Iria

Check out this Lego Club Magazine that Aanchir posted a few pages back. It gives more background on the story and Emily's grandmother. It sounds like her grandmother was an elf, but was sad that she had no powers and so decided to venture to the human world to better fit in. Then 'she grew mortal', presumably she became human (or hid her elven ears well).

Skyra and Aira are not the same person, but they are both wind elves. Both have pegasi and have bird friends (Skyra has an owl). I'm assuming that Skyra is one of the five magical elven sisters and queen to the Sky Castle. Lego's character page on Emily mentions that Emily's grandmother was one of the magical sisters. It's likely the each of the magical elven sisters represent a different element (aside from the grandmother who actually wasn't magical). It's possible that the wind/water/fire magical sisters could be introduced in later sets. Yeah, despite being the protagonist, Emily is only in two sets. This probably helps keep set prices lower and avoids having an overabundance of a single character, especially when they are always wearing the same clothes it gets boring. Here is the current character count looking at both the current and summer wave sets: Johnny Baker _1 Skyra _ 1 Emily _ 2 Farran _ 2 Aira _ 3 Naida _ 3 Azari _ 3 (4 if you count the polybag)

Thanks for the background BrickJagger. I'm fairly new to buying Lego, so I haven't caught on to the trends yet. That makes sense to have a happy end to an early wave of sets, to avoid 'loose ends' in case it's unpopular. Hopefully the theme is a success. I really want to see what comes out of Desertlands. Are there desert elves living there or something sinister? The spelling of 'Helyan' reminds me of Hyrule.

How long this theme continues will depend on its success, but I don't think we have to worry that it will be ending with the summer sets -How many themes last only half a year? LEGO is investing quite a bit in the marketing of Elves with the episodes, app and books*. Hopefully Elves will be successful, because I'd love to see how far the story progresses in this fantasy world. *It looks like Scholastic is coming out with Elves books. Amazon shows the first book coming out in late summer. The untitled first book is 128pages.Here's a description of the first book: "Welcome to the magical world of LEGO: Elves. This enchanting chapter book series is based on the newest LEGO brand. When a human girl enters a portal into the land of the elves, she's in for an journey full of action, magic, and friendship! The chapter books in this series will have foil on the cover and offer enchanting adventures in a lush new world." Scholastic/Amazon also lists an Elves activity book #1. --- Edit: Correction. Thanks for the info Aanchir!

Great variety and very creative! You have really transformed these minidolls into a fun series. I love that the Rogue Gunslinger is holding a fan, even though there looks to be a breeze, with her cape flying in the air. Must be hot out in the Old West

Here's some of the swords and other possible weapons, as found in the app: At Skyra's castle there is sword with an ornate handle: Around Azari's bakery there is a scythe and a fancy bronze axe. (There is also a generic wood cutting axe, not shown) : By Aira's windmill you can find a mallet, which no doubt relates to her tinkering, but could double as a weapon: In addition to the sword shown in the first image there is also what I thought looks like a large two-handed sword. I guess it could also be a fancy butter knife as there were spoons and forks found around the castle. I didn't see any weapons at Farran's Hollow. I did see rope near Naida's ship, which is the closest thing to weapon/tool I suppose.

I agree, the music and graphics are stellar. That mini score is pretty epic. I'm glad they didn't include the voices or the theme song. (A bit too catchy for my liking.) The app does leaves me wanting more though, as it is fairly quick to get through the story, and then repetitive if you want to learn all the 'secrets'. I love your idea about a corrupted forest! I can totally envision something like that being incorporated into the Elves world. If LEGO doesn't make something like this, I might have to modify some sets to create my own corrupted Elvendale . Thanks for the idea, haha.

Ordered the Elves 'Epic Adventure Ship', 'Crystal Hollow' and 'Magical Bakery'. I'm too impatient to wait for the double VIP points later this month since it already will take two weeks for the sets to be delivered. At least I'll be getting the bonus Elves polybag and hero pack.

It doesn't need to be too challenging. A lot of the movies recently posted have been too obscure for me

I was skeptical that LEGO would be bold enough to introduce some actual bad guys to this Elves line however they have hinted at some kind of villain(s) and the need to defend Elvendale and the portal as legozebra noted above. Also, if you check out the app, you'll notice there are weapons including axes and a variety of swords that are lying around the ground along with the other, more commonly found items of the sets (gems, animals, desserts, jewelry, etc.). Hopefully these weapons were placed in reference to whatever story arc they will be doing following the summer wave.

I loved building the houses from that 90s set! This pencil pot set is quite a nice for the price. It's available now on the online LEGO Shop- but the second photo is incorrectly showing the box for the 'LEGO Store' set instead. http://shop.lego.com/en-CA/Pencil-Pot-40154

Andy D's suggestion about using a food processor or blender is pretty good (and safe!). I think the processor would work better as it has a sharp blade, so it can make fine cuts, while the blender would likely just break it into chunks if at all. If you do try a food processor I suggest adding ice cubes, unless you are planning to grind up a lot of bricks -- food processors tend to make the hard bits go flying if there isn't enough volume being processed. (Just use a strainer to get rid of the water afterwards and then let the shavings dry). Another alternative* would be to use a small rotary tool (Dremel) with a small circular saw. *Though I don't recommend cutting LEGO with a Dremel unless you have experience using one, and preferably if you can clamp the LEGO down before you cut it, otherwise the outcome can be much more dangerous than your run-in with the xacto-knife. Good luck with your project!

Beautiful display! The way you created the water almost looks like the ship and dolphin are set in resin on holographic paper. The unicorn captaining the ship is a funny addition.

The Yeti looks based of the Abominable Snow monster from the 1964 Rudolph the red nosed reindeer:

Cave Girl's hair definitely matches with Pebbles Flinstones. Looks like she took Bamm-Bamm's club.

You're right, inflation rate really depends on where you live. Looking at many of the new sets that came out recently, there has definitely been a jump up in price since last year.

I think the Elves minidolls are beautifully designed. I'm generally not a fan of minidolls, but I think Lego did a great jobs with these ones. I just wish they could have slightly varied outfits or at least facial expressions, to avoid duplicates of the same character in multiple sets. I guess it's personal preference, but I find it odd that people will avoid sets just because they dislike the minidoll included. Why not just take the hair piece off and use it to customize a minifigure?

But so has inflation and average wages.

Snowpiercer - I expected it to be silly, but it was surprisingly decent.

I think the EuroBricks forum automatically defaults everyone as male. I had to change mine as well. It would make more sense for the default to either be blank or 'I'm not telling.

Welcome to the forum Rolf. Better late than never to enter the world of Lego. I look forwards to seeing your creations.

Thanks everyone! Thank you for the encouragement GallardoLU. JB Weld is my duct tape! It might have been my oddly worded title. (Hopefully nobody thought I was going to take their LEGO )

My name comes from a non-playable character from one of my favourite rpg game from close to 15 years ago. The character is actually named Iris, but the game was notorious for its typos. Iris lives alone at the bottom of the deep cave and is super challenging to beat. Her name shifts from Iris to Iria when she takes a more menacing pose which often resulted in her decimating my party. I currently have her gentle 'Iris' pose as my avatar.

I think I'm probably the only fan. I grew up playing with my brothers Lego. I'm sure he still has that blue bin, but I'm not sure if he gotten any new sets since he discovered video games in his early teens. My dad was a model builder and collector of various Star Wars figures, so I doubt he'd object to my hobby. Pretty sure my mom thinks I'm weird enough, so I don't bother telling her. Although he's not into it himself, my boyfriend is very supportive of my new found obsession- in fact he completely encouraged me to get into it and has since given me Lego gift cards for x-mas and valentines day . He just worries about space, since we don't have a lot.