brickzone

Well, I "stack" my black plates in their storage tub - but I don't actually connect them - they just sit loose next to each other on their ends and sorted by size. The 4x4s are loose in the leftover space not taken up by the other carefully arranged larger plates.

Aquaraiders was in the shops (Smyths Toys) here in Ireland. The only reason I can think of for Lego not releasing Pirates in the US, is with the dollar even still being worth less, they may try to maintain a US presence but not commit as much to the market. Fortunately the dollar is appreciating a small bit again (now the Pound Sterling is going down against the Euro - nice for anyone here in Ireland buying from UK on ebay :)

Hmmm... I know it's the same as if the bricks are in a model, but one would imagine that because the bricks are capable of gripping on another at all, there is some small stress from that. So presumably the bricks would store better loose, rather than stacked *or* indeed in a model (the latter if it's a large model surely makes an impact on the bricks, especially if they are at the base supporting the model). Of course, bricks can scratch when loose - but they don't really get that heavy wear and tear - sure they jumble around loose even at Lego factory or in bags in the box. Sure there are some signs of wear, but you shouldn't get much more just having them sit in a bin and occasionally moved about. I make sure not to overstock any bins, so I don't have to scrabble - just move them around a bit.

Yes, the Advent calendar box photo has "9 minifigures" written on it, and there are nine minifigures visible in the photo. So just one dwarf! You do get both a knight and a footsoldier though! Considering two of the minifigs are just skellies - we're definitely paying a premium for the special figs!

Well, I will admit that despite my pseudo-premonition, I wasn't expecting the price to change so quickly! At €70 it is certainly far better value and quite a reasonable price! I agree with what someone else mentioned - that it seems odd for the main photo not to show the entire set!

As far as I'm concerned, the Dwarves Mine is clearly part of the '08 line-up, seeing as it has *dwarves* and orcs and apart from an early release in the US, was released in 2008 worldwide! Maybe you wouldn't call it literally a 2008 release, but it is certainly part of the "second wave" which we colloquially call "Castle 08". I think the second wave has different strengths to the 07 line up. Dwarves and trolls/orcs are so cool, some set design elements are cool (siege tower, battle wheel), but perhaps in terms of set design they aren't as "perfect" as '07. Troll Warship I think could have been better (a bit sparse), yet because it *is* a troll warship (=awesome), I can't really say it was poorer than an 07 set. I haven't yet bought the Troll Battle Wheel, cause at €45 it is overpriced imo - despite the 6 minifigs. I would probably not have all the '07 sets but for the fantastic deal that the Complete Castle Collection was on S@H for Ireland (about €50 less than for Germany, and included the Skeleton Ship Attack). Re: Castle Advent Calendar - it's €19.99 on S@H for Ireland. Also it is marked as *EXCLUSIVE* so it won't appear in stores (well, Lego stores I presume it will, but the nearest ones are in England, UK). I was hoping for €16.99. I guess they know people won't pass on it just because of €3 extra. Last year's city advent calendar was in shops here and after a week or two marked down from €16.99 to €14.99 (it sold like hot cakes). Anyways, I'm off to order five of them for myself and various family members, once they have their PaB orders composed. Got to make the most of that €15 shipping! Still debating whether to get a second calendar so I can keep the witch and peasant as is from one, and use different faces etc. with them from the other (also extra knights, dwarf and troll would be welcome). Also debating about the Troll Battle Wheel - I'd like it but it's a bit silly to get it for completeness or just for extra trolls/knights.

Thanks for the review. Like many such town sets, I would characterise it as cute. Contrasting it to the new bin lorry, it's nice that this set has two minfigs (more realistic) and two bins. Those bins are a great addition to Lego, although wheelie bins would be nice now (need some kind of 2x2 container you can clip a plate onto as a hinging lid, and clip mini-wheels under the back two studs). Having two minifigs is a superior point for this earlier Lego rendition of a bin lorry. In fact, even though our bins are now emptied by a private company rather than the local council (as was the case up till the mid 90s), and of course for the last two decades there have been wheelie-bins, bin lorries have three guys - the driver and two collectors. However, our bin collectors for sure don't use a broom or shovel! Indeed on occasion they've befouled the street themselves if something goes wrong with hoisting the bin on the mechanism! The shape of the lorry in the set is still quite accurate, pretty good for a four-wide vehicle (I must admit to preferring the newer vehicles).

I would qualify Norro's statement. Lego in Ireland is expensive as with Lego in Europe in general, but we do have shops that sell at S@H prices (Smyth's Toys), and those prices in turn are cheaper often than other European countries, even Germany. Other S@H prices are too, e.g. Green Grocer and Town Plan at €130 rather than 150. Now, there is less competition than some other countries (across the board; capitalism here mainly means price-matching, monopolies, weak regulation and screw the consumer), so you do not have as many promotions, sales, attempts to woo customers with bargains. Saw much more of this in Germany both times I was there (Munich and Hannover) you'd save loads by shopping around and buying a set here and there in various shops. Most sets are released here, Avatar is an example of one not available here, and I believe Spongebob is S@H only. Batman is in the shops here. Castle '07 was exclusive last year to Argos (UK catalogue retailer) and they only released three sets, Skeleton Carriage, Skeleton Tower and King's Castle, the latter at higher than S@H prices (also the tower was a whopping €60 at S@H price here). Fortunately Smyth's Toys has both the entire Castle '07 and '08 lines this year, except Skeleton Ship Attack and Troll Wheel which are S@H exclusive, and no sign of impulse sets. The Castle '07 Complete Castle Collection (incl. Skeleton Ship Attack) was far cheaper here on S@H than Germany, I was very glad to buy it.

Well, it looks like an interesting enough selection of parts and minifigs, and sure you've plenty of options within that one set for doing your own vehicles. The cars displayed look a bit cobbled together mind you, and the garage somewhat austere. €99 seems pricy for a set like this - it's not that exciting and many small pieces. With a US price of $70, I would have thought a European price of €70 more reasonable (that's still a huge chunk more dough than $70). Seems like the Space Skulls/Star Justice - which were €99 here too on release, then reduced to €70 (although that price still doesn't entice me). Oh well, I hope the parts show up on PaB and LDD.

Wow that's awful! I sincerely hope it's released on the peripheral European markets like here in Ireland!

Isn't Alexa just based on people who install the Alexa software on their browser? Meaning it won't give an accurate picture as it's biased to who would use Alexa? In essence it could simply be showing that more Eurobricks visitors from US use Alexa, than visitors from Europe.

Try this page on the S@H website with Ireland selected as country. There used to be an option of "by catalog" on the menu bar of Lego S@H even with Ireland as the country. It lead you to a page where you could view the (UK) print catalogue online, or request a printed version. You can get the same page now if you select UK as the country, but they don't seem to do the online version of the print catalogue anymore. I think even though you're in Ireland you can just request the UK catalogue. I don't know if there is an Art & Hobby shop near your location, but my local one had the latest Lego print catalogue instore last week.

Well, even if there is a loss of a colour (purple), at least we have good new ones such as dark brown. I too am enjoying the greater use of "secondary" colours. Orange for example I now have a reasonable bit of. I can't get enough of dark green, dark blue and dark red - they are perhaps my favorites along with dark brown. Dark blue legs are so much more versatile than blue, dark green is more of a nature colour than ordinary green, and dark red is less abrasive than ordinary red, but more effective too (just look at Vladek sets, Skellies, etc). In fact, ordinary red, blue and green are more suited to being secondaries, with the dark colours as primaries! The old colours are more effective for highlighting! I'm not too disappointed about purple - it's a difficult colour to work into anything, and although I'm collecting the Harry Potter sets, it's thus far meant I'm not willing to pay much at all for Knight Bus (even though I want to eventually get it for completeness).

I *HIGHLY* recommend that! I had a younger sibling mess with a spray deodorant near Lego years ago, and it got on some flat plates (4x12 or so). Within a month they had sort of disintegrated (cracked in multiple places). Of course, I was too young to think of it, but cleaning them immediately would probably have helped. As regards headlight bricks, I've had incidents of the small bar at the base cracking with older bricks for certain, and I'm not sure about some new ones. They don't seem the most robust of designs.

Yep, Smyth's also originally listed the new police station at €70 (€5 cheaper than S@H), but when Argos released it at €55 (why I don't know, they mostly have higher than S@H prices), Smyth's updated their price to match. It was such a bargain I picked one up despite having the previous police station.

Welcome Graham! Good to have another Irish contributor! If you're looking for getting hold of roof tiles without having to order online and wait for them to arrive - there's a €15 pack of red roof tiles (set 6119) available, although so far I've only seen it in Art & Hobby in shops here. Alternatively the Tan Lego Creator house (set 4954) is a great source of black roof tiles and tan bricks - it is available in Smyths for €55 (link).

Just a note that the local Heatons had Lego today - albeit just a racer pod at €5 (same price as Tesco's which has the latest small ones), a slightly larger set at €6 (similar recent set in Tesco - €13) and some bionicles. Art & Hobby have yet again rotated their stock, and I picked up a new print catalogue there also. They've almost sold out of Lego Agents - having had Mission 1,2,3 and 6 they now have only 3 of the latter left.

Nice review. I really want this set, but I think the €35 here is too much (more like €25 would suit) and haven't found it cheap enough on ebay yet incl. shipping.

Well, just over a month since going on display, the Lego Agents are almost sold out at one of the local stores here selling Lego; Art and Hobby. They had a standalone cardboard display for them, so they were featured against the rest of the Lego. They had the three smaller sets and the car chase (€60 here in Ireland rather than the €50 some other places). Haven't seen the main toy chain here recently, but considering it is S@H prices (€5 cheaper than Art & Hobby for swamp and gold chase), it is probably seeing even more trade. How are Lego Agents selling in your area? I'm very happy to see it sell so well, as I think it is one of the more impressive themes Lego have done recently, particularly for a side theme like this. It's just outright stylish, and captures the style of a lot of existing bond/hero/villian stereotypes, thus meaning you can connect with them despite the Agents being nobodies that Lego thought up themselves.

Rock raiders was an interesting concept, but imo, poorly executed. I'm quite excited about the potential of this Power Miners theme to pull it off far better (Agents is after all, simply superb, whereas alpha team despite good concepts is similarly not as well executed). Half-rock, half-crystal suggests a monster made partly out of ordinary colour, and partly out of trans. If it is one main mold, maybe it'll be two-tone solid and transparent? Potentially very cool!

I too am sort of actually hoping they *are* stickers. That way I can either have nice plain shakos, or use the stickers (and know that plain shakos will be easier to get hold of even if I want to keep mine stickered).

Thanks for the link! Interesting video. Didn't spot the new heads myself (from the earlier still posted, does look like Pirate heads!). The still above, the ringed ones are (top to bottom clockwise) a KK head, Viking head, KK head (also Castle 07), and the new Witch/"Claw-dette" head from Castle/Agents. It struck me that there aren't actually that many faces overall currently in production (if that is the sum total). Certainly City is getting a bit repetitious now (all the Spielberg clones), and Castle too (KK heads are good and certainly reusable, but how many Rascus heads does one need?) I do like the recent additions mind you (that Clawdette/Witch head is cool, looks like pirates will be too).

KimT: You can go to "View" menu and select "New Themes" and from there switch brick palette between Creator or Factory (or Mindstorms). Doesn't offer much, and it's a bit awkward (you'll still want factory as it has a lot of the useful parts) but it does expand the range of bricks a little bit. I too would like to use LDD for more than just those themes, it's a nice easy program to use, and though it can be tricky if you are trying to combine bricks in unconventional ways (it may not allow it), the flipside is that it is great the way it snaps bricks together correctly. I've only built about 3 full models in it so far, and a couple partial attempts.

My Eldorado also suffered from a few yellowed bricks, but not too badly or too widespread. My set also had a couple errors/omissions (e.g. gold coins, which I fortunately got extra in a mixed jumbled lot of pirate Lego) and had some original black cylinders (no groove at the base) which I was also able to replace (not sure if I'll use the old ones, but they are in my collection now). Good to see all the minifigs are there and in good shape. Is the base also fully intact? I have I think four of those bases now, only one of which has no cracks/chips whatsoever (the one that came with eldorado, in fact one of the broken ones was also in as an extra).

Well, I certainly probably need to cut back on Lego spending. I'm already making more careful choices about which sets I really need. I do not think building with Lego is wasting time. I don't know about others, but having a decent hobby like Lego is I think very beneficial to you and so contributes in a way to time you spend doing activities that are obviously not wasting time. I do not think Lego is in the same category as some other pastimes, although I think many so-called timewasters can be useful. Lego is also in some ways an artistic expression, which again, at the very least is useful to you and puts you in better shape for actual work. I probably have bought a number of sets that I could have passed on, and I do intend to be more selective in future. However, I am not too concerned, as I did buy most sets for a good price, and could probably sell them on for more if at some stage I needed to, thus at the very least it is not a foolish waste of money, as it is in some respects an investment. I certainly would not like to have to part with some of my older Castle sets in particular, but I could part with a lot of my Lego tomorrow if I had to. I think it's important not to be too attached to these things. In any case all of the Lego I have is replaceable, and much of it quite easily. It is good to be concerned about these issues, although it does little good to be steeped in guilt to no effect. The best way to do something about it, without being too radical, is I think to cut back on ones Lego spending and be a bit more selective. If you feel you already have too much Lego, that is a sensible step at the least. Further than that, you may be best off just accepting you bought too much, and making the most of it now. Alternatively, you could consider offloading sets that while nice to have, are not really essential to own, and easily replaceable (e.g. many modern Lego sets). I think it's probably a big mistake to do anything rashly, and it's probably unrealistic and probably not necessary to try cut ones spending to zero. That's my advice anyway, as a Christian. However, I'm still working on the "cutting back on spending" aspect, so I'll get back to you on that. I certainly in some respects find it a comfort that even the total value of my Lego is less than a couple large consumer goods (e.g. gaming PC?) but unfortunately, relativism is not something I can really subscribe to. It probably does make your concerns easier to handle though, putting them in such perspective.