Goodbye 2014 and Happy New Year

January 1, 2015 | 6

Image via LEGO’s Facebook Page

A very happy new year to you! I hope that you had a great time ushering in the new year. Me and my wife had a pretty low key New Year’s Eve – we decided to forgo the crowds and have a quiet night in, with a movie, home cooked dinner and watching the ABC fireworks coverage on TV. The best part about watching the fireworks on TV is that you can just wash up and snuggle up in bed!

As we close the curtain on another year, I took some time to reflect on some of the biggest events and happenings in 2014.

2014 has been the most amazing year for Jay’s Brick Blog and I have to thanks all my readers for that. Thank you so much for reading, interacting, sharing my posts and being totally awesome in 2014. You are the reason why I do what I do and it has been a privilege and honour to be able to serve you some great LEGO content in 2014.

Here are some of my most memorable moments from 2014

Interviews

I had the incredible opportunity to interview a number of LEGO personalities in 2014. These interviews were among my favourite pieces of content that I’ve ever produced as it was a really awesome experience getting to know the movers and shakers in the LEGO world.

• Brent Waller, designer of Ghostbusters Ecto-1
• Dan Steininger, LEGO Master Builder
• Dr. Ellen Kooijman, designer of the Research Institute
• Rick James Bricks – Independent LEGO Retailer

Tribute to the late Robin Williams

The passing of one of the greatest comedians of all time was one of the most shocking and heartbreaking events of 2014. A tribute to Robin Williams that I made unexpectedly got picked up by major news outlets – an extremely humbling experience for me.

The LEGO Movie

Watching The LEGO Movie was definitely one of my highlights of 2014. I enjoyed the movie immensely (it’s my favourite movie of 2014, naturally) and one cannot discount the effect that it had on the LEGO Community. The LEGO Movie has been instrumental in making LEGO the number 1 toy in the world, bringing in thousands of new (and returning) LEGO fans into the fold as well as contribute to some of the most imaginative and interesting sets ever.

I firmly believe that we are entering LEGO’s second golden age, catalysed by The LEGO Movie. Trust me when I say that it has never been a better time to be a fan of LEGO.

Holidays with LEGO minifigures

I went on two mini holidays this year on the Great Ocean Road and to the beautiful island of Tasmania. I took along some minifigures to photograph and was quite pleased with the end results that it has now become a norm for me to bring along some minifigures whenever I travel to interesting places or events – such as this year’s Tulip Festival. I got a better camera for Christmas and have some big holiday plans for 2015, so expect more photos of minifigures on holiday!

LEGO in Australia

This year has been a pretty turbulent year for Australian LEGO fans. While we had cool events such as the giant LEGO Christmas Tree, Star Wars May the 4th Event in Sydney and Melbourne’s Brickvention, it was unfortunately marred by LEGO’s decision to increase the free shipping threshold to $200 from $150. Personally, this has caused me to buy less LEGO from LEGO.com, because hitting $200 is a pretty big challenge and for average LEGO fans with average incomes, $200 is a lot of money to drop per order.

LEGO Australia’s notoriously lackluster communication with its fanbase also bothers me. For example, there was hardly any information that Toyworld was given this year’s Star Wars Advent Calendar as an exclusive. Also, did you know that the LEGO X-Men set 76022 X-Men vs the Sentinel didn’t show up at all in Australian retail stores and is an online exclusive? What is the deal with that?

The bizarre decision to launch The LEGO Movie here in April, two months after it premiered everywhere else in the world was also another huge stuff up – a mistake that Village Roadshow has since come out to admit. Compounded by the fact that LEGO sets also sometimes get released here later than everywhere else in the world, it just seems that Australia seems to always get the short end of the stick when it comes to LEGO.

LEGO Set Reviews

One of my biggest regrets in 2014 was being a little lazy and slow with my set reviews. I bought and built way more sets than my reviews would have you believe, but with a lot of stuff happening outside of this blog like a really busy year at work it’s been quite a challenge scheduling in time to photograph and write reviews.

That said, I’m still quite satisfied and proud of all the reviews I’ve managed to pen this year, which have all have done pretty well and contributed a whole chunk to the blog’s traffic stats! Here are some of the highlights from this year:

• Review: 10245 Santa’s Workshop
• Review The LEGO Movie Minifigures
• Review: The Simpsons Minifigures
• Review: Series 11 Minifigures
• Review: Series 12 Minifigures
• Review: 21110 Research Institute
• Review: 21109 Exo-Suit
• Review: 21108 Ghostbusters Ecto-1
• Review: 76021 Milano Spaceship Rescue
• Review: 70803 Cloud Cuckoo Palace
• Review: 76012 The Riddler Chase
• Review: Legoland Malaysia Theme Park, Water Park, Hotel

One of the things that I endeavour to do is pick up steam with my LEGO set reviews, and hopefully churn them out a lot more frequently! Also, I have a special new Review series planned, which I will debut soon. Keep your eyes peeled 😉

So that concludes my 2014 recap. Looking back, it has been amazing year with this blog smashing last year’s page views and I only have my readers (that’s you!) to thank for that. In 2014, I wrote 88 posts which averages out to about one post every four days – which is decent but there is lots of room for improvement! Expect more frequent content in 2014!

Now that it’s 2015, I fully intend to up my game and improve my writing, photography and reviews of LEGO sets, with the odd feature thrown in whenever possible.

From all of us here at Jay’s Brick Blog (there’s only me, really), thank you so much for making 2014 such a success! Here’s hoping that 2015 will be another fruitful LEGO year!

How was your 2014? Let me know what was your favourite LEGO moment or set in the comments!