Hewman

To those in Adelaide, Target Newton has one Alien Defense HQ on the top shelf for $99.20 after the 20% off sale. If you're thinking of waiting to buy this set, grab it now as it's the only AC one not in this year's catalogue. PS the box is a little rough but not terrible.

Welcome! I think you'll find this a pretty fun and friendly online community. If you haven't seen it there's a Star Wars thread that goes over hundreds of pages (although I might be exaggerating) talking about this year's sets.

The HQ set is also the only Alien Conquest set not to be in th first half 2012 Australian catalogue, so it does look like the theme is disappearing which is a bit sad because I thought there was plenty of potential there for further sets, like an actual ADU Headquarters rather than a vehicel with add ons (as good as it is, it's not a real HQ).

I think it means production will stop and they'll start to disappear from shop shelves for good.

The pink tree is gorgeous and flower bed works really well with that dense look. A great MOC, you should be pretty impressed with yourself.

I wouldn't read too much into it. Even if the list is right, it's just the name of one episode whereas this season's episode list has many titles concerning snakes.

I got the Mill. Falcon from them a while ago and last time I checked it was a great price. Sets that ship to Aus tend to be older but not all older sets ship, so you just need to try to get through checkout.

Barnes and Noble have a bunch of new sets up, all at 10% off including Batman, Spongebob, Friends, Ninjago and City. Of course, based on my experiences (and that of many others), there's a good chance they'll just cancel your order, or if you're lucky enough to have your order honoured, there's also a good chance it will arrived with the Lego boxes damaged.

It's great to hear your passion and excitement come through in your post! This style of building with mainly basic bricks brings back the childhood memories of the Lego Exhibitions that I used to see in school holidays. I wonder if the rumoured R2-D2 sculpture is going to be built like this with generally non-specialised bricks, like the Yoda and Darth Maul sculptures were. Thanks for the pics, I like the look of the happy dragon hanging out near the bridge, maybe to devour some unwary giant tourists from the van.

The Pyramid for sure. I only own that and the MVR (but I do have the original bat cave). The build is way more interesting in the pyramid than the Mill, plus you get the great Anubis guard figs, a flying mummy, and a vehicle. The MVR has very cute goats and looks ok on display, just not as good as the pyramid and probably with less play value too. At $50, I'd grab a second pyramid if I had the opportunity.

Many thanks for the pics. Even at that relatively low price point that set is awful. Why did they give more detail to the base rather than what makes the opera house iconic? when I first heard of this set I was certain I'd buy it, but I wouldn't buy this on massive discount after seeing the pic.

Thanks for the info. Do you happen to remember the pricing on any of the sets? I'm just trying to decide if it's worth grabbing some sets from k-mart or wait for the inevitable Target 20% off sale (assuming they have stock).

Just put something in your basket and try to check out, it will soon tell you if it will ship to your address or not.

Nothing to worry about at all. I had an order airmailed from the US on December 9 and it didn't arrive until early this month. It's just a really busy time of year for shipping, plus holidays for staff in shipping companies. Is Chromebricks from Germany? I've always found German post a little slower than say the UK, so factor that in as well and I think you'll be right.

By cute little safari set, I assume you mean 4637. That's a store exclusive (according to the latest catalogue anyway), my guess is Toyworld and/ or independents as last year's castle creator type set like that was a Toyworld exclusive. Does anyone know if 1. Myer's one day sale tomorrow includes toys at all and 2. Have they re-stocked since Christmas?

I found it useful. So the quick summary is that it all relates to the $1000 import GST threshold (albeit with slightly dodgy exchange rates)

Thanks for all the new extra info, people. I'm still prepared to wait 60 days for a VAT refund rather than pay Australian RRP. I wonder if the government here is doing something shifty like adding up orders over a 60 day period to get to the $1000 limit. I was just on amazon.it and they have been listing a lot of new sets including a few of last year's shop at home exclusives although they wouldn't ship to Australia, although now I see they never actually had them in stock (but should be soon I imagine). Hopefully this means it won't be too long before we can order sets like the winter post office and VW van at decent prices.

Alex a big thanks for the photo review, it certainly shows a lot more than the official pics. Those brown bricks with tiles remind me of old action movies that hard cardboard boxes everywhere on the streets that gave stuntmen something to fall into and cars something to drive into without causing much damage.

Maybe download the instructions for both (easiest to find through brickset) and go through them closely to see what you'd enjoy most. If you could afford both and say didn't like one or the other after building, at those prices you could probably come close to getting your money back even with it being built once. I'm not sure how much info has been published here (and I assume availability can fit under the broad heading of sales), but here are some details of when sets are due out and what are exclusives in the first half of 2012. City - all out in January with the following exceptions: 4438 Robber's Hideout - March (exclusive to someone) 4205 Off Road Command Centre - March (exclusive to someone) 4430 Fire Transporter - March (exclusive to someone) 4206 Recycle Truck - April (exclusive to someone) Friends - March (I couldn't see any shop exclusives) Super Heroes - February (no mention of Joker's Funhouse set) Super Heroes Action Figs - May Ninjago - January except the following: 9455 Fangpyre Mech - March (exclusive to someone) 9457 Fangpyre Wrecking Ball - March (exclusive to someone) 9567 Fang- Suei - April 9561 Kai ZX - April Star Wars - February all sets, shop exclusives listed below: 9494 Anakin's Jedi Interceptor 9495 Gold Leader's Y-Wing Technic - all released April, except 8110 Unimog which is a shop exclusive and no month listed

I've almost finished building the Fire Temple, and it's definitely a more advanced build than I was expecting for one with a minimum age of 8 years. It looks great on display (90% complete) and I'd definitely recommend at $99. I only own the Black Pearl, which I think looks very good on display, has nice figs, a relatively simple build, some bits of the build are fun but it's not overly challenging. Also there aren't many play features with this set As for the Castle, I can only comment on my experiences with the previous Castle (Fantasy Era one) which is much bigger than the Kingdoms one, but I found a rather simple and unsatisfying build. One thing with the Kingdoms castle is that it may go together well with the new joust set. In fact if I saw it cheap enough I'd buy it purely for that purpose. That's probably not overly helpful but at least gives you a bit more info.

Were these 2012 sets they had listed that wouldn't ship? I think it does depend on availability and how recent sets are. On Amazon.com, you could get the emerald night shipped to Australia for ages, then all of a sudden it became available. For 2012 sets, I'm prepared to show some patience before pay Aus RRP (less 20% on sale). I'll say one thing about amazon.it, my sets arrived in perfect condition, and quickly too.

Also add 2507 Ninjago big set (I've forgotten name) $99 ($200). For anyone in Adelaide wanting a cheap Pets Shop Modular, there were a few copies at David Jones at Marion today. The boxes didn't look brilliant from what I saw but less than $200 isn't bad for an exclusive like that.

Was the space shuttle at Firle? I found it several aisles away from the Lego, scanned it and put it with the Lego, but resisted buying. Although I was bad and bought the big Ninjago set, for $99, I couldn't say no to half price and I haven't bought anything online for a while. Firle K-mart had plenty of half price (well half of their price) City advent calendars for $25. Also Pirates of the C. were heavily discounted too, 30-45% for the sets I saw today. Edit: They also had the Mill Village Raid set for a rather respectable $69 I think.

It's that time of year where we reflect on what have been the best sets of the year. Polls appear and blogs have features on the best sets of the year. Invariably though, all the 'best' sets are the big ticket items. So here's one for the little guys. What are people's favourite small set (I've set a price of less than $20 US (based on US shop at home prices, you can check brickset if you're unsure of prices in the US. This gives plenty of sets to choose from at $19.99 or less). I'll kick it off, for me, it's set, 7978, Angler Attack from the Atlantis theme. There are so many great features packed into this small set, great variety of colours (plenty of dark green that I love), a brilliant barracuda minifig, a fun build and masses of playability. I bought this on a whim and it was my best unplanned Lego buy of the last two years. Picture taken from Whung's Brickshelf folder, he who provides us with so many top quality early pics

Do Target still have their 20% off sale? With the disappointing online sales, I have a few spare $s budgeted for Lego. There really is very little on the shop at home sale, the winter post office is discounted, but the discount doesn't even come close to covering shipping, and I think it will have to be more widely available in the coming months. Edited: To correct horrible typo of 'discounted'