Gryphon Ink

Let us know if they are - the TRU website says they're still only available online. Same for the new Kingdoms sets. I really wanted to pick up a couple of the cheap sets during the BOGO 1/2 sale, but with the cost of shipping there's no savings at all unless you're buying the big sets, which I can't afford.

Sounds like you're having a lot of fun. I keep thinking I'd like to get one train, especially since I saw the first pictures of the Maersk train - but that stuff looks totally addictive, and there's no cheap way to get into it, with every train running over $100 (not even including PF). Maybe someday I'll win the lottery. Until then, I get my vicarious train thrills by looking at posts like yours. Enjoy your new obsession addiction pastime!

This is amazing, Oky! I especially love what you did with Boba Fett. I'd have to say the only one I'm not completely enchanted with is Vader, whose body is great but the head doesn't really "do it for me". I can't say how it could be done better, though. Brickdoctor might have the right idea with that helmet.

Got the Atlantis Angler Attack. One of the best $20 sets I've seen, and the only Atlantis set that has completely satisfied me. You get an awesome creature, one of the best minifigs ever (the Barracuda Warrior) and a TON of useful pieces when you get tired of displaying the Angler. Amazing value IMO.

I love it. Atlantis really does need at least one ginormous monster fish, and yours looks super creepy. The sub is awesome, too - I have to say it looks better than several of the official Atlantis subs.

Got 5867 Super Speedster and two Series 4 figs: a Musketeer and a Werewolf. The car is not bad, not the most exciting thing ever but a nice parts pack. The CMFs are both sweet figs.

I really like the Log Cabin, not only for parts but because Lego really doesn't do much in the way of rural settings, and it was nice to get something that wasn't a typical suburban home. I'm still disappointed that I never bought the Beach House when it was in stores, though. That was a beautiful set.

I love the Creator minis, too. Some of them look rather clunky, but it seems like most of them give you good value and really cute little models. A couple of weeks ago I found the 5761 Mini Digger at the grocery store, and I'm totally in love with it. The useful parts to price ratio might not be the best Lego has to offer, as Aanchir pointed out. But for $5 a set, you can buy them while doing the grocery shopping, get your Lego fix and gradually accumulate useful bricks, without feeling guilty about spending $99 on Lego. One thing I'd really like for TLG to do is mini sets on a standardized scale, so you could build a city without spending the thousands of dollars you need to build a city in minifig scale. But that would probably cannibalize their sales, so I guess it's up to us to design our Mini Cities.

Got a couple more S3 minifigs at TRU the other day, one Fisherman (he's awesome!) and one Racecar Driver (eh, nice hair). Took me ten minutes to find the CMFs on display. They also had S4 at one point, but the box was empty and I had to be moving on. Oh, and if anybody is still looking out for Space Police, this store had several Lunar Limos and Undercover Cruisers on the shelves. I was surprised to see them, as I thought SP was gone forever by now.

Seriously, if a battery company could just invent batteries that small they wouldn't be putting them in LEGO accessories as their first implementation. This is the kind of thing manufacturing companies invest years of R&D on, not something that gets developed on the whim of a guy that wants sparkly lightsabers for his toy Jedi.

It's always sad to see someone quit a hobby they've put a lot of time and effort into, but I totally understand why you might want to do it. Sometimes it just gets to be too much for not enough real reward, and you look around and wonder where your life went. I hope this turns out to be a good thing for you. (I also hope, like most others here, that this isn't April Fools'. Cos I ALWAYS fall for those!) If it is serious, I'd love whatever you have to spare. Castle and Pirates would be especially welcome.

I finally found a shop that sells the CMFs. Unfortunately, I found it when I had barely a nickel to my name, so all I bought was two from Series 2 and one Series 3. I didn't have specific figures I wanted, would have been happy with any of the fantasy or historical figures. I got a Weightlifter, a Ringmaster and a Tennis Player. Very blah in my opinion, only the tennis player really appeals to me. The other two are straight parts packs. I probably should have bought all Series 3, but I wasn't thinking. If by chance anybody in the US wants to trade any other CMFs for any of the three, give me a shout.

#15, cheerleader, traffic cop and fisherman by Sarkanyapu - 1 point - because how many times have you EVER seen a Twin Peaks MOC? #20, nurse, surfer and space villain by Darkblane - 2 points - totally amazing laboratory!

#12, Elf entry by KristofBD - 1 point #22, Fisherman entry by turambar - 1 point #36, Elf entry by Oky Wan Kenobi - 1 point SO, so many cool entries, it was really hard to pick three. Thank goodness I didn't have to pick one. This was a great contest. EDIT TO ADD: wow, apparently I'm not smart enough to read post numbers. All my original votes were off by one number. The numbers above are the right numbers!

I know that I've seen some really cool large-scale Trek ships around the Web, including a D7 battle cruiser and some Romulan warbirds, but I never bothered to bookmark them since chances are slim that I'll ever have enough bricks for that kind of MOCing. These were not the mini-scale ships that are pretty popular, they looked to be at least a thousand pieces each. You don't see much Trek on Eurobricks, though. I guess it's mostly due to the popularity of the minifig scale and the fact that Trek doesn't have a lot of cool one-man fighter-sized ships. One of these days I'm gonna dismantle my Midi Star Destroyer and try to make a Midi Klingon battle cruiser. I love Klingon ships!

Finally bought the Burrow a few days ago. It's beautiful!

I'm not sure where you guys are getting the idea that ANH wasn't meant for kids. The PG rating was not in any way meant to keep kids away from a movie, it just meant there was more violence than you would find in a G movie. Kids under the age of 10 could and did go to a PG movie without any adults, and no one would even blink. I saw ANH when I was seven, and I was far from the only kid in the line. If my memory is at all accurate, most of the audience was families, with very few adults on their own. Most of the initial reviews of the movie were full of whining about how Lucas had singlehandedly <insert that tiresome argument> the blockbuster movie with childish storytelling and cutesy characters. Adult-oriented science fiction in the Seventies was mostly stuff like Silent Running, the Omega Man, Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes and Rollerball. It was almost all serious stuff with a Big Message, totally unlike Star Wars. And Lucas certainly wasn't selling all those action figures and Star Wars bedsheets to adults. There was no adult market whatsoever for those things at the time. They were all being bought by and for kids under 10 who had seen the movie multiple times and wanted to keep on reliving the story.

I'm sad. I thought this was going to be an Ash minifig...

Yes, from what I've seen they always do clearance sales to recoup as much as they can from the stores that are closing. This could be a great opportunity - the Borders near me still had a couple of Space Police sets last time I was there, a few weeks ago, and assorted other stuff. Oh, and books, too.

Not really the topic of this thread, but I have to say, I think Last Airbender could have made an AMAZING Lego theme. There is a huge range of different styles, settings and characters in ATLA that rivals the Star Wars universe in its potential. Also, ATLA is a lot like Lego itself in that it's a show made for children (and wildly popular with children) that also has a fairly large and enthusiastic adult fan base. Even though I'm not blown away by the two sets they did make, I think it could have been great. And it couldn't possibly have been worse than the Spongebob sets.

You said it. The Falcon is beautiful, but priced way out of my reach. Same for the Infiltrator. I guess if I'm buying anything from this wave, it's a treehouse. In a way, this is a good thing, because Kingdoms and POTC already have their grubby mitts in my pocket, I need at least one Creator house for my kids, and Harry Potter probably isn't done with me yet.

I just saw that one, and I'm not happy. I wanted a classic monkey that I could pose and have him climbing the rigging and, you know, being a monkey, not a little plastic blob that just sits there. Changing the monkey is like changing the LEGO Horse! If you're going to change it, at least change it for something better.

I still don't like the "mothership", but that Earth Defense HQ is totally awesome. I may have to revise the budget.

Heh, looking at these new pics, there's definitely something nice in each of the sets, but I'm feeling a bit ripped off by the Dragon Prison. Why can't the Dragons get one solid structure that's not just a facade? From the old pics I had thought maybe this set would connect nicely to make the back side of the Prison Tower, but it's going to need some serious modding to make that work. I'm also not really feeling those chickens. But the goats are ADORABLE, and the spotted pig must be mine. Really loving the Mill Raid set.

I chose the "I have no money" option but whatever sets I can afford will get modified and combined with Kingdoms, Harry Potter and POP pieces in the "eclectic fantasy village" theme I've got going. I really don't care about the skin color, it's just another faction to me.