Marty McFly

Looks like Rivendell will be the only set with stickers in this wave. Hooray! Still having nightmares about applying all the ones to Mines of Moria.

Wow. This is going to sit alongside my pirate ships, haunted house and Arkham as 'sets I never intend to pack up'. As far as height goes, I think it's about right for the set (too high would bump the price up too high) but clearly there's potential to MOC in a few extra floors. Hopefully if this sells well we'll get a UCS Minas Tirith or Barad-dur

Best: there are so many good ones out there - LOTR/Hobbit and Superheroes are full of winners, but my favourite is Darth Malgus from the Old Republic series. Worst: new Spidey. Looks like he's wearing pajamas.

I wonder if we might see a UCS/modular Arkham Asylum set? Would be great to get a 2000+ piece model of such an iconic setpiece.

Left it under a light for an hour and still no glow. Contacted TLG and they're sending a replacement. Both are great, two best sets of the line apart from Vampyre Castle. Tricky decision - figs in both are fantastic. As far as the build goes, the car is better in the zombie set but the monster lab is really cool, especially the light brick effect. If I had to choose I'd go Zombies and regret not getting the other one.

Anyone else get a non-glowing Mummy? According to the instruction book it's supposed to glow but mine doesn't. This is a great series though - love the way they've used the light brick on the Mad Scientist's lab, and the Monster is one of the best minifigs of the year!

Personally I'm holding out for a Calendar Man minifig. ;)

I was not prepared for how big Helm's Deep is! Easily the biggest model I own, especially once a piece of Uruk-Hai Army wall is attached. Anyway the combination of Helm's Deep plus 2x Uruk-Hai Army sets makes for a very impressive battle scene, to say the least!

Diagon Alley and 4842 Hogwarts (and maybe 4867 Hogwarts gate) should be enough to make any Harry Potter fan happy, the rest of the sets are just filler.

Yep Big W have the SW exclusive too (9494). Good week for Aussie LEGO fans, as of tomorrow both Myer and Target have 20% off all LEGO, most stores seem to have the LOTR kit in stock.

I cycle through themes. POTC just made way for my new LOTR sets, which in time will likely be disassembled to make room for the next line. Disassembled sets are kept in plastic containers, each set has its own container depending on its size. I keep the minifigs in tiny ziplock bags (2" x 3") to stop them getting scratched.

9500 Sith Fury-Class Interceptor Wow this ship is awesome! Fantastic detail on both top and bottom, space for all 3 minifigs inside (and the Darth Malgus fig is pretty special!), very pleased with this purchase. I don't usually get any non-OT Star Wars sets but this one is an exception, superb design, well worth the cash!

This is the real challenge for budding Cuusoo builders - make a spectacular set which can fit into a $20-30 pricetag. It's one thing to make an impressive model with thousands of pieces, the skill is being able to do so with 250 bricks. I think the BTTF set works well in this regard, it's only a small set but uses detail rather than scale to impress.

Wow. I thought it was going to be closer to AUD$300. Mind you, unless they do a free shipping offer that'll be another $45.

Grabbed a few of the planets on special yesterday: 9676 TIE Interceptor & Death Star 9677 X-wing Starfighter & Yavin 4 9678 Twin-Pod Cloud Car & Bespin 9679 AT-ST & Endor (I tend to only grab OT Star Wars so left the other two sets on the shelf) First impression is that the mini-models are pretty cool, especially the TIE Interceptor and AT-ST. Lobot in particular is a nice minifig, the rest are still good but kind of generic pilots. I really like the presentation of the final model, with the minifig and ship on a stand, and the printed 'title' plate. Not sure what to do with the planets though. They're a bit useless and (apart from the Death Star) look fairly ordinary so will probably go in a box somewhere. At any rate, I'm sure LEGO will continue this series and look forward to seeing what they come up with.

I got mine in a group buy for 25% off RRP. Still AUD $400 for 6 sets (excluding Orc Forge), $70-odd more expensive than the US RRPs. At least the premium on Monster Fighters sets won't be quite so high. <rant> Ridiculous that it's significantly cheaper to import LEGO from the UK or the USA than buy it locally, even taking shipping costs into account. </rant> Still very impressed with these LOTR sets, hope the second wave will be just as good.

You won't regret it. Despite the relatively small piece count for the price, the final build looks great. After I turn the lights off at night I can see the silhouette of the ship in the moonlight, and it's still recognisably the Black Pearl - a hallmark of good design IMO.

Side by side the differences are pretty glaring. Similar style to be sure, but clearly by two unique designers. At the end of the day all Victorian Mansions look alike in real life, so it stands to reason that two LEGO models would also have similarities.

Just got the call, my LOTR preorder will arrive on Monday. All six sets apart from the Orc Forge. Going to be a sloooow weekend!

I'm going to be different and say The Orc Forge is my favourite. It packs a lot of features into a small set, and the Lurtz minifig is superb. The use of a light brick to add some "heat" to the furnace is a nice touch too. Weathertop is a very close second, and all of the sets are 'must haves' as far as I'm concerned.

Well the UCS R2-D2 is $250 locally so if this is the same price then I guess that's not too bad. Would still want to find it at 20% off though.

I think POTC would have benefited from having more sets based on the earlier films (especially the first) as opposed to the fourth one. Would have loved to see a blacksmith's workshop with Jack and Will fighting, or the classic POTC scene with the prisoners in jail begging the dog for the key. And Pintel/Ragetti minifigs The licenses definitely work best when they're tied to a long-running theme. Like Star Wars, LOTR and Super Heroes both have very long term potential due to the breadth and depth of the source material. As far as the rest of the licenses go, Spongebob, Cars, Toy Story, PoP are all a bit meh for me, but I love the PoTC sets that have been released and will be disappointed if there aren't any more. Indiana Jones worked very well too. I feel the Avengers sets don't work quite as well as Batman, simply because the Batman sets aren't based on any specific film or comic book. Contrast with the Avengers replicating specific scenes in the film, these are always harder to make work because there's less 'wiggle room' and the differences between the set and the source material can be glaring.

I suspect until we see The Flash in a movie he's unlikely to get his own set. Next wave will probably be more X-Men, Superman or Spiderman, since each of those themes only have one set each at this stage. Personally I'm hoping for more X-Men!

I was very into LEGO Technic in my early-mid teens (late 90s/early 00s), mostly small sets (big ones were too expensive!). Lost interest around the end of high school but after 5 years of university I picked up a discounted 8265 Front Loader from Target on an impulse. Wasn't long before I started to check out what else was out there but didn't want to buy anything due to the high prices here in Australia. Then I discovered imports. Early in 2011 I picked up the 8053 Mobile Crane from Amazon UK, since then I've added the 8110 Unimog, 8043 Motorised Excavator and 8070 Supercar to my collection, along with a few smaller sets. But the real renaissance was earlier this year when I grabbed my first regular LEGO set - 6860 The Batcave. The rest of the Super Heroes sets quickly followed and I'm pretty well hooked now. Hasn't helped that my housemate has a similar obsession! So far I've been 'catching up' on sets I've missed, but plan to mainly follow licensed themes going forward. Chiefly Super Heroes and POTC so far, but LOTR is definitely in my sights (who am I kidding? I've already got them on preorder), and the upcoming Monster Fighters series is very interesting. I don't have a lot of space to display models, so my plan is to have a rotating 'exhibit' of the different themes. At the moment it's Pirates, next will probably be LOTR, and so on. I'd often wondered when younger who could possibly afford all the 'big' sets. And now I know: it's young professionals with plenty of disposable income.

Is there a difference in boxes between territories? Apart from Architecture, all the sets I've bought locally in Australia have had the ends glued shut. But recent imports (Black Pearl from UK, Joker's Funhouse from USA) have both had the taped/stickered shut ends. I toss out/recycle my boxes anyway, so much prefer the 'peace of mind' of the glued ends.