TheLegoDr

Thanks for the interview. It is interesting to read about how some people got into LEGO and what they do with their free time. With that said, those desserts look amazing and very professional. And I recently had Pad Thai for the first time at my wife's insistence and it was quite yummy. Yours looks delicious as well.. I have a lot of German in my family heritage (great grandparents), but no one from Germany is still alive, so I do not know any. How would you go about pronouncing your name Erdbeereis?

My dream would be to have those drawers, but I don't know how economical it is. It sounds like our sorting may be pretty similar and I think these drawers would do that quite well. I'd almost want more of the larger open faced drawers too for a lot of the larger plates/bricks and whatnot. I should look into these sometime. As for Redhead1982, I have yet to disassemble a big MOC, only a few Winter Village sets or Modulars and I just tore them apart and they are still in random chunks of pieces in random boxes, so not very organized. But if I were to disassemble a set and I wanted to keep it organized, I would definitely have designated "boxes" for this purpose. I have a handful of smaller cardboard boxes that I have taken from work since they were going to throw them away and I use those as a mid-sorting stage or to sort my actual colors. That is until I can upgrade to plastic to make everything look more aesthetically pleasing. Otherwise, my various cardboard boxes work quite well and I have essentially a limitless supply of them since we receive so many shipments here. Might as well reuse before I recycle as is the motto (reduce, reuse, recycle). But I would also say to Redhead1982 to not disassemble that MOC! That was beautiful!

I agree that the part list and colors available and themes are much more diverse now and that brings on a whole laundry list of goodies for consumers to eat up now. I do agree that comparing an older set with a newer set may show how dated the older set is, but that is also part of the charm. I would assume people who don't like any of the past sets probably are also inclined to not like anything historic or antique. Our house is filled with antiques. They add a certain aesthetic to the room whereas a newer "insert item here" wouldn't. As far as LEGO goes, I love the newer possibilities and being an AFOL I am more capable of seeing these positive aspects of today's LEGO, but I still can't help but love the LEGO of my day. I will forever believe Black Knight's Castle is my most favorite castle, no matter how nice some of the newer castles look. I will always love the original Pirates line, even though the most recent Pirates line was a step in the right direction (I missed out on that due to Dark Ages though). I think everyone will have their own Golden Age. Even though there is a lot of great LEGO related items now, my Golden Age will always be when I was within that target audience and everything was new and exciting.

I'd recommend the Mirkwood Forest set. You get two exclusive Elves and it is at the $30 price point. I agree the Wargs set would be nice, but I believe it is sitting at $50, so a bit out of your budget. Another option is the Barrel Escape. You get another 2 elves and 1 dwarf and 1 hobbit with some neat weapons. The problem with that set is it is TRU exclusive, so unless you can get it a little cheaper, might be out of your budget. I think it is sitting at $45 instead of $40, so not a terrible mark-up. As far as Star Wars instead, do you have all of the existing sets? I'd recommend the Anakin's Jedi Interceptor. A nice Nute Gunray figure, a newer Anakin and Obi-Wan. I haven't built the ship itself, but I liked the figures a lot.

I just received an email from customer service saying my replacement part was being shipped out. The only thing I sent a request about was the blue cape with my Elrond, so I don't know if that is what they were talking about?? But I guess I'll find out whenever it gets here. I'll keep everyone posted. I wonder if they will send this same differently shaped blue cape (if it is indeed what that is).

As far as I know there is no "price guide" for what LEGO has, other than what they have available in Pick-a-brick. Short of going to Bricklink and creating a list of only Cafe Corner pieces and then looking at every single pieces to see what is cheaper from which stores, I don't know how much luck you'll have. I don't think there are exact lists anywhere, unless someone has their own compilation. But I would assume the prices may be in more flux than one would think though.

I think this theme will be pretty decent. Some people like licensed sets in general and some people like western in general. I'd prefer more torsos without licensed skin tone just to be used with other themes (similar to most of LOTR torsos). Granted, I am okay with Licensed themes and I don't mind the skin tones. But I think a lot depends on how the sets are presented. People have been wanting a western theme for a while now, even if kids aren't playing like cowboys now. I think LEGO and Disney needed another collaboration and this happened to be it. Granted, I think it will be a bigger hit than PoP.

Umm, that's a lot... But I think typically the D2C sets come out right after Christmas, but essentially Jan 1st. The rest of the line-up I would suspect towards the end of December also. I recall ordering some Batman sets last year before Christmas and received them in time to be under the tree even though they were technically slated for a Jan 1 release too. I guess it's hard to tell sometimes.

I think maybe TLG realizes that LOTR isn't for everyone and the backlash of Kingdoms ending probably resulted in them thinking maybe two castle themes can work side by side. At the very least they could bring about extra pieces or nice looking molds/coloring to be used in any scheme. I will obviously wait to see pictures and more information, but I'm more excited for more LOTR sets personally. I love classic castle and that is what I grew up with, but I'm really digging how they are handling the LOTR line currently. As much as I love the CMF series bringing us some nice new castle-esque figures, it is not ideal having so many individual factions without being able to increase their respective kingdoms. The boar knight and whatever the new shield emblem may be isn't helping creating kingdoms around those factions. Unless those were indicators of future factions they plan on working with (but I highly doubt it since the black knight/boar combo has such strong pop culture ties).

Well, I guess they at least did something about the longer cape. I guess it isn't a complete lie when TLG says they don't have any long blue capes available because that is a different pattern for a long blue cape. But it's nice that you received something. They are definitely aware of the issues in the States, so I wonder if they plan on doing anything about that. Maybe I should contact them again about it.

They are their Zabrak horns, so I think they serve their purpose being a physical trait of their species. But with any LEGO, if you don't like something, change it.

Thank you for the raffle, CopMike. It was a lot of fun. And good luck to all the participants!

I just finished the game. I liked the bits of humor thrown in. I don't want to spoil anything, but there are some neat pieces thrown in. I did feel the storyline was pretty short, but I'm hoping the side quests add a lot to it.

The new Hoth set isn't ideal, but it might add some to Hoth collectors. I don't have much Hoth stuff, but it might be interesting. All depends on the price. Now those new Planet sets are more worthwhile. I will definitely pick those up. The other 3 are iffy, but these 3 are looking good.

Good for you. That is a good feeling. I did that once actually by giving away one of my Centurions. I didn't feel upset about losing one of my ranks. And yes, I'm pretty sure that is Maid Marion (Marian?).

I guess I've never felt weird about standing around feeling packets. People always look at me weird, but it doesn't phase me. Sometimes my wife will stand and help. She's actually quite good with her little hands/fingers. Normally I have to watch the little one while I'm out so it's harder to stand around. I have to grab a basketful and walk around feeling them trying to remember which packets I felt already and which packets I actually want to keep. But so far I've made only 1 error, so I'm okay with that. And I ended up just giving it to the little one anyway. She loves some of the figures (she's only 3).

They only had a handful left at my TRU. I think the BOGO sale is probably clearing them out a bit faster (when they are found). At $4.99 apiece, it isn't super enticing outside of being an exclusive (as far as I know). So getting them cheaper will be much more enticing. I grabbed about 6 more the other day and they still had a handful left, but they had TONS of Gandalf (naturally). I'm thinking they are all gone by now, especially since the rest of the Hobbit sets are available there now.

I like raffles! I wanted to enter this and finally had time to post my image. So here it is: Anakin didn't like the outfit his aunt left him for Christmas. Poor Santa Threepio may receive the first ever force choke.

True, it always depends on what set you go with. I will want a much higher discount than that (similar to what B&N had earlier this summer). If I can be so lucky to see that again.

I always count what I am buying LEGO-wise and add it up before I go to the register so I would be able to tell them they are off somewhere. It's worked so far.

Just from viewing the backs, I can see a lot of potential this series. I was hoping there would be fewer and fewer I'm interested in, but they keep pulling me back in. I can't wait for the fronts. But from the backs, I can say Female Archer FTW and Fortune Teller. Three dress skirts will be a bit tougher. And with those and then large headpiece of Cyclops and the Armor for the Mech/Space Villain there will be lots of bulky packages (that's what she said). So, this may take some time to sit by each figure. Maybe I'll just buy the lot of them and then return the rest. I've heard of people doing that before. On to December 3rd!

If you can find them, go for the BOGO 50% deal while it lasts. They had stacks of them at my TRU in Nebraska, USA. They also had stacks of the Gandalf polybag. I almost bought one and decided I didn't need to spend $5 for a figure I already had (and will get more of). But the Elf is a different story. I'm glad I only bought a few before this BOGO sale. I think the mushroom is neat, but I would have preferred a dark red leaf piece instead..or add in elf ears..or add a long cape..or..or... maybe I should just be happy they came out with a polybag of this nature at all

Really impressive! You can tell what the inspiration was before you showed us. I love the trees/plant life around it. Seems very organic and lifelike. I loved the original and I want to rebuild it from time to time, but this is so much cooler with the newer ideas/color schemes. The mossy green river is awesome. I doubt very much of the dark clear blue rivers of Forestmen day's past.

I have been on a LOTR kick lately, so I bricklinked some more Rohan soldiers and horses, weapons, shields.. I also bought about 8 more Mirkwood Elf archer from TRU. They have BOGO 50% so that helped a little bit, saved about 8-10 dollars. They had all of the Hobbit sets (other than the exclusive) that are also on the BOGO sale, but with their mark-up you don't really save anything unfortunately. So I will continue to wait until I see an awesome sale of those sets.

I think LEGO plans on only giving the short blue cape because they told me they didn't have long capes in that shade of blue. I looked on eBay and bricklink and blue capes can be pretty expensive. The multipack might be a good way to go though. Otherwise, The more I look at him, I wish he had a long blue cape, but I think he looks better with the short blue cape than no cape at all for some reason. He just needs a cape I think to complete his outfit. I went into GameStop recently and asked about more figures and one store said they would only give one to you if you bought the game and another store said they only gave them out for pre-orders. So there might be a disconnect somewhere. But if you bought multiple copies of the game to get multiple figures and then resold the games on eBay or somewhere, you probably could make your money back and get more than 1 figure?? Probably not the most economical way of doing it, but everyone wins in that scenario (unless you get stuck with 10 different LEGO LOTR games). But I guess it would be the legitimate way of going about it, unless paying $50 for a $20 figure isn't your cup of tea .