gylman

Highly creepy! Best use for the new joker head I've seen so far. Love it. I would think a Salem's lot vig could be done nicely too (that scene where the brother is floating outside the window comes to mind). The crazy joker head could be used for the Shining as well ("Heeeeeere's Johnny!")

I think the split is reasonable enough. The pirate fans are a pretty distinct "crew" and I think them having their own high volume forum is OK. My impression has been that castle/adventurer people typically like both these themes quite a bit, and Western fits better here than with Pie Rats. Certainly other than Technic stuff, I clearly belong mostly in the Adventurer/Castle forum, and as soon as I can come up from under the mountain of work I have been buried in since April, I hope to do my share to liven up this forum. Sigh. June will be bad, July worse. Maybe in August. I haven't worked this hard since..... ever, Argh.

And he does have a point - I would say that it is highly joonyerized. Look at those roofs. The figs are great, no doubt, but otherwise..... I don't see the use of this set unless the price point is very low, like no more than 40 US$, in which case there are enough usable parts along with the figs to make it worth getting. Personally, my feeling about the whole Batman line is that it has been a disappointment, except for the figs - which are spectacular.. It's better than Spiderman, or HP, but somehow it should have been more than what we have gotten so far. At least from an AFOL point of view. I gotta keep reminding myself TLC is not selling to me, but to the 8-12 year old crowd.

THis is the future of non-joonerized lego. Well designed sets with great main models and which are also good parts packs for the money. A+

Sorry Willy and other who think that somehow we are getting closer to classic castle. You are probably just getting stoned on the ABS vapour sublimating from those giant wall + window pieces due to their excessive surface area. This set is closer to or than to this: I have now finally accepted that unless a totally new line is coming out, Classic Castle is history. These sets are being designed for 7-12 year olds. Nothing wrong with that - that's TLCs market. But seroiusly, they owe more to recent megablok designs than to anything done by TLC in teh 1980s and 90s

Awesome. How long did it take you to put that together? Love the details.

Actually, I might have enjoyed getting the Adventurers one for my kids since they are fans. Is there any waywe can see what the book looks like inside - to see if it is appropriate for my kids?

Very very nice. I love the spotlights shining back and forth on the villains. One thing though, using the "fast reply" function, is that the black background makes it impossible to see the box for typing text in posts. No border is seen. Doable, but not easy. Maybe there's a setting you can tune up. Minor issue A+ all the way. EB rules!

Good point. I guess some spare parts can't hurt. Usually this type of set I buy off eBay when someone sells it without instructions, without box for 30-50% of original cost.

Actually, the value of these extra pics is to show you how important marketing and box cover art are for selling a set. It looks quite nice on the box picture, with the background and ground backscreens. When you see what you get in the box as they show in the second batch pictures we just got, it's actually quite disappointing. Very HP-ish, and that black one-piece-wall-and-window is so hideous that ........ that...... that....... argh. words fail me. Oh well, the figs are great. I'll get them on eBay, and more money left over for creator sets.

Obviously a review written by a true KK3 lover. Well, young man, let me tell you about how we made castles in the old days..... from 1x2 and 1x4 gray blocks. Dem wuz the good ol' days. <cackles hysterically> :-P seriouly, thanks for taking the time to do it Athos. And for saving me $50. Well not really, since no new KK set has been on the shopping list here in a long time The one-piece wall with window should be banned. The whole thing looks like a JOONYERIZED Bat Lord Castle. And I remember that when I got that one, I thought..... bleh, how sucky.

Dacta has often provided very special sets that were not available from regular Lego retailers, and which have become very valuable. Like the big hospital set http://guide.lugnet.com/set/9364 This amazing control set (8 motors, 8 sensors) http://guide.lugnet.com/set/9751 Excellent pneumatic parts packs http://guide.lugnet.com/set/9604 http://guide.lugnet.com/set/9633 Great teaching cards and teachers guides, amazing parts packs you couldn't get anywhere else, etc. etc. It was always wildly overpriced, but if you could afford it, or get it at a bargain price on eBay, it was very good. The pneumatic stuff was amazing for me. The biggest problem was to get it from a dealer, because Lego never sold Dacta direct through S@H and retailers did not stock it. You could only get from educational supply dealers, and they were a pain to "deal" with. As far as I can tell, I can order stuff from legoeducation.com directly now, like S@H. If this is really true, it will be a great help for many people.

It's really quite excellent. I'm no expert on these things, and the fins may be essential for your character, but I can't help but think that you might want to drop the shiny fins on the head and dtrunk. The fig itself looks so good, so "real". But the fins make it clear that it is "home made". I'll forward to seeing some of the other characters coming our way.

Sweet Mother of Mercy!! X-D

All good points, I agree. It doesn't seem to me that they add up to the markup involved, which as far as I can tell is at historic heights with regard to the US/Canada. Our dollar has appreciated significantly in the past year against the US dollar, but they can surely accomodate within that type of timeframe. Given that they report in US$, and the USA$ is much weaker this year than in previous years, they may end up making a significant amount of extra US$ profit.

Yoda, how long does it take to do a minifig? I've been rubbing away here with Brasso for a few minutes, and not really getting anywhere.

The fact that LDD even came close in price is remarkable. If the markup is only a few bucks, I think people are much more likely to use LDD. Re: the quality of the sets on display... this is only the beginning. Think of it this way. Every year TLC releases 100 or so new system sets. Probably 10-20 are top sellers and generate real income. Now, all the AFOLs in the world can in theory make their own. Any size, withint the limitations of the bricks available of course. It only would take 2 or 3 really good sets that a whole bunch of people want to buy, to make this financially beneficial to TLC, assuming they are not losing money per set. If this catches on, TLC will have potentially thousands of master designers working for for them, for free. IF it catches on with the AFOLs. I have used the software, and its OK, not great. The part selection is OK, not great......

A unique set. For those that don't have it, or haven't built it, the whole back wall of the fort swings out as a single piece to permit access to the inside of the fort. Nothing is supplied for the inside of the fort, but that's not a problem really. While I like this set, it never quite reached the status of the "greats" for me. Dunno why. Good price, rich supply of nice figs, not a useless part in the set. No useless cart that drives up the price point but dosen't really add to the quality of the castle. It has everything that I want in a castle.... yet somehow.... I think if it had brown corner panels like 6079 it would have looked better (the black trees don't do it for me). It just doesn't seem impressive or detailed enough given that it was the crowning achievment (or at least the biggest set) of the Forestmen line. It could have been combined with Forestmen Crossing 6071 to make a a set that truly impresses, with 550 parts. Nothing stopping any from buying both, and doing it themselves, of course. That makes me want to cry :'-( $37.5 in 1988 = $62 in 2006. This is a 350 part set. I would judge that this is not very different frmo what we would get these days. The difference, of course, is the quality of this set and the number of good figs, which totally surpasses anything TLC has done with castles in the last 10-15 years.

Certainly Canadian prices do NOT include tax. On top of the 50% Lego markup I can then expect to pay 15% Canadian taxes. Usually I don't pay any on stuff I buy on bricklink or eBay. One more reason to reduce my S@H activity.

Actually, for as long as I can remember here they keep Lego and Megabloks beside each other. I have to say, I have never seen anyone buying megabloks. The lego stuff, especially Starwars, Xpods, cars, moves pretty well. Still, that's no justification for the pricing abuse. It does a lot to erode the good will people have towards the company. I presume Lego is not selling their sets at a loss in the US, so a 40-100% markup in other places in the world is hard to understand. I know they are just charging what they think the market will bear, but I am not sure they have a good concept of this right this moment. This pricing issue was not present last year. I am not sure why they are doing it now. Ignorance? Or ar they arrogant again already after one successful year? Oh well. If they are wrong I can expect to catch a lot of S@H bargoons. These days I am buried in work, have no time to build anything, and I have decided not to buy any new sets for now, with the expectation that I can get them on eBay or later on at S@H for 20-50% less. We will see if that works out.

Wow. Thanks. I think we have some Brasso somewhere in the house..... I'm off to hunt it down (as well as all those useless basketball backboards!!)

Have you tried this with trans-clear. i.e. when you are done, is it still trans, and clear? It would be awesome to get a bunch of clear walls from the useless basketball backboards. http://peeron.com/inv/parts/3754px6 (the pictured one is red, but most are clear).

Sets are now becoming available in Canada. The prices are uniformly 50% more in Canadian dollars than in US dollars, even though our dollar is 91% of the US dollar. %@&^#%! last year the differential was 20-40%, with our dollar 75% of the US dollar. , which was a bit reasonable. I know, it's even worse in Europe, and even more worse in Australia. But still..... it's shorter to drive across the border than to the nearest Lego store here (Bricks and Blocks, it's called). It's not that I can't afford it - I've been waiting a long time for some of these sets and haven't bought anytyhing new in several months, putting money aside. But I'm just offended at the abuse. >:-(

Count sneffie, you're making me cry :-( Technic last 3 years is the best it's been in a decade. I hope they are getting decent sales and keep it going. Do we have any hard information on this?