gylman

Well, while I hate the plane,and I generally dislike police sets, and I am generally a grumpy guy that has not been very enthused about many of the sets that people have liked this year, etc, I feel obliged to defend the truck. There are lots of good parts. Look at the big white doors in the back, and especially front, of the truck. Lots of white bricks, big windows.... Hardly a useless part in the set. It will be overpriced, I am sure, but it's not a bad set at all IMHO.

http://www.bricklink.com/search.asp?pg=1&q...10&searchSort=N and then, restrict the search to gear only. As you can see, a number of sellers have them. Mike's store (Lasting Toys) is very reliable and professional - I can testify as to this.

LOL Hinckie. I think my students would agree with you about my teaching style. No sugar, just meat.

I am hopeful that they will not make the same mistake that was made (IMHO) between Mindstorms and NXT, where the lack of simple backward compatibility made people with an investment in Mindstorms just give up rather than embrace the technology (well, N=1 here, anyway). Anyone want to buy a couple of RCXs and a bunch of sensors? I'm just to darn lazy to sell it on eBay. I don't see why a new train system has to be totally incompatible with the old unless they WANT it to be so, in order to force people to buy a bunch of new stuff. But, I believe that approach would fail because there is already so much 9V stuff out there that it will keep going for years and years, and then people would really be PO'ed. Personally, I'm cautiously optimistic. TLC has done more right than wrong in the past couple of years with set design and technology choices.They are not a bunch of idiots.

I understand people's frustration, but I think that's a bit harsh. TLC is not perfect, but I challenge you to name another toy company that spends this much energy communicating with their ADULT customer base. And it is apparent that they have been listening at least in part, or at least where economically feasable (castle, NXT, Town, Cafe Corner series, Technic bulldozer....) None of us would be better off with TLC bankrupt. Further, what's to say that the change from 9V to whatever new system comes into place will be so very hard? Most or all of our trains will still be usable. We don't know about the track of course = probably not.

My impression is that Batman has not been doing all that well. Every one of the first years' sets I have picked up at 40-50% off. Personally, I don't much like the sets, but certainly my black part collection has grown immensely, and the Batman theme is great for keychains. Avatar was a disappointment. Enough said. Great show, crappy sets. What were they thinking? Interestingly, I have yet to see one in the bargain bin though... By the way, after a 2 year hiatus, Avatar resumed new shows this past week! My kids very extremely excited, and not disappointed. I have no use for Spongebob except as a source of colourful odds and ends. The first year was OK, but too many useless bits in the second wave. I wouldn't blink it if went poof, although I have to say that the rocketship from next year looks hilarious. Indie is the final nail in the coffin of Johnny Thunder so I resent it. I'll probably buy some of the sets, though, and replace all the fleshies with Adventurers How about the Ferrari License. I think it was great for 2 year. The Scudaria truck is a classic. But they are clearly out of ideas at this point. Time to end it. Star Wars has a life all its own, and has greatly advanced the quality and quantity of space design at TLC. It is a definite *y* . At the end of the day, this is the only license I think Lego really needed.

OK Fartface. I would start with colour. Colour is one of most important things when building something. You have to pick something that: 1) makes sense for the type of thing you are building 2) you have enough parts in that colour Also, usually more than one colour is used, so try to make a non-clashing combination (orange + gray = bad, red + gray = fine). So, if you are planning to build a spaceship, probably you want to be using gray as a main colour, with highlights in other colours. I see you already have two good gray parts (the rocket - burners at the back). Why not get some gray bricks, slopes, panels, and some gray train windows if you have them to make the body of your rocket. The brown part you have the front can be gray too, but other colours that might work would be red, or a trans-shade. Brown, generally does not work well for space. The green baseplate also should be either gray (if you want to make it part of the ship) or something like white if you want to make it part of the display that the spaceship sits on. Once you have the main shell, tryto think of things you can put on that are NOT gray, like wings, instrument panels, landing gear, weapons. This way the details are highlighted, and the background is consistent. Other members at this friendly forum will probably be talking about proportion, symmetry. Good luck.

Indeed. That seems nuts. However, in defense of the lunatic who paid that money, this is considered perhaps the best classic Lego house ever made, and for a serious colletor, to have one of these MISB in a good condition box might be worth the money. Another thing that surprises me though, is that the seller lists all his personal information, including bank account info, in the auction. Is that wise??

One thing for sure, this new castle theme will make for some spectacular!! keychains. And really, what more is there to Lego than keychains. :-D X-D

If Crossbow attack , a set with two knights, skelly, cart and weapons sells for 6$US Then there is no way these will sell for 4.99 they will sell for 2.99 US or no one will buy them in the US. As an aside, I am impressed with the castle impulse sets. The space are OK too.The City ones add nothing to what can be obtained in any of the recent Advent Calendars

Clever ladder. Like that. Looks like someone's got a gray-bley situation though. Doesn't the colour mismatch drive you nuts? Or does the photography make it seems worse than it is.

Sure, that's a great example. But there are many others. Not to turn this into a "my favourtie castle" thread, but JoJo's Tower in the Lonely Woods stands out in my mind for example, and is a similar scale to Siskind's tower of Dracula. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=2665049

Agree with all above. These big <insert that tiresome argument> planes have no future in my collection. I have to say the airport set was nice EXCEPT for the useless plane.

Clearly, someone here suffers from a luck of imagination. X-D http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=985034

As I said in an earlier post, once I started this I really wanted it to be the best possible thing I could make, and it was more about that than about the competition. So, I definitely see where you're coming from, and I'm ok with it either way, Yoda. Once I start, my preference is always to build the best that I can, and as an adult with money and a big collection I can bring more to the table than many can. If it was all about the competition, some might perceive that as unfair, and I can't really fault them. And we don't want to discourage people from entering because they feel at a unfair disadvantage. On the other hand, I could point to the fact that time availability is probably more of a constraint than money. Whatever. Both formats have a role. We should do whatever would get the most people excited and building fun stuff. I would normally be more likely to participate in an unrestricted build, although I like the idea of a weight restriction as a novelty, because that requires some thinking that we usually don't have to do...

Without a doubt the highlight of 2007 for me was Cafe Corner and Market Street. They created a new paradigm in Lego construction that has really caught on with the AFOLs, and can be expanded upon very nicely. I sure hope they sold well. I've been pushing for that UCS Castle for years now, but it has to be something of quality, not a giant <insert that tiresome argument> set.

Definitely an improvement! The weak part of this castle is the tower/building inside. It just looks so.... thin.... empty.... ANd why the heck is a mini-chamber just sitting out there on the edge of a parapet? Is it a medieval outhouse? If you could beef that section of 7094 up up a bit, make it look more like a real tower, that would make it look better. Come to think of it, that would be a good contest. Using 7094, and 200 other bricks or Lego pieces of any kind, build a better castle. Show Lego how good this COULD have been. Anyone interested? If 5 or more people enter, I'll put up some sort of minimal prize.

Errrm... ah... actually you won Hinckie. And deservedly so. Yours was more of a work of art while mine was an explosion of colour and silliness. Really, all the entries were great, showed me new things and ideas, and I'd be proud to say I was able to make any of them, or put any of them on my desk. Of course, if I put anything more on my desk, even one more keychain, I'd be doing my work on the floor. Now, about this "avatar" business..... it's not going to involve whacking is it??? :'-( 8-

My personal disappointment with these sets comes from the fact that these sets appear to involve very little building. The joy of building a Lego castle, to me, has been to see how it starts to form as you build it from the ground up. These sets have a nice collection of bits and bobs, neat parts, etc, but they look like they are meant to be assembled and posed, not built. This was exactly what I said about the StinkySocks Pyrate ship a couple of days ago in another thread. To me, they look like the Belville equivalent of Castle. Dumbed down so the child can put them together and play with them right away, without having to spend the time and effort of actually building anything. I am sure these will make for some great battle scenes and dioramas, but any real structure we build for such scenes will have to come from another source. Only the 7094 castle in the current lineup has anything worth building, and even this does not appear to be much of a build for a model of 973 parts.

This doesn't look like Lego to me.... :-( I don't want to say what it looks like, but it rhymes with "stinky socks". Sorry. But, I guess it will probably be popular, so that's good.

Sorry, Hinkie, I don't accept your proof.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! MY eyes!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm blind...... Excellent..... :-D Megabloks.... that was spam, wasn't it... Seriously, though, they are very large pictures. Until you or an admin resizes them, perhaps you should just use links to Bricklink, not direct image embedding Like this: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Varnka/B...er/img_0460.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Varnka/B...er/img_0466.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Varnka/B...er/img_0471.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Varnka/B...er/img_0478.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Varnka/B...er/img_0462.jpg At least them people can click on the link, and get taken to brickshelf, which automatically resizes things.

Yes, indeed, I recognize it looks like the one in the Viking Longboat. But the one in the skellie ship? EDIT: YEP.... quite right. Same as in skeleton ship. Goes to show how poorly I have kept up with this year's Castle sets. Excellent.... (well, not really).

It looks like something you assemble. Not something you build. However, no doubt it will have appeal to some. I got nothing against Megabloks as a maker of playsets. As a building toy... different story. Excellent....... (well, for those who like this kind of stuff anyway).

The hull looks useful.... is it a new shape/proportion? I think I see a front, two midsections, and a back. It could be used for other types of ships, and the rown colour is good too (although a real brown would have been better). It seems much better than the current Skeleton Ship attack. Oh, yes, I almost forgot: Excellent.....