Gryphon Ink

Is it my imagination, or has TLG done a great many minifigs based on the suggestions in the EB forums a while back? They seem to have been extremely responsive to that thread, unless it just happens that AFOLs all over the world were asking for hula girls and men in haz-mat suits.

This is gorgeous - I think it's my favorite one. It looks so simple, but is full of wonderful subtleties. I love the wet sand. And I'm pretty sure the Emperor is going to burn the food, but what fool's going to tell him that?

Just out of curiosity, does Lego actually do sets that reference specific religions? I had a vague feeling that this was one of their big taboos, like military sets. I don't remember ever seeing a church or any kind of temple in a LEGO set, unless you count temples to gods that haven't been worshiped since ancient times. (I don't mean to knock down your work, ACPin. It's a very pretty piece, especially the interior. Love that chandelier! I was just wondering if this was the kind of thing that TLG would actually endorse. The only religious reference I can remember seeing in LEGO is the advent calendars and the Christmas trees, and I don't even think they ever come out and call them Christmas trees, do they?

I need like four battalions of those scarabs. That is one excellent mini-monster. This set looks like great value for the money.

Midi Star Destroyer! I've been eyeing it longingly since the day it came out. Now it is mine! Everything is proceeding eggsactly as I have foreseen...

I love it! A beautiful little design. This would fit perfectly in the steampunk / retro SF theme I'm playing with right now.

I love the fact that the brim of his hat is more curved than the usual hat brim. Someone at TLG has evidently worked on a real farm at some point. I did most of my growing up on a farm, and whenever someone would get a new hat the first thing they would do was to give the brim a serious curve, on the theory that it shaded more of your face. It's this kind of attention to tiny details that makes LEGO so awesome. Did you notice that fig on the box also has the old style hat?

I don't know what the argument is. They're paint spots. Dude is an artist. Everybody assumes he's a mechanic because he's got a little chest hair and says "Febyewary" instead of "Febrewary", but he's really the creative element of the PQ team. Those damn stereotypes!

I really like the latest "Luke's Landspeeder" as a Lego intro for SW-loving kids. It's small and inexpensive ($25 last time I checked), not a very involved build, but creates one of the most iconic vehicles and scenes in the whole franchise, and has an AWESOME set of minifigs. The Midi Millennium Falcon is a beauty, but the Midi scale limits its playability since it doesn't match any other Lego vehicle anywhere. Upcoming "Battle of Naboo" looks like a nice one for play. I also like the Hoth Wampa set, which is doubly good because there are a ton of smaller sets out now to boost up recreations of the Battle of Hoth. ETA: Okay, I'm thinking of $30 sets, while everyone else is suggesting the $75-and-up sets, which are inarguably cooler. I clearly need to be making more money.

(Looks around nervously and sidles away from the tree...) Of course I like pirates!! Who wouldn't like pirates? That's crazy talk! And yes, it would be pretty easy to turn a couple of wands into knitting needles and knit a teeny tiny project to go on them - but I'd still like a real minifig.

I love the Anubis head, hope it shows up in a slightly cheaper set at some point. The Pyramid is sweet, but probably out of my price range for the near future. One thing I like about PQ is that there are at least two really nicely priced sets with beautiful pieces in them - I have my eye on the scarab attack and the one with the biplane. Nobody seems to like the idea of flying mummies, but I think they rock. Lots of neat, new ideas here.

Well, for crying out loud. I had it all set in my head that I would not bother about Atlantis anymore and narrow my focus. And they had to ruin it all by going and making that beautiful temple, with the crab man and the great angler fish torso that is just crying out to be used for a new alien species of my own. This is an amazing set! I am probably the only one that isn't happy about the switch to yellow trim for the vehicles and suits. The continuity geek in me is really having a hard time accepting that suddenly the divers have new uniforms and all new vehicles. I'm going to have to pretend this is a whole new faction of deep sea explorers who slaughtered the old team and stole their Atlantean goodies. Also, am I totally crazy, or wasn't there supposed to be one Atlantis vehicle that converted from a runabout sub to a really tall walker? I swear I saw this somewhere. It was fighting a big sea serpent, and looked pretty awesome, but I'm not seeing it in any lists now.

Big Trekkie here. Some of my earliest memories involve watching TOS on a black and white TV with my parents. Seriously. Star Trek TOS was one of the very few shows to ever really fulfill the promise of science fiction - not just entertainment, not just flash and bang, but a show that held up a mirror to our own world and showed us everything we were and everything we could be. Sure, some of the ideas have become anachronistic, and most of the sets and effects are horrendously cheesy by today's standards, but the ideas still shine like diamonds in the wasteland of general TV programming. Favorite series: Duh, TOS. Favorite films: Wrath of Khan, First Contact Favorite characters: Spock and McCoy Favorite episode: Too many to even list, but extra fond of Balance of Terror, Space Seed and the Trouble with Tribbles. As far as fandom goes, Trekkies set the mold for fandom as it exists today. Fan-fic was invented by Trekkies. Slashfic, ditto. Trekkies saved the show from cancellation once - the *only* time that I know of that this feat has ever actually been accomplished. Trekkies kept the show's memory alive long enough to make The Motionless Picture a reality, and then bring on no less than four sequel series! Star Wars has a lot of fans, sure enough, but Trekkies really set the standard for fan devotion as far as I'm concerned.

I'd love to, but not right away. I need to get a lot more familiar with what is out there and what the possibilities are before I can really start reviewing things. It will take some time. Thanks for the welcome, everyone.

Great review! This looks like a really nice set. The price is a little steep for me, but I'm loving the look of the PQ theme so far, and this set looks like it has great possibilities. The scorpion looks awesome. Why couldn't they have made something like that for Aragog in the Hagrid's Hut set? Can you tell us how sturdy/poseable the scorpion is? Your pics show it with the claws resting on the ground - can they stay lifted? They look pretty heavy.

Hello everyone! I'm fairly new to the scene, although of course I had LEGO as a child, back before there were any such things as minifigs and movie-themed sets, and what you got in a LEGO set was pretty much a bunch of oblong bricks. Raising two girls of my own introduced me to the wide range of sets available now, and I fell in love quickly enough to make my wife give me some strange looks. So far, the themes that appeal to me most have been Castle, Harry Potter and Star Wars, and I'm looking forward to the Pharoah's Quest and POTC lines. I'm a fantasy and horror writer and reader. I love to read and watch science fiction, too, but don't write very much of it. My other big hobby is working with yarn. I knit and crochet all the time, and plan to launch a campaign to have TLC produce a Knitter minifig as soon as possible. I discovered Eurobricks a few weeks ago as my interest in the newest Harry Potter sets started to become an obsession (I need Hagrid's Hut. No, I need the Burrow. But Hagrid's Hut is cheaper and has Hagrid. But the Burrow has swiveling chairs and a pig! (See what I mean?)) and have been enjoying all the great reviews here, which seem to be head and shoulders above the rest of the reviews I've seen around the Web. I can only hope I'll be able to contribute something to this community.