brickzone

From this thread - 10198 is apparently to be "SW Tantive IV Blockade Runners". This Christmas set, 10199, should be more than enough mind you!

I designed a small helicopter for my Agents. I have an Agents HQ I've been doing little bits of work on from time to time and the most recent addition was a helipad. Naturally so I had to create a helicopter for it. I used the police helicopter of 7741 as a template for some basic design placements but the detail is quite different apart from the bottom and the tail. First we have a profile view. The helicopter has three Exoforce rotors, some flick-fire missiles and some guns in appropriately discreet Agents fashion: Next, we can see the doors at the rear open to allow a winch to be lowered. Useful if you have to haul a bicycle out of a river or something. Alternative ideas for the top - the silver dome is nice, but I think perhaps the dark grey works better? Also I have an Agents-stickered hull piece for the back of the roof, but perhaps the Exoforce one fits better due to the rotor stickers? (plus there is already "A" on the tail). A close-up view of the front showing the cockpit, guns and typically cheerful Agents minifig. Here the helicopter is back at HQ on a fun-to-land-on helipad. A sneak peek at the top of the Agents base I've had built for a while (I need to kit out the interior and finish some parts before it goes properly public.

A fantastic street scene - I hadn't seen that magnificent railway station before. I too would suggest keeping the fire station MoC - perhaps replace the red with another colour and use it as a bank or some kind of commercial building?

As regards lining up the logos, I don't usually do that. However, I did feel I'd made a slight error when applying the sticker to the front of Emerald Night. The logos in the 6x6 disc's studs are sideways now.

At least one of the construction sets has a portaloo - the lifesaver piece used as a toilet seat. Just FYI.

Well for me it's nothing to do with the flag, and indeed it is not specifically that the architecture style is American that means I like it less - it is the fact that the architecture style (i.e. that style of building from America) appeals to me aesthetically a lot less than the extravagant style the previous sets had. And as for saying you can modify it - well obviously, but I for one do not go out and buy €150 sets just for parts (even if I later modify them or "steal" parts). In any case I will probably buy this later on if I can afford to (after all the other Lego purchases I plan). I think it's a bit sad that people can't cope with people saying why they do not find this set appealing to them as much as Green Grocer, Café Corner, etc. It's a matter of preference and opinion. I can well understand others liking this set, and I think it would be natural enough if many from the US would like this set more as it is a style that is more cherished over there for it being the style of some of the earlier buildings there. As an aside from expressing preferences etc. - one of my brother's first reaction was also that you could neatly mod this to be a Ghostbusters HQ, and I agree.

Smell does seem to have dissipated somewhat over the course of the afternoon. I have bought any number of packs of playing cards before, and apart from a faint odour, I haven't encountered quite such a smell before. However, I asked around irl too and the opinion is that it's just the sheer amount of black ink. Haven't played with the cards just yet, I've been too busy building Lego. Interesting choice of minifig for the queen though - using the old Queen Leonara head/torso. Green is one of the colours used, it would be cool to have the pointed hat in green as depicted on one of the red suits. I think I'll just avoid deliberately holding them close to my nose or licking them or whatever :) Should be ok. Thanks for the feedback!

My most recent Lego order arrived today - one of the small items I added in was the Pirate playing cards. These do indeed look fabulous, the box even nicer than in the photos (the red skull is "shiny" - looks great against the matte black). Here's the issue - the cards stink of toxicy plastic - you know the smell you get from black bin bags that are made from "recycled" plastic? I'm not altogether sure this isn't actually a bad sign - surely with such a smell it suggests there might be dioxins or such from the black plastic on the back of the cards? Has anyone else encountered this issue with their playing cards, or has anyone else even bought them? I've left them lying out of the box and spread out in the hopes the smell will dissipate, as I really want to actually use the cards to play with (they are really awesome looking playing cards). I'm not sure whether to contact Lego or not as maybe the fumes are only temporary - and plus I don't really want to return the cards, I want to have them!

As much as it shows me up to be a bit ridiculous, I must own up and say that I align 1x1 cylinders by the moulding point (making sure it is facing inside, or against other bricks if possible).

Some very nice touches to this building, and a lovely choice of colours - a great part selection too. However, I think I agree with Alex54 - the style of architecture just doesn't appeal to me as much and it doesn't seem entirely in keeping (or even scale) with the previous buildings (even Market Street the odd one out fits better IMO). Don't get me wrong, this set will be on my wishlist, but particularly in the current circumstances I won't be rushing to buy it!

I'd like to thank the mods as I think they generally do a good job of achieving a balance on this site - it's not "uptight" but doesn't descend into farce either. I am personally all in favour of strict moderation, as it helps keep discussions on track and useful. I think in fairness there is plenty of allowance on Eurobricks for people not sticking absolutely strictly to topic, and also joking and such. Any moderation is surely going to seem inconsistent as even if there is a defined "cut-off" for behaviour, you will inevitably have things straddling that and that are up to the judgment of the individual moderator involved.

Very nice indeed, I like it a lot. I like how you've acheived the look without a gigantic scene or very intricately arranged building using heaps of SNOT etc., but rather clever arrangement of "ordinary rooms" using nice details and decoration. Did you build from a plan or drawing? I find it hard to acheive such a clean look when I just make it up as I go along. Great work!

I like the review. I hope to pick up this set at some stage. I agree its nice to have more "civilian" (i.e. ordinary) sets. I guess one theory about the tree might be that the car breakdown might be from it crashing into the tree. As regards the phone, although not like the ones here in Ireland, they are being installed on our new motorways even yet (indeed dozens to be installed on recent roads being reclassified to motorway this summer), though the new ones are battery powered with solar panels to recharge, and use a radio link. The advantage over mobile phone (which even now someone may not have even just through forgetting it, or else it may have no battery or coverage) is that on the other end of the phone line they know where you are straight away. This can be very important for a motorway accident that might need immediate response to avoid further crashes.

Yes - 21.5% here in Ireland. But those don't explain discrepencies as vast as exist in many cases. City Corner is €60 for Ireland, but €50 for Germany. Now, I believe Germany is 19% sales tax, so the extra 2.5% tax here in Ireland should mean a difference of an entire ONE euro five cents (50/1.19=42.02, 42.02*1.215=51.05). Even considering Ireland as prepared to pay more, surely anything more than €55 is simply gouging Irish customers for the sake of it.

Not surprising given the way Sterling dived last year. And still not recovered despite being a bit better - not so long ago I was using the "easy" exchange rate of £1=€1.50 and this was accurate. It went close to parity and now is close to £1=€1.15, a *huge* difference from the earlier rate that it had been stable at for some time. Needless to say many major UK retailers have been "nice" to Irish customers and continued to use £1=€1.50. Bunch of gangsters. Anyway, getting back on topic, I was about to order Agents 2.0 sets as these are good value for Ireland (€45 for Robo-Attack, €60 for Aerial Defence) but then I saw that UK is even cheaper still - so I will hopefully get them from an Amazon retailer or other UK toy retailer. Indeed Smyth's Toys will probably at the least have the same price as S@H, but more likely cheaper (I suspect they use some of their UK-ordered stock for ROI - Irish in-store Pirates set prices were similar to UK prices). I don't think UK people can complain much, except to their govt. for not having joined the Eurozone and latterly pursuing a "lets see how close we can go to bankrupcy and avoid it" gamble strategy.

Now the wait to find out what damage the prices do...! If there are any reasonable prices for Ireland I may put in an order straight away - otherwise I'll have to wait for shop discounts, ordering from UK, or a trip to Northern Ireland. Good news on the Space Police front anyway - a total of six sets showing up (not linked from the themes index at least for Ireland).

There's nothing particularly "worthy" about free market principles. They can be useful, but I can't understand people who would wish to live their lives in a society that is a slave to them. In any case, Megablocks or other brick manufacturers being present or not is not entirely relevant. Lego's main competition comes from other toys - and that may or may not keep them on their toes ("competition" is not of course some magic wand that means consumers are better off). The article was quite informative about issues such as the US being behind in building toys, and also Lego having less of the preschool market there. I think Lego until the last year or two had Duplo going too much in the direction of almost customisable playsets rather than a real building toy.

I really liked seeing all the details in the review. Quite a difference between old and new Ewoks. I am very tempted to make this set my first proper star wars purchase (apart from two small sets I got on clearance). Am I simply too uninitiated, or is this really one of the better Star Wars sets recently if you're not crazy on just vehicles/spaceships? The selection of minifigs seems really great!

If they want to stick with passenger trains they could make the Irish version (Iarnród Éireann 201 class), a slightly different varient for passenger use. They could even do the cross-border "Enterprise" model, complete with flames (one or two incidents of the loco overheating and catching fire due to the heavy load that HEP on those trains puts on them).

It would suggest that the checkout employees weren't capable of "sanity checking" the prices until the last occasion. I mean I know it's not that skilled a position - but especially after any length of time working there you should have a vague idea of prices and query any oddities (presumably the item appeared on the till as a different Lego product too). Anyway, it sounds like far too much reliance on barcodes by the retailer. Why even have the cashier?!

Stereotypical late 2000s blockbuster movie. Pretty decent at it, brings a bit of real worldliness to the Star Trek picture, but ultimately I felt it completely failed at actually being a Star Trek film. Yet it still had lame plot holes and technobabble. As with many of these recent blockbuster films, despite being reasonably entertaining, and the fast pace can be engaging - it does tend to just be a mish-mash of brainless action at times, and the camera work is headache-inducing. Explosions etc. and any excuse for fighting, all overdone. In other words... get off my lawn. I'd probably watch a sequel or TV show, but not because it's called Star Trek - but more just as mindless entertainment fodder (nothing wrong per se with that). That said, I'd get bored with it pretty quick I think, as probably would many viewers. I'd also watch this again sooner than ST 1,4,5,7,9,10. I.e. Just 2, 3, 6, 8 rank higher in my esteem (8 only just). 7 and 9 I can enjoy but I consider them to be more like an elongated TNG episode.

I'm not a reader of proper comics, although I should try reading a few as I do have access to a large collection (Xmen, Batman, Spiderman and so on) through one of my family members. I guess I'm daunted by the scale of it actually - and also I couldn't afford to get seriously into it (time or money). Mind you that's a bit negated by someone else having the collection already :) As it is I have invested a fair bit in ordinary books (fantasy, pratchett, classics, factual). Most of my exposure to any of the world of proper comics was religious watching of the Xmen cartoon series on TV as a kid, and the animated Batman (which I still think is marvellous, I love the music, stories and the convincing dramatic environment as well as the art style). I have three graphic novels - Mort, The Last Hero and Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. I love the artwork in the latter two particularly, and the Wee Free Men was just a fabulous Christmas present surprise - it was a delight to read again and enjoy the artwork. Not comics or graphic novel, but I have always been a very keen fan of Asterix and Hergé's various works. Webcomics: Ctrl-Alt-Del, PhDcomics, xkcd, garfieldminusgarfield, dilbert (fits as a webcomic despite being in print first) "Funnies" I love include Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbes (possibly favorite), Farside, Garfield. Quite enjoyed some FoxTrot compilations that arrived as Christmas presents in the family this year.

It was only really worn pieces that got modification treatment in my house - and my sister was a dab hand at paintwork - so the results were quite good. I'm a purist myself though, and I'd certainly have to recoil in horror from anything such as that posted in the OP.

Ah, so probably €275 for Ireland then I guess (and poor Finland Lego people get similar "special" pricing I believe) In any case, this is probably just too large for me to splash out on, especially when competing for my limited money with the modular city series. The array of parts is quite dazzling though - and that's quite a few minifigs (albeit a bit plain - Robo Attack from Agents 2.0 is better for minifigs despite having less).

One of my last creations before my dark ages was knocked off a shelf by one of my younger siblings. It was a fairly nice Ice Planet kind of tank/spaceship thingy (that I had rebuilt and modified several times over the preceding few years). I kept the parts of it for years intending to fix it, but never did. My brothers still have a number of their contemporary space creations (I used to from time to time build a space base for them all to live in - the last one of those also met with an accident and lay in ruins for a few months until cleared away). I have had a recent accident, but it was only a set (can't remember which one). I was moving it between rooms and someone walked into me in the hallway. Fortunately no pieces lost. However, I think I may have been rebuilding it for the third time in quick succession after that (it was an ebay buy - built once to check parts, then washed the pieces, then rebuild, then rebuild again after the drop). So I was still a bit annoyed! In fact it probably happened immediately after the second rebuild and I was on my way to find somewhere to display it.