Hewman

great stuff, seems like steampunk to me.

Hi grand Admiral Oh no, I think it's an exceptionally difficult job you've got with the limitations on piece choice, and inevitably without piece choice there will be many situations where you will need to use several pieces instead of one more specialised one (I like a mixture of both, eg. the old minifig y wing hardly used a curved piece and it does look a bit ugly whereas the introduction of just a few bigger, more specialised pieces makes the new one look infinitely better). It's a constant situation of compromise for Lego designers, which does make it a bit of a thankless task. I think the prices become inflated because of the nature of them not being as mass produced as other non-factory sets. I understand the price differential between these and more mass produced sets, but it doesn't mean I'm happy to pay it. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my comments. Cheers Matt

Hi Grand Admiral Don't feel the need to defend every part of your creation, what I don't like, others might love, it's just a question of taste. Regarding the price ratio, yes, but it does 'appear' (I don't have a piece list) to have great numbers of smaller cheaper pieces, and given the pieces aren't decorated, that further reduces the average value per piece. I hope it sells well and this encourages Lego to introduce a better space line than mars mission (although I quite like their figs).

Well it had to be Galidor didn't it, it's barely even recognisable as Lego. As for Jack Stone, yes it is ugly and <insert that tiresome argument>, but it was targeted at a post duplo/pre system market so I can forgive Lego for trying this out, at least they took it off the market.

this is not to put down the hard work of those involved in putting this together, it is way better than anything I could come up with, however there are a couple things that have made me decide not to purchase these. Firstly, the price isn't particularly appealing, and like some of the previous factory sets it looks like they got the piece count up by using lots of smaller pieces. Secondly, the stickers, no, not the fact that they have them, I understand the need to minimise costs, but it is the style of the stickers. I assume these sets being Factory are aimed at an older, more 'sophisticated' Lego fan, however the stickers seem aimed at a very young audience, I don't think they'd look out of place on a spongebob set (I quite like spongebob, but don't want space having a spongebob look). Anyway, I'll finish on a positive note, with instructions available I can build some of the small ships myself from my own parts.

What happened to Midnight Oil? well frontman Peter Garrett is now the Federal Minister for the Environment in the Australian Government. He's been a member of parliament for about 4 years I think. PS Yes he still has a shaved head, and it still looks weird to see him in suits.

How about The Panics, The Presets, Gyroscope, The Mess Hall as a start, they're just ones I've seen live recently, oh wait, I'm from Oz so it's not really fair.

For all you Aussies My local Toys r us (Adelaide) has plenty of clearance sets, Y-wing, tie crawler, the UCS AT-ST plus plenty of exoforce, racers and batman sets heavily discounted. Plus Target now has 20% off all toys and they have the new Indi lego in stock

You could have got one on bricklink recently from an exceptionally reputable seller for about $450.

A sloght correction General T, it's not actually a UCS number but a shop at home exclusive (and sometimes available in selected stores) number, there are plenty of minifig scale sets with these 10xxx numbers, eg 10144 sandcrawler, although I think all the UCS sets all have 10xxx numbers. So I still have my fingers crossed for a minifig death star set.

I was shown a nice trick by a guy at a lego shop and at least for some sets, there isn't any printed code to tell you, however a date of production is embedded in the box, basically just a stamp which squashes down the box without altering box colour at all and you can se eit if you look carefully. I know this can be done for train tracks to check for grey/bley.

A 7190 Millennium Falcon and a top condition boxed snowspeeder (4500) only $25 Aus for the latter!

We (I'm definitely including myself here)were all so pessimistic weren't we, and Lego sure has shown us, a few of those sets are gorgeous, oh that silver, so so beautiful. I guess they did some exhaustive product testing because they've come up with the goods here, and no license for them to pay. Plus it didn't go the obvious route of mimicking James Bond.

Well it looks like the big surprise for a lot of people including me is the Agents line. I had no interest in this at all after seeing prelim pics, but that silver and dark blue look brilliant. The city advent calendar is very ho hum, just more of the same. Also a big plus for the new creator sets, love that ferry!

and yes you are sounding naggy

Sensational I saw this topic and thought 'good luck pulling off something convincing here', well you more than did that. the pie shop building is awesome and how you made the pies was just genius, very clever.

Of course it's collecting, he builds and displays his or perhaps her sets. The collector has made additions to sets to display them better, seems like an enthusiastic collector to me. A buyer would just stack everything in sealed boxes and never open and brag about how many sets this is, this guy has taken pics and put up what I think is a really cool display. I like the little touches like making a bit of variation among X-wings.

Awesome! Perhaps an easy way to get some other colour in it is to add the dark grey pieces that go on the feet and the back of the leg of the grey AT-ST. I could see these sneaking around Tatooine, firing at innocent Jawas.

I'm with you on the steampunk, some lovely bronzey colours would be great, I'd love a zeppelin.

Well I'm a space nut and I think my opinion of these sets can be best summed up by my buying pattern. I've only bought one set, the 7695, the smallest of the sets and that was purely to have at least one mars mission minifig. The big low points for these sets are firstly the huge amount of stickers, the style and design of several of the sets, the 'story' of the theme, exploitation of aliens, and the colours don't particularly do it for me either. So for this old classic space, space police 1, and blacktron 1 fan, these were a bit of a disappointment.

A comprehensive and well thought out review. I have to agree with you that those stickers are actually pretty cool, and stickers generally suck, they definitely work well with the transparent background which helps the silver appear to meld into the blue piece better. thanks also for the comparison pics of the old and new stormies, it looks like the mouth in the new one isn't only with stripes but also bigger.

Don't delete now, I think upload has worked!

They all go in zip lock bags and then placed in the box of the set they come from. Extras I've bought go in a zip lock bag and then in another larger bag with other little bags full of minifigs.

Definitely the 4501 Cantina, grab a drink, listen to some music, shoot aliens, fun for the whole family.

Sweeney Todd, visually very good, but what do you expect from tim Burton but performances by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter weren't up to their usual high standards.