Rodomonte

I totally agree. I thought it was a great movie until that live action sequence came along. It ruined the flow and character of the movie and introduced a ton of plot holes. The message was also ridiculous; that Lego is for kids, because adults are unimaginative and unwilling to accept change. It's a weird statement considering all the Lego communities out there. I figured it was a consequence of writers reusing tired old trope that adults are lame because they think that's what kids want to hear. At least they resolved the conflict between father and son pretty well. The thing that really bothered me throughout the movie was the anti-consumerism message. I find that hypocrisy extremely obnoxious but it's prevalent in so many movies. The real life scene at the end makes it even more ridiculous by showing a basement full of thousands and thousands of dollars worth of Lego. What exactly are they trying to say? Don't be so materialistic, except when it comes to anything Lego.

In many ways, however, I think Lego is somewhat immune from the worst of it. First, it's really not all that hard to find sets that are several years old. Secondly, you're going to have to hold on to that set for a very long time before you can hope to profit on it. I already see parents complaining about the price of Lego on a regular basis, so I can't imagine them spending double or more on an old set when there are dozens of new sets, the ones kids are going to want, are readily available. This isn't like the Transformers Alternators craze from several back. Hasbro had a crap distribution channel, whether it was intentional or a consequence of corporate disorganization I don't know. What it meant that very few sets made it to the stores and those that did were promptly snapped up by vultures. At the time those were $20-$30 but because they were so hard to find you had people willing to pay double or triple the price. People started hoarding all Transformers, new and old and values skyrocketed. Then some guys got their hands on old molds and starting producing fairly good reproductions in China, all the way down to stickers and packaging. Then the bubble burst and everything went back to being more reasonably priced. To this day values haven't returned to their original heights. Lego is too widely distributed for it to be a viable investment. The ability to build whatever you want negates the need to even hoard an old set and it's trivial to buy individual pieces. So I think whatever investing happens is going to be more focused, centered around minifig packs and stuff like that.

This is my attempt at recreating the Nissan IDx concept, at minifig scale. I was going for capturing the overall feel of the real car; it's tough to be more accurate at this size. And my philosophy with builds is that you have to be able to play with them, so pieces that aren't secure for the sake of aesthetics is unacceptable. I'm sure that's been debated, but it always irks me to see a build that falls apart the moment you pick it up, as cool as it may otherwise look. For anyone wondering what the actual concept car looks like:

That's one hot car!

Thanks! I took a look and that space set looks pretty awesome.

I'm a long time Lego fan who finally got around to signing up. I don't have a particular favorite theme, although Space sets are what got me started and the Exo-Force sets from a few years back are what drew me back in. I tend to have a particular fixation on building minifig scale vehicles. Here's a link to a few of my builds.

The main reason I got this set was to get those wheels on the trailer. But I was happy with the build. Normally, when I put together a new set I get the impulse to redo a good portion of the vehicle, but that didn't happen this time. I think the oversized wheels are what gives it personality but it does look decent with more reasonably proportioned wheels. The vests themselves look good, but the floating head doesn't. I don't understand why they didn't make the opening larger.

That's exactly what sold me on the set.

I'm sorry, but I totally disagree about those wheels. It's about time Lego offered modern-looking wheels at this size. They work great with those wheel arches. If there's an problem with this set it's the uninspired headlight treatment. There's another new set with those same wheels but in grey, the SUV with Watercraft. I stuck those on an existing build of mine and the improvement was instant: This car came out quite nicely as well: There's no way that the old wheels would have looked this good.