Gryphon Ink

SMC, I have the same rule, and the only set I have ever broken it for is Uruk-Hai Army. That I bought two of and would like to buy another. And I don't even do army-building in general, but something about seeing a horde of Orcs just tickles me. Plus, the set is a very good generic piece bucket for historical and fantasy building. You can do a lot of castle work with those parts.

Anybody over "a certain age" is very likely to mispronounce many of the names in Tolkien's work, because there was nobody to tell us different when we first encoutered the names. I still regularly go around referring to the dragon as "Smog" and pronouncing Gandalf "Gandolf", because I grew up in the Dark Ages and read the books dozens of times before there started to be Tolkien fansites with handy pronunciation guides, let alone movies. It really doesn't mean the speaker doesn't know Tolkien. It just means they didn't see the movies first.

Love it! It really captures the grandeur of the station. Well done, dude. I second the request for a White Star, or a Minbari battle cruiser.

I kind of like a few of the sets in this Castle wave, but not this one. I just think all of the builds look a little awkward - holes at the top of the guardpost, an out-of-place blue on the front of the ballista, holes and an overall unattractive shape on the carriage. It would be easy to fix most of the issues, but then there's not much point in buying the set except for a few rather generic minifigs. I'm not as ticked about the new Castle heraldry as some fans. I think the Lion sigil is just fine for an army of blocky little plastic men, and ditto the dragons even though they aren't as nice-looking as my beloved Kingdoms Dragons. But it does annoy me to see that Castle has been infected with the dreaded "bad guys must have EVIL eye makeup" affliction. I really don't like that style of eyes. On an Orc it makes sense, but not here. I nearly forgot to say, Echo, that this is a solid review and I like the honest rating. I would suggest not calling the Dragons "baddies" every time, and it's always helpful to have a picture or two of the parts before assembling. Sometimes an interesting mix of parts can give a big boost to a middling set. But aside from that, I thought you did pretty well with the review.

I bought this set a couple of weeks ago, and I like it quite a bit. It's my first Lego train, and almost definitely won't be my last. I do have a question for the experienced trainheads: how would you add driver rods to the Constitution? It didn't bother me at first that it didn't have any, but the more I look at it the more I want that iconic feature. But I have no idea how it should be done. Has anybody done this yet?

I think the dragon looks great except for the fact that its beard is on fire. You may try to tell me that element is meant to represent breathing fire, but I would respond that TLG would never EVER design something that bad. So sorry, but just no. That dragon has a beard, and its beard is on fire. But seriously, other than that I think the dragon is pretty darn good. And I actually think Dragon Mountain is a decent half a set. It looks fine. It just doesn't go far enough. It should be twice that size. When and if I get this set, I am definitely going to rebuild my Dragon Knights sets from Kingdoms and incorporate this one into them.

An Apache might be more his style, but it's much harder to jump the shark on a helicopter.

They do it when they can't get the pieces apart. Not all kids do it. My eldest daughter has always been super careful with our Lego, gently working on everything. But when I'm building with my youngest, I have to make sure there is a brick separator right at hand, because if she can't get something apart by tugging she WILL use her teeth. She is also not nearly as gentle with the bricks as my eldest. There's something about pushing the trains that just speaks to a child. My youngest is fascinated with the Constitution we just built. She loves to run it around the tracks and makes up whole stories about the Lone Ranger characters riding the train. Until I actually bought the set, I wondered why TLG made such a nice steamer without any regard for motorizing it. But after seeing my little troll playing with it, I know. Motorizing it would totally kill the magic.

Smaug attacking Laketown. I think it's a pretty safe bet that the second movie will wind up with that, possibly also including the first half of the assault on Dol Guldur. I'm not really sure we'll see Thranduil in the second Lego wave. We already got two sets that cover most of the book's Mirkwood action. There's not much more to include Thranduil in until the end, unless the movie adaptation is even farther removed from the book than it already is. Than again, AUJ did manage to include Elrond in plate mail and a giant albino Orc with a prosthetic hand, so DOS might have Thranduil fighting Nazgul on water-skis for all I know.

I don't know where you are, but I've seen Weathertop in Target and Wal-mart in the last few weeks, maybe in TRU too. Definitely worth a look.

Sweet! I love Daft Punk, and this is a great little build.

1979-ish to 2010. Things were very, very different when my Dark Age began!

As a father, I don't think it's an overreaction. I think it was very legitimate to complain to TLG about it. Street harrassment is not cool, and it is not something I want to see as a joke in a product meant for preschool children. When we trivialize these things into jokes or pass them off as pop culture references, we legitimize them. We teach our children that this is an okay thing that happens in the real world and is something to be shrugged off as funny. We teach our sons that it's okay to harrass random females (because, you know, it's just a joke) and we teach our daughters that harrassment by random males is not a big deal and that they should try to see it as a joke. This is NOT the end of the world. But it's a horrible thing to be teaching our kids. Too true. This is sadly typical of big companies' responses to consumer complaints of this sort. It's always "we're sorry you find this offensive"; never "we're sorry we said an offensive thing." Really? Name one children's TV show that has reproduced this scenario in the last twenty years and NOT made it crystal clear that such behavior was primitive and reprehensible, usually by having the "joke" backfire horribly on the construction worker. Every successful movement for social change in modern history succeeded by tackling one specific problem at a time. You don't "tackle the issue in general" - you tackle instances of the issue. If you do it often enough, consistently enough, people eventually realise that there is a big issue at hand that needs to be addressed. It's kind of funny that you say this here, in a community where whining about trivial aspects of Lego toys is not only accepted, but encouraged as part of the daily routine. Unless Spongebob has changed significantly since the last time I watched it, Spongebob is a bit of an idiot, and he gets his big behind handed to him every time he says something offensive. I distinctly remember a couple of episodes where Sandy beat the living daylights out of him for saying stupid sexist things. Part of the Spongebob routine is that Spongebob says stupid things that he doesn't realise are hurtful, then somebody teaches him the hard way that you should not say stupid, hurtful things. He learns and he feels regret when he learns what he has done. I don't see Mr. Construction Minifig learning anything here.

Winter Village Toy Shop AND Bakery. I dilly-dallied way too long. I missed the Cottage too, but hopefully that one will come back this winter. Not much hope for the other two.

Realistically, there have only been, what, twelve Lego LOTR sets ever designed? It hasn't exactly been decades of waiting and dozens of missed opportunities. I'm with you in the hopes for both heroines, though. Hopefully Galadriel will show up in the Desolation of Smaug sets this winter. That said, I'm psyched to see Tauriel in action, and she did make a fine minifig.

I have a feeling this set will sell like crazy to kids, as it's a really superlative playset, but personally I'm on the fence about its design. As an AFOL and a former tank driver, it drives me nuts to see "tank" toys that violate basic real-world tank design principles, and the fact that this one has an enormous bubble cockpit as a massive obvious target for enemy fire just makes me get all angry-eyed. Especially since it seems the enemy weapon of choice is LASERS. Lasers can really ruin your day when your only protection is a transparent dome. If you think of it as a mobile missile launcher for indirect fire, rather than a tank, the incongruity is not as bad because your vehicle would typically be out of LOS from enemies. But I really doubt that TLG were going for that kind of thing. Yes, I'm aware it is a children's toy. And I probably would have been all over this set if I was nine years old today.

Great review, Pandora. I really like the look of this set. I must say I haven't really warmed up to Galaxy Squad yet, but I'd like to get at least one or two of the smaller sets because I like the buggoids themselves and some of the parts are really neat. This looks like a good one to get. The beetle is a great model. It looks more like a real bug than any of the buggoid vehicles I've seen so far. It's a real shame the legs don't move, though. I wish TLG had incorporated more movement in the alien vehicles. I know it would drive up the price, but I'd be willing to pay a lot more for a more interesting Technic-enabled moving insectoid.

I'm disppointed that the bakery set includes an oven and display that don't fit into the building. That's really not cool. It makes the set much less attractive in my opinion. This set should have been the same size as the City Cafe - it would have been wonderful at that size.

Very creative work, MMM! I especially like the second one. It has a great Hellraiser-meets-Guillermo-del-Toro feeling to it.

But it wasn't and it isn't. "The Longest Day" is about mass battles and vast armies. The Lord of the Rings is about four brave hobbits mustering the courage to do what needs to be done, when all around them is darkness and chaos, fell creatures and mighty heroes who think the little people are children to be protected or enslaved. This point is driven home again and again and again in the books and repeated somewhat less frequently in the movies. The battle scenes are eye candy to decorate that story. And they sure are pretty, I can agree with that. The siege of Helm's Deep is an awesome spectacle. But LOTR was a publishing phenomenon for sixty years before the movies were ever made. It was successful without any visual interpretation of vast armies clashing. And even as far as the films go, I think what will stick with me twenty years from now is not Gimli and Aragorn fighting through hordes of Uruk-Hai, but Pippin singing for Lord Denethor while Faramir rides to his death. I'm sorry to belabor the point, but I keep on hearing this point of view from AFOLs who want more, more, more armybuilders, repeating it as if it was the only point of view. It isn't.

I believe TLG's plan has always been to ramp up and bring out Gondor in the third wave of the theme, but a lot of fans insist on thinking the theme is over. Every time there isn't any news for a couple of weeks somebody comes in and declares the theme dead or dying. And when there is news, it's also a sign that the theme is about to be cancelled. Small wave of LOTR sets this summer? Because sales were weak and TLG are quietly phasing it out. A new Castle wave coming out this year? TLG were disappointed with LOTR and realised they need a back-up plan. No Tower of Orthanc? Sales were atrocious and TLG will never make a big UCS-style LOTR set. Oh, wait, there is a Tower of Orthanc? Well, that must be LOTR's grand send-off. Mark my words, this can mean no good for fans of this theme. The fact is if you look at Amazon's top selling building sets (the only sales data that is readily available to the public), LOTR still has three or four in the top 100 and the Hobbit has two (and one of those is Riddles for the Ring, which AFOLs decided was a horrible and pointless set). And the LOTR sets have been in the charts for almost a year, while the likes of Monster Fighters, Batman and the Avengers sell like crazy for a short period and then drop off the edges of the map. LOTR isn't selling as well as Ninjago, Friends or Chima, but you would never expect it to. Like you, I think that there will be at least one more wave of LOTR sets, and before the theme is over we will have everything we want including the Witch-King, the Balrog, Treebeard and Gondorian forces galore. Meanwhile, this summer's wave is not the BESTEST WAVE EVAR, but it's got a decent selection at a wide range of prices and a whole gang of coveted minifigs in beautiful renditions.

You have some good points there. I don't think anybody would argue with you about the stupid lack of variety in our Orc armies, or that there were better army builders in the last wave and in other themes. I also would love to see a grander version of Rivendell. A 2000 piece Rivendell would be awesome and beautiful. But I probably wouldn't buy it, and I wouldn't be the only one. Look at all the comments on the Orthanc press release. Half of them say "beautiful set, it's a must-have for me" and the other half say "beautiful set, unfortunately costs way too much for me." Hell, I haven't even bought Helm's Deep, which is the centerpiece of the entire theme so far. It just costs too much for me. This Rivendell is something that I can buy, and for that price point I think they did a darn good job. It doesn't capture the glory of Rivendell, as you say, but it does do a good job representing the feeling of the place. Even the most casual LOTR fan will look at that set and know exactly what it is. As far as the minifigs go in this specific set, I'm really happy that Gimli is there. It would have been good to get Boromir in the group, since there are hardly any scenes left for him to be in. But Gimli is one of the central characters of the whole trilogy, and he's only been in the really expensive sets so far. He has some excellent accessories and is very useful for making custom Dwarves. And yes, all of the Dwarf-hurling play features are pretty silly, but my kids do enjoy those things. There's a valid reason why TLG like to include silly play features in every set - their main target market loves things that go boom. If anybody in this set is "filler", it's Frodo - and as someone else pointed out, he's there mostly because otherwise he wouldn't be in this wave at all, and an LOTR wave without Frodo would be like a Big Mac without the hamburger.

So, in a low end ($40?) set we get brand new arches, foliage in new Autumn colors, an assortment of common but useful pieces, one of the iconic locations from LOTR, a "hero" minifig that has so far only appeared in much more expensive sets, a unique version of Elrond who has so far only been available as a video game promotion, and Arwen - a character who has appeared on every wish list since the first rumors of the LOTR theme started to surface. And your complaint is that it isn't the RIGHT Arwen. Your opinion is, of course, your own. But this comment really illustrates that AFOLs can find something to complain about in every set that TLG make. I don't think this was a perfect set by any means, but I really don't think you can knock it for "lackluster minifig selection".

To be honest, I have no idea how the VIP program works, even though I have bought a few sets from S@H and Lego Stores. I know, I'm a complete failure as an AFOL.

I don't see the problem everyone is complaining about. The piece in question is a wonderful rendition of an adorable baby Misty Mountain Eagle. And Gandalf was SO nice to use his magic to pretend the eaglet was actually carrying him aloft! Gwaihir must be so proud!