Zeya

I also realized something this morning. I saw my "early summer" product catalog on my coffee table, and looked to see all 3 current modular buildings in there, which implies that they will likely be around until the next product catalog comes, at least. Next catalog would probably come in about 3 months or so.

Thanks, that's better than I thought!

I know this question comes up all the time, but things might have changed recently, and I haven't kept very good track of this. I'm thinking about getting on the modular buildings bandwagon. But I'm worried about when the current ones might disappear. Obviously Pet Shop was just released. But Grand Emporium and Fire Brigade might be disappearing from shelves. On brickset it says that Fire Brigade was released in Sept '09 and Grand Emporium was released in March '10. (Doesn't that seem pretty close together? What's up with that?) So I guess my question is, when will Fire Brigade actually disappear? This month is kind of rough on finances, but I might be willing to buy it in June or July perhaps.

Yes, the way you do this is to make a "wanted list". For each part, you visit the page for that part, and click the link near the bottom that says "(Add to My Wanted List)". When the list is all filled up with your parts you want, you go visit your wanted list in a view where you can sort by which shops will have the most of what you want (Wanted tab up top -> By Shop below that). Look at the column labeled "Lots (Unique)". It's that number in the parenthesis that you want. You should see shops listed near the top with larger numbers in parenthesis, indicating that they have the most of the parts you want. I hope this wasn't too confusing. There's an area of EB where there's a thread just on bricklink questions. You can learn more there. Good luck!

The buckets are cool. There are some in the POTC sets that I got. For each bucket, they give you another handle as a spare, which is nice. I noticed that the handle comes off quite easily, so it's probably pretty easy to lose them. Another thing is that the buckets are really small, for better or worse. Hmm, I wonder if you can fit a flower stem piece in the bucket and use it as a flower pot?

There's an easy experiment for the water temperature issue. Take a few bricks of various sizes that you don't want/need any more, put them in a pot with a thermometer, and slowly bring up the temperature. Fish them out every few degrees or so, and when they start to be soft, you know you've hit around the temperature where damage happens. Surely somebody has done this at some point.

Is there a new version of the birthday set, or is it the same one that's been around for a while?

The modular houses (pet shop, grand emporium, fire brigade, others that are discontinued) cost about $150 USD before any tax, so that's right under your $180 limit. If you want a cheaper option and/or aren't sure about this new Lego hobby, you can go to your local TRU (if you're in the USA), and there you can find one of the Creator houses/buildings. The new ones are Hillside House and the lighthouse set. You'll be almost guaranteed to find the Log Cabin set. But ones that are likely to still be on shelves are Apple Tree House, and I even found the large Family Home about 3 months ago, but I think that was a fluke, maybe an online return from Christmas or something. You might luck out and see a Beach House. My favorite Creator buildings were the Beach House and the Family Home. When it comes to Creator sets, the older ones are bigger and thus more likely to be more fun for AFOLs like us.

Oh cool! I'll take a post office! I'm a fan of the holiday sets too. By the way, the upcoming City advent calendar is a winter-themed police thing. You end up making a police station by the end of it. You could put it alongside the winter sets if you want to. Of course there are past years' advent calendars. City almost always has an advent calendar, I think. We scooped up the 2010 one for this coming Christmas at TRU for $35 USD. http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=7553-1 As for the holiday train. I'm sad I was in my dark age for that. People sell it for exorbitant prices on BL; it's rather sad. I heard that it wasn't on the shelves very long either, which drives up prices further. I wish they would do another run of that set as well. I really could care less if it ruins other people's MISB investments because of a re-release.

Hmm. I'd rather email than call on the phone, myself. Captain Green Hair, please let us know what the response is to your email. Hopefully you get positive results, unlike poor Boomchil there.

One of my past professional projects was a video game adaptation of a Pixar movie. It's pretty much like you said. They don't give you much to go on. At first we only got a general outline of the script. At some point, two or three of us got to see a screening of the edited movie in progress, which was half hand-drawn scribbles. So it was almost impossible to match certain scenes and layouts in time to have the product tested and complete for release alongside the movie. I also got the feeling that the movie studio was very careful about what parties got to see details, so as not to have leaks (like a copy of the script shows up online months ahead of time, and such). I'm sure a similar thing happened to Lego. They might have gotten some production photos for some things, and maybe only got to see the script for other scenes. That might explain why some of the new movie sets don't match that well. I think the QAR might match pretty well (you know, given the low-ish piece count) because it probably took the movie folks quite some time to construct the setup and Lego probably got to see what they were doing enough ahead of time to match it. But then the lighthouse set is surprisingly complete and detailed, so who knows. I'm sure Lego has to have their designs complete enough ahead of time to ramp up production (know what parts to produce at the factories), and that time period might be a year or more ahead of the sets/movie release.

There are different release dates for different countries. I think it's out in some European countries today or yesterday, last time I checked.

When I was at a Lego store back in September of last year, they had the classic smiley head in the make-a-mini bins. I'm talking about the thing where you can make 3 minifigures for $12, not the PAB wall. I don't see Lego putting minifigure parts on the PAB wall; that would be way too cool and/or possibly ruin the rarity and novelty of minifigures.

I have all the sets except QAR now. Is anyone else as amused as I am that every set has two 1x1 printed tile pieces of a compass as an accessory for Jack? I find it to be a nice little bonus. I can see using those tiles as nice decorative garnish, maybe around an awning or the corners of a doorway, or something like that. I only remember Jack using the compass in one of the movies. But they include it in every set. But it's quite possible that my memory is fuzzy here. Did the compass actually play a role in every movie?

I check Craigslist (online classifieds) pretty much every day for Lego. This posting sticks out from the rest. This man says he's desperate, which is a good sign. He wants at least $4.92 per pound for this gigantic lot. If someone here has the deep pockets or a major BL store, this might be a good resource for you. http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/tag/2383561086.html "My baby momma is weeks away from finding out about my Lego collection that I was supposed to have gotten rid of last year. But now that she's moving in I got to sell but not cheap! These legos are clean as recommend by LUG and not cherry picked!!!!! I hate ppl who sell cherry picked legos. Send me your offers. Anything lowed than $5000 will be ignored."

You're forgetting the bag and the instructions. Oh and one cent for a minifigure? Uh, I'll take 2000 of them, please! Ebay here I come! But seriously I'm hoping I also can buy the voodoo minifigure at retail for a reasonable price. Maybe I should swing by TRU tonight and see if they have any like yours did.

I played Red Dead Redemption as well and it was fantastic. I even dressed up as a cowboy for my Halloween party. And last night I watched this awesome Korean stylized western called The Good, The Bad, The Weird. (You can stream that on Netflix. Do they have Netflix in Europe?) Anyway I'm all into cowboy stuff now. Haha, at least to an extent. I would definitely buy western-themed Lego sets. We got a cowboy in the collectible minifigure line. We also got two native... er native Legolandians? I'm hoping they do a cowgirl or an evil cowboy minifig at least.

The Walmart near me had all of the Kingdoms sets around Christmas. When stopping by in February or March, they only had a couple smaller Kingdoms sets. I always see the Carriage Rescue set on the shelf at Targets. It's hit-and-miss as to whether they have the castle or prison tower on the shelves though. I have yet to see any of the new Kingdoms sets anywhere.

I bought this set for the crystal ball piece, which is new to my collection. I wish this set came with a diver (head piece really) other than Lance Spears because I already had him from another Atlantis impulse set and the Gateway of the Squid set.

And now I saw Tangled on Friday with the girlfriend. This is the first non-Pixar Disney movie I've seen since... wow... I just checked the animated Disney movie list and the last one I saw was Tarzan back in 1999. Tangled was pretty good. The girl's hair was kind of grossing me out. She drags it everywhere and she never wears any shoes, to boot. Eew.

I swung by the page for replacement parts on Isla de Muerta, and they didn't show any of the gold coins or gold bar on the replacement parts page. I wonder if it's related to this chrome/pearl issue or the fact that the coins and bar are packed in a separate plastic bag. And I wonder if they'll be replaceable in the future and if they'll send the chrome or the pearl versions.

That's awesome, Runamuck! I wish I could help you out. Unfortunately here in the US, most of us only get just a little bit of a foreign language in high school. I took French, but I really only know enough to maybe order a ham-and-cheese sandwich, and not very well. I hope a native French speaker can help us out! And by the way, it looks like this young kids book got published: http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Pirates-Brickbeards-Treasure-READERS/dp/0756677068/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305236754&sr=8-1 You can use Amazon's "look inside" and read just a few pages. They introduce Captain Brickbeard by name, but I could only see a couple other pages besides that, and on one page they refer to "the pirates" so maybe they don't use many specific names. But if someone can get their hands on the book itself, maybe there are some names for the 2009/2010 Pirates line. Oh and by the way, there are some other books by the same publisher for Lego stuff. One of them is for Kingdoms, and another I'm pretty sure was City (firefighters subtheme if I recall correctly). EDIT: I poked through the Kingdoms one. It looks promising because that one uses names like "The Dragon Knight" (in all caps, implying a proper name) and even refers to the prison tower as something like "the dragon knight's tower", which is a little strange since the set's name is "Prison Tower Rescue". But my point is that this looks promising for the Pirates book if it's written the same, and maybe they gave some names to characters from 2009 pirates!

I don't have that problem. But my guys have a bit of a minor defect on their hats. The painted white brim is coming down on one side of the hat, and this is with both hat pieces. I have a photo somewhere... Here it is:

I hope so. I'm waiting for Battle of Alamut to hit something like 50% off; anything more than that and I don't want to spend the money on it. I would also buy Fight for the Dagger at a similar discount.

I saw "Little Fockers" last night, to make my girlfriend happy. It was okay, but not that great. Next up we'll be watching "Tangled", also to make her happy.