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

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

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

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

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

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

Offsite set reviews - an apology....

Although my intention has always been to update the Gimme LEGO Offsite Set Reviews section when I post a set review elsewhere, a quick glance suggests that I'm doing a terrible job of this, with none of the recent (or indeed not-so-recent) set reviews that I've posted on Brickset or elsewhere having been added to the list.

Given that many of my offsite set reviews and articles are written in a similar style to the stuff that I publish on Gimme LEGO, it actually got me wondering why I don't make a bigger deal of publicising them here. After all, one of the most frequent complaints I get from you guys is that I don't post often enough, so such offsite content might help to address that somewhat.

I've therefore decided that in future I'll aim to post brief notifications of my new offsite set reviews and articles here so that Gimme LEGO readers can get a heads-up and go and check them out if they're interested. First up is my review of Set 70173 Ultra Agents Ocean HQ which I posted over at Brickset yesterday (12th July 2015) - click here to read.

Rumour has it that none of the three Summer 2015 Ultra Agents offerings, including the Ocean HQ set, will be coming to Europe. I'll try and seek confirmation of this from LEGO, but if true it'd be a real shame. Let's therefore hope that the rumours are wide of the mark, or if they're true that fan pressure might change their minds - we can always hope!

While I'm on the subject of offsite set reviews, I guess it might be worth providing a brief recap of some of the other offsite set reviews which I've posted since around the turn of the year but which haven't as yet appeared in the Offsite Set Reviews section - read on to get up to date.

City Set 60080 Spaceport. Review posted on Brickset on 9th June 2015. Click here to read the review.

Jurassic World Set 75919 Indominus Rex Breakout. Review posted on Brickset on 18th May 2015. Click here to read the review.

Star Wars Ultimate Collectors Series Set 75095 TIE Fighter. Review posted on Brickset on 1st May 2015. Click here to read the review.

Speed Champions Set 75913 F14 T & Scuderia Ferrari Truck. Review posted on Brickset on 11th March 2015. Click here to read the review.

Star Wars Ultimate Collectors Series Set 75060 Slave 1. Review posted on Brickset on 9th December 2014. Click here to read the review.

In addition to the Brickset reviews above, I've also written a number of set reviews and articles for Bricks Magazine, and prior to that for Blocks Magazine. Given that these are paper publications I obviously can't link to the content directly, although if I can get permission to republish articles on Gimme LEGO (as I did for my review of Set 5975 T-Rex Transport which appeared in Blocks Issue 1) then I'll certainly do so. For the sake of completeness, you can see a list of articles below which I wrote for those publications and which may be of interest.

I hope this recap has been helpful, and has maybe flagged something of interest that you weren't aware of, in which case happy reading!