CP5670

I was on the fence with this set earlier, but you have certainly convinced me to buy it. It has a lot more functionality than I thought and it's an unusual concept too. I love the 4-way control stick mechanism, which as you say hasn't been seen since 8855 and a few of the helicopters. The H pieces seem rather pointless and specialized to me. That kind of shape can be created easily with studded bricks. The T beams and 9 axles on the other hand would be very useful, and the new panels are also pretty nice.

This sounds really extreme. Those must have been fairly big models if the mice could actually enter them. If you're referring to house centipedes (big, long legs, very fast despite their size), I hate those things too. They have been in my parents' house for many years. My bedroom (which used to contain all my Lego) was the only place in the house where they weren't around, although they occasionally just came in through the door. The good thing is that there is nothing of note in my current apartment. I occasionally see these small brown bugs, but they are rare.

Are the cracked cheese slopes from any particular year or set? I haven't seen any problems with mine but you seem to have a number of bad ones, so I'm wondering if they might be limited to specific years or colors. Nice observations. Some of the issues you mentioned (headlight bricks and transparent round plates) are actually still present today, although they have improved since the 80s. The differences between minor part revisions like the open/closed studs definitely varied with the set location, and probably also depended on the theme. The bricks with molding marks on the side lasted up to 1989 at least in certain themes. I have many such bricks from City and Technic sets from that year. As for the 1x1 clip plates, I think they moved away from ABS again at some point in the 90s, in order to make them stronger. The last few revisions of those clips, including the current ones, don't seem to be made of ABS. I'll add the road signs to the list, as those have been brought up many times before.

The red differences really do stand out, especially the 1x4 plate in the second picture. This is in line with the red we have seen over the last two years. I hope they are just using older stock of bricks for that model. Does anyone here have red sets from the last few months and can give their thoughts on that color? As I said earlier, the recent red I have looks pretty good, but I have too little of it to tell for sure. I think the light blay issue is different, at least in those pictures. Those actually look like old light gray pieces that were used by accident. It's not uncommon to see slight building mistakes in preliminary images like this. [edit] Never mind, just saw your edit. It looks like I was right.

I was wondering about that too. The monorail motor isn't that powerful in my experience and can't handle much more than the standard two-car setup while going up ramps. This is extremely cool in any case.

I would be very surprised if a manufacturer actually has any authority to block sales, in any country. Once you buy a product, you own it and you are free to resell it if you want. There is plenty of legal precedent for this, and TLG couldn't shut down ebay and Bricklink sales even if they wanted to (which itself is unlikely in the extreme, as they generate business for TLG). I have not gotten any such email, so it seems to be something limited to Europe. I still have big doubts over whether the thing is genuine though. I have received spoof ebay emails including my username many times in the past. Check the petition link and see if it takes you to a site under the ebay domain.

This game has become my favorite title in the last three or four years, despite having an immense number of problems. It has the gameplay and level design of an FPS along with the content and nonlinearity of an RPG. The game reminds me of Deus Ex in many ways (which I still consider to be the best FPS of all time), with more content although a much weaker plot. The attraction of the game is the side quests though. The main quest storyline often makes no sense and there has been enough said about the silly ending. However, from looking over the Fallout wiki many of the story and universe issues were carried over from the first two games. I don't think the Fallout universe was ever meant to be entirely plausible or realistic. I was originally getting a lot of crashes, but they mostly disappeared after using the microstutter fix discussed here. This has other side effects though. This game is much better on the PC since you can use mods and console commands. I increased the weight limit and the amount of money sellers had, as I was spending too much time making trips to collect stuff and finding people to sell it to.

I actually like the wheels better the default way, with the recessed side visible. I adjusted the wheels on 8865 to look like that. I've seen the nuts used like that to make linear actuators, but as you said the axles are too fragile to allow for much power. On a side note, anyone who has this set on display may want to see the note about the old pneumatic tubing here. I'm pretty sure that all copies of this set use the old tubing.

That would be great as far as I am concerned. It means less demand for the things I want. I have no problem with the kids myself and they can occasionally add a lot to these events. There was a 12 year old kid last year (who is on the front page of the site) who had a remarkably large and detailed ship next to my Blacktron carrier. It looked like an AFOL creation and was certainly miles ahead of anything I built at that age. If I simply want to converse with friends, I would arrange something with a few select people of my choice anyway, not the entire Brickfair attendance.

And by the same logic, the consumers have a right to "rant and rave" about the price increases on private forums like this one. I wouldn't expect any explanation from the company, but I do expect to hear about such things from other consumers. That being said, if it's only limited to the single $3.50 item in the OP, I wouldn't worry about it. It's still an impulse-priced item either way. I don't think there has been any increase in their production costs. In fact, TLG has engaged in a wide range of cost cutting moves over the last three years. They simply want to increase their profits, and they believe that the slightly higher prices will not deter most people from buying them.

I liked the original Alpha Team a lot. My favorite set is the 6773 helicopter. Ogel's bomber craft in 6776 is very nice too, although the base is somewhat lacking. The later Deep Sea and Arctic lines were largely forgettable though, except for a few of the Ogel subs. As someone said earlier, the comics were a nice touch too. Agents has some great models like the command truck, but I like the original Alpha Team color scheme better, especially their colored windscreens.

They might just tell you to keep it. That happened to me once many years ago, when I bought one 8466 from S@H (a $120 set) and got two of them. It often costs big companies more to take the item back and restock it than to just let the person keep it.

I wait until the MOC is completely finished (which can take anywhere between a few days to multiple years). I don't care about keeping anything a secret, but it takes so long to set up and take good pictures that it isn't worthwhile to photograph unfinished models, except in cases where I abandon the project halfway through.

This problem seems to have been solved in recent years. See the entry on stickers here. If this is no longer an issue, white paper stickers are probably better. Clear paper stickers are more durable, but lighter colors such as white and yellow don't look good on them and air bubbles in them are much more visible.

I think what I did was better for this reason, although more time consuming. I didn't need to touch the minifig at all while cutting the ring. On the other hand, it's not so easy to cut the pinhole on the minifig and removing it would leave a big hole there anyway. I just left it there on that fireman. The flaky chrome is simply a matter of prolonged use rather than heat or time. Some more details on it are here.

It stood for Building Instruction Tool. I think it actually streamed the content from the Lego site, so it probably wouldn't work today even if anyone still has the program. Thanks for the box pictures. As I remarked earlier, this set had a cool and unique box design.

It looks like that guy pulled on it and the metal loop just broke off? I would have thought that needed some kind of metal saw. Maybe I'll try doing that on this fireman. I can probably live with the screw head. It's the chain that I want to remove. You can't really have a minifig wandering around your city with a long chain dangling from their head. Update: I just tried it out and a metal loop did break, but it was the one on the other side. However, I used a wire cutter instead and after a few minutes of work I was able to break the loop on the minifig head. I can finally use this fireman for something now.

So do you get this thing with any S@H order over $75? They really should have made it a normal minifig. It would make a perfect statue. Is there any simple way to remove the keychain from it? I got a fireman keychain a while ago for free, but haven't used it for anything. My keys are too bulky and numerous as it is, and I don't want to add more stuff to them that I would have to carry around. On the other hand, the keychain part makes it useless as an actual minifig for use in MOCs.

5150 Lego, I think you're just escalating the issue now. The thread was reopened, and as far as I'm concerned the matter was resolved in a good way.

Black hole gang? Maybe they are sitting behind me right now. Notice the "M-Cola, the magnetic beverage" sign at the beginning, and Squidman doing his laundry later on. Pure brilliance.

Thank you. And that's certainly fair enough. As I said earlier, I actually understand and agree with your motivations for the rules. I have nothing against the rules themselves. Since Lego is ultimately meant for kids, EB is more susceptible than most forums to attracting a lot of kids who fill the place with pointless posts because they don't know any better. I think there was one case of that just yesterday, and it seems to have been dealt with quickly. However, it should also be kept in mind that having overly strict rules (which I don't think is the case right now!) can lead to a bad overall atmosphere. People taking a fun hobby too seriously was arguably one of the things that led to the rifts in Lugnet's community. As 5150 Lego said, it also leads to many members agreeing with moderators just because they want to be seen as staying in line, not because they actually support the moderators' point of view for rational reasons. In fact, there is some evidence of that in this thread alone. The balance between fun and order on a forum is difficult to achieve, but I think what you are doing right now is a good compromise.

I think you are missing the point of our complaint. It isn't about 1337speak, bad English, or any such things. It is about whether that particular thread should have been locked. The thread was a discussion about immature posting, but it did not actually consist of such posting. That's good to know, but you realize that you could simply reopen the thread if you think one of you made a mistake.

That isn't even the point. I agree with you on this. But it was still no reason to lock that thread. Did you read the later posts in the thread? People were giving reasonable opinions on why they agree or disagree with the rules. I didn't see any whining there. For the record, I am a global moderator on a much larger forum (although not Lego related) and we certainly have no problem with people voicing complaints as long as they remain civil about it.

Yeah, closing that thread was quite unwarranted. It was a perfectly civil discussion about an important topic, even if you (like me) didn't agree with the original poster's views. I have no problem with the newly posted rules and I see what the administration is trying to accomplish with them. On the other hand, there is a lot of precedent within the AFOL internet community for what he is complaining about, so we do need to be careful with it.

Some interesting mechanisms are visible there. Notice that in part 7 of 8258, they achieved two independent geartrains on the turntable by having a transmission ring with the dark gray 16-tooth gears on both sides, which is basically the same thing as the differential assembly I referred to earlier. I never thought of doing it this way since the transmission rings are more rare and expensive than differentials, but it will work equally well. I think this makes the cheap, non-motorized winch design more excusable, since adding a third geartrain in there would have required new pieces and some very complicated gearing. On the other hand, it shows why pneumatics would have been better than LAs on this model, which would make it relatively easy to motorize the winch.