Jareth

The other day I saw a scrap of 1 inch thick ribbon and realized that it would make a good start for a minifig cape, especially the "Vampire" style ones that stick up.

Brilliant use of the binoculars

Man! I wanted too, but I've been suffering from a double dose of block....writer's block and building block. Come to think of it, the last story challenge I managed to work in builds that I had planned anyway (the river, the labrynth, the swamp and the demon) but now my planned builds are mostly for my town. Oh well, the important thing is to have fun and become a better builder.

That's a really nice build, and great use of light in the photography as well! I especially like the use of the dark grey plates.

http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=11610 I hope this part becomes available in greater quantities and other colors

I totally agree. Bricks by the pound sometimes have pieces I've never seen in a PAB wall, but the one closest too me started only carrying basic bricks and plates, so I pretty much skip it now.

GUINEA PIGS!!!! GUINEA PIGS!!! ok, two other points. First, We could potentially create our own tribes with the Gorilla suit guy, Lizard suit guy, bunny suit guy, minotaur and bat person from CMF (Yes, I know gorilla is a confirmed tribe) and the shark men from atlantis and the ninjago snake people. Second, I think that chima should be confirmed as the dystopic future of fabuland. Thus my suggestions would be... Bear Crocodile (done) Panda Racoon Dogs Bunny Cat Cow Birds (done) Elephant Fox Goat Hippo Lamb Lion (Done) Monkey Mice Pig Horse Walrus

Yesteday I picked up 5 harry potter polybags (30111...I think) at target for $1.06 Each They were labeled "as is" but I couldn't find any problems with them. I've also bought damaged boxes from target before and only once was there a defective part. If you see a deal like this at target, I say snap it up!

Nice work! Any chance I could commision a golden goblet or telescope from your company?

US toys r us is having a pretty good sale on a few sets http://www.toysrus.com/search/index.jsp?sr=1&f=Taxonomy%2FTRUS%2F2254197&kw=020313lego&origkw=020313lego&kwCatId=&view=all&ab=TRU_Header:Category I didn't check the sorter or the duplo, but all the others are below MSRP

I REALLY like how the fortress looks like one tower underwent hasty repairs recently. If I might suggest, when you are adding helms deep to your fort, add a few diagonal tiles to the repair job. Like these. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=5686015

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while, Ive been working on this. Which looks like I'm going to have to wait for a bulklug order to come in.....maybe... I think I'll do some smaller projects in the meantime, or redo Belladonna's cottage.

Not all of nocturnus is about the monsters. It's about a general feel. A human build is more than welcome here. Visit Scarbourough and you will see.

Number: 30108 Name: Summer Picnic Theme: Town Subtheme: Friends Year: 2013 Minifigs: 1 Minidoll Pieces: 33 (37 by my count) Price: $4 US Well, well, well....after a local target ran out of Emma's Ice cream stand, they replaced it with this. Since I hadn't even seen any preview pictures of it, I had to buy two. One for this review and one for a gift. It seems that this is a very rare set. Peeron has no info, it is "pending approval on bricklink, and brickset barelly shows it at all. Parts: As you can see, it's a pretty good set of pieces, then you realize that there is no pink, purple or aqua in this set! The Croissant is a nice touch as I don't have any yet. People: Um...it's Mia. Nothing is wrong with it, it's just that this Mia is available in 3 other sets, one of which is also a polybag. If I was in charge, I'd probably try and switch out the parts a little more. Use a different set of legs, or even better yet, use a minifig female hair and have it be an unnamed heartlake city resident. Build: I had a hard time comming up with somethign to say here, because the build is so flat. It is however, not based on a 2xX plate, but a 6x8 plate. The picnic blanket is brilliant, becuase it has the right pattern and color of a real one, plus it has studs for the accessories and tiles for minidolls to sit. The center 2x2 white plate is a little difficult to remove. I chose this as a build picture to show that the tan rod is used to support the sappling and Mia seems to enjoy mustard, lettuce and ketchup sandwiches. The sandwich is the size of her head. Attagirl! Oh, there is also an orange soda. This is trans orange, not trans neon orange like I first thought. Trans neon orange is on the left, trans orange from this set is on the right. Extra parts! MVP: Most Valued Piece Plate 6x8 in green! The Croissant was a close second, but I decided that this plate was much more versatile. Conclusion: Parts: 10/10 Minifigs: 8/10 Build: 10/10 Playability: 8/10 Price: 9/10 (With two part counts, I chose a number between the two extremes) Total: 90%

Number: 30251 Name: Winzar's Pack Patrol Theme:Legends of Chima Subtheme: Legends of Chima Year: 2013 Minifgs: 1 Pieces: 38 Price: $4 (US) So, when my local target set up their St. Valentine's Day section, the friends sets were there right away, but the bin next to it advertised this, but was empty. Well, they finally filled it so I had to buy it. So how does it stand up to Emma's Ice Cream Stand? Lets find out. Parts: I have no complaints here. I like all of these colors. Even someone who doesn't like dark red can throw those into a red wall for extra brick texture. I guess that dark grey wedge plate is a little too rare for me to love it, but given that its in a polybag I can totally forgive it. People: Here's Winzar, Here he is without his....helmet? And he is the back printing and alternate face. I guess I have one minor problem with Winzar, and that's the scar. I like my polybags for the ability to build a good supply of the same pieces and for minifigs, that means army building. Why would an entire army all have one eye scarred over? I'd prefer one of the other wolves like Waks, Worriz or Wilhurt. But lets be honest, if this was a CMF I'd buy five easy. So basically it's like getting a cmf quality figure and a whole buch of great parts for a extra dollar. Build: Here's Wiznar skiing next to the half built....jet ski? You know what? I don't care what the thing is, it's great pieces and doesn't have any wheels. And here's the completed pack patrol. It has a hinge brick on the back to give it a great amount of tilt, and the front of the wolf head has a bone that also holds and tilts the front skis. Brilliant! Extra Pieces. MVP: Most Valued piece Black Bracket 1 x 2 - 1 x 2 Inverted It might not be pretty, but this piece can be used in any theme. Let's be honest, we all want these, and now they're in a polybag. Conclusion: Parts: 10/10 MF: 10/10 Build: 10/10 Playabuility: 9/10 Price: 9.5/10 Total: 97%

I had two lucky finds in 2012 First I got a $4 goodwill bag 599 lego...2 dozen megablocks all in poor condition, still, for less than a penny each.... check out that 1x4 brick with circles....I'm still trying to ID it. A coworker also gave me as many of his legos as he could find. Most of them were from my dark ages. OOH! A spiderman, and yellow star wars! There were also eight complete or almost complete sets 2162 Hydro Reef Wrecker 6341 Gas n Go flyer 1786 Jailbreak Joe 1711 Ice Planet Scooter 6879 Blizzard Barron 6076 Dark Dragon's Den 1477 Red race car

Hi Everyone! I recently bougt a bag of bricks from goodwill, and some of them were megablocks. However, I have some tiles and slopes that were confusing, because they didn't have studs. The 2x2 tiles have a "t" of bracing on the back and each one has a number in the lower left corner. I did manage to find some old lego 2x2 tiles that match this pattern. After looking more carefully I did find the "lego" print on the 45 degree slopes, but not on the 33 degree slopes The 2x4 slopes each have a number between the 1st and 2nd support tubes, near the lower edge. One is a "2" the other is an "8" The 2x2 slopes have a split in the support tube and also have numbers the first is "8 02" the second is "02 31" My question is, are these lego or a clone brand? One final picture to show that there were both lego and megablocks 33 degree slopes (and the difference between them)

Mr Brickman: That is one fantastic hardsuit!

If you are going from the book, I'd recomend brick built hardsuits (not my design) The book and the movie are very different, but I Like them both. I think they complement each other.

Part of the problem is that the original pics were lost due to a memmory card problem. After it was built, I relized that if I took too many pictures, I would give the wrong impression due to missing pieces, color substitutions and building errors from teh horrible instructions. I'll take some more pics and put them on my brickshelf file, but I won't post them. Even a terrible set needs to be treated fairly. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=Jareth My original thought was that it was a good parts pack. If you had four of them, you would have enought parts to build a decent mountain, a grove of trees, the start to four great towers and enough minifig parts to jazz up an existing army. But at $43 it's just too expensive.

Number: 6076 Name; Dark Dragon's Den Theme: Castle Subtheme: Dragon Masters Year: Minifigs: 4 (plus a dragon) Pieces: 206 Price $43 (US) Parts: No picture of the parts for two reasons, first, I had a problem with a memmory card, but also I did have to substitute quite a few colors http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=6076-1 Here's the inventory. Five large rock pieces, Two castle turret pieces, a spiral staircase and quite a few tree pieces. Normally this type of thing drives me crazy. Here, I'm ok with it. The way I see it is that even if there is something you don't like, there is also something you love. Also, before building the thing, I realized that the two hated castle turret pieces can be combined into a spiral shape, and it would be perfect to do that on top of the staircase. People: A great variety of people and weapons. Not pictured is the dragon and I just realized that all the helm ornaments should be red....oops! They look a little dated today, but these a very good minifigs for their era. Build: Sigh, this is where it gets really bad, I don't have a lot of good things to say here so I'll start with the bad. The mix of black, light grey and dark grey is muddled. As an example, the stairs start off ligth grey and then merge into the black spiral staircase. The tower is completely weird, but the absolute worst thing about it is how confusing the instructions are. It has no parts list (except for the first step) and the rock pieces and the trees block your view of further steps. I KNOW I didn't build this correctly, but I have no idea where some of the pieces go. Now, the good features. The back of the structure actually has some finished parts. The cave of the dragon has a door on the front and the back. There is also a side cave with a secret door and access to the main cave. The partially finished back is waht is going to make this hard to judge. It has terrible features, and then this one nice feature which is almost never seen. MVP: Most valuable Piece Brown Brick, Arch 1 x 5 x 4 Allthough not exactly rare, this piece was only in brwn in 10 sets...all of which came out in my dark ages, so I am very happy to have 6 of them now. Also this piece in this color can be used in a lot of different settings. Trees, wooden buildings, caves etc. Conclusion: Parts: 9/10 For me 10/10, but I figure that on average some people don't like rocks, most people don't like turrets & staircases and few people don't like trees. People: 10/10 Build: Normally I give a perfect score and downgrade from there. Here I'm going with my gut 5/10 Playability: 10/10 Very easy to imagine a variety of scenarios for this set. Sieges, theives, dragon hunting/trapping, etc Price: 4.7/10 I was expecting something low with all those large pieces, but 4.7! I expect that $30 would be a fair peice for this set, but $43 is ridiculous Overall: 77.4%

Poke 'im in the eye!

Number: 1786 Name: Jailbreak Joe (I'd love to know what this was called in other countries) Theme: Town Subtheme: Police Year: 1995 Minifigs: 4 Pieces: 180 Price: ? Parts Even though this set has two themes in it they stuck to three major colors (White, black and red) which I appreciate. Note that I couldn't collect all the parts, so I can't build all the vehicles at the same time, and the paddywagon suffered the most from color changes and a significant missing part. People As you can see, Joe is Missing! (Well he is "Jailbreak" joe) Here he is... http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?M=jail002 So four figures and this might seem weird, but I'd like to see more variety. The two police men are identical, and the cheif and joe share a hair pattern. Even throwing a standard grin head for one of the policemen would have helped. Build Nice to see a helicopter that doiesn't use a <insert that tiresome argument> part for the base. Nice use of a hinge brick. A little slender, but there are four vehicles in this set, and this thing is made of a lot of good reusable pieces, so I'm willing to be forgivable. Here's Joe's car. The blue pieces as shock absorbers are interesting, and they were only in for sets before this one, and in two other sets the same year. Note that the trans blue one is my color substitute, and that the two axles are on different levels to make the vehicle tilted. Joe's completed truck. The paddywagon. This sticker goes over three 1x4 bricks. I was very happy to see it intact, unfortunatelly the panels for the other stickers were missing. The paddywagon. Please note that the roof is supposed to be white and the lights are suppsoed to be trans red and trans blue. MVP (most valuable piece) Light Gray Bar 1 x 4 x 3 Window! I love a good bar piece, and one without studs or sockets I love even more as they are often a better looking decorative piece than one with studs. I can see this piece being usefull for a lot of different themes. Conclusion Parts: 10/10 A great mix of standard pieces and great decorative pieces. Sticks to three main colors while finding room for some usefull trans pieces. Minifigs: 8/10 Build: 9/10 Playability: 10/10...if I could do an 11 I would. Price: ? Total: 92% As a bonus, here's what I think happend with the pieces that I couldn't substitute or replace at all.

Number: 6879 Name: Blizzard Barron Theme: Space Subtheme: Ice Planet 2002 Year: 1993 Minifgs: 1 Pieces: 81 Price: $8.00 (US) Parts Yeah....the picture of the parts got lost due to a memmory card malfunction.....here's the inventory. http://peeron.com/inv/sets/6879-1 Nice classic ice planet colors. You know, when Ice planet came out I didn't like the trans-neon-orange. This was during my dark ages anyway. Now that I have them, I like them much better. I think they look much better in person than in any picture. People Standard Ice Planet guy. Looks great. Build Nice little ship. I prefer closed cockpits, but in general this is a good set. It looks a little bulkier thasn a lot of ships of it's size, but I prefer to think that that's because it's modified to deal with a cold atmosphere, as opposed to a near vacuum. Oh, check out the use of a Boat Bow plate for the front. Like a lot of ships of this time, the back detatches, but as an added feature, the engine is reattachable. So we can leave a probe unit with radio capabuilities and the take the engine off the probe and reattach it to the ship. The ships that left their main propulsion on the ground and then flew off allways bothered me. It's nice to see that a lego designer was thinking the same thing. MVP (most Valuable Piece) Brick, Modified Facet 3 x 3 x 2 Top I admit, part of this decision was beacuse I didn't have any of these before. But this set has a lot of interesting pieces. In the end I chose this because I think it has the most possibilites for other uses. Conclusion Parts: 10/10 Minifigure: 10/10 Build: 9/10 Playability: 10/10 (For a set this size) Price: 10/10 Overall: 98% (Nice to know I can end up with a score other than 92%)

Number: 6341 Name: Gas n' Go Flyer Theme: Town Subtheme: Flight Year: 1994 Figs: 2 Pieces: 92 Price: : $13.25 (US) Parts This sets has some really classic pieces in classic colors. I would mind having this as a kid. Allthough it has a few green pieces, one of them is a vehicle base (Bleh!) In general this set has a great collection of standard bricks and plates, and specialty pieces like wings, tails and curves. Of particular interest is this propellor. Good Lord! With and axle hole this could be attached to a lego motor! There's a reason that this piece (http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=61403) has a pin hole, and it's to prevent injury! I was going to attach the propellor to a motor and test it out, but my motor seems to be broken. I also have reason to believe that the official peeron and bricklink inventories are missing a part. (More on this later) Also, please note that I had to subsitite a 1x10 white plate for a 1x10 red plate. People So we have a pilot and an Octan staff member. Allthough they look a little on the plain side, for the time they were very good. A non-standard head, and octan torso and green legs were not exactly common in those days. I do have to comment on the pilot however. Who wears a helmet and a sleeveless shirt? Plus with the sunglasses and grin he looks far to smug. From this point forward I think fo him as "Lego Steven Seagal, Man of brick" Build Here's the Gas truck halfway. What is the point of using a vehicle base and immediatelly covering it up with plates? It's like the designers didn't like this piece either. Oh well, here's the final truck. I have to say I like the profile of this truck. The hose has a tendency to drag behind it, but I still like it. Here's the plane half built. Nice classic plane design. I like the headrest design and check out the use of panels as wing supports. Those extra pieces are well appreciated. The final plane is very nice a swishable stable feel. You can also see the nice wing and tail pieces. MVP (Most valueable piece) Allthough the wings and tail pieces are going to be very valued additions to my collection, in the end the winning piece has to be.... The 1x2x3 panel. The humble panel makes many lego structures possible, especially 4 wide vehicle. If there were only two of them in this set, it probably wouldn't have won, but with four, it makes more building ideas possible. Conclusion: Parts: 9.5/10 A little more green or no vehicle base would make this better, but the repeatability of parts makes this an excellent pallette of bricks. Minifigs: 10/10 Build: 10/10 Playability: 10/10 Price: 7/10 at about 14 cents per part, this is pricy. Overall: 92% Hmm....is it just me or all my reviews 92%? BONUS: Look what else I have! A piece of cardboard from the back of the box with the ideas on it! To my younger readers, Back in the day, lego boxes had ideas on the back instead of showing the playabuility features. A few of the instructions also came with idea pirctures, but sadly, these days seem to be in the past. So, let's explore the latest Steven Seagal movie "Man of Brick" Swamp Boat = Manly! Chasing down a smuggler! = Manly! Flying a rescue mission! = Manly! Videotaping your kid in a go cart = less manly! Ok, now this last pciture needs two 2x4 bricks in red to make, but both peeron and bricklink only list one 2x4 brick. After all, only one 2x4 brick is needed in the official set, but TLG used to put more additional parts into sets then just the few replacement pieces we get today. I think this is one of those situations. Also the plane with the octan tanks is VERY difficult to build without two 2x4 bricks. Interesting huh? Well, I hope you enjoyed, Q&C welcome!