Hewman

I bought an enlighten pirate ship (one of their 'original' designs) and it was substandard, and figs were very ordinary. I posted a topic here on it. I love my 9V trains, and as appealing as the pictures seem in that they look like a cheap alternative to get extra carriages, there's no way I'm going near them or their copy of the 9V track, I jus tthink it would cause hours of frustration.

But that bigger Hogsmeade is infinitely nicer. Also perhaps people view it as "which set would you rather have?" and in that case one with a motor and track will win every time. Anyway, excellent topic. I'm going to 9V my new Hogwarts express on the weekend, I'm assuming it'll be a pretty simple task.

Target Adelaide had 5 or 6 Cad bane speeders at about 8:45 this morning, the three smallest Harry Potter sets were also in abundance. Although the stack of collectable figs that were present on Tuesday seem to have disappeared. For those interested in saving an extra dollar (well 80 cents after discount). A couple of the Harry Potter sets at Myer are slightly cheaper than Target, $179 no cents for castle and I think it was $119 for the train, although The Burrow was $89.95. all before the current 20% off that is. Edit: A bit off topic I know but is anyone interested in just purchasing the figs (plus accessories including invisibility coat and I think there might be a couple cool printed tiles in that bag as well), owls and Weasley car (with instructions) from Hogwart's express for $50? If so I'll grab myself another one to get an extra carriage. Just send me a PM if interested.

Went into Myer in Adelaide at lunch and 20% off all toys until the 10th. They had most of the new Harry Potter sets too. Did someone here mention something about a Myer One offer this week? Does anyone have any further info on it?

I was at my local k-mart (Firle, SA) tonight and there were two copies of the biggest Prince of Persia set for $80. If you don't own it, I thoroughly recommend it even if you have no interest in Prince of Persia, it's an absolutely beautiful set.

This is why Lego don't like sets of pics being leaked early. Because I've seen this magnificent set I'm not going to purchase the Hogwart's castle (which has only just become available to Aus buyers to order or purchase in the last couple days unlike some European and North American markets).

YG-49, you're a legend. Myer has 20% off lego today and tomorrow but since I know the HP sets will be at Target, you've saved me a trip to the crazily busy shopping centre with the closest Myer to me, and I can drive two minutes to my local target and pick them up next week. Thanks!

That would just be your computer caching, they're not actually there. It won't be visible to anyone that hasn't seen it already. Anyway, it's just a matter of hours until we can see high resolution pics and discuss every detail.

A couple of them aren't bad value at full retail (don't tell anyone but I'm going to look for Dobby's release after work and maybe pay full price!). If no-one from Sydney can't point you in the right direction, try Target, it seems to be the only place anyone has spotted them in other cities.

Everything* goes on sale at some stage. I'm waiting for sales. *this doesn't include store exclusives

As a classic space "expert" I can tell you this is pretty much correct. The air tanks were used often on the front of classic space vehicles and the light grey helmet is from castle sets from a long time ago and will cost you a fortune to buy. However, the new style helmet is available in light grey at a more affordable price. I customed a bunch of classic space figs in a variety of colours including light and dark grey, dark purple, medium blue and green.

Very clever, and great fun, thanks for sharing it with us.

Beautiful, elegant in its simplicity. I forwarded it to a few friends to admire. Do you have plans to do any other characters?

Yes, these prices are lower than what the Qld Toyworld store were reporting ages ago, although they match up perfectly with what bttw listed about a month ago. Maybe the strong Aus $ kicked in and Lego took notice. We do seem to generally fare better with the prices of licensed sets that aren't Star Wars.

There weren't any markings to show brand. The set I had was a clone not a bootleg, although I saw a couple bootlegs for sale. All the pieces looked like late 70s to early 80s designs to me, so their patents have probably run out too (edit, the hull pieces probably are breaking a patent, as they are from late 80s). I have no proof of lead in these sets, it's pure conjecture! I believe lead has been detected in some Chinese toys, whether or not they've appearerd in enlighten bricks I have no idea, they certainly don't feel like Lego bricks, but I can't conclude from that, that there are poisonous metals in them.

A day after the sale ends, Target Adelaide put out the collectible figs (just like they did with series 1). There were about 5 boxes all messed up but lots of packets in each box. Thankfully I remembered the Spartan's barcode, so after about 30 packets I found one. Depending on what figs you want, you might want to get up quick. I assume there are some Spartans still left. For those that don't have the pharaoh I say get it, it's a beautiful fig!

When Lego first introduced the Pirates theme I was getting what I thought was too old for lego, so I never owned a set when I was younger. When I rediscovered lego as an adult I saw all these cool looking pirate sets in old catalogues. So last year I was very excited with the reintroduction of Pirates. I bought a couple sets, loved them and ended up buying them all. However, the downside is that because the line was only out for a year I only have two ships for a sea battle, Brickbeard's and the Imperial Flagship which isn't near enough. I really prefer new sets over used and the prices of old Pirates sets (even used) on bricklink and ebay are pretty steep. After reading some reviews here of clone brands here it didn't look like the enlighten ships were too bad quality wise and I quite like some of the designs of their sets that I saw on ebay (excluding the direct rip-offs of old Lego designs). Given the price I didn't think it was too big a risk to take so I ordered a MISB set. What follows is my experience building this set. Now I didn't have particularly high expectations for a clone brand, so it wasn't like I was going to only accept it being up to Lego quality. The first thing I notice is that the box is realtively small, it had two cardboard boxes inside all packed full of plastic bags with pieces in them. The sails were packed nicely in one of the boxes greatly reducing the chances of creasing occurring. I pull the bags out of the boxes and the hull pieces which I notice have little screws in them, I'm not sure but I had my doubts there were screws in old Lego pirate sets. The instruction sheet is pretty small, there are part call outs at each step, but the steps tend to involve a lot of pieces. So it's time to get building. Minifigs: The first thing I notice is the hands aren't attached to the arms of the figs, so I gather up all the torsos and hands only to discover I'm one hand short, I guess the amputee will have to be the guy operating the cannon. The hands are annoying to put in, they require a lot of force and often don't click in neatly. On the first fig I tried the force required popped an arm out of the torso, so I had to adjust my technique to hold in the arms (which are very loose by Lego standards). The next issue was the headgear. Some hats went on fine depending on the style, others were impossible to fit on correctly, so I had to force them on crookedly then twist. The printing of the torsos is well below Lego standards and still way below anything on the new collectible figs. The Ship: The weirdest thing about how the pieces are packed is that the pieces of string are completely loose in the bags, not even slightly coiled to protect them and all sorts of pieces catch on the string. The pieces themselves don't feel or sound like Lego pieces. They're quite brittle and when shuffled around together they don't make that reassuring gentle sound like lego bricks do. The colours aren't too bad generally, the red and yellow are a little lighter than Lego, however the biggest issue is with the black. Lego black is usually beautiful and shiny, Enlighten pieces were dull and dirty looking. This may seem weird but the black 1x1 round bricks seemed to be slightly attracted to each other magnetically. This was a little scary, so when a piece dropped on the floor and one of my cats (yes I'm a crazy cat man as well as a crazy lego man)wanted to pick it up in her mouth there was no way I was letting it happen, not just a choking hazard but potential metal poisoning (yes this is conjecture on my part, but better safe than sorry). The clutch power of the pieces is highly variable and the hull wouldn't stay together until there were pieces joining the segments on both top and bottom. Even then there were noticeable gaps between hull pieces due to the lack of precision in the manufacturing process. The instructions are reasonably good, but not for young children because of the amount of pieces in each step. Colours are way off in the instructions (particularly blacks) and way worse than any problems I've encountered with Lego instructions. Besides some of the clutch power issues and the problem with some pieces not lining up perfectly with others the biggest issue was pieces with clips. They attach so poorly to other pieces and there is no nice 'click' to tell you it's done properly. The string was also an issue as it had disentangled itself into three separate threads. Usually I'd put a Lego string in my mouth for two secs to get the end right, no way was I doing that with this though. Twisting alone didn't fix the string so this was a really annoying part of the build. The sails: I was expecting them to be quite frayed at the edges, but they weren't too bad in this regard. They were however annoyingly stiff, liked they'd been starched 20 times. The printing on them was quite poor and it leaked through unevenly to the back side of the sails making the backs look very messy. Once finished and on the shelf, the set looks ok, but playing with it causes pieces to fall off regualrly. I knew what I was potentially getting into when I bought this set, however I thought I should warn others so they can learn of my mistake. Now the only question is what to do with the set. I wouldn't feel right selling it for money, as I only like to sell what I would be happy to receive in terms of quality. Do I donate to charity or the child of a friend and worry about them getting lead poisoning or growing up hating Lego because this set they got wouldn't go together nicely. It's a tough call. Overall as cheap as it was (probably 1/3 the price of an equivalent sized Lego set). Thanks for reading!

I think it increases their profit (as well as being their full legal right to enforce this). My reasoning is that the earlier pics are released the more you get used to a set and it seems less novel over time, thereby making it less likely to buy. Now I think there is an optimal time to release pics before a product goes on the market in order to build enthusiasm but this timeframe is much closer to release date than the 6 months or so until the Pharaoh sets will be released. The other thing is that these are all preliminary pics and some sets could change radically, and Lego wouldn't want to have to deal with the PR when peole are complaining they didn't release what was seen in preliminary pics.

Here's my lunch time report from checking the shops of the city in Adelaide: Toys r us had about a dozen jester impulses in with all the other kingdoms lego, but no evil wizard impulses. Target didn't have any collectable figs as far as I could see. Went to toyworld in the Myer centre, they had both series 1 nd series 2 figs in a series 2 box. I thought about looking for a Spartan (the only one of the series that I like but don't have), but then saw they were all $4.99 so just on principle I didn't check, also given there was only half a box, my chances would have been pretty slim to find one. Edit: In other news shop at home Australia are advertising the Harry Potter sets on their front page but when you click on th elink it says this set is not available in Australia, however I assumes it means we're close to having RRP of the sets confirmed, with differing prices listed on different web shops.

Utterly brilliant, professional seller. I've spent way too many hundreds of dollars at his physical store and bricklink shop. Also his shop Toy Corner in Adelaide is starting their 15% off sale for school holidays tomorrow. I'm not sure if this applies online (by online I mean toycorner.com.au, not his bricklink shop) as well. To those not in Adelaide the reason a 15% sale is so interesting is that there are plenty of old sets and the store sells figs and pieces as well. PS Lightingtiger, I can't believe you didn't know this one, that makes the score Hewman 1: Lightningtiger 26 PPS Slopemodified, I bought a clone battlepack and a few pieces off him last week, super smooth transaction.

Yep! Also in this thread the 6 or 7 posts aren't really clogging it up. OK, so some sales news. Toyworld in Adelaide (Myer Centre) have 40% off a bunch of toy story sets including the western one. No sign of series two figs anywhere in the city.

Thanks, now I know why I didn't find the concept of the sphinx coming alive too strange. In fact I think this adds some playability beyond just pushing a vehicle around. Bits can fly off as it is shot. They look good and have play value so a winner in my book.

Thanks for that but those prices aren't actual discounts, they're all still above RRP, they just grossly inflate the 'normal' price. Hopefully it means we should be seeing them in stores within two weeks though.

Thanks for the pics. The sets look even better than I imagined. I'm not really a fan of stickers but the designs here are so nice I'm not bothered at all by these ones. Looks like a lot of small bricks in the pyramid too which is great. I can't see any reason not to get all of these. Great job, Lego!

New K-mart catalogue has a few sets nicely discounted Wampa $59 Midi Imperial Star Destroyer - $59 Plo Koons ship $35 a couple world medium sized racers sets I'm guessing around 20% off and a few other sets on sale as well. I assume this starts Thursday.