gylman

Beautiful. I have most of the "good" LEGO planes hanging from the ceiling in my living room, including the old Sopwith and the Red Baron. This will make a very worthy addition (plus two more copies of the set for "the vault").

I think the architecture series has merit. I do look forward to what Adam Tucker will come up with. That said, the outcome is uneven. All are overpriced, which tends to make me restrained with my purchases. I thought Fallingwater was a masterpiece (the original as well as the LEGO building) , and I am enjoying building the Robie House now to join Fallingwater on my desk at work. Some of the others are nice (The Farnsworth House, the White House). Others range from OK but not good enough to overspend on with some that are just silly (the Burj Dubai, what the heck, who would buy that when they can just built it out of spare parts?). In general, the towers/very tall buildings don't do well - they are either boring, or don't look realistic or nice. The pattern is clear - the greater the horizontal to vertical ratio of the actual building, the more likely the LEGO rendering is to be faithful as well as attractive. Obviously less curves makes for easier rendering as well. I don't think LEGO expects to make money on these, but it's done for publicity and visibility. I hope LEGO continues this series as long as they are not losing big bucks on it. There are hits and misses, but I can ignore the misses and enjoy the hits.

I agree. It's missing "something". I don't find it as interesting to look at as the others. I also find the inside detail to be quite weak. Better to have left it open concept, and let us design our own. The elevator does not add much. Overall it's very nice, and I'm sure I'll buy at least 1 copy, but I would not rank it up there with Green Grocer, Cafe Corner, or even the Emporium set.

My two kids enjoyed it quite a bit. We just found out, and one of them is crying right now. They aren't hard core gamers, and LU was just right for them - they like the graphics, quests, and made a few online friends. It was probably too expensive for what it could do, but as a parent I had no trouble spending the money to make them happy playing with LEGO online. Too bad.

LEGO should be licensing and selling this. This is the kind of set I would pay big bucks for. Amazing. Isn't there a site where people can vote on LEGO mocs that they want to see sold through TLC?

The colours in this set just look ..... wrong. I don't know how else to describe it.

My two kids both have Lego Universe accounts, but don't seem to be able to see each other in the game. They are both on Overbuild. Why would this be? From what you are suggesting then any player should be able to see any other player who is online and playing in that universe at that tie.

My 11 and 13 year old kids got LEGO Universe for Xmas this year. No hassles with setup. It runs fairly decently on a pretty crappy old computer with only 1 gig ram and no special graphics processor. There were some minor in-game glitches that haven't caused any grief. They seem to really enjoy it. Missions are reasonably achievable. They are accumulating a small army of pets. Have built their own house that they show off to anyone who visits our house. There's really not much to the building aspect of it - it seems very primitive. So far there hasn't been much social interaction or team building. I am also not sure if there is an overall "game" in the sense of a goal and a bigger mission that has to be accomplished through teamwork. So far they mostly seem to be running around doing their own thing. I am not sure what will keep their interest going long term, but for the time being we got more bang for the buck out of this present than out of any other present they got this Xmas.

These architecture sets have potential, but the price tends to limit their purchasability. I have the Fallingwater one, which is excellent. The White House one is also good. They both sit on my desk at work. The others are just too little brick for too much money. But I wouldn't discourage LEGO from trying more such sets. I doubt they are losing any money on them.

<decloaks> This is very nice. Definitely will be purchased at our house. I don't understand why they wouldn't release it for Xmas, unless they are afraid it will eat into their other sales. Odd that TLG totally gave up on the HP sets for a couple of years, and then comes back so big. I guess they are expecting the Deathly Hallows to be huge. When you reach a certain critical mass of LEGO at your house, there is relatively little incentive to buy more, but giant and well constructed sets like this are exempt. <recloaks>

The obvious Adventurers theme is Old West. It fits with the kind of thing the Adventurers did. It's a timeless classic. Just like Pirates (I wonder how that did for LEGO when they brought it back for a year or two). There is a large pent-up demand, I believe, for the Old West LEGO. There was a Western LEGO series which ran for a few years, but has been nearly totally silent for a over a decade I believe. Now with the Toy Story western type sets, this might not be as true... but I didn't like the Toy Story sets at all so who knows.

Great opportunity for imaginative play outside of a pre-programmed licensed set. My kids' interest in LEGO mostly began with Bionicle, and then evolved to The Adventurers. There was excellent web support for the Adventurers with lots of fun (and funny) games and challenges. There was also a lot of fun gear. Just this week we were canoing and camping overnight for 3 days in Algonquin park, and we all were wearing our Adventurers T-shirts, and my kids carried all their stuff in the Adventurers backpacks. In my opinion, LEGO has never topped this series. Some sets were not great, but the play value was always there. My kids still play with JT and the Adventurers, and didn't spend a second looking at the Indiana Jones (ugh! fleshies) sets.

1. NO. They are spectacular display pieces that always generate conversation and enthusiasm. Also big building jobs that we do as a family. 2. Specific models based on what I like. It depends on price. I didn't like the Eiffel Tower or Taj Mahal as much as the Statue of Liberty, but I bought them when they were on sale or used to save money. A great set I would buy new at regular retail cost as soon as it comes out. 3. Tough question. Most of the great buildings have domes, and I find that domes don't really work that great with LEGO, though we try our best. I also don't want an insanely repetitive build like the Taj Mahal (which the Coliseum probably would be). A really tall tower, like the Burj Dubai or the CN tower would not be possible to do proportionally and not make it insanely tall. I guess the Sydney Opera House would be a good choice with those considerations in mind. Maybe a working (internally and time telling) version of Big Ben? 4. An ultimate castle, along the lines of the ones built by AFOLs for contests. Internal details, external details. http://www.flickr.com/photos/36059767@N08/...094782/sizes/o/ There are many others..... this was just a handy link. A nice change would be to have a Japanese style castle, and I've seen a few beauties, but don't have a link offhand. 5. Why did LEGO take the LEGO printing off their keychains!! It means that a keychain collector is getting nothing more than a regular fig with a nail driven through its head. Until 2-3 years ago the keychains figs had some sort of LEGO identifier (ideally printing on the back, less good was the attached tile). This has totally vanished, and really makes the keychain much less interesting for me. Also, please continue the Cafe Corner series. I love them all. Finally.... what's happened to Technic? It's become pathetic. No complexity at all any more.

I am praying that they continue to release these buildings. They are absolutely magnificent - a riot of colour and detail, but still looking realistic and reminiscent of cities we all know . When people see my collection the thing that blows them away the most, the "wow, I didn't know you could do this with LEGO" comment, comes from the street that has Cafe Corner, Market Street, and Green Grocer on it. And soon a fire station will go up on that street. It's too beautiful for words. If anything will keep adults interested in LEGO, it will be this type of set. I think it's the best thing TLC ever made. Are you listening Ambassadors???!!! I am sad to hear, though, that we have just seen the last of a series designed by one person. I hope that whoever takes up the mantle will do equally good work. I would not want the designer of something as sterile and repetitive as that Taj Mahal set to be making these sets.

I like that. Stupid me I tried to use a shaft from the centre to transmit the rotation to the sides. Still, I wonder how reliable it would be. NO doubt there are infinitely more clever Technic builders than me who can figure out a way do this in a couple of brick heights, but I doubt it's easy. I agree about the comment re: the Power Functions motor noise. It's been 2 years with those new motors for me, and I still don't like them. I end up using my old 9V motors 90% of the time.

For someone who wants to buy this set, it's a trivial matter to build something to hide the motor in an adjacent building. Since the horses go up and down as well as around, there must be some pretty clever mechanism present here, as doing this type of design and not making the mechanism too bulky, or too flimsy, is not a trivial job. Every iteration of this mechanism that I tried to make in the past was too bulky. I am very curious about how they did it, but probably not curious enough to buy this set. I do find the roof of the carousel ugly - but bricks would have made the thing extremely heavy and even more expensive.

If the horses indeed go up and down, then this is a pretty good design. I tried to build a carousel a couple of years ago, with the horses going up and down, and ran into all sorts of practical problems. Gave up after a while.

Though stated undiplomatically and certainly not the words I would have chosen, I agree with the essential sentiment of this statement. LEGO fan sites certainly have the right to make a choice about what they display, but I know of no other fan group that so universally kowtows to the corporation that produces their product. This puzzles and disappoints me. And the excuses for this policy here at Eurobricks, which used to be the place where you could go to see news like this first and enjoy the excitement of a "leak", but more recently has been more restrictive than other major sites, have gone from "let's protect their intellectual property so that competitors don't get a chance to make a clone product" to "let's not spoil their PR extravaganza that is coming up in 2 days." How lame is that? Those who have not seen the evolution of Eurobricks from its early days will not know what a change in the essential character of EB as a "rebel" LEGO site this was. Meanwhile pics of the carousel are readily available at least on Brickhorizon and Bricklink. I am sure other fan sites have it too, but I haven't checked them all out. So what's the point of this policy here?

Vote for Adventurers to return!!

Looks like a slightly significant sale at S@H now, North America http://shop.lego.com/SalesAndDeals/Default.aspx About 30 new items, mostly duplo, a few bionicle. Doc and Patient impulse set, down to 1$ US Spongebob Emerg Room 10$ Indy - Lost Tomb 10$ Technic Dirt Bike 10$ US Dreamliner 50$ US The Death Star 200$ US A few others. Very significant savings if you care for those sets. Go wild.

I can confirm that at S@H Canada the prices are back down to reasonable levels, in some cases 1/3 of what they were yesterday. Of course there are two cynical points to make: 1) they will eventually creep up, or we will pay some other way 2) now there will be a huge run on all these bits from people who want to buy a batch "before the prices go up again". Ridiculous I'm off to load up.... :-)

In the real world of construction and heavy equipment, pneumatics are still a very important way of delivering force/power through a full range of movement, so clearly pneumatics in relevant models would still be the best tools and I bet would provide more force. Similarly, linear actuators have specific situations where they are the best tool in terms of control of the extent and speed of of movement that pneumatics do not provide as reliably. So the best solution is to have both depending on the situation. This being said, pneumatics are infinitely cooler. :-) BTW I'd love to buy more pneumatic stuff from LEGO education, but in Canada it's actually quite difficult, and the prices are pretty bad in any case. So Bricklink prices quoted above are actually what most people end up paying.

Adventurers. Since they are gone, my kids' interest in LEGO has gone way down. They really loved the characters, and there was good support on the LEGO web site for them. They still play on the LEGO site with those old Adventurers flash games, and still mostly play with their old Adventurers sets and Johnny and Pippin etc. We had some Indiana Jones sets, Spongebob, others. Most sit unopened, the rest were opened once, and not played with. It's kinda sad. Someone should take all the names we have received on this topic, and make a poll (though I think it has been done in previous years).

Theme Name: Adventurers in the Old West Characters: Johnny Thunder, Pippin Reed, Professor whathisname, Senor Palomar, Sam Sinister, assorted good guy Indian dudes who help Johnny, various henchmen Conflict: The map to the Lost Dutchman Gold mine has to be found, and then the mine entered and explored to find some golden treasure. Justification for this theme: 1) Adventurers is a known LEGO theme that has some very loyal fans. 2) It is play and humor based, and appeals to girls more than most LEGO themes because of the strong female character, as well as the humor. My two girls LOVED the Adventurers and still play with them more than any other themes 3) Use of these characters and a Western theme will minimize the number of new molds that have to be created because you have lots of elements to use from past Adventurers and past Western sets. 4) Licensing and gear production for Adventurers is well established and would not require rolling out a whole new line 5) Old West is a classic play theme that has been neglected by TLC in the past decade. 6) It would be easy to incorporate a train into this series. 7) A mine set is one that has not been made by TLC before, and might somehow mesh with elements used in "power miners". 8) No licensing fees Bottom line is you don't have to reinvent the wheel, it's probably the lowest cost-to-start-up new theme you could make because it recycles lots of LEGO history, and the product would appeal to a broad spectrum of kids (and AFOLs) including girls.

http://gizmodo.com/5...y?autoplay=true Also many of the comments below the article are worth reading. Sorry if this has been posted before.