Nagyzee

I can only hope that this new bright light yellow colour will see much use by TLG's designers and it will have a useful palette of parts in 1-2 years. It is so much better for MOCing houses than the normal yellow.

I didn't, because Hungarian does capitalize place names. "Pisa" - capitalized "pisai" (meaning "of Pisa") - not capitalized Also, I must have read this review before. Was it pulled and now put back up?

Thanks for the nice review even though I disagree with your verdict. Over here this house costs almost as much as the Log Cabin while being a lot smaller. And its value is definitely very poor. You know something is off when at RRP it is a lot cheaper to simply bricklink the parts rather than buying the set. Not surprisingly it has been on sale at various places almost from the very beginning. It's also a very simple build, the 1st and 3rd model definitely has some kind of Classic Town vibe while the 2nd reminds me of Basic sets of the 80s and 90s. I don't know whether this is a positive or a negative though. Time has gone by after all and this looks a bit boring compared to today's offerings. If I want to build a similarly simplistic and nostalgic shack I can always do it from my collection of parts.

Was an unconscious mistake. (I know this saying even though I'm not a native speaker.) I should of read through my post once more before sending it then I wouldn't of made this stupid mistake. I must of been quite tired as it was something like 2 am here when I posted that. --- Back on topic: I think the King's Castle is actually a nice set in its basics, yet I still don't really like it. Structurally it's a lot better than both the Fantasy Era and the Kingdoms castles. It has a proper gatehouse finally after all. The drawbridge of the Kingdoms Castle looked quite funny and unrealistic with those outer arms. Yeah, this one is made up of more panels than the former ones but those were mostly wall panels as well, so this only means that this is actually bigger. What makes me not really like it despite this are the following: - colour scheme (dark blue > red > blue in my books), this can be easily fixed though - the siege engine of the bad guys, that looks ridiculous - the figures, I'm not a fan of their colour schemes and heraldry - 'bricks' bricks as foundation (it gives the effect as if that stone castle was built on top of a layer of bricks) - (and maybe higher standards after having been treated to Helm's Deep) I think it's still an okay set, and with a little customisation it can be made a lot more aesthetically appealing. The real dud in this line is the Dragon Mountain in my opinion. The baddies hideouts/fortresses has a tendency to be unsubstantial and small, usually being not more than a medium sized tower (only exception in recent times was the Trolls' Mountain Fortress), but this one is even smaller than its predecessors. Really, it feels to be barely more than a small stand for that dragon to stand on. (Okay, and a tiny tower next to it.) The gatehouse set is okay for what it is, I have the same problems with it as with the castle. Namely that I don't like the colour scheme and the siege engine. The cart in Gold Getaway is quite nice actually, it's pleasing to finally see a cart that seems to be to scale and not a huge monstrosity. The smallest set is a battlepack, so I don't have much to say about it. All in all I have to say that the builds in this new Castle iteration are not worse than their counterparts from former Castle lines. Apart from the siege engines maybe, but those were weak points quite often in the past, too.

Haha, if you slide one ruler 3 inches and then the other 2 inches in the other direction than you have made a total movement of 5 inches. If they were side by side at the beginning and identical in length there will be a 5 inch offset at both ends. By your logic that should be a 10 inch total difference, no? But to get an analogous example to the age range we are discussing you would have just had to slide one ruler 2-3 inches. If this doesn't help, then I give up. MMV and Kingdoms Joust. I admit I didn't check the exact age recommendations on them. Anyhow if you want to compare strictly this new Castle line. It's coming out just now. LOTR didn't get an exclusive in its first wave either. So you can't use this as an argument just yet. First we'll have to see whether this new iteration gets the exclusive treatment sometimes down the road or not. And btw I agree with you that this Castle line is targeted at a younger audience than LOTR. That's absolutely obvious. There's just not a 5 year difference between the age ranges as indicated and I think that dragging in the exclusive set LOTR is getting is not fair as an argument just yet. The word you are looking for is average, not max. That's what we are focusing on. Or on the offset between the two age ranges. You are essentially counting the difference twice. But whatever flies your boat.

You chose the wrong medium for your hobby. Modelling would probably be better for your plans. Unless of course you are prepared to start building your own MOCs. LEGO is first and foremost a building toy for kids and you want them to not make a playset out of the most iconic place in this franchise because it can't be done according to your most sophisticated and highest standards? I'd love to see TLG announcing in 2014 that: Because of a certain fan's standards we have decided to make a small Architecture set out of Minas Tirith instead. Sorry kids, you'll have to play with that if you can. We hope you'll still have much fun watching it gather dust on your shelf.

You perfectly described that the range is shifted upwards by 2-3 years for LOTR. I get how you end up with 5 years (adding up the difference at the lower and higher ends), but can't find the logic behind it. I don't really want to go deeper into this. Maybe you could use two rulers, sliding one along the other to get a picture of the nature of this difference. If you slide one ruler 2 inches farther along the other does it get 2 inches or 4 inches farther away from you? As for your side comment about 14+: mixing in exclusives is besides the point. Those are a whole different story. And the Castle theme has already had two 14+ exclusives, too. Well, then let's agree to disagree. Because I don't even understand what you are trying to say with this cancelling out thing and this topic is probably not the best place to discuss basic mathematics.

As high as Orthanc? If so it would be at least 3 times bigger. Minas Tirith is not a tower after all. I think expectations are a bit too high. As for me I'd be happy with a set depicting a generous chunk of wall segment with the gate and orcs attacking it with Grond or other siege equipment.

If it's 5-12 vs. 8-14 then the average recommended age is 2.5 years lower for Castle than for LOTR. Minimum recommended age is 3 year lower and maximum is 2 years lower. And it makes no sense whatsoever to add up the latter two and claim that the difference is somehow 5 years.

Sounds quite unlikely unfortunately. LEGO train stations have been getting smaller and less substantial with time. There are not many things that appear regularly in LEGO form and you could claim that an iteration from the early 90s is still the best (4554). Btw I really love the concept of 4555 Cargo Station as well. Equally unlikely but a similar concept with 1-2 more wagons and a shunter diesel tacked on could also work either as an exclusive or even in the normal City Trains line. (Arguably not as the 'starter' freight train set but as the add-on one, like 3677. While 3677 is quite nice they could have made it more distinct in concept.)

That's some pretty ingenious mathematics, lol.

Is this somehow considered okay to do in the US? To me it sounds like abusing the return system and also very unfair to all the rest of the buyers.

Aesthetically my favourite locomotives are the early electrics. Unfortunately except for the Crocodile design they are not really well known and recognisable by the public. I still hope that one day an old German or Swiss electric will get the exclusive treatment.

That's true. But they don't undercut retailers at S@H usually, so everything is exactly at RRP meaning that most often buying directly from TLG is among the most expensive options.

This segment is quite telling. Thank you LEGO for allowing us to subsidize the hopefully temporarily even lower US prices.:p Economies of scale, more concentrated retail partners, lower taxes, etc. all point in the direction that the US prices should be lower than European ones. The problem is not really with that in my opinion but with the huge variance in mark-up which is quite hard to explain. Even inside the same theme there are sets that are only 30-40% more expensive in Europe than in the US and ones that are 100-120% more expensive (Lone Ranger stagecoach, I'm looking at you ). That can't be explained with cost-side reasons.

Both the Mirkwood Elf and the Gandalf at Dol Guldur polybags tie in to the 2nd movie (after The Hobbit has been recut into a trilogy) so there's a fair chance they'll be available again this autumn.

The bald cap is quite easy to mistake for the skydiver's helmet. The easiest piece for the Grandpa is the 2x2 tile. If there indeed were that many Grandpas in that box then they screwed up filling that one correctly big time.

Well, that guy bought 6 figures from me. Though it's probably not from my shipment as it hasn't arrived yet. (He just made the purchase a few days ago.) You are wrong about shipping times though. I have posted 6 figures to the US on April 3rd. Those were in the hands of my US customer on April 8th. That was on the fast side but usually it's no more than 10 days.

Hungary.

I've been to 3 stores in 2 towns having Series 10 already out. Each store had 50+ left of the initial 60. According to my observations the Medusa and the Trendsetter are only 1 / 60 in these. (Remember these are not from CMS boxes but from shipping boxes in which there are 5 strips with 12 figures attached on each.) On the other end of the spectrum the Baseball Fielder, the Tomahawk Warrior, the Skydiver and the Roman seem to be the most common. It's funny how it is easier to build an army of both the Caesar and Roman Commander minifigures compared to the basic grunt Roman Soldier. Very logical, no?

I'm talking about Series 9. There indeed are two types of boxes for that. As far as I know the local Lego store (not a brand store) got boxes of 60 with their first shipment and later received boxes of 30 when they ordered more. Series 10 can only be found in one retail chain so far and they do not have the box version but the hanging stuff so one can only guess whether the box of 60 will be scrapped for Series 10 or not.

No, the small boxes with 30 bags do exist for Series 10. I mean they come packed with minifigs and not empty.

The centurion is also easy to identify by his plume. The Sea Captain has a rather big gull and I've found the Bee Girl (helmet and pot), Clown (hat) and the Baseball Catcher (just find the torso and you'll instantly spot the unique hand) to be among the easier to spot ones, too. Distribution seems to be quite off for this non-box source. The Medusa, Trendsetter and Paintball Player seem to be extremely rare, maybe only 1 per 60. The good news for the army builders is that the Centurion and Mohawk seem to be among the more common ones while the Revolutionary Soldier and Amazon seem to be in the rare to average range. I don't know how this will translate to box distribution though.

Nice MOC. That Berserker Uruk is not very wise though. Already waving a lit torch next to the bomb when just leaving Isengard? I wouldn't want to travel to Helm's Deep in his company.

These are now available on sale in Aldi stores in Hungary, too. Sale price is a little bit over 10 EUR. I feel it's still great value for money at that price, too. Is anyone using the 17 compartment one with the 8 open trays? The one with 33 drawers is an instant buy but I'm debating whether I should buy a few of this variant as well. (But I don't know whether those open trays would be suitable for Lego storing.)