TeufelHund

It seems like the Dino sets are no longer exclusive to Big W - they had the full range including the Limtied Edition Gyrocopter/Pteradon set at my local Toys R Us yesterday (all at RRP of course - the Gyro set was $49.95). I'm thinking of a Haunted House but will wait for when ShopforMe put it at 15-20% off, methinks.

I just saw this was out at Amazon.com - has anyone snagged a copy and if so can you tell me what the differences are between this and the 2009 version. Bascially, is it different enough to warrant a purchase or basically the same with a few new themes added?

I am in Germany at the moment and have seen the 2nd half 2012 catalog - there is nothing in it new if you have been following things online at all. I dropped into the Lego shop in Frankfurt this morning with my 4 year old - we were 10 minutes early (shops don´t open here until 10am) and I´m sure he left drool plastered to the front glass doors while we were waiting for them to open up. Palpatine`s Arrest looks underwhelming - even with the current exchange rate with it working out at just over $100. Definitely a must buy only if you want the minifgures (which do look great). The Vampire Castle was also on display pre-built and it has moved from my maybe to my definite list - I can`t describe how awesome this set looks. I also picked up the Zombies set as it was a decent price, and as an exclusive may be hard to pick up in Oz. Sadly the Haunted House was not available for comparison. They also had the Super Star Destroyer on display - great looking but looks like an uninspiring bley brick selection and impossible to display unless you have a lot of space. I may pick up some more stuff later depending on how much space we end up with in our luggage and whether I give into the temptation to buy some Playmobil while I`m here.

"Cool Castles" Looks relatively up to date given he is utilising Kingdoms figures and seems to have some nice ideas from the preview pages.

Oh yea of little faith - I'm sure TLG have a droid torture chamber/dungeon planned for you to buy to complete your Palace at a very (un)reasonable price. It's a bit hard to tell from this angle but the set doesn't do too much for me. The Rancor looks a little on the small side (not too bad though) but the minifgure line up isn't that great if you already have the Skiff and the Palace (although another Garmorean is always nice). It would have been preferable to me if they'd include a Luke with a hood and cloak to distinguish from the skiff version a bit more.

Thanks - the shelves were pretty much bare when I got to the one in the Canberra CBD but I ended up getting a ghastly pink Friends set for my niece's birthday. Only having sons myself I have no idea about shopping for girls so I was a bit flumoxed about picking between a pet show or beauty salon but ended up going for the later because in that set the friend actually comes with a friend.

I usually follow the box art, particularly if there are minifig torsos mixed up in the instructions compared to the box on the basis that the box art is what attracted me to the set. Saying that, sometimes I make small modifications to a completed set on the basis that it just looks better/more logical to me to do it that way.

I just noticed that my local Big W had quitely marked down Alien Conquest sets - they had the Alien Abduction for $30 and the JetCopter set for $40 which suggest that line is now on clearance. They also had the Battle of Hoth game scanning for $28 even though the ticket still said $48.

I think you did ok - the SSD is basically an extremely long-display piece (with an apparently pretty flat and barren underside) whereas the Death Star is an awesome playset, display piece and source of minfigs. Enjoy.

I wandered into my local Big W this morning after 9am and most sale stock was still available. I didn't see any SSD but they had all the Dino sets except the smallest one, tons of Helm's Deep & Orc Forges + A few Anakin's Jedi interceptors (I couldn't bring myself to buy it though for the price). I ended up getting the biggest Dino set for my Son's birthday and a $20 storage box for my small elements.

I didn't think too much of Season 3 as the writers seem to have forgotten there was actually a war going on, but I am about 2/3rds of the way through Season 4 at the monment and things seem to have picked up a lot. Let's hope Season 5 continues in the same manner.

It's a BigW exclusive. It may turn up at some of the specialised online dealers like Shop for me or Bricks 2 the World at some stage but likely the Big W price (which is $6 less than the Lego SHop@Home site) is the best you'll manage. As always, you might save a few dollars buying off Ebay or Bricklink, but unfortunately there just won't be as many options to obtain this set locally as with most other sets.

I picked up the Orc Forge at Big W this morning but no signs of other exclusives such as the Dino, SSD or Anakin Interceptor yet. Other than that, there's not much else in this sale round to tempt me (already got the rest of the LOTOR sets at 25% off).

I'm partial to the new Sandtroopers in Droid Escape, although there are a selection of great figures in the recently releashed Jabba's Palace & Desert Skiff sets (Boush, Olla, Lando, Garmorean Guard, Boba Fett etc). For older ffigures I love the Emperor from the Death Star complete with Blue Lightning!

Well so far I am leaning to awarding Big W the prize for most attractive exclusives (Orc Forge, Anakin's Jedi Interceptor, Dino sets, SSD) and Kmart for the best prices. I will probably drop in to the city tomorrow and see if I fancy picking up anything on a whim. EDIT Toys R US are threatening to match any price and give you an additional 10% off if you can find any item cheaper, so that might be the way to go for any non-exclusive stuff.

Before I saw this set I was thinking about getting the Zombie set and the Vampire Castle but I may have to drop the castle now I've seen this (I prefer the ghosts to the manbats and the zombie chef is gold). Also it is mercifully free of any of those ridculous cybernetic monster fighters despite being labelled a Monster Fighter set. The extra zombie heads are also useful. Now where on earth am I going to put it!

No - sale items don't work with the coupon.

I picked up a bunch of LOTOR sets today at 25% off from Toys R US Madura Park. They had all sets save the Orc Forge there when I visited, which is probably a Target Exclusive like in the US. They also had all the new SW sets save the exclusives. Just be careful - even though my receipt says a 25% discount I was actually only given a 16.66% discount on one transaction for some reason. They have a deal where you get a free 32x32 Green or Blue baseplate at the moment if you spend more than $80 on Lego, so I ended up with 2 x Green and 1x Blue after getting them to put transactions through as seperate purchases.

It doesn't apply to sale items, which is why Helm's Deep and Jabba's Palace are both "on sale" at only 10% off at the moment.

I would tell him to go easy on the god-awful poetry and hire a decent editor. There's a great story buried in his books but the amount of tedious prose you have to go through to unearth it is OTT. Apart from the Hobbit of course - that book is gold as is.

I like the set a lot - it doesn't look too much like the actual Palace but there's only so much you can do without the price getting out of hand (sorry...more out of hand). There are some nice pieces for Mos Eisley/Desert MOCs and some of the minifigs are beautiful - Oola and Boush probably being the best of the bunch, with the Gamorean Guard a close runner up. Frankly I love the new detail on minfigs - the old Gamorean Guard and Jabba for instance are painfully primitive in their execution.

I just built Jabba's Palace over the weekend (great set) but the one thing I can't understand is why TLG felt the need to slap a flickfire missile directly under the roof. Now maybe a little rotating turret on top of a roof might make sense, but this one is a stationary missile pointing out of the base of the roof in one direction only. I guess Jabba is only anticipating attack from a single direction. Is there any more ridiculous placement of a flickfire mssile? I know TLG is addicted to them (they seriously need to detox) but this is getting ridiculous.

A classical history theme would be fantastic and should be possible to run alongside LOTOR as the two aren't directly competitive (whereas LOTOR and Castle have a lot in common).

Dude - they're for your daughter/niece (if anybody asks).

There might be some nice MOCCing parts with this set but the structure they've created looks pretty ordinary. Really it's all about the Jedi, and if the idea of 3 useless Jedi who get cut to shreds the moment they face a genuine threat appeals to you, then by all means go for it...otherwise I wouldn't bother. Palpy looks nice and I'm glad they included his lightning bolts, but otherwise I can't see much going for this set.