Joebot

The Falcon set is definitely "cute" ... but I'm not sure who the target audience is. No mini-figs, which knocks out a HUGE portion of the Star Wars-buying customers. Not a big, detailed model (which we already have) for the deep-pocketed AFOLs. It seems like they're trying to create a new niche here, and I don't know that there's room for it. Now, if they expand the "midiscale" concept to other ships, as others have speculated ... well, then maybe. The Falcon reminds me of the "collector's edition" Naboo fighter from a while back, with the chrome silver parts. I got it, and it's nice enough I suppose, but it's really an oddball set. It just doesn't fit with anything else in my collection.

Very nice! I think Mel Brooks would be proud. "I see your Schwartz is as big as mine!"

Thanks, Zepher! No, N-Vasion isn't going to figure into the larger mystery with the Benefactor. Those guys were fun, but I think I got as much mileage out of them as I could.

The river is a very interesting experiment! I've never seen anyone try to create the illusion of a rushing, churning river. You almost have to step back from it and let the individual pieces meld together in your eye. Otherwise, if you focus on the separate pieces, the illusion is ruined. It's a clever idea. As for the books ... I gave up on them about book #7, right about the eighty gazillionth time that Nynaeve pulled on her hair braid and complained about men. Jordan had a lot of interesting ideas, but it felt to me like the story had spiralled out of his control into too many separate plot threads.

Thanks, Bob! The next chapter will hopefully be coming along a little quicker than the last one. I took about half the pictures last night, and plan to take the other half tonight.

I wish the wind turbine was sold separately from the vehicles. It would have been fun to buy four or five wind turbines to build a wind farm in my city, but I really have no need for four or five gigantic red transport trucks. Thanks for the pictures. The City theme is as strong as I've ever seen it in my 30 years of collecting!

I remember having a similar conversation years and years ago on rec.toys.lego regarding Lego's short-lived "Outback" theme. It was commonly thought of as a "City sub-theme," which really doesn't make any sense. If it's in the Outback ... it's as far from the city as you can get! Likewise, being on a farm is definitely NOT in a city! But ... I think the City product line is more a thematic one than a literal one. I would define the City theme as "contemporary, realistic sets based on current real-world objects." So, even though you wouldn't often find a tractor or a combine in a city, the fact that tractors and combines are current real-world vehicles would place those sets firmly within Lego's City product line.

I think using LEGO is what makes it so wonderfully, subversively, hilariously genius. Great stuff, as always, Rev.

How about a little teaser pic? HA! All two million lines?? Sure, no problem!

Seriously?? They needed us to tell them that? [banging head slowly on desk] So, let me see if I've got this straight -- they jacked up the prices, somehwere in the vicinity of 300-400% ... and then they were surprised that the fans were outraged? Really? They couldn't see that one coming, huh? [banging head slowly on desk]

Until we get some kind of official statement or explanation, I don't think it's fair to characterize the price hike as "greed" or "gouging consumers" or "taking money from children." We have no idea what the manufacturing/sorting/packaging/shipping costs are associated with running a customized operation like Pick-a-Brick. Maybe PaB is a huge loss leader for TLC, and they can't afford to lose any more money on it? Who knows? I definitely agree with that. And with these price hikes, usage of PaB is probably going to decline to the point where they will have to shut it down. We'll see ..

I feel like I always start each announcement of a new chapter with the same disclaimer: "Sorry about the long wait ..." Well, this time is no exception. Sorry about the long wait!! The villain Boombox is back with his rock-music-blasting sonic gun, and it's up to our heroes to stop him! Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think!

I'm just curious if you have some stats or a press release to back up your assertion. If so, please post a link! I'd really like to read that. Thanks!

That's interesting, I've never heard that. Unfortunately, that's all behind-the-scenes stuff that's invisible to the average user. For example, when I look at PAB now, I see that a 2x2 tile is still $.08 (no price increase). However, a 1x2 tile is now $.19. A piece that's HALF the size is over TWICE the price. Most people are going to see that and think: "What the hell??" Raising prices in an economic recession is a bad move ...

Love it. That is made out of pure, unfiltered awesomeness. I had a thought a long time ago of building some scenes from Dr. Seuss' "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" but I never got around to it. Legos and Dr. Seuss seems like a perfect match!! Really great stuff, thanks for sharing!!

Thanks for the review. The planes are much bigger than I'd first thought based on the early pictures we'd seen. Even so, this set is kinda "meh" for me. That's a fair question. The answer is probably that the swastika is still, even sixty years later, a politically "loaded" symbol. There are various neo-Nazi groups that still use the symbol. It's similar to the way that various racial slurs are forbidden. You might think, "Big deal, it's just a word." But the word (or the symbol in this case) is loaded with so much hatred and anger that it's best just to avoid it.

Nice article. A couple of things jumped out at me: Holy crap, I think I just threw up in my mouth. The thought of Mattel buying Lego is nauseating. I don't remember ever hearing that rumor back then. There might be some truth to that, but I think they're underestimating the fact that Lego is churning out some of the best set designs in 15 years. They are knocking it out of the park recently, esepcially the Town sets. Ugh. That guy needs to play some better boardgames. I could easily name a dozen games that are highly creative in the way you interact with the other players and with the game itself. With all their color problems and quality issues in the past year or two, I'd sure like to see Lego embrace this philosophy again ...

I think it's a great point. TLC doesn't seem to yet realize how this new-fangled "interwebs" thing works. Sending cease-and-desist letters to websites that are hosting confidential pictures has no effect. It just irritates people -- and usually those people are their biggest fans and consumers! So instead of fighting to maintain a strict veil of secrecy, why not give us some sneak peeks? Tease us with a few cryptic images for a while, and get us all worked up into a lather of speculative frenzy. We'll do the marketing for them by spreading the word and driving more visitors to their website. They have an amy of fans ready to and willing to evangelize their product for them, and yet they often treat us like the enemy. I realize things have gotten better in the past year or two with the fan events and the community ambassadors, but there's so much more they could be doing.

Have you guys seen this stop motion video of the building of the Falcon? This is really great, and hilariously funny. I can't even imagine how long this must have taken to put together.

There is a market for boardgames in the U.S., but you're right in that it's probably nowhere near as large as other countries (notably Germany). Video games reign supreme here in the U.S. Boardgames are a niche hobby with a small, but devoted fanbase (check out www.boardgamegeek.com for some examples of just how devoted). But, Lego HAS made boardgames in the past. I have their Lego Creator boardgame from a few years back. I hate it, and it's dreadfully boring, but even so ... I'm not sure if this is really all that new of an idea for TLC.

Lego also has to decide whether it's worth it to fight all the knock-off brands. That would cost millions in legal fees and court costs to sue all those different companies. How much money are the clones really stealing from Lego's business? Or, should Lego take those companies to court just based on principle, even if it costs more money? On a related note, right now Apple is embroiled in a lawsuit with a company called Psystar for illegally selling computers with Mac OS X installed on it. By all accounts, Psystar is just a couple of guys working out of their garage. They can't possibly harm Apple's bottom line in any serious fashion, and yet Apple has unleashed the lawyers. My guess is that Apple is fighting them on principle, rather than out of any concern ove a loss of business. So, companies have lots of reasons for whether they choose to take a competitor to court.

In my opinion, the most important part is to NOT create repeating patterns in the rock face. If you're using BURPs, it's easy to get lazy and simply stack the BURPs next to each other, then fill in the various gaps. That creates a very repetitve look, which is not at all natural or "organic" looking. The real trick is to randomly stagger the BURPs. Totally agreed on both points! I tend to use lots of 2x4 bricks rather than slopes, which gives the hills a "chunky" appearance that I rather like. But yeah, I just start building with no real sense of what it's going to look like at the end.

You can find a few more pictures in the Fire and Rescue section. HA! You got it! That's awesome, thanks. I was actually working on the next chapter last night. I'm building a new "Hall of the Superiors." The next chapter has a couple of scenes there.

For the mini-fig hair problem, the solution is simple -- Bricklink. TLC has gone crazy the past few years with all the new hair styles and colors, so there should be lots of stuff out there on Bricklink. As for your other question ... that's a lot harder to answer. First, you're going to need Photoshop, or some other Photoshop-esque applciation in order to do the special effects. I use Photoshop Elements (a stripped down consumer version) for my comics, and it works great. I've also invested in some third-party plug-ins (mostly from Alien Skin Software) to give me some more options, like motion blurs, fire effects, radiant glows, etc. Beyond that, a lot of it is just trial and error. Spend some time playing around with the software, learning what it can do, and what gives you the effect you're looking for.

Just to clarify, the Spiderman license was with Sony Pictures, not Marvel Comics. The license was specifically related ONLY to events and characters in the first two movies (presumably the license elapsed before the third movie; probably a blessing in disguise given how crappy the third movie was). Since it was tied to a movie, TLC was really handcuffed as to what they could do with it. But anyway, I do see your point. Didn't TLC make an announcement a few years back that they were going to reign in their licenses and focus on homegrown themes?? Seems like they've got as many licenses now as they ever have.