Zeya

This weekend I saw: Due Date - This movie was terrible. It had a really bad script and direction basically. They managed to waste Robert Downey Jr. It's Kind of a Funny Story - This one was pretty good. Some of their attempts at Wes Anderson-esque scenes fell flat, but there wasn't too much of that. I have a penchant for stories that take place in psych wards. Both movies had Zach Galifinakis. He's okay as an actor for the most part, but his standup is hilarious.

Online or brick-and-mortar? I was at a Target in San Jose, CA, USA and found one copy of Fight for the Dagger, but it rang up as $26 (MSRP is about $29), so I left it.

I have all the POTC sets now except for the QAR and the polybags. (I have a voodoo Jack coming next week; I might leave that one MISB.) This was my first foray into a licensed theme. I have mixed feelings, overall. Most of the set designs seem to cut corners and opt for larger, less detailed parts to lower piece counts. And then there's the "licensed tax" that inflates the prices a bit. But good things about the line are the nice minifigures and new parts like the scabbard, painted tricorner hats, and bottles. I also found a certain bit of fun in recreating some memories from the movies, some of which I had forgotten about. I found my favorite of the set (again I don't have QAR yet) to be the Cannibal Escape. The minifigures are great in that one, especially the heads. I also like how you get some nice greenery pieces there, one of which is a tan colored frond. Maybe I liked this one the best because it felt the most similar to the more cheery classic pirates sets. I also found that set to be one of the more memorable scenes from the movies. My second favorite would be Whitecap Bay. This one was a pretty large and engaging build. After seeing the new movie, that scene was also the most memorable in that movie. I was also impressed by how closely the spotlight matched the look of the movie, by putting the trans-orange/yellow brick in front of the light and using the magnifying glass. It really focuses well into a spotlight! The minifigures here are pretty good, although I wish they could have had minifigures other than Quartermaster; Lego could have used that opportunity to give us another figure. Although I guess this set has enough unique figures (to match the typical Lego "formula" of figures) in it as it is. For the rest, The Mill was an underwhelming build, but the shell-head-guy figure is really cool. London Escape felt a little incomplete and phoned in. The main carriage is okay and the Gibbs figure is welcome, and the redcoat scabbards and hats are great to have. But the Captain's Daughter building is a strange breed of unfinished with the hinge it has going on. Isla De Muerta is acceptable for a small set and the figures are the good thing there. But then we have Fountain of Youth and Captain's Cabin. *sigh* The Fountain of Youth is one of the worst sets I own. I understand that Lego didn't have the final movie design so there isn't much they could have done, but it's still disappointing. I find Captain's Cabin to be almost completely redundant after having all the other sets; although this would be a good birthday gift sort of thing for people who don't buy all the sets. I do look forward to getting my QAR eventually. I expect that to be on par or a little better than Brickbeard's Bounty. I also hope the rumors of another wave of POTC are true. I'm sure I'll get the Black Pearl, maybe for Christmas when it should be out. I do not think I'll be getting the smaller polybags though, since they look kind of unessential (mini black pearl and Jack on a raft). One thing I am a little wary about are the flesh colored minifigures. I'm going to go ahead and say that I prefer these to yellow from an aesthetic standpoint, but not from an availability standpoint. I don't plan on going hog wild with buying licensed theme sets. So that leaves me with a minority of fleshies that won't mesh well with my other yellow minifigures! So from this light, I kind of wish Lego had stuck with all yellow minifigures to keep it all consistent. I guess I'll just have to deal with it. I also have to say that although I like POTC well enough, I secretly hope it doesn't end up getting the Star Wars treatment (10 years of sets and going). I hope this stays as a smaller run, along the lines of Indiana Jones. I have a drive to get essentially every set, but I don't want to end up owning 100 sets in this theme, lol. Oh yeah, and here's hoping for a speedy return of classic Pirates! That theme is better and more free of creative shackles. The only thing POTC has over it is a wider and more interesting range of minifigures. I don't think classic pirates will be back in anything less than 3 years, but a guy can hope, right? Thanks for reading my long post. I felt the need to share, seeing as I've dropped so much money on this theme!

Fire Brigade Voodoo Jack Sparrow Polybag 24 drawer Akro-Mils cabinet All from Amazon (no sales tax). This will be my first modular building. I'm excited!

I wish! At my store (Santa Clara, CA, USA), they seem to just have a couple of bins filled with all different minifig parts. If they sort it at all, it must just get jumbled up after the store opens. And it's pretty low to the ground too, so us adults have to stoop over. That's kind of why I posted this thread, so I can go in with a plan. It's usually a zoo there and little kids tend to swarm all around the build-a-mini bins. This reminds me of the one time I went through the build a mini bins, and this little girl took a minifigure head, paused for a second... and then stuck it in her mouth and swallowed! Haha it was pretty funny. I guess she thought she would smuggle it out. I wonder if her brother has minifigure heads disappearing all the time or what.

Just to be clear, I assume an accessory would be a hand-held thing or neck item, right? In other words, anything that isn't legs, torso, head, hair, helmet. Ah sorry. I did a google search but didn't see that thread. Feel free to merge.

Strange, I saw those two movies a few days apart as well. They're kind of polar opposites, now that I think of it.

The Lego stores are having a promotion this month, where if you spend $100 USD or more, they give you a build-a-mini 3-pack. (I'm going to buy a Fire Brigade.) I just want to confirm what constitutes a minifigure for this. I've read different things. Some people are saying they let you do legs, torso, head, hat, and one accessory. Can you do a hair piece and a hat? Does a cape count as an accessory? Can I do a backpack, cape, and two swords? How fancy can I get here? Also if anybody has up-to-date tips on rare elements they spotted in the bin, that would be nice to know. Thanks!

Does anybody besides me keep the left over middle part after twisting off the chrome coins? There's your chrome gold bar right there.

The umbrella and lampost/sign are fantastic! I wish I had a surprise find like that pop up.

I'm with these guys. I have a job, girlfriend, 3 dogs, a house to maintain, and not nearly enough time for hobbies. Somehow I manage to squeeze in a couple hours here and there assuming I've got the lawn mowed and the kitchen clean. I have to make time for this hobby. But yeah I probably spend only a couple hours a week, if that. I do hit the forum during down times at work for maybe a cumulative hour spread out over the day. I guess I spend more time forum-ing than building, which is kind of sad.

I saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie at a theater yesterday. I read some negative reviews, and the movie has a shocking 32% freshness rating on rottentomatoes.com. I thought it was at least a 70%. It's not going to win an oscar, but I had fun watching it and so did my girlfriend. It was way better than the 3rd movie. It was also nice to be able to know what all those POTC Lego sets I bought are all about, lol. A couple of the small sets don't match the film hardly at all though.

Also, the pearl gold ones that I got have holes in them. I think each coin has two holes, if I'm not mistaken. One could do something crafty like put them on a string or the netting element to add some detail. I need to send an email to Lego asking for chrome gold too. Can't get enough treasure!

His helmet looks kind of sparkly. I thought pearl colors weren't introduced until the mid-2000s, so it must just be black with some dust on it, right? It would be cool to see promo sets like that again, especially for things like filling up on gas that we have to do anyway. (I wouldn't want to see them in fast food meals though.) People in the UK can get little polybag sets with a newspaper voucher; it would be great to see more of that.

Not to nitpick really, but I was curious about the dark tan jumper plates. The 1x2 dark tan jumper plate only appears in 5 sets, according to bricklink: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=3794&colorID=69&in=A Other than this Black Pearl polybag, it's in 2 large exclusive sets, an Indiana Jones set, and a game. There are 4 in this polybag and the next cheapest source is the Orient Bazaar game, from which there are 5 of these. So that makes this polybag the cheapest way to accumulate this part (assuming this goes on sale for a reasonable price eventually).

Right on. They're kind of a zoo, especially on a saturday or during the holiday rush, etc. Lego stores are kind of like the Apple store in a lot of ways. The big draws are: - The pick-a-brick wall. A wall of drawers, each with a different brick/element. You can fill cups with whatever you want from it. (Stack the elements to compress space and get more for your dollar.) - Essentially all current sets are available. - One of the few (only?) brick-and-mortar stores that will have exclusive sets on the shelf (e.g. Imperial Flagship, Grand Emporium) - Build-a-minifigure bins (hit and miss for the cost) Sometimes Toys R Us might have exclusives on the shelf if Lego is trying to clear them out of inventory, but I have yet to see it around here. Online vendors will sometimes have exclusive sets. But they rarely go on sale so 9 times out of 10 you end up buying them from the Lego store, or through Lego online. I really want to swing by the Santa Clara store for the long weekend here and get myself a Fire Brigade, which will be my first modular building. Bills kind of hit me hard this month though, so it might have to wait.

Welcome, blargh! I live in San Jose. I see other people post on here about our area as well. You can usually spot them when they mention the Lego store in Santa Clara (it's inside Valley Fair mall). There's also a Lego store in San Mateo, but I haven't been to that one (I'm sure it's just as good though).

Haha! Aanchir in 3....2....1....aaaand...

I use a brick separator (wish I had another) and sometimes I also use the measuring tool that came with it, but not that often. The measuring tool is nice when moccing sometimes, if you need to make sure that something is level on the other side of a baseplate or something. This is the package I bought at TRU with the two tools: I need to find a solution for dusting in between studs though. I read somewhere that someone used a little brush with soft hair on it. Maybe I should look for a nice little paint brush or something from the hardware store.

I think other people gave you your answer. You can just take one of the dividers and duplicate it by using it as a template. I think you could cut up a Lego box (if you don't save them) and trace around it in pencil and cut it out. Should be sturdy enough, right? If that isn't strong enough, you could use some flat plastic maybe from a food storage device like a microwave dinner or something, or maybe a milk jug or some other container that is flat on one side, but thin enough to take scissors or tin snips to. I saw the dividers on Amazon too and their $6 or $8 or whatever they wanted was a little silly for a bit of plastic. Since I wrote my post on the Akro-Mils drawers, I now have 3 of them. They're filling up quickly! So I need a second level of storage now. I'm looking into getting a larger cabinet, like something that fits on the floor with larger drawers, maybe like the ones they sell at Target and Walmart (US stores). I might even just start using a big bin and large ziplocs. It seems to me that the most annoying thing to store are large single-purpose or <insert that tiresome argument> pieces, and also things like horses or the kraken/squid animals. I like to stack up my things when sorting and storing. I've also got a lot of sloped pieces that need sorting and storing. Even my minifigure accessories have filled up their little drawer. And I've only been buying Lego for less than a year already! I can see how people end up with bins and bins of this stuff as the years go by.

Couple of things... First about the misprinted redcoat hats I got in the London Escape set. I contacted Lego replacement service via email. They responded saying they needed the number that starts with '4', which I gave them. (By the way that number is in tiny print near the legalese and copyright on the back cover.) And then I got this response: I just wanted to point out that the hats are coming from Denmark. I'm on the west coast of the United States, and I've had missing parts come from within the U.S. before (I think Connecticut if I'm not mistaken). So maybe those hats are manufactured in Denmark. The other thing, is that I went to my local TRU and asked if they had any left over wooden Jack Sparrows (the video game preorder bonus). They told me that they only got five of the things in. They said other people had been through asking about them. I asked if they knew if that fig would be sold separately at some point. They said they didn't know. But they said they think that there is a keychain of that fig coming out. I'm not sure how true that is; these were just some dudes at the video game counter.

You people need to give spoiler warnings before blurting out plot twists.

I'm almost certain it can't. The king on his horse couldn't fit through the castle gate. The carriage looks to be even taller, if not wider as well.

Thank you for the nice review! I don't think anybody's going to flame your review. That doesn't happen so much on this forum, thankfully. (Who flames people about tiny plastic bricks anyway, I mean come on!) Those horses are drool-worthy. I also really like the axe-head on the dragon knight's weapon. It's a nice dark pearl and looks like it has some nice detailing to it, instead of just being flat, unless my eyes are tricking me. I also like the theme of this set. I miss forestmen as much as the next guy. I would love to see that theme or a similar one like it return. The web and spider will be new to my collection, by the way. Greenery (leaves) are always welcome as well.

At the end of my survey about the community aspect, I suggested that we could have Lego employees post directly on community websites such as eurobricks.com. Basically I just want to hear more from TLG directly in lieu of news coming from third parties. That was my suggestion there. I didn't have that problem. I rated a couple rows with the same number value and it was fine.