopefully hopefully, our next update will be providing you all information about the shipments. Just a quick reminder to ensure your shipping address is correct! We’re almost at the finish line!

I hope you’re all having a great start to the new year and are all getting ready for a bunch of building in the coming months.

To start this update, I’d like to quickly cover a few important things that we need from you all, just so it’s up top and clear for everyone. Then we can continue with the update itself.

Critical Update

When will we ship?

The sets are currently being produced and so we’re gearing up to start shipping out the sets hopefully by the end of the month. We don’t have a definitive date just yet, but we’re not far off now.

Please check your shipping address

We’re preparing to pass over the list of shipping addresses to our shipping partner, so we need everyone to check to make sure that your addresses are correct. You can find the address you’ve entered in your dashboard.

If there’s an error, please reach out to us immediately and we’ll get it corrected.

No charge, no reserved spot

This last one only applies to a handful of you who have yet to have your cards charged. I’ve tried reaching out through email but am trying out this channel too. We’ve recently dropped to less than 5% of stock remaining, so we will need to start freeing up your slot for other customers who may be waiting once we completely run out. If you’d like to keep your reservation, please go through the ‘Confirm Payment’ route in the dashboard to charge your card before 23rd Jan. After this, we can no longer guarantee your reservation. If you’re unsure about whether your pre-order is confirmed, as long as you have a “Paid” status, you’re all good.

Not-so-critical Update

That’s it for the critical announcements, let’s get on to the meaty bits.

Why are we so busy?

The reason for this is because we’ve been sifting through a (Thunder)jaw-dropping 21,970 parts in our excel sheets to make sure they’re properly accounted for on the factory side. To give you an idea of the complexity and a bit of insight into the world of lego part numbers, there is a whole system for identifying parts because they each have a part number and a colour ID. The factory has their own system for part numbers and colours which are different, so that’s a fun problem to deal with. On top of that, lego parts can sometimes have different numbers for what seem like the same part, due to minor revisions or updates to the molds. It’s enough to make me want to saw-my-tooth out. There have been initiatives to try and standardise the mess that is lego part numbers in the form of the databases like the ones found on BrickLink and Rebrickable, but these then sometimes add their own numbers and colour IDs.

This is just another quirk of sourcing for parts, and it can become quite overwhelming for the average customer to go through and sort this out for themselves. This is precisely why we’re stepping in to change the way this is done and to make it more accessible to everyone.

What we’re doing internally is developing a way to connect everything up together so that ordering parts becomes more automated and robust. It’ll take a bit of time, but we should eventually be able to get sets out faster and with less manual checking required in the future.

Speaking of automation…

We’ve built some custom software to allow us to organise the parts into bags in sequential order according to the builds. In doing so, we’re levelling up the build experience for building MOCs as you no longer need to search for the parts in a huge pile of parts, as sections are now more isolated. It’s a bit of a (Tremor)task to update the build instructions accordingly, but this change is a huge quality of life fix so we’re putting in the work so you don’t have to.

Packaging has been finalised

Unfortunately, due to time, this was one thing that we had to compromise a little on in the sense that we only Grazed the surface of all the options we wanted to explore. We decided to submit what we think is a fairly unique packaging design that we hope you’ll all appreciate somewhat. Just know that the majority of the effort went into the builds instead.

For those who were asking about the size of the box for the Complete Edition, it’s roughly W540mm x H450mm x D350mm.

A real pain in the (Tall)neck

We made 2 fixes for the Tallneck, one minor and one major - here they are for your viewing pleasure.

Minor Fix

I really do love the way the feet of the Tallneck are designed and how it integrates into the base to provide much needed support for the whole build. To create the collection of toes, Nik uses a flexible tube to wrap around, to which the toes are attached - it’s a really clever technique. When testing the build however, I found that for the tube to stay put when clipped in, you needed to pre-bend the tube to give it a curvature so that it doesn’t just want to pry away when it’s attached. We had the toe assembly pop out a few too many times during the build process (once they are built, the tube tends to conform to its new shape and stays put, but this takes a while). We felt it was annoying enough to warrant a really small fix that keeps the toes in place a lot more sturdily allowing you to build without ever having to worry about them popping out.

Major Fix

We updated the flexing internal structure of the neck to be a bit more rigid. The thing with stiffening up certain parts of a build is that those forces then get transferred to weaker sections which is where new failure points occur. I have to say that doing a retroactive fix here was certainly not easy since specific points and features needed to exist for the beast’s panels to be placed on. But I’m happy to report that the updated version is sturdier and all the features remain intact. On the outside, you can’t really even tell that there’s been a change, even though that change is quite significant.

What about that elusive Thunderjaw?

At this rate we may as well call it Redmaw since these fixes are so often mentioned but not seen. They’re coming, just need the time to document them and also leave something for the next update.

A wild Clement appears!

We’ve officially made our first hire! Meet Clement, our in-house builder who will be responsible for helping to build and tests sets for improvements but also to help develop completely new builds.

A man of few words, but yet has a lot to say. He’s a Nintendo fanboy and is particularly fond of the Pokémon universe, and will buy anything Pokémon related, except the new Lego set, because it’s too expensive sold out.

Clement and I worked together as a duo developing our many helmets at Lumos and he shares my relentless pursuit of high quality products. Watch this space as we’ll be teasing his first build from an entirely new theme soon!

Hello and welcome to another update for the Creator Set that can’t seem to get out of the door fast enough!

I know we’ve been pretty quiet lately (both Sean with his videos and I), but it’s because we’ve been very busy with things in the backend. What has been taking up all of our time?

Fixes, fixes, fixes

When I stated in the last update’s comments section that the fixes were not too major for the Tallneck, it was because I hadn’t seen the state of it after we’d been moving it around a bunch for content. What we found was that the bricks start to loosen over time when put under a bunch of stress. Now, this isn’t an alternate lego bricks issue, this is an ABS plastic issue, and it will happen regardless of the logo that sits on the studs. To be clear, we don’t think this is a critical problem, since we expect most people to build and find a spot for their Tallneck and not move it as much as we’ve been moving it (which has been a lot, and includes all the stress tests we’ve been running). But after putting my Mechanical Engineering degree to use for probably the first time since I graduated a lifetime ago, I noticed a few areas specifically in the neck area that I felt could be built in a way that would make my old professors a little less disappointed in me. And so I got to work!

The original design on the left allows for a bit more flexing which can have some ramifications if you love to move things around. The right shows the updated version which is far sturdier, even with the head sitting on it. Apologies for the lack of a proper apples-to-apples comparison videos as we just didn’t have the time to build up both of the versions at the same time to get the footage in time for the update, but we will share more in the next one.

I believe implementing the fixes on the Sawtooth and the Tremortusk gave me a false sense of security on the amount of time it would take to get this particular fix done. But making structural changes in such a complex model is not as straightforward as it may seem. I fully get that straightforward is not what most people would think here, so I accept that it’s a me problem.

Which brings me to the next one…

Quick, whilst the beast is distracted

The final build to fix was the Thunderjaw, and I have to say I got a little carried away here too.

In fact, I think I got so carried away that we didn’t have time to document the extent of the changes, so again, I’ll leave those details for the next update. Just to tease a little, this comment by Robert had been staring me in the face and I just couldn’t get it out of my head...

I know, I know, I was being responsible when I said ‘in the interest of time’ and in all fairness, I did do just that - I quickly finished up a much sturdier base without changing too much. But then it got a little involved…

Anyway! The good news is that we’ve finished the fixes and have submitted the parts list to the factory for review and will be proceeding with starting to manufacture the sets imminently. We’re about 2 weeks behind due to these fixes, but hopefully you’ll appreciate the extra 2 weeks wait once you get the sets. To make up for the slight delay, we’ll be including all 318 extra parts (slightly less for the Core Edition) for free along with your set to also show how committed we are to delivering a superior product and to show how we’re supporting the Creators we work with. We also expect to be providing as much support as we can afterwards and sharing more fixes or upgrades if we come across them for the builds at a later date.

Bag and forth

We’ve been discussing bagging options with the factory and the good news is that we’re able to bag the beasts separately for the Complete set, so that’s what we’ll be doing. No Upgrade Kit complexity like I suggested in a previous update, just a more straightforward approach which’ll improve the building experience for all the Complete Edition customers.

This however doesn’t quite work for our Core Edition customers so we’ve been wracking our brains on how to best optimise the bags to allow any build to be built easily. Here’s what we came up with:

Since this is ultimately a Creator Set, we expect you to want to make the different beasts so we assume you’ll be pulling your builds apart at some point. Now with 14,000+ parts and around 500 part types, we know first hand that the biggest headache is going to be sorting. So we’ve been thinking about how to sort thousands of parts. Even for ourselves, the large number of parts that are beginning to build up on my dining table is starting to get out of hand.

We’ve gone back and forth on how best to organise the bags for the Core Edition and were doing some pretty complicated sorting math to try to bundle up the parts so that they could be used in sequence for any of the builds, and this may have worked well if we only had 2 builds, but doing it across 5 increases the complexity exponentially. We realised that even the previous idea of the Core + Upgrade Kit split would’ve resulted in a subpar customer experience for Core customers because you’d still be looking for random bags.

Ultimately, we think that the best approach is to have the parts sorted for you in bags, so that even once you’ve built a beast, the rest of your remaining parts are still in a sorted state. What this means during your build is that you may need to identify a few more bags than those building with the Complete set, but we’ll try to bundle them up and create a balance of not too many part types per bag but not too many bags either.

Unfortunately what this means is that we won’t have Upgrade Kit for our Core customers immediately in the future if you’d like that. There may be at some point, but currently the number of Core customers is too low for us to be able to create that kit. If you’d like to upgrade to the Complete, there may be a window whilst the factory is setting everything up. Just get in touch and we’ll see if we’re able to make that happen for you. We’ll still be thinking about how to make the Upgrade Kit happen in the future though.

Wishing you a very merry Christmas

We’ll probably be trying to take a little bit of a breather as we head into the holiday period (as much as we can anyway), so the next update will most likely be in January, where hopefully we’ll be able to tell you we’re starting to ship the sets out. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly with the factory. We’ll also be sure to provide more in-depth looks at the fixes we’ve made.

We want to thank you all again for your support and we’re really excited for you to get the sets. We know some of you have bought these as Christmas presents and whilst we wish we could’ve gotten them to you by then, we hope it won’t be too long of a wait till they actually arrive. If you were gifting the set to someone, we’ve made a few postcards that can be printed out just so that you have something to share with your loved one on the day. You can find the hi-res PDF file here.

Wishing you all happy holidays and a happy new year!

Sean, Bilal and 2B

Phew! I know this update is a little later than usual but truth be told, we were convinced it had only been 2 weeks since the last one. When we checked back, it was far more than that.

How have we been so busy that 2 weeks flew by and we didn’t even notice? A heck of a lot of coffee, scrambling and running on no sleep to get things moving along. We ran into a teeny tiny (read massive) hiccup last week (scratch that - 2 weeks ago) but we’re over that hump and can take a breather to share what happened.

New business, new risks

About half of you may have gotten a notification from us regarding payment issues - what happened, as far as we can discern, was that we were getting flagged as a new business with no previous evidence of delivering any products. The fact that we were routing the money to Malaysia, where we’re based, apparently made it even more flag-able. So we needed to switch to our UK account for customers paying in USD. This required orders to be recreated, which is why we set up the ‘Complete payment’ flow. Making a live fix was super nerve-wracking, but I just want to thank everyone who assisted me in providing feedback and helping me get some bugs rectified - super appreciated!

Why am I explaining this? I think it’s really important to be super transparent so that everyone knows what’s going on and can rest assured that we’re always working to make things right.

Cards have been charged, mostly

So we managed to resolve the payment issue for most of you, and are now down to only a few customers who haven’t yet confirmed their payment - Sean and I will be following up with you, so if you want to not wait for that, please go and confirm your spot! This payment is critical for us to be able to make the order with the factory.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you to all of you for believing in us to get this done and for helping us to take our first big step in turning our idea and mission into a proper business. A pre-order is really the only way we could’ve pulled it off and we’re so grateful that you’ve taken the first steps with us to make this a reality.

For the Creator

SerialBuilder is just the first Creator that we’re working with, but by providing a more legit way to source the bricks and reward the Creator, we’re making an option available to people who want to support the original creators. Up until now, customers had to choose between paying a premium to source official Lego bricks through the painful process of purchasing them bit-by-bit through third-party sellers or the more convenient, but also much riskier way of buying unauthorised sets through shady e-commerce platforms. The downside here is that the Creator loses out entirely due to (often) stolen instructions and the buyer must deal with opaque info on what the quality of the bricks will be and whether they’ll get decent after sales service, if at all.

EasternBrick is all about removing this crappy choice entirely and making it convenient for the buyer and rewarding the Creator all-in-one-go. We hope to be able to support more Creators with our future pre-orders whilst also providing a kick-ass customer experience for all of our customers.

What’s next?

You may have seen some videos relating to the fixes we’re making for the models.

Whilst we think SerialBuilder’s builds are incredible, what I find fascinating is to see how his skills have developed over time through his builds. What this means is that the latest build, the Tremortusk, is probably the most impressive in terms of build quality. As we go further back, there are a few things we’d fix for the other models to help bring them up to the same level of stability. Since we’re not just here to sell bricks, but incredible builds, we think it’s crucial that we make these updates before shipping the sets out to you.

The fixes are coming

We’ve been hard at work creating a few fixes to the sets and have been sharing some of those details with a few of you who have been inquiring about them individually, so we thought we’d create a more in-depth look for everyone to see the fixes we’re making and how it’s making already truly impressive sets even more epic.

Here’s a summary of the fixes so far...

Tremortusk

We discovered an opportunity in the setup for the Tremortusk to make it more stable. We went through a few issues of it collapsing on us when we tried to move it for our photoshoots.

To be fair, Nik does warn us, but we don’t listen.

The fix was a fairly straightforward one and involved burying the axles that hold up the feet deeper into the base. Still a little bit of wiggle room, but much much sturdier overall!

We would still recommend trying to not move it and finding a permanent spot for it, but in case you do need to move it, we’ve got a bit of peace of mind for you.

Apart from this the build is probably the most stable of Nik’s builds and it’s clear to see the progression in his skills as a designer. It’s top tier for sure and precisely why we wanted to work with him as our first Creator.

Sawtooth

If I’m completely honest, this one was the one I was most worried about, because, look...

But I’m happy to say that we’ve resolved all of those major issues and the Sawtooth went from being my most frustrating to position correctly for a photoshoot to my favourite to display.

Now just imagine me asking it ‘who’s a good boy’ as I’m petting it all over…

Tallneck & Thunderjaw - in progress

We’re currently working on the Thunderjaw and Tallneck fixes. They’re huge builds so we need to make sure to be meticulous with our edits and ensure the sets are still buildable. We’ll update you on the next one!

Priorities for November

Speaking of which, thank you for all your feedback regarding the beasts you’d like to see next. It gives us a great starting point to think about the upcoming builds. Our plan is to release them slowly over time, with an emphasis on slowly due to us needing to prioritise other things, like our main thing right now which is to get the sets to all of you. Building models for work is my dream job, so you can definitely expect those to be releasing at a somewhat regular cadence as things settle down a bit.

Packaging design draft

Along with the fixes and the parts list, we also need to submit a design file for the packaging. Since we’re so busy with the fixes and don’t have a lot of time (or money) to do anything too fancy with the exterior box, our current thought is to go with a minimal black box with some sort of a pattern for now.

Please let us know your thoughts, and if you’re really keen on something specific, do let us know in the comments and we’ll see what we can do to make it happen. Just remember that it’s only me doing all these things and writing these updates for you, so reasonable requests please :) Actually unreasonable requests are fine too, just so we can identify the trouble-makers ;)

1. The pre-order is confirmed, but we’re extending the timeframe to the end of the month. Cards will be charged on 1st Nov.

2. Bagging will be done according to build - we’ll update regarding the Core Edition.

3. We did some testing of the bricks - quality is good / comparable to LEGO.

4. Tell us what beast you’d like to see us attempt to build next.

The not-so-quick update

We’re officially past the half-way point to our goal!

The issue of the Core Edition not really getting close to the target is one that we’ve been thinking about and so we’ve come up with a plan on how to address this so that all our Core Edition customers will still get their sets.

We’ve switched our approach and will be combining the Core and Complete orders so that we’re able to get to the minimum order threshold faster. To help explain this change, I made a graphic.

What this means is that we’re able to submit the order for the Core Edition since it now meets the minimum requirement we need. We’ll end up with a few extra ‘Upgrade Packs’ but that’s OK, because it means that anyone who purchased a Core Edition, will have the opportunity to upgrade to the Complete Edition if they so wish at a later date.

We’ll be making a slight change to the campaign percentages and will combine them too, so we’ll have a single number to represent what’s remaining.

I know we’ve listed tentatively that we were going to end the campaign on the 15th of October, but I think we need a little bit more time to get enough pre-orders in to be able to make the sets. We’ll be extending the timeline to the 31st of October. What this means for you is that we’ll be looking to charge the cards on the 1st of November, so be sure to have the funds ready by then.

If there are sets remaining after 31st Oct, those will still be able to be pre-ordered until they run out.

We’re pretty excited to be getting closer to making this all a reality and to be able to ship the sets out. I’m frantically working on getting all the fixes in for the sets so that we’re able to include all the extra necessary parts for everyone - that’s a teaser for a future update

The quality of the bricks

In the previous update I showed that there is very little visual difference between the bricks that we’re using and LEGO bricks. However, this isn’t the complete story and there are a few differences that I feel is important to document, so we did some scrappy home-made tests and put together a video to compare LEGO bricks, our bricks and another unnamed alt brick which we were testing but ultimately rejected due to it not meeting our standard. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, but my videos might be pretty boring compared to Sean’s videos, but if you like to nerd out a little, this is a bit of a change of pace. Enjoy, or skip, I won’t take it personally.

If you skipped it, but are still reading, I have a summary of my long and boring (to some) video. If you watched it and got bored, just know, that it’s nothing compared to the boredom I faced editing the video. The experiments themselves were quite fun however. Here are my takeaways from the tests and my opinion about the bricks that we’ve chosen to use.

Clutch power

When it comes to clutch power, the no name alt brick had the most, whilst LEGO had the lowest, with EB closer to the LEGO brick. This was generally the case for bricks across the board. Higher clutch power doesn’t necessarily translate to a better build experience because it can mean that bricks require a bit more effort to connect and separate them. But you also don’t want too little clutch power as the model won’t hold its own weight. The ideal place is to strike a nice balance between ease of attaching/removing and ability to hold itself up, which LEGO does a good job of finding, especially when their core customers are little kids with lower strength than adults. When you get to bigger builds however, a bit of extra clutch power does indeed become a little more useful, so I’d say our bricks are a bit more appropriate.

We built the sets with all types of bricks and I can tell you that you wouldn’t want to build these giant sets with the unnamed alt bricks. These should be reserved only for torture sets where you gift them to people you don’t like so that they cry whilst building their sets. My mind is buzzing with ideas for a new type of set for the future.

Ball joint strength and articulation

For ball joint strength and articulation, we found that the EB parts were the joints with the tightest fit.

This resulted in the strongest connection and the most friction, which makes them require a little bit of effort to connect and disconnect them, as well as to move them around. Without this sounding like I’m trying to turn every L into a W - when it comes to larger builds, we’ve found that a tighter fit helps to keep things in place due to the increased weight. LEGO ball joints are easier to move, which makes playing with sets a lot more fun, however, since we’re not building play sets, but rather display sets, we actually prefer to have a tighter fit. It just holds up better over time.

The sounds of building

Part of what makes building with legos so relaxing is that sound of the snap, so it was important to test this too. As you can see, from the graph, we placed LEGO and our bricks fairly closely, with LEGO having a slight edge due to the lower clutch power. Maybe nostalgia was also just doing its thing, but that sound really does have a calming effect. The unnamed alt bricks on the other hand were pretty loud and again, would be perfect for that yet-to-be-released Frenemy Set™.

Consistency

Another thing that’s important is that we get a consistent build experience across all the builds. We’ve been testing with a bunch of bricks and this one is a bit more subjective since we haven’t had the patience or time to test them all with our home-made testing lab, but we’ve had a lot of people test out the bricks and have gotten their feedback regarding the quality. On the whole, our bricks and LEGO bricks are quite comparable in consistency and we had a few people comment about how they couldn’t tell the difference. The same couldn’t be said for the unnamed alt brick. OK, now it just sounds like I’m pooping the unnamed alt bricks and if I’m completely fair, they weren’t so bad. It’s just that when you compare them against the alternatives, all the little things add up and the extra stinging and the louder snaps and the extra effort required to pull bricks apart and the slightly chipped nails all just turns a usually relaxing time into a bit of a nightmare when the builds are this big. If the builds were small, I certainly wouldn’t have noticed it as much.

That was a pretty long summary…which calls for a summary to the summary!

To further summarise

Overall, I think (and of course, this may be biased) that our bricks and LEGO bricks are pretty comparable in quality and actually are the preferred option for our particular purpose - building ginormous sets. They will require slightly more force to attach than LEGO bricks, and so we recommend gloves when building the sets - your fingers will thank you for it.

Bagging update

Thank you for the feedback in the comments section of the previous update. The sorting by builds have it! I mentioned earlier that we’re combining the sets, so how does all this work together?

Here’s the plan…

However, Daniel brought up a great point that we’ve also been wondering about…

This does indeed become problematic for the Core Edition customer. Either we decide on a default build for which the bags are optimised, or we find another way.

We’re working on a smart solution that should allow you to easily identify which bag your pieces are in for the set you’re building. We’ll share this once it’s built out.

Feedback on our Specter MOC

Finally, I just want to do a shoutout to those of you who have written in about the mistakes you found in the Specter MOC. I wasn’t expecting it to come in so early, but it seems like people we’re excited enough to get building straight away. I really appreciate you taking the time to identify the issues so that I can easily rectify them. I’ll be updating the instructions and parts list soon.

As for where to find the updated instructions - we’re working on a way for you to have access to the different versions of instructions for all builds so that you can see what changes have been made for yourselves. It’ll be a bit like version control but for physical builds. The reason for this is because it just makes sense according to our approach to continuous set upgrades. We imagine that we’ll be incrementally improving builds as we get feedback from you all, so the most updated version is the always accessible and you can upgrade your existing sets if you like. This also paves the way for LED upgrades…

Have I said too much? Maybe I should stop typing already and get back to implementing all the fixes.

Let me distract you with our question for the post instead!

Q: What beast would you like us to attempt to release next?

Tell us what you want to see in the comments and we’ll add the most doable one to the ever-growing list of things we want to get done. Also feel free to ask any other questions you may have.

That’s how it’s been these past few weeks, so I’m taking a bit of a breather to answer a big question we’ve been getting and that has come up frequently enough to dedicate a whole update to it.

Are we a scam?

Now, obviously I know we’re not, but my job is to convince everyone else that we’re not and to make everyone feel safe knowing that we’re going to deliver their pre-ordered set. So to do that, let’s break down the anatomy of a scam.

How to identify a good scam?

🚩 An offer that sounds too good to be true

🚩 Asking for a considerable sum of money

🚩 There is pressure to act immediately

🚩 There aren’t any testimonials / testimonials are coming from questionable sources

🚩 There is the impersonation of someone

I put myself in the shoes of a prospective backer and asked myself, is EasternBrick displaying any of these red flags 🚩?

Dammit! I guess we’re scamming everyone up in here! 🥲

Now, I’m just kidding, but let’s go through each of these issues and tackle them one-by-one to put your mind at ease.

An offer that sounds too good to be true

How are we able to provide so much value to the customer? The main reason is simply that we’re not using bricks with the LEGO logo on them. The reality is that the price of LEGO is continually getting pushed higher, making it out-of-reach for many. We love LEGO, but we’re a little tired of that and so want to provide an option for those who feel the same way to not have to pay the LEGO logo premium.

If LEGO were to release our Creator Set, it would likely be starting at $1,400 for the Core Edition alone. We think that’s way too much.

We’ve heard a few people wondering whether our bricks are able to match the quality of LEGO’s and there’s no way to answer that question if it’s just a “yeah it’s comparable - take our word for it”, so we’re currently working on a video where we’re running some tests to show the similarities/differences. Stay tuned for a future update on that. In the meantime, since some of you have been asking, here are a few photos comparing our bricks to LEGO. They honestly don’t tell much as it’s hard to spot any difference, which is precisely why we’re putting together a more in-depth video with more practical tests.

For those who are wondering whether we’re ripping off LEGO - patents for the brick ended many many years ago and so it’s safe to say that LEGO has fully benefitted from the limited time protection that patents grant any business. But like with every patent, they expire to allow for competition to resume. This prevents companies developing monopolies and keeping prices artificially high.

Why don’t we make our own system of bricks? The straightforward answer to that is that the system is already in place - trying to fight the system with a new one rather than building upon it is a waste of resources and not what we want to focus on - that’s reserved for delivering jaw-dropping builds.

Coming back to how we’re able to offer incredible value - there are a few other reasons.

1. We’re not spending on running ads

   

   You may have learned of our pre-order campaign through a video that looked like an ad, but that was just the social media algorithms doing their thing. The cost to run ads can become astronomical and so we made a conscious decision to avoid it altogether. To fund ads, the price of the offering usually needs to be increased, which essentially means that the customer is indirectly the one paying for the ad to be shown to them. We don’t mess with that and as such no additional cost is passed onto you. So now that you know that we don’t run ads - your referrals and support really do mean a lot to us, so please do spread the word about us to help us reach more people.
   

2. Delivering amazing sets with extendable value is our main priority

   

   Whilst it may sound counterintuitive, we believe that by focusing on packing as much value into our sets as we possibly can so you only need to buy it once, is the way that our little startup will become profitable. We want to gain your trust by not pushing you to buy new bricks every time we release a new set. If you purchase one of our premium MOCs in the future, we think it’s far more responsible to give you the option to build it with your existing parts if you so wish to. It’s not the LEGO way and probably why we’ll never be as big, but we’re OK with that.
   

3. We need to offer something that’s attractive to customers buying knockoff sets

   The unfortunate reality is that there are a lot of knockoff brands out there just replicating whatever LEGO puts out, but also ones who steal MOC instructions from talented creators to offer sets that will no longer be targeted by LEGO’s lawyers, but at the expense of the original creator who never gets any credit or reward for their work. We think this is quite the injustice, but we can see why these types of businesses are thriving - they’re providing unsuspecting customers a way to buy these amazing sets that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to get from LEGO. The downside is that the customer usually needs to deal with inferior quality and an unresponsive/non-existent support team. But the prices are attractive, so the compromises can seem worth it.

   
   Our strategy is to make our set as attractive (if not more) to the customer so that anyone thinking about buying from shady sources, will hopefully think twice, since we’re offering something better. The more people that buy original MOCs from us instead of the questionable no-name brands, the more we’re able to reward the original creator for their creations. It’s a conscious decision on our part - we know we can offer the Creator Set for much more because it really is packing a lot of value, but we still want to convert those who are considering the knockoff alternatives.

Finally, I’ll just mention the strongest motivator for why we want to offer lots of value is that we just want you to remember us as that little brand that is working hard to get the creator paid and provide great value to the customer - two seemingly contradictory goals, but we do love a good contradiction.

Is over-explaining also a red flag? 🤔 On to the next flag!

Asking for a considerable sum of money

It’s true, but we’re delivering a tonne of value in exchange. Each of the 2 bigger builds would cost at least $699 each if they were released by the LEGO. We’ve been asked why we can’t offer the sets individually, which I explained in the previous post, but we’re certainly thinking about how to make that happen. Our focus right now is on the concept of Creator Sets, where we provide you with a tonne of bricks to make whatever you want, including some pretty awesome builds. We’ve heard you though and will see how to make the builds even more accessible. Also, this is just our first Creator Set. Future sets may not be as big and so will be more affordable. What those sets will allow you to make is still a big question mark, but we’re excited just thinking about the possibilities.

Pressure to act immediately

I totally got called out for the language we’re using on the pre-order tracker which sounded too ‘FOMO’ inducing, which I will accept. However, it doesn’t make it any less true - this really is a pre-order that we’re not yet sure we’ll be able to do again. Of course we would love for this Creator Set to be an evergreen set and to continue releasing instructions for new sets over time, but it all depends on how the pre-order goes. Part of why we’re limiting it is also because we don’t want this pre-order period to be too drawn out as we’d like to get everyone’s Creator Sets to them as soon as we can so that we can prove ourselves and remove the need for this post altogether.

We don’t want you to feel pressured into pre-ordering now. We will try to bring it back in some form, but it may not be at the same price or with free delivery. If you know you’re going to get it eventually, then this is probably the best price we’re going to be able to offer it. I say probably, because read the bit above about providing incredible value.

No testimonials or from questionable sources

The only thing I can say here is to state the facts, which is that nobody has our set yet since it’s our first set and hasn’t been produced. The sooner we can close the pre-order campaign, the sooner we can place the order with the factory and then get the Creator Sets sent out to you. We’d love to get them to you all as quickly as we can so that we have the social proof that we’re delivering and are who we say we are. Once we do get them to you, we’d love for you to leave us a review so that everyone else can feel safer knowing that they can trust they’ll get the set they ordered.

Besides that, my only other credible claim is that I’m the co-founder of a previous Kickstarter brand called Lumos, where we made smart helmets and ran some pretty high profile pre-order campaigns. You can read all about it online and see proof of how we delivered thousands of products to our customers across the different campaigns. Funnily enough, we had people calling us a scam back then too…even after we had started delivering.

Impersonating someone you’re not

We’re not really impersonating anyone, but did get called out for using a lot of AI imagery for ourselves which seems like a red flag. I get it - we’ll try to include ourselves in images and videos a bit more - but sometimes, you know, you just don’t want to have to do up your face for the camera - I currently look hideous due to the lack of sleep I’ve had the past few weeks. AI is my saviour. Isn’t this what AI was developed for - to make us all look fabulous?

Hopefully these rebuttals have helped to ease any niggles you may be feeling, but do know that we’re hard at work upgrading the instructions and making fixes to the builds - would a scammer care about investing so much time in something like this? I think not. Where’s the proof of my upgrades, I hear you wondering - stay tuned for the next update!

How should we bag-em?

Just to close off this update - we’re working to figure out how to bag all the parts and package everything. Before we get to the solution, we just need your feedback on a few things so that we can share the options for you to choose from in the next update. Please provide your feedback by commenting on the post and/or liking the suggestions that others are making so that we can get a rough idea from you.

If you have more ideas, feel free to share below.

See you in the next one!

The Pre-order campaign has kicked-off

Firstly, I’d just like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has already placed a pre-order. Your support is everything to us right now and so we just want to let you know that we appreciate you immensely.

Since you’ve decided to join us on our journey to build this new brand, I’d like to provide regular updates for those who are interested to follow along and hear about what we’re up to.

If you know me from before, you’ll likely know how these updates will go, but if not, I apologise in advance.

Without further clarification on that matter, let’s get to our first official EB update!

Over 1/3 of the Complete Edition has been reserved

So, we’ve gotten off to a pretty unexpected start with a third of the Complete Edition being reserved within a week of our launch. That is a little nuts.

The other unexpected thing is the number of Core Editions reserved in comparison. Our initial survey pegged it at 2:1 Complete vs Core. All I can say is...

Our reasoning for introducing the Core Edition was to make the set even more accessible by bringing the cost down further for those who wanted the parts for the builds, but didn’t necessarily want them all at once and so didn’t need as many parts to build everything together. 6% of you agreed and have currently taken advantage of this. Should’ve been more like 30%, but hey, no complaints here. If anything, it just shows how compelling the Complete Edition really is.

We’ve heard a lot of feedback regarding offering individual sets, but since this is our first pre-order campaign, we didn’t want to needlessly overcomplicate the process, even though some of our potential customers are telling us that we definitely need to overcomplicate it.

We do intend to return again with a future pre-order, but what that pre-order looks like is very dependant on a bunch of different factors. Contrary to certain individual beliefs, we’re not using FOMO-inducing language on the website just to get orders. It is true that we don’t yet know if we can offer this configuration again, and especially at this price. We will certainly consider the individual sets in the future, but that’s not a given either. These are just the challenges of building a startup. So our stance is if you think you’d like this Creator Set and the current offer works for you, now is the time. Full transparency - the individual sets (if we do them) will cost more on an average price per brick basis - economies of scale and all that.

We know we’re a new brand and have very little recognition in this space. Until only a couple of days ago I had never even published any MOC instructions or photos of my builds before (mainly because they looked like crap and I was quite embarrassed with them). My point is to say that for those of you who have already placed your trust in us, we are immensely grateful and we’re looking forward to rewarding that trust with us.

In case you didn’t notice, we have a referral program

We want to reward our backers by offering referral discounts for helping us to grow. It’s not much, but it’s what we can afford for now.

So far, we’ve had 1 referral! 🎉 I won’t out you specifically, but know that we think of you as our biggest supporter! You know who you are!

Since we’re mostly unheard of as a brand, we do need your support to help spread the word about what we’re doing and the value we’re offering in our Creator Set. If we do well on this campaign, it just means that we can repeat ourselves and come back stronger on the next one. There are many ideas for new Creator Sets that we’re cooking up, so we’re quite excited to be able to share all of that with our growing community.

Our first free MOC instructions

I did a little humble brag earlier in the post about how I recently published my first MOC instructions. Did you miss it? Well, the reason for that was so that we could set the stage for what’s to come.

This is the new machine that will be fully build-able with your Creator Set. If you don’t recognise it (🥲), it’s the Specter from Horizon: Forbidden West. These instructions will be available to everyone for free and we’ll make it available for you to download from the dashboard soon (which btw is where the rest of the instructions will be released once we ship).

The release of new build instructions is something that we’re planning to do periodically. The purpose of this to further extend the value of the Creator Set, even after you’ve purchased it. As our initial backers, you will have access to our free instructions that will be fully compatible with the parts in the Creator Set and will get generous discounts on any compatible premium instructions that we release as a thank you for your early support.

The reason for this is simple - the more we can convince people to choose our sets, the more we can funnel back to the original creator and the less viable it becomes for random stores on shady e-commerce platforms to sell inferior quality sets using stolen creator instructions.

Wrap up

That was a relatively calmer update than I imagined, but I’ve hit my 1,000 word count limit, so I suppose the juicier stuff needs to wait till the next one.

Thanks again for all of your support, and do mention us to people who you know that might also be interested in the Creator Set! Good things await!