gylman

Wow, that is a good deal! Wish they had it here..... :-( <coughspamcough>

How does a company listen to text? Anyway... Is there any picturs of this updated Ice Castle, because I'm obviously dying to see it! Well, I have this foolish notion that there is at least one Lego employee in marketing who trolls these fan web sites, and tries to get the pulse of hte community and what people want. The need for more female figs is a consistent theme across many sites over the past few years. Not ending the great Adventurers theme is another..... *sing*

My two girls now aged 6 and 8 outgrew Belville in about a year, and now play only with System. Constant complaint about lack of female figs. Not even a nurse in the hospital as was discussed recently. They LOVE my Paradisa sets. This is one area where Lego has failed to listen to users in the last couple of years. It's a circular argument. Boys are mostly the target audience, so the need for female figs is less. However, if they want to get some more girls into it..... then get the female figs first. Seriously, how much can it cost to paint a set of lips and put a long hair wig into the set, or shudder to think, just throw in an extra female fig. A theme with strong female charcters, like Adventurers, would be ideal. Make a female villain, or make the female hero (Pippin Read) bring alone her two sisters (Flippin Read and Drippin Read) to beat the bad guys on one or two of 6-8 sets they make for each release. Orient expedition would have been ideal, but they only used one female character, Jing Lee, and that was it. Still, that fig is very popular both at my home and on eBay. ARE YOU LISTENING TLC? <end rant mode> oh yes... and no freakin' fleshies please.

I think the bloodthirsty grin is higly appropriate for an inquisition taskforce out to hunt down some heathens or apostates. Size is a personal issue :-) Some say size doesn't matter Others think size is more important than quality I will let the admins judge the importance of size to them :-P

By the way PHes, your sig picture is beautiful. Too big, mind you, since I find those things just distract me when reading a thread, but regardless it is the nicest sig picture I have ever seen anyone make at EB.

Except Phes' has red lips. That's why it looks so....... different. Maybe the red lips are an artifact of making a 100x100 sized avatar, mixing a thin black line and a yellow face. And yet, my avatar does not that have effect. OH, THE MYSTERY OF IT ALL!!! EDIT: OH, it does not look red on Phes' screen!!! This has more twists and turns than the Da Vinci Code. We need to start a poll of this. Who sees it red vs black vs other. Quickly!

Entertaining, to be sure, and thanks for your efforts. Yet they somehow leave me wanting more - like those 10 second movie trailers that show a flash of action, something blowing up, but I have no idea what the movie is about.

I've never seen a Johnny Thunder head that looked like that!! Crikey! What set is that from??

Actually.... regarding your avatar, Phes. There are some issues there All comments about my new avatar and signature can be made in the Mister Phes's new Signature & Avatar thread.

Phes - your avatar looks freaky! What's up with that. Did you PAINT on some lips? He look rather... well... unmanly (if I must put it diplomatically). Is this a recent change. When did he start playing for the other team?

Enjoyed that! Thanks.

I agree - both the castle and the boat were too empty. It looks great on the picture, but once built.... you have to add much from your own collection to make it look really cool. That may not be an issue for AFOLs with 200,000+ bricks sitting around, but for the average buyer it will be.

MattZ - another fast and reliable transaction, #2 for us.

My speculation is that the Vikings was a "trial balloon". They didn't commit too much production capacity to it, not knowing if it would be worthwhile. The 2006 sets have nothing new except the freaky wheels, frankly they are pretty ordinary, so they did not require further committment from TLC. Their role is just to keep us awake and Vikings on our minds, in case they continue the line. I have no inside info re: time it takes from market planning to release of sets, but I vaguely recall that from the "Behind the scenes tour" were there not some "secrets" even in early 2005 that we learned about only 6 months or more later? And even these "secrets" probably took months and months from market planning to manufacture of prototype sets. These Viking set were announced a few months ago, not 6 months after TLC released the original vikings. There is no way they could have known about success or failure of the initial launch when they planned these follow-up sets. The vikings were a pleasant surprise to all of us, but I don't see how they can make a "real" line out of them, like KK, or Alpha Team, or Batman - none of which i like anyway. The fact that they have no cartoons, no interactive play on the web site, none of the usual Lego marketing tools, tells me that they do not have a big future. I predict they will see released in 2007, some decent sets, and then disappear into history, Bricklink and eBay.

The sets we seen now were planned 12 months ago, at least. At the time they did not know where Vikings would go. If Vikings was truly a success that they wish to follow-up on, then we will see a full complement of sets in 2007, not 2006.

I think "hit" would be a relative term. They probably sold them all, but the total numbers made I believe were quite small in comparison to more mainstream sets. They were in my TRU once, filled the shelves, and after the shelves were depopulated, they were never restocked. The real success of a line is how it does over a period of several months on the shelves. However, the 2005 financial statement did specifically mention that Vikings were a hit, so I predict they will push further with this line.

Right. And all of the ranting raving hating masses of the world are going to look at this poster on whose meaning even we cannot agree, and come together in sweet harmony. Another UN triumph.

Symbol for prejudice!! Our poor innocent, playful, colourblind, non-violent, "play well", LEGO brick. Now a symbol for prejudice. Thank you United Nations. *n* :-X (sorry, I could not add non-sexist to our Lego brick, since Lego clearly is sexist >:-( ). Maybe next time we can have some feminist poster using the brick :-X )

That's just weird. Lego is an oasis of innocence and sanity in a world of evil and crazy people. I vote for keeping the politics out of Lego, and Lego out of politics.

Please go ahead. Reviews are not just for buying currently available sets. Pretty much anything can be bought on eBay or Bricklink. And I routinely build sets from parts if they loook like they will be fun. Review ahead. Good review are one of the things that sets EB apart from the rest of the fan sites.

I found EB from BZpower also, when they linked to some breaking news story that EB had scooped.

It is human nature to want to build something out of nothing, whether to create something beautiful, or useful, or to keep alive a memory, or see if something is simply possible. Lego is simply the best tool for the job. Looking at the elements of flexibility, durability, practicality (which includes issues of cost, storage, ease of obtaining) and attractiveness. That's why Lego has survived Mecanno, Lincoln Logs, and the various other imitation bricks. You guys can all wax sentimental all you like. My feeling is that Lego has tapped into an intrinsic part of human nature (not present in everyone, but present in many of us), and has simply been most successful in satisfying that need.

I keep boxes for almost all sets. The only ones I don't are ones I got for parts and have multiple copies of. It does become a storage issue, though.

Excellent SNOTed Zaku. I can never build stuff that small that looks proprotional. And the colour scheme is just right. Dang! This has been here for almost 2 weeks and no one has commented on this beauty? Not fair. One of hte best small mecha I've ever seen. Gyl

Now that's detailing! Nice work indeed.