Lego Castle Media

[SirBlake]

This sort of thing has been coming up more and more often, referencing reviewers or other builders who share their MOCs across the different platforms. I thought it might be nice to put some recommendations together and let people discover and share. There are some I've found recently that I wish I had known about sooner.

1. Steve's Lego Blog: http://legosteveblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/history-of-lego-castle.html

Though it hasn't been updated in a long time, there are lots of good thoughts and examples here. Especially good for the younger FOL that didn't live through it when some of the older stuff was new.

 

2. Brick Monarch (YouTube & Instagram)

Not only is he an active builder, he has a cool shop that sells T-shirts, stickers and wall decor shields featuring many faction designs.

 

3. The Brick Stop (YouTube & Instagram)

Like Brick Monarch, a hardcore castle fan and builder that is very active.

 

The best way to show off these last two is to post a video of the two of them in deep discussion about a specific theme. These guys are serious fans of Lego Castle and while I don't agree with all of their opinions, it's fun to see a couple of guys that are into this as much or more than I am really get into the details of this stuff. It'd be fun to sit down with them over a couple of beers.

 

 

So how about y'all? Any good recommendations as far as sites/YouTube Channels/Instagram handles that are worth taking a look at?

 

[Phyre]

Interesting, I will have to check these guys out.  I've just recently started a youtube channel myself (link in my signature).  My plan for the time being is to mainly focus on set reviews.  I don't have any castle content yet but I will in the future (recently bought the Medieval Blacksmith set and will definitely be doing a review of it as soon as I build it).

 

Since you're interested in this kind of stuff, do you have any thoughts/recommendations for what types of Castle content you'd like to see on a youtube channel that I could potentially film?  I've got a fairly large Castle and Castle-related collection that extends back to 2007 Fantasy Era, which is when I first got into Castle.  Would collection videos be something you think people would be interested in?  What about custom (but purist) minifigure designs?  Minifigure armies?  Like I said I'm new to this so I'm not super sure what fans would be interested in, especially on the Castle side.  Reviews seemed like a safe place to start, but I definitely want to branch out and do more unique content.  I'm not a great MOC builder so I probably won't do much stuff related to that yet.  Any advice would be very appreciated!

[SirBlake]

I can only speak for myself, but my tastes are pretty specific. Focused on castle, I’m interested in insights. For example, you got fantasy era stuff when new. I was in my dark age then, and would like to know what it was like being into it at the time. What came out first, what were the cool ones vs the sets that warmed shelves? What holes did you see in the line at the time? What has held up over time or what do you appreciate more now than you did at the time and why? Favorite bad guys (trolls vs skellies) and why. Any backstory or ads or literature around the theme that you remember? Like, was there some specific lore or story around it? I don’t know if the king has a name. Or the name of the evil Wizard and if there’s a story around him kidnapping the princess. 
 

Reviews are kind of everywhere. Certainly worth doing, but giving sets context is the really interesting thing. 

Edited July 16, 2022 by SirBlake

[Phyre]

22 hours ago, SirBlake said:

I can only speak for myself, but my tastes are pretty specific. Focused on castle, I’m interested in insights. For example, you got fantasy era stuff when new. I was in my dark age then, and would like to know what it was like being into it at the time. What came out first, what were the cool ones vs the sets that warmed shelves? What holes did you see in the line at the time? What has held up over time or what do you appreciate more now than you did at the time and why? Favorite bad guys (trolls vs skellies) and why. Any backstory or ads or literature around the theme that you remember? Like, was there some specific lore or story around it? I don’t know if the king has a name. Or the name of the evil Wizard and if there’s a story around him kidnapping the princess. 
 

Reviews are kind of everywhere. Certainly worth doing, but giving sets context is the really interesting thing. 

I appreciate the insight to your tastes.  These are all great questions and I think it might be fun to do a video answering these questions for you.  If I do end up doing it, I will send you the link.  You might be my only viewer but hey, gotta start somewhere, and who knows, maybe it'll take off lol.

Just to answer some of your last questions briefly, there wasn't much lore around Fantasy Era and to my knowledge none of the characters, even the king or evil wizard, ever had names.  Which I didn't mind because it allowed me more freedom to create my own storylines with the sets.

Edited July 17, 2022 by Phyre

[SirBlake]

Right on. I’ll certainly watch if you post a video on this. 

As far as the lack of narrative at the time, I’m right there with you. It’s fun when they leave things vague so the stories are ours to make. 

[MAB]

On 7/16/2022 at 7:07 AM, SirBlake said:

What came out first, what were the cool ones vs the sets that warmed shelves? 

It was a different time. It was never difficult to buy any Fantasy Era sets so they were all shelf warmers in the sense that they were always on shelves. There were of course occasional discounts but there weren't really hard and fast EOL times (especially in non LEGO stores) so there weren't any of the massive discounts seen later with Kingdoms. I remember seeing some Fantasy Era sets on shelves when Kingdoms was out.

[Poco Lypso]

I like this guy - takes his castle hobby very seriously

 

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCl_4XUPmvBsSJ19rB2MJ13A

[SirBlake]

6 hours ago, MAB said:

It was a different time. It was never difficult to buy any Fantasy Era sets so they were all shelf warmers in the sense that they were always on shelves. There were of course occasional discounts but there weren't really hard and fast EOL times (especially in non LEGO stores) so there weren't any of the massive discounts seen later with Kingdoms. I remember seeing some Fantasy Era sets on shelves when Kingdoms was out.

That makes sense. Once Kingdoms came out I was reignited, and ended up finding MMV at Walmart for $50. That was a stroke of luck.

4 hours ago, Poco Lypso said:

I like this guy - takes his castle hobby very seriously

 

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCl_4XUPmvBsSJ19rB2MJ13A

Nice! Thanks for the recommendation. Subscribed. 

[TalonCard]

On 7/17/2022 at 12:02 AM, Phyre said:

Just to answer some of your last questions briefly, there wasn't much lore around Fantasy Era and to my knowledge none of the characters, even the king or evil wizard, ever had names.  Which I didn't mind because it allowed me more freedom to create my own storylines with the sets.

Definitely wouldn't want it to get in the way of anyone's creativity here, but there is some interesting lore around the Fantasy based Castle sets. The crown knights were said to guard the Western Kingdom, and there was a book called Troll Attack that had some interesting backstory for the main players. The King is named Edward and the evil wizard was called Morax. The King's daughter, Princess Alyssa, got tired of waiting for rescue from Morax and found a way to escape. She and her father decided that she would remain a "captive" of Morax so that she could pass information on about his attack plans, which I thought was a nice twist. In the game LEGO Legends: Heroes Unboxed the King is named Brutus and he's less of a heroic figure there. (It's not unusual for LEGO characters to have multiple names, of course, but usually Heroes Unboxed will stick to preestablished names where there are any.)

[kchan98]

On insta:

bricks_fan_uy has some awesome builds with instructions

the_brick_stop has great builds too, i've done a few and they are worth every penny

satoisamu big fan of his retro style classic castle builds, also followed a few (no instructions)

 

 

[SirBlake]

Excellent! Thanks for the recommendations. 

[Phyre]

11 hours ago, TalonCard said:

the way of anyone's creativity here, but there is some interesting lore around the Fantasy based Castle sets. The crown knights were said to guard the Western Kingdom, and there was a book called Troll Attack that had some interesting backstory for the main players. The King is named Edward and the evil wizard was called Morax. The King's daughter, Princess Alyssa, got tired of waiting for rescue from Morax and found a way to escape. She and her father decided that she would remain a "captive" of Morax so that she could pass information on about his attack plans, which I thought was a nice twist. In the game LEGO Legends: Heroes Unboxed the King is named Brutus and he's less of a heroic figure there. (It's not unusual for LEGO characters to have multiple names, of course, but usually Heroes Unboxed will

Very interesting!  I wasn't aware of any of this material or backstory.  Of course I made up my own adventures, but it's very fascinating to hear some of the "official" LEGO storyline behind the sets.

[SirBlake]

Live stream conversation all about Castle on YouTube on the Bricking Up Brad channel with Mark Erickson, winner of Lego Masters season 2. 
 

 

[Yoggington]

Shout out to MB Bricks: https://www.youtube.com/c/MBBricks

She (and her video-editing brother) have a wide range of medieval MOCs, with regular releases. The channel has yet to really blow up, but it's well worth checking out.