MetroiD

I live in fear of Chuck Norris. I cannot say anything bad about Chuck Norris since I dread the thought of dying at the hands (or is that feet?) of his roundhouse kick. Chuck Norris has modelled the very world I live in. In that sense, Chuck Norris there has made an absolutely lovely rendition of his own truck (which he made in the first place) in LEGO scale. Needless to say, he also made the LEGO bricks for this truck himself.

This is a really well executed scene... you've obviously put a lot of thought into it and definitely brought some action to your LEGO world! I must say that it does look scarily realistic! However, I just can't help but notice that somehow the minifigs' smiles just don't go along with the theme of violence. This may be a bit off topic, but let me explain what I mean: Weird as that might sound, there never were any "baddies" in my LEGO world back when I was a kid. The criminal would relax and have a cup of coffee at the police station's lobby room along with other officers while Majisto would chat with the King's Knights and reflect on the dragon's recent exploits in helping out local population. Yes, I know it sounds naive and it pretty much ruins the sense of having a castle or a police station in the first place. I guess in hindsight I could say "how childish of me", but I have to admit that to this day I think more or less the same way when I build LEGO. It's just that the world's pretty messed up as it is and bringing violence to life in LEGO makes me feel a bit sad. Just a few personal reflections...

For someone who is working with a limited range of bricks (and believe me, I know how you feel!), you have done an exquisite job! I would love to see this next to an actual building created by you, I am absolutely sure that you'll come up with something fantastic. Congrats on the feature, by the way!!!

Thanks for your comments guys. As I said, this one was just a quick build and even though we're quite happy with it, that does not mean it's perfect. We had just purchased those orange bricks specifically with this MOC in mind and unfortunately those are pretty much all our orange-coloured parts as of this moment. Of course, I will be buying some sloped bricks off Bricklink in order to complete this MOC, but in the meantime I just wanted to hear your thoughts regarding its shape & the general idea. @ brickzone: You'd be surprised at how good some of those "older" torsos look when combined with modern heads! I know I was! Most of my minifigs are from the 90s and we've only just started acquiring newer sets, but I've sort of found out that combining old designs with newer ones really adds up to the fun value of building an MOC :) Once again - thanks for your input. More sloped orange bricks on their way soon, I hope.

Wow! Thanks for the nice comments guys. I can't believe you've chosen to blog this one - thanks, ImperialShadows!!! Seeing as this was my very first attempt at motorcycle building and I only had a limited range of parts at my disposal, I do believe that this can still be improved on. Which of course, does not mean I'm not happy with the design - this bike is going to remain as it is, but I will be placing a Bricklink order for a few more specific parts soon and then we'll see if I manage to complete one of my favourite other sport motorcycles, this time a green one. Yeah, you guessed it, I also like Kawasaki :) In the meantime, I've got another, more "comic", motorcycle design which I'll post laster on today. The good thing about it is that the minifig fits the bike without any problems. With this one, unfortunately, having a minifig actually ride the bike is pretty much impossible and can only be accomplished using suitable camera angles: I will work on that with the Kawasaki and hopefully find a resolution. However, I have noticed that building a chopper/cruiser-style bike which can fit a minifig rider is much easier than finding a way for minifigs to ride sportier motorcycle designs, which in this scale are very clogged up in order to achieve the sleek look... I have had the request to provide instructions on MOCpages as well, so I will definitely take a few photos of the Triumph's assembly & main chunks and post them here. I would be happy to see some of these rolling around in your own towns

Thank you ever so much, this has been tons of fun from the very first comment onwards. Obviously, this MOC is nothing too fancy but I thought I might share it here and have a fun discourse with other adults. Which was not to be - and I fully accept the blame for that. I would be grateful if a moderator could please delete this entire thread. Or at least lock it up and send it to the archives.

Affirmative. Excuse me for being off-topic here, but could I just clarify that this account is in plural, since we build most of our MOCs together (we = me & my girlfriend, Asya). However, seeing as she's not really the forum-writing type, I guess that 99,9% of the time you'll be reading my stupid comments (my = Bobby).

How profitable is it to run a gas station in a LEGO city nowadays? Especially with the recent low prices of petrol... Oh, and just by the way - this is so much better than LEGO's original "gas station" set. Great MOC, keep em coming!

1 month of free orange juice for 1 month of free gas at your gas station. I won't be needing the carwash, just gas is fine. How's that sound?

The size issue is now resolved, I should have checked up if everything was OK before posting this. Once again, my sincere apologies to everyone who had to load those ridiculously huge pictures and be beguiled by our unique skills at dust and hair shaping. Thank you for your sweet comment, Jerac, I take it that you never make mistakes, which is really marvellous for you :) Unfortunately, I am not considering shaving my head and dust is pretty much as abundant as oxygen. Guess that's life.

Precisely. Which nevertheless seems to be a theory which has continuously eluded TLG's marketing sector. The question is, why should the above apply only to big markets? And, from an economist's point of view, isn't this true for any market, irrespective of its size - at least until a specific point is reached? I come from a small eastern European country where LEGO has hardly been available before 1989 and during the last 20 years its prices have remained ridiculously high. Up until a few years ago, while Bulgaria was still not a member of the EU, I could see a reason for that, but nowadays I just can't understand why it is that sets here are still sold by LEGO's exclusive distributor for Bulgaria at a price of almost 140% the original one... Comparing this to my experience having lived on both sides of the Big Pond, I think it's safe to say that a huge percentage of TLG's customers don't really buy their products at the original prices. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that if they had to buy, for example, an Indy set for 90 EUR, they'd just buy some other hobby item / toy instead. However, discounts at stores occur almost every other month nowadays - and THAT is when most of the LEGO shopping is done. I could be horribly wrong, but I have on multiple occasions witnessed how the average consumer (and I'm not referring to die-hard LEGO fans here) would only pay what they deem to be a reasonable price for a set, and once a set they have had their eyes on for a few months finally gets that "25% off" sign on it, then it's buying time. But not a second earlier. Now, returning to where I started off - I guess TLG's thoughts on the local market are more less something in the pattern of "Since Bulgaria is a small market, people don't really buy LEGO, hence why not charge the customers who ARE willing to pay such big money something extra". Well, why not try and see things from a more classical point of view (at least in economical terms) and just for a second accept the statement that supply does actually create its own demand, ridiculous as it might sound in modern times. Let's alter that just a tad bit and imagine that the local market is supplied with reasonably-priced LEGO sets - wouldn't they be bought at much larger quantities, in that way negating the big profit from overpriced sets and actually generating a much larger profit? I guess the answer to that question depends on the market. But you can never know the local market unless you really have tried, and during these last 20 years, TLG have definitely not tried to offer their products at a reasonable price. Hell, if they did, I would buy out 20% of what's available in Bulgaria! :D But who am I to argue about a luxury toy's pricing policy... Just wanted to make my feelings heard (and yes, I HAVE contacted both the official distributor and TLG... no response as of this moment and I'm almost 100% convinced that my emails have ended up in the trash can). What I CAN do, however, is stop purchasing sets from the local exclusive distributor - which is just what I've done. There are plenty of other ways to buy LEGO at a reasonable - or at least, at the original - price nowadays thanks to the internet. But I find it ridiculous how I've been purchasing new sets which are sent to me from all over Europe and despite the shipment, they still cost me less than buying them from a local store.

oooh I missed that... I guess I'm going to have to use the forum's "Search" option and check out what THAT was about ;] Now, regarding this conversation - obviously someone had a bad experience since someone else could not really handle the situation in a timely fashion. It happens to us all (being on both sides of the story), so I think we all should try and show some understanding. Fair enough, sometimes you are left wondering if things would eventually have worked out for you at all had you not been insistant as hell... But well, such things happen. At the end of the day, all's well that ends well, thanks for the heads up, LegoBuster, but let's not make too big a deal out of it. There are far too many big and well respected companies out there who just have a hard time responding to all their clients' grievances and obviously LEGO makes no exception. Which brings to me a question which is more or less relevant to this here thread... A month ago I sent an e-mail to LEGO Customer Service via their online form. I am yet to receive a reply - that is, if I ever do. However, since it contained a few questions which are of concern to me, I wanted to ask you guys whether anyone of you had used the website feedback form @ lego.com to contact Customer Service and had their grievances / problems dealt with? Or at least - did you get a response from a LEGO representative?

It's great to see you here, Jarek. I loved your Tatra... and your Junak... and that Zuk model you built! You're a terrific builder mate!

Hi there Pedro, great to see you here and thanks for greeting us to this place :] To be quite honest, I hadn't really had too much time to surf the net for LEGO forums/sites in the past few weeks and neither did Asya... hence our belated registration @ Eurobricks. I'll get around to posting our MOCs later on this week... Working on a few new ones as well, I guess the LEGO fever has a very tight grip on us lately :] @ Dadster: thanks mate! Regarding the orange juice kiosk - it was Asi (my girlfriend)'s idea actually, I just asked her about how she got the notion to build that one... She says that she'd seen one of these at the seaside resort when she was a kid and had always wanted a glass of orange juice. The idea was so inspiring that we finished it in no time.