J.P. Manalo

Awesome stuff! Very cool!

That's me! And my monorail! lol It appears you took that photo of me whilst I was helping set up the MOC that my mate Tim and I brought to Brickvention 2012. Cheers, J.P. Manalo

I'd like to add some commentary based on a discussion with a well-placed source who understands many of the decisions behind the pricing of LEGO products. In Australia the price of LEGO, unfortunately, is all to do with market expectations. LEGO's market research (for Australia) showed them that people (in general) in the Australian market view the LEGO brand as a "premium" brand, and as such are more willing to pay more for the product. As such, LEGO has decided to price themselves appropriately to reflect their "premium brand" status. The analogy given to me was one of a business owner trying to maximise their profit on the items they sell - if you were a business owner, you would want to sell your products for as much as you possibly could without scaring off your customers. When I pressed the source further, with the question "what can be done to lower LEGO set prices?", the answer was along the lines of: "if you can convince the *entire* market to buy less LEGO in the shops, that will force us to drop our prices. But whilst we still have strong sales at these prices, the prices will likely stay at these levels". Note, I don't necessarily agree with the higher pricing, but I understand *why* they have chosen to price higher in the Australian market. Anyway, it's good to see that many of the new 2012 LEGO City sets are priced much better when compared to sets of equivalent size released in 2010/2011. Cheers, J.P. Manalo

I hate to be picky, but the Sydney Brick Show is being organised by SydBricks in conjunction with the Powerhouse Museum. It just happens that all of the people in SydBricks are all SydLUG members :-) Cheers, J.P.

I spotted both Battle packs at a Target store this evening. Only a couple of boxes on the shelf though - I'd say the store was raided earlier in the week!

I have a heap of images on my Flickr photostream, but because I've made less than five posts, I can't post any links yet! I'll add some links once I've moved up the Eurobricks ranks...

I'm looking forward to the release of Town Hall - if anything, the parts in this set will make for interesting modular MOCs. Thanks for sharing the news and set images!

G'day everyone! My name is J.P. Manalo. I've been lurking here on Eurobricks for many years (since 2008!), and figured that it's about time that I added my voice to this wonderful LEGO Community. :-D I've considered myself a "proper" AFOL for nearly ten years now, but I have been a LEGO enthusiast in varying degrees all my life. I like *everything* LEGO - it's flexibility in which the same bricks can be used in a building one day, a mountain the next day and in a machine the day after will always astound me and is one of the reasons why I've stayed with the LEGO hobby. The other main reason why I've stayed in the LEGO hobby for so long is because of the many friends I have made within the LEGO community. I will happily state that my life is much richer because of LEGO. My main involvement with the LEGO community is through my local LUG (LEGO User Group), SydLUG - the Sydney LEGO Users Group. I am currently the LEGO Ambassador representing SydLUG within the LEGO Ambassador program. I also from time-to-time post news articles on the front-page of Brickset.com (generally relating to events in Australia, or extraordinary sales events in local Australian stores). My latest MOC was a monorail station that appeared on a joint display that my friend, Tim G. and myself displayed in Melbourne, Australia at Brickvention 2012: Cheers! J.P. Manalo

Your anecdotes are very similar (or in fact, identical!) to the experiences that myself and others in the Sydney L-Gauge Group (SLGG) have had when we have exhibited at the Annual AMRA Model Railway Exhibitions here in Sydney. I find it interesting that the organisers of the Model Railway Show have always invited us back to the event every year because our LEGO layout is a really huge draw-card in bringing people to the exhibition. Personally, I view LEGO Model Railroading as a very valid form of the Model Train hobby, with benefits that you can't get from other "traditional" model railroading forms (i.e. HO-scale, N-scale, etc). I should point out that I once ran a HO-scale layout myself, and still help my Dad out with his HO-scale trains. It would be interesting to find out whether the NMRA (National Model Railway Association) in the United States has finally recognised "L-Gauge" as a peer amongst HO, N and the other "traditional" model railroading gauges/scales... Cheers, J.P. Manalo

This might sound really, really pedantic to some... :-P But... I use a 3-drawer filing cabinet to store my instructions. Each instruction booklet goes in a plastic sleeve, then it goes into a suspension folder within the filing cabinet. Larger instructions, like the Death Star II instructions, and the ISD instructions don't go in plastic sleeves because of their size! lol They do fit in the suspension folders though... The instructions are sorted by set number, of course... :D I keep catalogues in a seperate drawer to the instructions, and those are sorted by date-of-publication (if known...)