Letter from the Director, April 2026

G'day Brick News readers!

Frase here - I've just realised it's been an entire YEAR since I last addressed the community, so I want to take the time to run through what we've been up to, what the plan is for Brick News' future, upcoming competitions and more. I'm going to put some headings for each section, so you can skip ahead to the parts you want to read.

I'm New to Brick News, What's the Letter from the Director?

Welcome to our website! The Letter from the Director is essentially a big update from the Brick News company director Frase (me) where I go over what our site members can expect in upcoming months, as well as some recaps and personal notes. Let's get into them!

What Will The Monthly Draw Grand Prize For June Be?

Good question. As most of you will know, we're giving away the LEGO The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell set in April and the LEGO Star Wars: UCS Venator in May. While we were considering putting the upcoming LEGO The Lord of the Rings: Minas Tirith in our June draw, there has still been no official confirmation yet as to whether the set will release in June, July or at a later date altogether. Because of this, we're going to give away the LEGO Star Wars: Jabba the Hutt's Sail Barge as the June prize, given its popularity in recent polls with out VIPs, then follow with Minas Tirith in July.

June's Monthly Draw grand prize will be the LEGO Star Wars: Jabba's Sail Barge. Image source: LEGO Australia.

Will We Be Getting Runner-Up Prizes Again In The Future?

If you've been a Brick News VIP for a while, you'll remember that some of our past draws have had runner-up prizes. The reason we stopped including these was because it's not yet sustainable for us to include them every month. We're a very small business, so while we'd like to be able to include runner-ups every draw, we don't yet have the ability to do this.

However... keep your eyes on our May 2026 Monthly Draw, y'know, just in case.

Where Are The YouTube Vids?

Many of you will have noticed the Brick News YouTube channel has been relatively dead for the past few months. While me being away has certainly been partially to blame, the main culprit is the video editing software I was using to make my YouTube videos. For both my YouTube and Instagram videos, I have been relying on Canva to edit clips together, create transitions and put captions on my videos. Unfortunately, Canva has a file size limit that restricts lengthy 4K videos from being uploaded and combined together - which has prevented me from being able to merge smaller clips together if those clips go for any longer than 90 seconds.

I'm currently learning Da Vinci Resolve so I can start putting together videos again, but I won't lock in a date for when the videos will start until I'm confident I'll be able to get them out on a regular basis.

Where Have You Been?

North America! I took two weeks off to visit California and Nevada, which also happened to be the first time I've ever visited the Unites States' mainland. I went to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but spent most of the time in Los Angeles.

While I was in San Francisco I had the opportunity to check out Lucasfilm HQ, and also got to visit George Lucas' new shop. I bought a few of his wines (his winery is called Skywalker Vineyards) and have taken them back to Australia with me. If you're a wine enthusiast in Australia, I do have to break the unfortunate news that Skywalker Vineyards does not ship internationally - in fact, they only ship to a few states in the US, so if you want to try the wine for yourself your best bet is probably to fly to San Francisco...

Anyway, here are some photos below from my trip! There's way more, but I figured I'd show some of the nerdy ones and one from Yosemite National Park during a snowstorm.

Looking For Feedback

I'd love to hear from both our VIPs and our standard site members on what Brick News can improve on. Whether it's covering more news, making more videos, sending more emails or something else - please comment below and let me know! I'm also looking for more topics you'd like me to cover in the next Letter from the Director, so feel free to list them below.

I'm not going to drag this letter out, so I'll wrap it up there for now. Thank you to those of you who took the time to read through. I'm excited to keep working on Brick News and can't wait to get some more LEGO news out - including the new UCS The Mandalorian's N-1 Starfighter leak. Talk soon!

Fraser Barr

Director, Brick News