brickzone

Good MOCs, and an interesting idea. Any plans to do the house exterior?

Mmm... those pictures are seriously tempting me to rebuild my Eldorado. Unfortunately I just don't have display space (just some space in front of books, and one space beside current MoC for 48x48). Hoping to clear a shelf for Lego display, but it will be modular town (green grocer, café corner) first off the block I think. I would like to buy SES, but I haven't even seen it in Lego listings I've been browsing the past few months (sellers listed to ship to Ireland, and via Paypal, and for auctions, mostly sticking to EU only). I'm very happy with Black Seas Barracuda mind you (€70 incl postage).

The Smyth's stores around here have in the past had reductions where not all the sets have been price-stickered with the reduced price, and to confuse it further, sometimes they apply the reduced price even if you can no longer find a set with the reduced price stickered (had this last year with the Advent Calendar, reduced from €16.99 to €14.99 - only the top of the stack had new stickers, but even later on the reduced price still applied despite the remaining sets being marked with €16.99). So sometimes you get a completely unexpected surprise of a cheaper price than the one marked - I don't think this is really ever a pricing error, just that there was a reduction and the remaining sets didn't get the updated price stickers. The price label messiness at Smyth's (even just having actual price labels rather than squainting at shelves), and the unknown of what local reductions apply (or old sets not on the online catalogue, and possibly also marked down), in my estimation just make them more fun to shop at. An excuse too to check back every so often to see what's up. It's almost like the old days of Lego shopping in Quinnsworth and Roches Stores! The online catalogue is handy to find out if your local store has the catalogued sets in stock at all at all, also it gives release dates for new sets sometimes even before the sets are on S@H (e.g. this happened with Castle '08). I haven't been to Smyth's in Dublin - that's pretty awesome if they still have a PaB! Last time I saw PaB in real life was in German dept. store a year or two back, and before that, Quinnsworth as a kid in the 1980s!

Looks like they have expanded to the UK now - Northern Ireland and Greater London. The Lego prices appear, as in Ireland, to be almost all the same as S@H prices. Smyth's are a pretty good toy chain, albeit retail park warehouse style rather than high street. Art & Hobby had some special 50% money back voucher offer the past couple of days (offer runs until Monday), I didn't get to check it out though. Still intending to go back to them for upcoming Lego purchases - €20 back for spending €120 is a good deal! For now though I'm stalled on spending in anticipation of next years sets (although I'd be tempted if they had certain sets in stock that they don't currently have).

I don't see why people complain "<insert that tiresome argument>" anytime there are large pieces. Newer sets are not like Jack Stone, Town Jr, etc. - if they have large pieces it is to add scale, and you can see in the farm set that there are no less detail pieces despite the roofs and pillars. That tractor certainly is not <insert that tiresome argument> - like most new sets it is far more intricate than the sets of old. As far as I am concerned, Lego has now nicely married the large bricks to provide scale, and smaller bricks to provide detail (ok so it does look like this farm has less ordinary building bricks). Now I do think the farm is a bit lacking in terms of being an interesting design (just a big silo, barn loft and stables, and a tractor that I'm not interested in?) but that is a different complaint from juniorisation.

That's not bad pricewise, I paid €50 myself for this set. It's certainly worth it, especially if the minifigs in particular are complete and in good order. It's very enjoyable to build and looks awesome (I would probably have it intact as part of a soldier/pirate display if I had more space, e.g. a whole room for Lego).

Is it just me, or in at least one of the pictures does one of the cannons seem to be in a new gunmetal metallic colour? That would be pretty awesome.

I'm not sure plumes are back. There's one of the large ones used, but it may not be like that on release, as it seems that in the large ship set, the new flame part doubles up as a plume in the soldier's hat. The large plume in the port set may be an error, just like the confusion over helmets on knights in one of the Castle 07 sets (even on S@H photos). The good news is that the flame part in red looks like a more interesting wavy plume where it is used in the ship set. I for one don't consider these <insert that tiresome argument>. Sure one set has a stud-scarce baseplate, but it looks interesting enough to use in my own creations. The Agents shark I can live with. I am actually very pleased about the ship not using string - I've always considered string a hassle and too far removed from actual Lego bricks. Those who wish to can still arrange string for themselves, but I am glad to have pipes for the sails. It does seem a bit silly to have chain for the front sail mind you. I absolutely love the style of the ship. The back cabin to be honest looks more interesting and yet coherent than any of the preceding ships. The prow looks like it is indeed a solid hull similar to the ones of old rather than the Viking one, and has a interesting bow with mermaid figurehead!! Sure it might have been nice to have a bit of a bigger ship like BSB, but really, my pocket is happy to have a compromise size like this.

It will certainly be nice to have pirates and soldiers again, and these sets do look nice. However, it does seem a bit unoriginal, just a bit like a remake rather than reinvention. Making up for that is the ship in particular, which looks awesome, and also the nice mix of parts and minifigs/accessories.

Thanks for the news! It does sound rather exciting if Pirates are returning! Personally, I think Kraken Attackin is a great name for a set. I love cheesy alliteration. I'm not too anti-brick creatures, but I would hope they aren't too big an element of the set.

The stock sometimes seems to be country-dependant, items can run out in one place and still be available elsewhere, even within Europe. However, they probably also redistribute stock, as sometimes items are only out of stock for a short time, or spontaneously reappear for a brief period.

PhD student finishing up - without getting technical, it involves computer software.

They were on sale previously also. It looks like this time they also won't be selling out completely before the sale ends (received an email suggesting it was last chance for the summer sale). I got one too, although I sort of would prefer now not to have previously gotten the Vikings one. A pity the squares are glued, although in my set, the rooks etc. were not glued.

I only saw this thread for the first time a week ago or so. I'm quite interested in a return of pirates (and soldiers), though it fills me with a slight worry about my bank balance! If they do appear to be as in the photos here, that'll be quite good. Of course, perhaps more interesting than minifig designs would be how they would approach the ships. Resurrect the old prow and stern pieces? Introduce new ones (yes please)? Surely the Viking ones aren't suitable? Also will we see the old rigging parts one wonders? I'd like to see them go back to the French and British. Sure there's plenty of scope to diverge into the other powers, but those two surely have to be the quintessential naval forces involved with pirates/buccaneers.

I saw some of a foreign student's English notes one time, and the list of irregular English verbs was rather terrifying. Fortunately in my Irish speaking primary school we spent less time on the intricacies of the English language than the Irish language. I think the latter is more regular as regards grammar, although certainly the noun genders and groupings for mutations etc. when used in various cases took a bit of learning (they were drilled into us though, again a contrast to how English was taught). I think the oddest aspect of my teaching was how I ended up knowing the Irish words for some grammatical constructs, but not the English translation (same applies to primary school Maths, early Irish History, basic Irish Geography)! I do not remember ever "learning" English verbs, or even learning the English for words like "tense" (of a verb), "conditional" (tense - it was "an módh coinníollach" to us). "I" before "E" except after "C" was learnt after "leathan le leathan, caol le caol" (broad <vowel> with broad, slender with slender - referring to the Irish spelling rule where i,e and a,o,u must match either side of a consonant in a word). My English may not be perfect, but it has proved sufficient for a Masters thesis and publishing some academic papers. Here's hoping I can pull together the PhD thesis!

I like how the tray of empty bottles is done, very convincing! Like the ice-cream too. This isn't a must have for me though, I have plenty of city folk from the sets.

My biggest gripe with fleshies is that the supposed white people are a diseased hue of pink. It is as if they picked the most unnatural shade possible. Certainly a poor option for anyone remotely tanned, and too pink for anyone not tanned. It's just a horrible colour. I feel they should have stuck with yellow heads, and just used darker colours where necessary to distinguish characters (as in the Cloud city example).

Nach mhaith leat Gaeilge a fhoghlaim? Wouldn't you like to learn Irish :) Being from Ireland, I have only a limited fluency in French and German due to the usual pathetic language teaching methods used here (same as in UK). In fact even my Irish is a wee bit rusty despite 14 years study since 4 years old, and attending an Irish-speaking primary school. In Ireland you do not have much occasion to actually use Irish thanks to a rather typically Irish approach to supporting the language (no real ambition to have us become a bilingual society despite lipservice of signage etc). The English did fairly well instilling into the populance here the notion that Irish was backward, and US influence also re-inforces the notion of what's the point to anything but English. Ah sure, at least we have our own notion of what passes for English :)

Perhaps he meant the pearl light grey lance, which is not that common.

The Car ejector seat is great IMO, but I've only manually set it off (push in the front panel) as I don't really want to go crashing my shiney new sports car :) It works well as far as I'm concerned, the passenger flys right out (albeit not very far, but out of the car nevertheless). I like the missiles which are hidden in the back, and can be raised by turning the cylinder on the rear of the car. I wouldn't like to be sitting in front of them like the people in the car do though (when the missiles are hidden). A pity you have to manually close the hatch again. The siren is like a klaxon, quite loud and echoy (if that makes sense). Would suit e.g. an evacuation alarm, or missile silo fire sequence alarm, or somesuch. Only €5 extra here in Ireland - Argos' typical UK retailer rough and ready conversion from £ to € working in our favour this time. However, although I was slightly tempted when passing Argos today, this set is not an immediate must have for me. It's entirely possible Argos would have Lego on sale at some stage in the future again, so it might be worthwhile for me to hold off on it (alternatively I will probably be ordering from S@H at some stage in the future, e.g. some future S@H exclusive similar to CC, MS, GG).

I am seriously tempted to get the entire theme. I did pick up the Car chase set on impulse - €60 here (turned out to be a bit rash as I could have got it from UK on ebay buy-it-now for €45). The silver James Bond-style car is probably the single coolest Lego car ever made! Very very stylish. Spyclops helicopter is a bit mad, with no floor for the cockpit so Spyclops can descend out of it spider-like. Spooky. The gate alarm is quite loud indeed for a small brick. Girders and grills are great too! I agree re: Agents having great colours. I love some of the new Lego colours like Dark Blue (also like Dark Red and Dark Green). The metallic silver bricks in the chase set are fantastic!

This set is a great little bundle, the kitted out knight, skellie knight, weapons, and the few bricks for the fence and weapon rack. The Castle 07 barding here is very nice, indeed the colour scheme of the new Castle guys is great IMO, the light blue and blue work nicely together and against the grey background. I don't really like the pearl grey helmet - it would be nicer in metallic silver like the visor I think. Interesting comment re: the skellie helmet - I guess black normal knight's helmet with visor would be quite nice for him. I got this set as part of the Complete Castle Collection from S@H. However, I have extras of all the smaller sets and Skeleton Tower, except I don't have another one of this set. It's on my list of sets to buy. Unfortunately it wasn't on S@H for Ireland when I was making later orders - quite an odd omission. Also last year Castle '07 was exclusive to Argos (UK catalogue retailer) who only had three sets (not the joust). I should see if the local toy store has it now though, as they did stock some '07 Castle in addition to '08 at the start of the year. I think small sets like this should be well stocked in shops for a year or two - it surely doesn't do their sales much good to be so sporadically available? Sorry, turned into a bit of a ramble. Anyways, the point is that this set is good enough I'd pick up another. The Cobra: that sucks about customs. I try to keep my orders to within the €23 duty-free limit for here in Ireland. If your imports are waylaid you pay 20% import duty, 21% sales tax, and a postage fee for the diversion to customs. NASTY!

Very impressive if Lego are doing well in the current climate; whatever about how bad things really are economically, there's no doubt consumers are tightening their belts and are rather gloomy (although here in Ireland, the weather is not helping, nor at the start of the summer the change in leader outside of election and the messy and acrimonious Lisbon treaty vote with a very depressing result for half of us). From observation, Lego Indiana Jones seems indeed to be very popular. Lego Agents is also flying off the shelves in shops around my area. I think Lego have done very well in product line-up in the last year or so. The City line has been very strong too. I wonder if Lego have profited much from their offerings to AFOLs and Lego fanatic? There seem certainly to be more masterpiece/big sets out than ever.

Well, I've just bought more Lego from the US on ebay. Including the shipping (USPS Priority intl. with tracking and insurance), it still only cost me under two thirds of the RRP here. And that's with the euro dropping from buying $1.56 a week ago to $1.50 today, and Paypal offering just $1.45 to the euro. I'll tell you, at this stage I wish I was over in the US while working for a European company and being paid in euro. There much be some people in that nice situation!

If the toothmarks are on the edge of the brick, you can at least make them fit together again properly by squashing down any protrusions back into the crevices using the flat side of a butter knife. If necessary, drag the back edge of the knife carefully over any bumps using a small bit of pressure. This will of course affect the bricks, but they may be better than before treatment. If it is just that toothmarks/scratches look bad, I can recommend soaking your Lego bricks in warm water with a small dab of washing up liquid (for dishes), or soaking them in Milton for a bit. (Milton is a very very mild bleach used for sterilising baby stuff, or even purifying drinking water - it breaks down just into water again, so very safe and light on the bricks - esp. if there is dirt/bacteria for the Milton to work on). Some recommend washing in the washing machine, but the action of this tends to scratch the bricks and remove any vestiges of glossiness (by contrast the above tends to restore it). If you are doing in bulk, you may want to consider it - we successfully cleaned up some *very* played with bricks using this method. As for discoloured white bricks (or grey)... the Milton helps a little bit, but for very bad pieces, some toothpaste can help (mmm... minty fresh). Toothpaste will remove the glossiness though. However, maybe there's a better solution (solution, geddit?), some other substance that can be used on discoloured bricks.