Ash

Thanks for the great review. The set doesn't do much for me. Minifigures aside the two vehicles look like the sort of things you'd get in a polybag promotion. I'm not really bothered by glow in the dark stuff, I do like the Ann Lee figure though. But this'll be a big pass for me.

Hamleys mark-up is about 30% on UK retail. So more than a little overpriced. It's nice to visit, but I'd stay clear for buying!

Not sure if Amazon will match, they're around the same price on most Alien Conquest stuff, but not the Tripod. That is a really good price, I might pick up a couple as well. It's kind of hidden away but BB has a Lego Store/Amazon comparison thing that highlights sale items and when the Lego Shop is cheaper than Amazon. I have to update it manually though (well manually as in I have to press a button!) which I have now done thanks to your post!

Some nice discounts in there. Guess they're winding down on these themes to make room for Monster Fighters and LoTR. Thanks for the tip! And thanks Praiter

The thing is you don't do all this currency conversion and price comparisons in your head every time you buy a can of Coke or pack of chewing gum. The only reason we do it with Lego is because we're part of an intenrnational community and have a lot of awareness. Prices vary on everything. But so do average wages and standard of living and the quality of social services and the level of taxation etc etc. There are plenty of things with far worse price differentials between regions than Lego (Petrol comes to mind, the difference between the UK and US is massive). But you simply can't look at the price of consumer goods and compare like for like. It'll drive you crazy. Playmobil is quite interesting in this respect as they role out all of their new sets in two distinct batches, so some regions are a full year behind. And the UK and US (so used to being the center of the universe) are actually in the second batch, because the toy is far more popular in continental Europe and South America. It is related to production rates and quality control. Like Lego Playmobil is made to very high specifications and the dies for individual pieces are expensive so they reduce production costs by staggering the rate at which they need to produce new ones.

Thumbs up from me. I've been considering trying to do a classic Nick Fury and SHIELD flying car at some point in the future and am probably going to steal your idea for the torso!

Because of some positive feedback I've added a comparisons mode (see all regional prices at once) to brickbadger as well as an "AFOL" theme that groups a lot of the big sets people might be interested in together. It's not all in the menu yet but you can access it directly with: http://brickbadger.com/themes/afol?lan=es&c=1 I hope some people find it useful. Feel free to message me if there's anything else you want added.

Thanks for the review. I'm not much into Star Wars Lego but I'm going to be tempted to get this one. It just a neat little set. I don't think the price is that bad considering the four minifigures.

With regards to Lord of the Rings Amazon.de has them listed as 23rd June, Amazon.it has them at 1st of September :( I'd previously seen and heard June/July for the UK, but haven't seen them listed anywhere yet. I saw someone had bought those and was jealous! I'm always happy when people get some use out of it. I do get some affiliate stuff if people use the links (and obviously appreciate people who use the site doing that.... especially when they're buying big sets!!), but at present it pretty much just pays for the hosting. So it'a more a labour of love than any kind of income source and I doubt it will ever be anything but. The back-end of the site is running on a free Amazon cloud computer, but that's only free for a year. When that's up (next February) if it's not getting a bit more traffic I may have to pull the plug. So.... tell your friends! At the moment I'm currently for a way to get all the big/AFOL orientated sets in one place and allow easier comparisons across regions. Also, you're the only person to ever buy something from Amazon.it through it! On an unrelated note when someone buys something I can see what is bought (including non-lego stuff for up to 24 hours) after they visit. Someone bought some Ben and Holly Top Trumps recently.... hmmm, I have my avatar based suspisions as to who that might be.

Reminds me a lot of Los Angeles City Hall. It wouldn't take much modification to be a neat little micro architecture set! Nice build.

That's really nice. Instantly recognisable to anyone that's been there. That said it's cool to get some background information and reference pics as well.

For anyone who hasn't got it yet Rise of the Sphinx is down to £25 again on Amazon. It's one of my favourite recent sets and has a lot of cool parts (at under 5p a brick). I'm considering getting a second because I have a lot of pieces in the Pharoah's Quest colours so when I have enough to actually start a MOC they're almost certainly the colours I'll be using! In other news, if anyone cares, I've completely redone the BrickBadger front end and it's 43% less ugly now

I spoke to another Dutch couple but didn't get to speak to you. That bridge was awesome, especially when the train was going full speed. I saw a photo but wanted to ask you the name of the bridge it was based on. Either way, thanks for sharing your stuff with us. My kid loved the paradisa display as well.

How is it backfiring? The fact that some people disagree with them doesn't mean they're backfiring. Some people would disagree with Yes/No answers as well (possibly more, youd see exatly the same amount of speculation and arguing about semantics I'm sure). Some people will disagree with whatever they do. It's the nature of the internet. They're being open and honest about this stuff and are obviously still adapting the Cuusoo experiement as they go along (as they should be). I would have thought most of the people who are invested in Cuusoo apreciate the time taken to feedback and explain their decisions. I know I prefer it and the fact that we get some insight into the decision making process is actually one of my favourite aspects of the whole thing.

That's really cool. I love it. Time for an Easy Rider Cuusoo entry

These are not "moral rules" or laws or anything. These a Cuusoo "house rules", some rough guidelines for what Lego to help explain to people what Cuusoo products they will or will not consider making. They're not finalised and more importantly they are not The Lego Group's official internal policy guidelines. I even think "moral issues" is a bit of a stretch. The fact that they choose not to make sets featuring certain themes is not nescessarily a moral or ethical choice. It's just simply areas that they as a toy company have decided to avoid. Doing so does not imply any kind of moral judgement. Just a decision. Is it a double standard to have enforce these sort of guidelines with regards to their internal development and Cuusoo development? Yep. It's a double standard. Two different things have different standards. There is absolutely no requirement whatsoever for TLG to apply the same standards to both these things. It makes a lot of sense for TLG to err on the side of strictness when enforcing this stuff on Cuusoo and it is completely acceptable for them to do so. Again... these are not laws. I thought Clone O'Patra raised an interesting point that I hadn't heard before. With their own products they have a lot more control over the message through marketing and the like and, as with many non-licensed lines, they tend to create their own narrative. Star Wars is obviously the best example of this. The fact they ave the opportunity to do this may be one reason they might not enforce these guidelines so strictly on some themes. Money is almost certainly another. Yatkuu just made a good post about the same thing. Calling it "the LEGO veil", a good term for it. And.... Exactly. I've seen someone else suggest this before. The only thing I can think is that you either watched an edited for TV version of Shaun of the Dead, stopped half way through or, and I think this is true for me, the gore is mitigated by the comedy. It has graphic violence way, way above and beyond The Dark Knight. However, you need to keep in mind with Batman Lego are drawing from a lot of sources and Lego's Joker is clearly not the Dark Knight's Joker. He's much more cartoony. Again the "Lego veil" thing in full force.

That's an amazing set. Look at all those baseplates! We could never afford stuff like this when I was a kid, but I would have loved it.

Zelda merchandise sells really well. There's not a lot of it and much of it you need to import if outside of Japan, but it is a very popular franchise. There have been several concert tours based on the music from the games that sell out multiple venues all over the world. Off the top of my head Star Wars is the only other geeky franchise that can do this kind of thing. Another head scratcher, when people claim that licensed sets only appeal to Lego fans and fans of the licensed property won't buy it... because Lego Star Wars has already happened and shown this is not the case.

You're creating problems that don't exist and claiming The Lego Group will respond in a really stupid way solution for them based on nothing whatsoever. I mean why? I don't get it. Cuusoo is an experiment. So far it seems to be a fairly successfully experiment. What I don't get with all these crazy doomsday hypotheticals people keep coming up is why they all seem to assume that TLG are a bunch of idiots. Seriously, you're manufacturing scenarios that they will have already considered and for some unfathomable reason insist on the assumption that they are incapable of adapting to this kind of stuff. I mean it's not like they're one of the most successful and oldest toy companies in the world or anything I have no idea why so many people seem to think they're just going to sit there scratching their heads as Cuusoo goes down in flames. And as it stands nothing is going down in flames. All this doom and gloom is based on nothing at all. At this point none of us have any idea what licensed sets will get made and how they will sell. Lego may have a rough idea as they have access to a level of market research that we don't and this will be part of the decision as to which sets get made or not. They are in a better position to make this decision than anyone. Personally I'm with Omicron. I think people are underestimating the appeal of Lego to any fan base. As a product it has massive crossover appeal and plenty of this stuff has already has Lego-knock-off products associated with them (My wife has a set of Kubrick-like Zelda characters for example).

Back from day two. Kid (4) loved the trains, mindstorm robots and a Dutch turning the lever to make the balls go round thing. Played with Ninjago spinners at the Lego store for ages as well. I see a purchase of those will have to be made in the near future. Again, such a well organised event. So much to see and do and a great venue meant that despite being really busy it wasn't overly crowded. Everyone seemed to be having such a good time.

I'm pretty sure they could just make this by rearranging the bricks in the Quinjet set. Double Joss Whedon for the price of one. Be interesting to see if it happens. I know a lot of people think one-off licenses are too much hassle, but when you look at all the tiny little niche companies that have licenses for every kind of Firefly/Serenity mechandise under the sun... the barrier to entry really can't be that high.

I saw someone out and about taking photos with silentmode on their jacket and thought the name sounded familair! I didn't know you had a display, I'll have to keep an eye out today. That was my biggest issue with the show. Everyone should have had big Eurobricks name tags But seriously, names on all the displays would be nice. If the person manning it was off getting coffee or whatever you'd have no idea whos work it was.

There's something vaguely sacrilegious about this But I love it. Great mod!

Someone may have already mentioned this but all the UK Amazons share the same AISN, so if you find something on Amazon.co.uk it's fairly easy to find it on any other euro-Amazon. My site (in signature) has regional listings for various Amazons and everything is listed in English so might be of some use. Although it doesn't have a lot of the big sets and modulars and the like listed yet as I assumed most people just got them from the Lego store. It wasn't until talking to someone at The Lego Show today and reading this thread that I realised for a lot of countries some European Amazon's where their best, or possibly only options for this kind of stuff. So I'll probably go ahead and add them ASAP. As someone who lived in Australia for a while and knows the pain of trying to get Lego there I commiserate!

Price! In general I only buy cheap stuff, usually 30-50% off. There's so much I could by and I only have limited space so I might as well spend as little money as possible. I don't MOC (yet) and I enjoy building stuff from instructions and then modding it a little. In terms of style of sets I really like chunky fully three dimensional structures and vehicles with minimal big custom parts. I hope that makes sense, obviously all Lego is 3D, I just mean that it's solid and complete all the way around rather than having an open back. I love the hinged buildings with interiors for example. That said I'm not a massive fan of modulars and things like that as I prefer adventure, castle and space type themes. I really don't like play sets that are all seperate free standing elements. For my kid: Anything with ninjas and/or firemen in it.