Jargo

The little dog emblem lol. Joker. Wolves were big with Romans. Romulus and Remus origins of Rome ring a bell? It occurs to me that in order to deter scalpers feeling the bags and walking off with all the golden chase figures, putting a top hatted figure like the Jeckyll and |Hyde dude from series 9 into this wave would have been a good move. Because you just know most of these golden figures will be ending up on Bricklink and ebay at scandalously inflated prices. I think the only one out of this series that I don't like is the Pierrot. Man I hate clowns. I do like his black ruff though. This will probably be the series I buy most of. Besides the Pierrot and the revolutionary soldier, golden fig and Roman I love them all. I like the Roman but i don't have the other Romans and have no use for Romans. The Amazonian woman warrior will be pitted against the Tarzan Jungle dude and some explorers. The Mohican dude will fit in very nicely with the lone ranger stuff once the figures from there have been converted to yellow flesh. I don't really have a use for Medusa but she's a great fig so i have to have her. All the City figures are very welcomed. I think it's a cracking assortment.

I think the golden fig would look great as a replacement for the medieval statue fig in the upcoming City square set. If one was lucky enough to come into one's possession.

SQUEE!! Oh I could hug you right now GRogall.

The whole cuusoo project is a fruitless exercise. Lego would have better results browsing flickr and brickshelf etc then contacting individuals if they see something they think would sell. Franly everything they've picked to produce so far has been dull as ditch water and if that's the level of product they're willing to put out Brickshelf and flickr are full of it. Seems to me that a lot of people use cuusoo like those sites anyway. Plus the whole cuusoo process takes so long by the time a product is available most people will have lost interest in it if they really were interested in the first place and not just voting on a friends project to curry favour. Frankly I don't see cuusoo lasting further than the beta stage.

I still think a battle pack would be a hot seller. One of Buggoids and one of Squaddies. I'd buy the heck out of a Squaddie pack.

The CMF fisherman short beard would probably have worked best out of all the beards Lego have.

Anything but yellow. Because I detest Paul McCartney. White with a stripe of colour would be nice.

Not really. The original Ninjas was a historical castle theme while Ninjago is a fantasy set on a distant planet with anthropomorphic snakes and futuristic vehicles.

Friends is just a rehash of Belville and Paradisa though. It's nothing new or radical.

I couldn't agree more. And I'm sure Lego would love to produce more of the lesser heroes. But the market is always going to respond more favourably to the most well known heroes. Unfortunately that means Batman, Superman and Spiderman. Personally I'd like to see The Punisher vs Jigsaw as a set. With a Motorbike and lots of beefy weapons. Microchip as an additional minifig would be nice, but not essential. However, given that The Punisher is not a super powered character and is by nature a remorselessly violent vigilante anti-hero I can't see Lego ever touching anything Punisher related.

Looking at the City square set bus made me think of this: Folding door. Same principle as the garage roller door section but upended. The piece would be roughly six bricks high by two studs wide so that two sections would be enough to make a folding bus door. Or indeed an interior folding door where a building has little space. Two pieces would be required, one with a handle and one without. And to go with those: Six high by four wide door frame with rail. A mix of a normal door frame with the rail from the modified plate with rail. Holes in the inside corners for the folding door pegs of the door section with no handle to attach. Rail at top and bottom to facilitate the sliding open and closed of the folding door sections. One possibe problem with using such a door in a structure rather than on the outside edge of a vehicle is the rail meaning the door has to be raised by a plate height. A solution to this would be designing the extra clearance into the door frame. which would mean the doors being that 1/3 of a brick's height shorter. This would still give regular minifigs enough clearance.

In all honesty I'm not totally serious. It does strike me as odd that an old fashioned design was used in a very modern looking square but I think the addition of a huge crane rather than another building is more annoying. Also leaving out the crane would have meant more attention and parts could have been given to the pizza place which is sadly lacking in depth. The last one in 7641 City Corner was quite shallow but this one is almost non existent. It's got a nice facade but that's all it is. There isn't even a pizza oven. The bike shop though is lovely. Compared to the tiny one from 7641 City Corner this is leaps and bounds beyond. Modern looking, two floors, attractive corner facade and plenty going on. Two motorbikes, a bicycle, a skateboard. Rotating door. Cool signage and a classy colour scheme. The bus has a great shape, colour scheme and decent doors. A fantastic addition to the streets of Lego City. With the train logo on the doors it's nice to see a rival bus company to the one in 7641 City Corner. I don't have much to say about the statue apart from that the plaque on the plinth has the date 1132. Must have been a significant year for Lego City. Perhaps a battle took place on the ground the City was built on? It's a nice nod to the castle theme and Lego City having a history. Which leaves the crane. The only part I like is the pseudo pneumatic rods on the base of the boom which is a definite improvement on the crane from 7633 construction site. And as I've said the crane means fewer buildings in this set which is annoying, but also this crane is eight wide which is too big at this scale. It's only lifting a statue onto a plinth so there's no need for a huge crane. And yes, I can see how a crane is fun for kids, but a smaller one would be just as much fun and mean more parts could be added elsewhere in the set. I don't mean to sound whiny and whingey. I just think in a set that's supposed to be a City square there should be more emphasis on the buildings and square than on the vehicles.

The Man of steel sets have cool minifigs. I'm loving the Zod and Faora ones. Awesome armour and helmet. Look forward to seeing the correct head and hair on Faora. Odd how Lex Luthor's head got put on her. Zod's ship looks interesting as does the pod in the black zero escape set. Lord knows what that structure shown as the other part of Black Zero is. Flick fire missiles and a shed? Bizarre. Not fussed on Hardy and Lois Lane or the Jeep. Metropolis showdown is pretty silly. I'm going to pass on that. And for the record I like the new look Superman. Glad he no longer wears his Underoos over his unitard. I'm totally not feeling the Iron Man sets. The dark green and black vehicles is a cool colour scheme but I don't dig the vehicles. If I buy anything I'll probably just Bricklink a couple of the minifigures and the mansion sticker sheet.

But if Galaxy Squad is a redo of Insectoids then it's not original and the trope of humans versus mutant insects is aeons old. Truth be told there are no original ideas left. Just the retelling or re-imagining of them. How well someone does that is the key to success. Star Wars is a spaghetti western in space. at the time it was made westerns were the staple of movie theatres and sci-fi had died a death. the success of Star Wars hinges on it's thematic resemblance to the westerns that were popular at the time. True it kickstarted a new wave of sci-fi but if George Lucas has any genius it was in having his sci-fi seem like the stuff that was currently popular. Right now if you really look at what's popular it's all zombies and vampires, slash horror, crime drama, rehashed superheroes and anthropomorphised cute animals/inanimate objects. Threading through all that is the resurgance of the western. Sci-fi is failing somewhat. You've got rehashes of ancient franchises like Star Trek, space soldiers versus hulkingly huge aliens, or the tired old trope of man versus machine. There is nothing new. Getting back to Galaxy Squad, it's a refreshing take on an old idea but to be honest it's never going to compete with movie franchises. The juggernaut that is the Star Wars franchise is set to eclipse everything over the next few years. Any in-house sci-fi theme that Lego produce is only going to appeal to die-hard long term Lego fans. I'd wager that Galaxy Squad is the last in-house space theme we'll see for a long time. Which is sad because I'm sick of Star Wars.

Strangely the only parts of this set I like are Aquaman's hair and Freeze's helmet visor.

The 8404 street sweeper is the sort of thing I expect. Modern, compact, attractive. That 'thing' in the City square set is hideously ugly. I really don't know how anyone could like it.

Would this have come from a production plant in the USA?

last year I found a child's sock stuffed with various pieces while walking past some waste ground on my way to the train station. One of those Ninjago snake staffs with a trans green 1x1 tile on it was the best item. Also a Toy Story Jessie keyring in almost new condition which I gave to my neice. The rest was pretty much junk. However it was a Toy Story army guy hand that alerted me to the stash. My eyes must be attuned to spotting tiny Lego pieces.

That trans light blue modified tile with clip in the Deep Space Destroyer cockpit doesn't appear to have a sticker on it but it looks like it should, as a display for the co-pilot seated behind the pilot. I can't make out if it's one or two stickers applied to the cockpit canopy bubble and if it's two then perhaps one is intended for the blue tile with clips.

Karai would have to be in one set. As she's playing a fairly large role in the series. I'd like to see Krangbots that weren't just printed minifigs too. I suppose everything hinges on Lego's plans and sales of the current sets. Rather than the success of the show.

Not really, Disney have been milking things for an awful lot longer than Lucas. The house of mouse wrote the book on milking a property dry. And now they've bought Star Wars they're proving the point and are set to bludgeon the world to death with gazillions of movies and merchandise and lord knows what else. However, this is getting off topic.

I think I would probably would kill for those black windows.

You could always start off with virtual bricks and set an LDD task at each meeting. No lugging (no pun intended) masses of bricks around, just a laptop and I'm sure there'd be plenty of those around at a college.

'The villa of insanity' used about 144 Cypress trees. Though I'm assuming it was open at the back in the same way as the front. If not then it's 156.