Gryphon Ink

I just noticed the insane number of sharks in the "City scene" picture. No less than five sharks there, all of them going after people. And people are still going swimming!! WTF, Lego City? Did you know there were massive swarms of sharks in the area when you were heavily promoting water sports last year? Reckless irresponsibility, I say. I'm calling for a change of leadership.

That shop has put up the wrong names before and caused rampant baseless speculation. Early this year they were saying LOTR would have an "Eagle's Nest" set, which IIRC turned out to be the Black Gate. Don't put too much stock in their pre-release names. The set will be what GRogall says it is!

I saw this one on Target the other day. It looks like a great set - the nicest helicopter i've seen in a while, plus a shark and some decent minifigs you can use ina lot of different settings. Most of the smaller City sets don't excite me and I'm mostly all about LOTR and Friends, but I'll make an exception for this one. I haven't seen the winchbrick before. Is that a new part? Oh, and I love what you did with the rope on the last section. Great review!

So it wasn't you who claimed that there were no female firefighters or police officers in the minifig lineup? Or that there wasn't a Wonder Woman minifig? I'm glad to hear it. Overall it seemed like a pretty fair story, giving both pros and cons to Friends. About what I expect from NPR. Since this thread has been resurrected, I may as well report on what happened to me a month or so ago on Ravelry. Ravelry is the biggest fiber arts (knitting and crochet) website in the world, and it has extremely active forums that cover a wide range of topics beyond knitting and crochet. On one of the general interest forums, somebody started a thread about the recent Disney Princess makeover for Merida. At some point this diverged into a conversation about Lego Friends, and let me tell you, the controversy is far from over. What really struck me was that I kept on hearing the same misinformation that was originally used to condemn Friends when it was launched. "The girls all wear miniskirts". "The sets are simplified so there's hardly any building involved." "The Friends all do stereotypical things like go to beauty salons." One woman was insisting that the Friends all wear makeup and nail polish. Never mind that no minifig or minidoll has ever even had fingernails, or that no Friend is wearing obvious makeup. She had it in her mind that they were a bunch of Barbies, presumably because she heard it from someone with an axe to grind. Likewise, the same woman thought that there were no female minifigs in heroic roles outside of Friends. No firefighters, no ambulance drivers. She kept saying that the women in System were all damsels in distress waiting to be rescued by heroic men. I pointed out that this was very true a few years ago, but that TLG have been making great improvements in offering women opportunities to be heroic. I talked about Eris and Nya and the nameless ADU fighter pilot. Another thing that is very obvious is that most adults tend to think Lego is still in the business of selling big boxes of generic bricks. They just don't understand that your average Friends set is very much like every other modern Lego set, with specialized pieces galore that are meant to build a specific scene. They see those Friends sets and think that the whole design philosophy of Lego has been bastardized for this Girls' Theme. I showed the group some pictures of other sets with comparisons of the number of parts and complexity of the builds. I touted the non-stereotypical activities girls engage in throughout Friends. I tried to set the record straight about the roles females play in other Lego themes. I think I got through to some, aided somewhat by other posters who had more current experience with Lego through their kids. It was a pretty good discussion. But there are still a lot of people who believe that Friends is basically evil. I also have to say that many of the responses here are not very mature, and don't help the AFOL community at all. I did some rereading of this thread, having abandoned it originally when I found myself getting too worked up over the immature posts - and I started getting annoyed all over again. What I see here is a more or less complete failure to accept that other people may have different viewpoints, and that things aren't only bad if they affect us personally. It's a complete blanket denial that other people may be insulted by things that we (I'm using the impersonal "we" here) don't care about. It's more or less the same response that I see all around when people start to talk about racism - a response that comes from unquestioned privilege. "This doesn't bother me, so I don't see why it should bother you. You're being oversensitive." That's not how it works, people. These things DO bother other people. You don't get to just deny that, or laugh it off, or make the controversy disappear by using ironic quotation marks (see title of thread). If you want people to respect you and your hobby, you need to try to be a little bit more "ambassadorial" in manner. We're not going to get people to see that Lego can be a respectable hobby for adults if we act like thirteen-year-olds. We won't convince people that Friends is really not sexist if every Eurobricks review of a Friends set devotes several paragraphs to being ironic about how the set was dumbed down for girls, and then goes on to give us a "clever" minifig comic that is a big winking "FU" to all women reading it. Why can't we just review the sets? Talk about the build, drop the whole ironic stance and treat the Friends sets the same way we would treat any other Lego set? Pandora does this pretty well. When she reviews a Friends set, it's just a Lego set. No wink-wink nudge-nudge "I don't need any of these girly colors, but SOME people might find them useful", just bricks and tiles with perhaps more cute animals than most themes have. I'd like to see the rest of us doing the same. Okay, I'm not going to be on anybody's best buds list right now. But I had to say it. This is a very cool community. I just don't think we as a group handle the Friends theme very maturely.

I got Council of Elrond. Beautiful! My Fellowship of the Ring is now only missing Boromir. Sucks that he only comes in one set that I don't particularly like.

It's a very cool train, octavspot. Of course it doesn't stack up to the EN in detail, but the track and the minifigs (including Silver, who is currently the only white horse available) make it well worth the money IMO.

I don't know that you can generalize about it, but my 5YO is crazy in love with the Constitution train from the Lone Ranger. The Chima flyers have also been big hits. She loves that they are both birds and planes, and she loves Eris. She was not happy at all that the Ravens and the Eagles were at war with eachother, and in her story it soon turned out that the whole war was just a big misunderstanding. Now the Ravens happily fawn over Princess Eris, who is really good at repairing their broken Chi crystals. Also, Eris has a British accent.

Well, yes, you kind of do. It's an extraordinary claim to be making, since nearly every major atrocity in the last several hundred years has been accomplished with the assistance of guns. Every oppressive regime has guns. Every violent criminal has them. The weapons in this book include some of the favorite sidearms for bad people all over the world. I sincerely fail to see how the world would be any worse if these things didn't exist. Since I know the knee-jerk response to my statement is going to be that I'm obviously a hippy who doesn't understand about the need for a strong defense, let me head you off at the pass: I'm a combat veteran, and I'm still on the reserve lists to defend my homeland in time of need. I'm trained to drive and operate big damn killing machines. I know all about a strong defense. And none of that means that guns are good, or that their overall effect on the world has been a positive one. I'm not one of the original posters who disliked the idea of this book, but I will defend their right to express their abhorrence, without having to suffer insults or condescension from people who do like guns. Not everybody likes them. I personally don't like them at all, and neither did the founders of the Lego Company. I think it's totally legitimate to say that this seems like an inappropriate use of Lego. That is NOT an attack on DLuders or on anybody else who does like the book. My philosophy is, "an it harm none, do what thou wilt." The "an it harm none" part is pretty important.

That is INSANE. Before watching the video I thought the Blackbird was not really worthy of your talents - no disrespect to the amazing aircraft, I just didn't see how it could be anywhere near as interesting as your cars. I should have known better. Wonderful job! The only thing that could have improved this would be to find a couple of X-Men in the cockpit.

My wife bought me Razar's Chi Raider for Father's Day. Awesome set, only a little disappointed that it comes with the same two Ravens that are in Eris' Eagle Interceptor. So, SO swooshable!

You'll change your mind when you see the excusive minifigs included in the set. Genius Pathogist is wicked cool with detailed arm printing, and Cute Phlebotomist has a brand new hairpiece that will be extremely useful for One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest MOCs. Can you feel the excitement NOW?!? ... Personally, I think Curiosity looks really cool.

Well, apparently I'm in the minority here, but I'm thrilled that this set won. Not only is a cool-looking set, but frankly I'm tired of all the cool stuff being movie and video game tie-ins. And I've never played Portal and was never even considering buying a sandcrawler big enough to double as a coffee table. This set looks great, has a nifty suspension system, and is educational. Now, I realise that most Eurobricks members couldn't care less about a set being educational, but to me it's a huge plus. I've been interested in space exploration since I was in kindergarten, and am a big fan of Curiosity. People here have said "we've all forgotten about Curiosity, it's past its time", but I know I'm not the only geek who keeps clicking on every page that offers us news and images from the rover. Come on, people. This little robot is exploring AN ALIEN WORLD. It's doing for real what the heroes and machines of Star Wars and Portal are pretending to do. Human ingenuity put a machine the size of a car on a planet 350 million miles away and set it loose to explore and observe. It's been working flawlessly for a year and a half now, taken vital observations of the planet, and helped pave the way for bigger and longer missions, which will hopefully eventually lead to actual humans exploring Mars. You guys want to see a future like Star Wars or Star Trek, where we zip around at FTL speeds and hobnob with alien species in a universe of infinite possibilities? Well, if there's any chance the dreams of science fiction will become reality, this is how we make it happen. Curiosity - it's what moves us forward.

That's because Snyder has nothing whatsoever to do with the trailers. Those are made by completely different people in shops that do nothing but make trailers. This is why the trailer for Sucker Punch was a much better movie than the actual movie. It was able to use Snyder's not insignificant visual artistry and ignore his pathetic attempt at writing a story.

I did like those, and the fawn set also has a couple of useful foliage pieces and an ever-useful tree branch or half arch. I might get one of these and give that terrifying fawn creature to one of my girls, keep the pieces for myself. But it's not too cost-effective to buy it for, essentially, two bits of cute fruit!

Damn, I just saw those pictures of the latest animal sets, and that fawn is awful. I had high hopes for it. Too bad. I find the Friends animals are a VERY mixed bag. Some of them are really cute (hedgehog, squirrel, turtle), some of them are strange but still okay (horse, poodle) and some are just bad. The fawn is one of those. I agree that it looks a lot more like a fox than a fawn. Now, the bird I like and will buy. The dog, I think, is just meh. I've never been a huge fan of the Friends dogs, and the build is wholly unremarkable.

Neither. I'm totally over the console wars, and my girls are still pretty happy with an old Wii and a few used games. With games going for $50-60 apiece, it's just an unnecessary expense. As far as I can see, it's strictly tabletop gaming, Lego and free tablet/phone games from here on out.

Wow. I think this set actually surpasses Olivia's House. It's easily my most-wanted set of the year so far - I'm a sucker for detailed dollhouse-style interiors like the Burrow, and this is definitely on the same level. Its only weakness that I can see is that, like all Friends buildings, it's roofless. I really wish they put roofs on these sets. Kudos to TLG for including another boy in Heartlake City, and a dark-skinned boy no less. Yay diversity! Another grown woman is also welcome, but I would have been more thrilled if she had at least different hair or a different dress piece. New prints are good, but new molds would have been even better. They're surely not going to drop the Friends theme anytime soon, so they didn't really need to be economizing on minidoll molds at this point. My daughters will love building and playing with this. There's an incredible amount of things to do here. It's a wonderful environment. Okay, must stop gushing now. Great review, Pandora! I think the cat poster is probably a "Kittens free to good home" notice. It is rather odd to have it put up in the restroom. No school that I've ever known would have approved of students putting up notices in the toilets. This should have gone in the foyer instead.

Yeah, I think you're really reaching there. If anything, the second "Two Towers" wave should have had a logo related to Saruman, he being the main villain of that movie. A White Hand or an Orthanc would have worked well. If we are to read that much into the box art, this would actually seem to indicate that this is the final wave, since Barad-Dur is the focus of the third movie. But really I think TLG just wanted icons of the trilogy, and the Ring and the Eye are the two best-known icons. However, I do believe a third wave is planned, and might feature Minas Tirith in the box art. Now watch as the latest wild rumor starts, when people start saying that the box art indicates that this IS the last LOTR wave.

Yeah, the Friends controversy is alive and kicking, thank you. I got into a very long discussion about it a couple of weeks ago over in the knitting forum that I frequent. The results were mixed. There are some women out there who are just going to keep on hating the idea of "Girly Lego" no matter what, but there are also a lot of fans, and I was able to demonstrate that the sets are not dumbed down at all. The idea that they are is still pretty pervasive, though. About the boys, there are two more male minidolls coming in this summer's Friends sets. My girls and I are all looking forward to welcoming new boys to Heartlake City. I would guess that the orientation of the pretzel is a deliberate design choice, as this way the pretzel looks like a heart and fits into the Heartlake motif.

Great review. I knew I wanted this set, but these pictures have totally convinced me. Hats off to the designer of this set, it's amazing how they've captured Rivendell's essence in a tiny piece of scenery. I'd buy two if the budget allowed for it. Elrond did smile in at least one scene that I remember, but I can't think what it was. Maybe in one of the many endings of ROTK, when the hobbits are reunited? I remember it was kind of weird for him. The Last Alliance version is much prettier than this Elrond, IMO, but this one is still pretty cool. And Arwen is beautiful!

You didn't like Eris' Eagle Interceptor? It's very much a mechanical eagle. The Raven flyer looks pretty raven-like, too. I do like the build of this set, but I'm not sold on the gorillas themselves. I know Chima isn't the most serious of themes, but these guys look extra goofy.

It's not really a fair comparison in my opinion. The Ewok Village has lots of action elements in the movie to play with. Orthanc doesn't have any real action associated with it, since anything to do with the Ents attacking Isengard would have added even more to the cost. But I think it makes a great dollhouse. I don't really expect sets at this price point to be play sets, except for trains. They are generally made for AFOLs, I think.

I had that exact same thought for a few seconds. 15 minifigs?!? WTF? But then, you really have to remember that LSW is the One Theme to Rule Them All in terms of collectability and appeal to well-monied investors, and a Star Wars set with that many unique minifigs is guaranteed to bring in a good ROI. I doubt that TLG would do anything like that in any other theme, and LOTR especially just doesn't have that track record.

I'm a bit disappointed about the price. I didn't catch last year's Cottage, and hoped I could catch up by buying both sets this year. This won't happen if both sets are that expensive. I wish they'd stuck with the cozy sized sets. How much was the Cottage in euros?

I feel doubtful about this, too. But I think Bofur's hat would work for Radagast. It's not exactly right, but close enough for me.