ShaydDeGrai

This is probably a terrible estimate as the plastic to air ratio is probably all over the map depending on the pieces in question, but the official Lego brick grab bags I pick up from time to time in the Lego Store are 1 quart zip bags and nearly always weigh just over a pound 1 pound and are about 3/4 full by volume. So if we were to top off each bag, that would add 1/3 again as much weight and at 4 quarts to the gallon that puts you at about 5 pound, 5 ounces but this is really a rough estimate as it really depends on which pieces are included and how tightly they're packed. I've got a short PAB cup full of 1x1 tiles that weighs over a pound all by itself. I could imagine a bucket filled with large, mostly hollow parts that don't mesh well, like boat hulls and roof turrets, would drive the total weight down. The best we can offer is a statistical guess, but even then there can be confounding variables. I once entered a contest to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar. I got the same jar, measured the volume, studied the packing density of jelly beans, came up with a statistical guess based on extensive calculations and utterly failed to account for the volume of the three spring 'snakes' the contest organizers had hidden in the jar to pop out of it when it was finally opened. Hopefully there aren't any snake surprises hidden in the eBay offering...

I enjoy microscale stuff and the Architecture line is one of my favorite themes but the mini-modulars don't really do that much for me. If I pick one up it will probably be more for the parts than the kit itself. It doesn't look like a _bad_ kit, it just doesn't scream 'buy me' when I see it. To each his own, I guess.

My first Lego set was #603 the Vintage Car. It was a gift from my "rich" aunt (the classic relative that tires to curry favor with other people's kids by giving gifts that the parents can't afford). I guess I was a cheap date because I enjoyed it so much and was so grateful that I soon got #600 Ambulance, #601 Tow Truck, and #620 Fire Truck. It was the start of a hobby that would last for decades, but was often financially beyond my means, often saving up for months to buy a single, small kit. The 1980's were particularly hard, as there were many, many sets that I wanted, but saving and paying for university consumed most of my budget. I finally had to take to avoiding toy stores so I wouldn't know what I was missing. This was my dark age. Other than the occasional gift, I was Lego-less (at least with respect to new sets) for about a decade. Then in 1996, I wandered into a Toys R Us and saw #8480 Technic Space Shuttle. By this time, I finally had a disposable income and while my friends were spending money on various vices, I'd yet to find a suitable well into which pour my excess income. I bought the shuttle, put it together that night and had more fun by myself than I'd had in years. That was when I decided to make up for a frugal childhood and modest Lego collection. I went back to Toys R Us the next week and walked out with a couple dozen or so more sets including one of each of all the Castle-Royal Knights, Technic, Aquazone and Pirates lines that they had in inventory. I've been hooked ever since. Obviously some lines have held more appeal for me than others and that disposable income I once had isn't as disposable anymore, but Lego is still my vice of choice.

Fantastic improvement. I'd buy your MOC over the official set any day. I've held off on buying that kit because it did such a poor job of capturing the character of the original, but your take on it is just great (I don't suppose you've got a custom instruction book and a parts list hanging around for those of us who'd like to follow in your footsteps )

Here, here! Back in the day I spent a fair bit of time on both sides of the curtain (and in the lighting net, the control booth, under the stage, in the limelight, in the carpentry shop, in the costume shop, etc.) and I'd love a theatre that actually respects the complex character of a real opera house rather than a simple auditorium with a raised platform in front. My dream theatre set would have: a costume, make-up and property rooms; a grand stage with stage elevator and trap doors, a working curtain, raisable backdrops, a lighting array and pass-thru; an auditorium with orchestra and balcony seating, and an orchestra pit; a control room/projection booth; and, of course, a stately lobby, lounge and classic exterior. Size (and therefore price), of course would be an issue, I could see a 'good' theatre starting at two full baseplates and being twice the size of this year's Town Hall. It wouldn't have the piece count of a Taj Mahal (simply because so much of it would be empty inside) but it would need a much bigger footprint than the typical modular to even play at being a true theatre. A cinema would be easier (having worked there as well) as it doesn't have nearly as much infrastructure going on and could certainly be made to fit in the typical Modular footprint. There's an old Art Deco movie house near me that might make a good model.

I'm not sure I can put a finger on a single "golden age" window, but for me, I think a key moment was the introduction of the pre-minifigure, the slab-like one with fixed legs and bumps on the sides of the torso for arms. There were a handful of sets, like the fire truck, police, and hospital that set in motion the age that was to follow with the minifigure as we know it today and all the themes that would grow up around it, Space, Pirates, Kingdoms, etc. The other defining moment, for me, was the launch of the Expert Builder line (that eventually became Technic). Again, like the pre-minifigure, I think this pre-dated any "Golden Age", but many of my favorite kits (particularly the Technic Space Shuttle, and the many generations of "super car") would never have been without that modest beginning. I guess in hindsight I'd give high marks to the ;ate 70's through mid 80's as a time when Lego was introducing lots of really great sets without being redundant or self-derivative; Technic took longer to come into its own and had a mini golden age of its own a decade or so later. Lego had something of a dark age around heading into the 21st century, parts got bigger, builds got simpler, and they relied on way, way too many specialized parts. Kits spent too much time trying to toys and not enough time being construction sets. I'm glad they've moved past that and have gotten back to what, in my mind, makes Lego Lego, and ushered in a Renaissance.

Ah willpower, or perhaps in this case won't-power. I used to have the problem that I could barely make it out of the store before I wanted to tear the box open, but I've since found a more mature way of dealing with such urges. I buy in bulk and try to savor the experience of each kit as I get to them. I think at the moment I have seven kits waiting to be opened and I was planning on ordering two more later today. Barring major economic calamity, I have no plans on ever reselling any of my kits; I just haven't gotten to them all yet. I like to keep kits on hand in part because you never know when you might need a little pick-me-up after a bad day at work or receiving some bad news, and Lego sets almost always improves my mood. Looking on a longer time scale, there are times when my taste in kits and TLG's offerings don't quite align. They might introduce dozens of kits that just don't do it for me. In these times, I need something to tide me over until the _next_ product roll-out in the hopes of more appealing future offerings. I have several sets I'm really looking forward to (like, pretty much all of the modular buildings - bought them all, haven't gotten around to building any of them yet ) I just need to find the time to work on them and the space to store them afterwards.

As a general rule of thumb, I keep things around, fully assembled, until unforeseen circumstances strike (cat pushes set off of table, wind driven curtain clears bookshelf, wife accidently bumps into Death Star II - doing more damage than Lando and company, etc.) Dropped, damaged or otherwise less than fully assembled models then undergo the quick litmus test of "do I feel like repairing/rebuilding this?" If so, fine, if not they get scraped for parts. My wife keep threatening to disassemble some of my models so I'll "have the fun of building them all over again" but sometimes I think she's just a little annoyed by the shear volume of display pieces I have lying around the house (plus in storage in the attic, basement and at my elderly father's home). Maybe I'm just a Lego hoarder, but I'd rather buy more parts and kits than take apart the ones I already have. Back when I was a little kid, I didn't have that option; every piece was precious and I'd build up and tear down on a daily basis (and saved all my instruction books in case I wanted to rebuild the original model again), now I'm just slowly amassing a collection for a my own private Lego Museum. As vices go, it probably not any cheaper than smoking, drinking or gambling, but it's a lot more fun and has fewer health risks.

All very good points, but I think of those as more sort of nods to source material not really "icons". Being iconic isn't really about getting the details right, it's about putting a thought into someone's head before they're even had time to think about what details should be expected. In my mind, it's a bit like the difference between the way TLG handled Star Wars versus Harry Potter. The Star Wars theme has a lot more "iconic" offerings where, taken completely out of context (nobody said it was Star Wars, there are no tell-tale mini-figures you just see the build), you instantly know what the source material was and it _makes_ you remember the films as a whole as well as individual scenes. The Harry Potter theme had more of the "if you remember this scene, you'll notice we included this detail" sort of offerings. Like Dobby's Release, yes there's a book and a sock and a little bit of a castle, but without Dobby and Malfoy and someone telling you it has to do with Harry Potter, it doesn't jump on a table and scream "I'm from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets!" The HP line really focused on the mini-figures (which is fine) and added touches so that someone who was looking for details to match a scene would be satisfied, but in my mind that's not "iconic" that's more a question of fidelity to the source. It's the same thing I find with the LOTR offerings to date; yes the details are there if I'm looking for them or willing to let my mind fill in the details ("oh... those are _supposed_ to be the fireworks, okay, I'll buy that...") but the whole point of icons is abstracting away details and still making an instant mental connection. If you read the scene in the book, watch the scene in the movie and then compare it to the kit, Weather Top has a lot of things going for it. If, out of the blue, you handed the model to someone who read the book 40 years ago, saw the movie 10 years ago and said "what is this?" Weather Top from the Fellowship of the Ring might not be their first guess, especially if they've seen/read lots of other fantasy/historic fiction and just see a ruin rendered in Lego. The same is true of Shelob, if I tell you it's her, you might look at it and say they did a great job with the eyes; if I just asked a stranger on the street to identify the model, most people would probably say "spider" - the shape is iconic because lots of people fear spiders and the model hits that dead on, but the LOTR connection is an afterthought. Put her next to Sam and Frodo, she becomes Shelob. Put the same model next to Ron, Harry and Hagrid, now he becomes Aragog (though careful observers might say the eyes aren't quite right). Pose it with a giant ape and some terrified explorers and you've got a scene from King Kong. Put it next to William Shatner in a bad monster movie and you have Kingdom of the Spiders. In contrast, you could build a Friends version of the Millennium Falcon in teal, aqua and pink with most of the surface detailing removed and people will still think Star Wars. I'm not saying the kits aren't good (I already own all of them and will be buying duplicates of some) I just think TLG could do better to really milk the LOTR theme for all it's worth; maybe with some UCS kits or scenes that really ARE iconic like the Witch King of Angmar and his Fellbeast versus Eowyn and Merry or Gandalf vs the Balrog at the bridge of Khazad Dum, take away the figures and you still have a fellbeast on a battlefield and a balrog on an arching bridge - those are more distinctly LOTR to me than a curved ramp and a postern gate on a castle. Even just Bag End with distinctive Hobbit architecture would be a vast improvement, in my book.

@ LEGO Historian: Main topic aside for a moment, those old box images really take me back (kinda like finding an old, beloved teddy bear after decades in storage). Thanks for that.

I'm going to have to go with the Mines of Moria. While build complexity and after build play-ability are major factors for any set (and many of these do quite well on this front; one of _MY_ key criteria for this particular theme is to take away all the mini-figures and see if what's left says "Lord of the Rings" . Most of the line failed this test. Only Moria and Helm's Deep really evoked anything that touched a LOTR nerve, and even then, Helm's Deep (as rendered) could really have been any old castle, there were just touches here and there that pointed in the direction of the original. Most of the sets really aren't much once you take out the mini-figures ("hey look, it's a cart that isn't even big enough for two people, yea!"). Shelob looks great (and is well priced) but how is she different than Aragog or any other giant creepy crawly? Don't get me wrong, I think they did a nice job with the figures (love the new horses) and I'll be picking up a number of duplicate kits for parts alone (nice colour palette, new SNOT brackets, stone textured 1x2's, new claw element, etc.) I just wish the sets themselves were a little more 'iconic' such that even without the figures you instantly think "hey that's from the Lord of the Rings!" not "Lego's come a long way from that old yellow castle I got when I was 5..."

Mind? Are you kidding? This is great. I may use it as wallpaper for my iPad. Thanks for sharing.

The White City, City of Kings, Capital of Gondor Continuing my series of Lord of the Rings micro-builds, I humbly offer my interpretation of Minas Tirith, the seven tiered city overlooking the Pelennor Fields and the banks of the the Anduin. The model is 32 studs square and about the same length in height if you count the very tip of the tower. It's something of a mega-micro-build in that it's made from a very large number of very small parts for it's size As this is relatively small model of an entire city, I tried to give it as much depth of detail as I could (unlike some of my other, more Architecture-like abstractions). I was shooting for something with a distinctly recognizable shape that would catch your eye from across the room and reward those who bothered to take a closer look with tiny archways, causeways and spires that make the a city feel more organic and alive than any single structure within it. This model has been taunting me for about ten years now (ever since I got a little Weta Workshop model with a boxed set of the movie. Creating seven tiers with concentric radii and just the right level of detail in a package that could still sit comfortably on a desk was a bit of a pain. One of my early attempts looked like a grey wedding cake with a cleaver sticking out of it. In the end though, I like how it finally came out. I hope you do too. If you like the look of this and would like TLG to make a kit so you can have one for yourself, please check out my Cuusoo page, I'd appreciate any support you can render. Comment and questions are always welcome. Thanks for stopping by.

There's no arguing that the US is a mass consumer economy. We'll throw large sums of money (even when we don't have it to spare) at just about anything. Since the Greenspan Era, as a nation, we've kinda forgotten how to save for the future - don't get me wrong, it's not all about immediate, ego-driven consumerism, the average American also gives a lot to charities, churches, relief efforts, etc. but then we've got money to burn, we usually spend it; when we see something we like, we find a way to buy it. And if one vender doesn't close the sale right away, someone else will. Unlike many parts of the world, it's not the sort of culture where you haggle over price and in big money deals where haggling is inevitable, (like real estate) we hire professionals to haggle for us. Unlike many pleasant shopping experiences I've had in small stores in Europe where the proprietor greeted me and made small talk, shopping at a megastore in the US is all about landing the sale and swiping the card with as little human interaction as possible. Now my family hails originally from Scotland so I'm predisposed to stretch a dollar a bit further than most, but I've got friends that need to replace their credit cards on a regular basis because the magnetic stripes wear out from overuse. We buy stuff, we buy stuff in quantity, and we love to get "a bargain." My mother would buy products we didn't even use because she had a coupon and didn't want to pass up on a good deal - that's probably why we donate so much to charities, we buy things we don't even want because we got a good price on it... So, in one respect I think part of the US pricing is factoring in what TLG will make up in volume, they might only make $5 on a given kit but they'll sell 50 of them for every kit sold in the UK and if the price were just a few dollars higher, half those sales would be buying video games or some fad-of-the-moment toy from Asia instead. Another thing that I think impacts US pricing is having national pricing in a large country with many diverse economies within it. In some parts of the US, the price of Lego sets, while not _cheap_, is not outrageous either. I went shopping yesterday and bought 1 weeks worth of groceries, $350, a tank of gas, $105, and bought myself an ice cream at the local malt shop $9.00 Last night my wife and I went out to a movie (with drinks and snacks), about $60. So, where I live, spending $130 on Helm's Deep is a drop in the bucket (or about 4 take-out lunches at work). In contrast, I know people in other parts of the country who bought their entire house for less than what I spend in a single year in interest on my mortgage payments. They can buy an entire meal for what I have to spend for a cup of coffee and for them $130 for Helm's Deep is an outrageous price to spend on a toy. In a logical world, maybe you could justify separate pricing for different regions of the US (jack up the price in NYC, Boston, Hawaii, Pacific Palisades, etc. slip the price even lower in the mid west, parts of the south, etc.) but the post Internet culture as a whole just won't put up with that, so vendors need to find a happy medium. No one said that it was logical or fair, but it is what it is, and if it weren't profitable for TLG, they wouldn't be doing it (I hope).

I honestly have no idea, but if Hasbro is half as diligent about protecting their copyrights, trademarks and signature logos as The Lego Group is, they may have objected to such an active posting at a site owned by a direct competitor. While many people mentioned in the comments that My Little Pony was a Hasbro property, the last time I checked the project page, the proposal itself did not openly declare it. As such, just as TLG doesn't allow anyone to a Lego logo in their proposal photos for fear that people will misconstrue as an endorsement of the product, Hasbro might have objected to their IP being posted in such a way as to suggest that TLG owed My Little Pony. As I said, this is pure conjecture on my part, but I know some blood sucking leeches, uh, I mean corporate lawyer types, and from they way they talk about cease and desist orders on intellectual property infringement, such a scenario would not surprise me at all.

A family of bricks that I've been lobbying for for a while now are Curve Builders I've got a proposal languishing over at Cuusoo but New Element projects don't tend to get much notice, and even if you do want to support them, the dialog sets a minimum price of 1 USD (which is 5 to 10 times what most new parts would actually cost/be worth). Anyway, the basic idea is to round the nose of normal 1x2 or 1x3 bricks radially to the centerline of the last stud to allow gently curving walls to be built for rounded battlements, architectural details, stud aligned hinges, etc. (There are some sample MLCad shots of the 1x2 half round-nose in action over here ) Although the proposal focuses in the 1x2 half round family (brick, plate and tile) I've also been experimenting with 1x2 full rounds (both ends rounded) and 1x3 full and half rounds (which gives more stability for staggering joints) I've build both virtual and physical models and I'm very happy with the results (though making the physical prototypes is enough of a pain that I'm giving serious thought to the idea of getting a 3D printer). I've found that my half round to traditional square ended brick will allow a little over 22 degree displacement off center and the round to round connections allow for very wide range of alignments (e.g. pentagons and hexagons of very tight diameters. Curve builder bricks allow for a much tighter curve than one can currently achieve by alternating 1x3 bricks with 1x1 rounds (the original inspiration for this project about 25 years ago when I first took a razor saw, model glue and a file to a couple of unsuspecting bricks and build my first prototype ). The new round nose design would be easier to manufacture than the current hinge plates that are commonly used today to mimic curves and implement bump-outs. As the studs of the round nose bits, effectively, are the hinge pins, there's no visible knuckle taking up space and the strength of the structure grows with the height of the wall rather than weakens (as in the case with sporadically hinged wall segments in currently Lego sets. I've wanted these things for years and manufactured a small handful, but I really wish TLG would start making them so I can just buy them in bulk. I don't envision my Cuusoo proposal ever getting anywhere near 10,000 votes (I just don't see a new Lego Brick going viral on Facebook the way Lego Shawn of the Dead or Lego My Little Pony did) but if you've ever been frustrated trying to render a tight curve with the current assortment of parts, please support the project (even if only to call to the attention of the Cuusoo folks that people DO care about new _parts_ in addition to new _sets_ they need better policies for handling New Element Proposals). And if you have questions or suggestions as to make my curve builders better or more versatile, I'm listening.

Speaking as one of the lucky ones - four stores within reasonable driving distance, the closest being 20 min away without traffic (and faster to crawl to on your knees during rush hours) - I think there are several additional factors that people haven't mentioned yet. In addition to _being_ located where there's a lot of local consumer traffic, I think TLG must also factor in how far potential consumers are willing to travel out of their way to get to get to them . I have relatives in Maine who think nothing of driving 300 miles to come down to Boston to catch a ball game or to "swing by" the malls to hit the Lego Store, the Apple Store, and numerous other direct marketing stores that consider Southern New England the end of the Earth when it comes to having a retail presence. In contrast, I know people that live in Lexington who complain about the traffic trying to get to the Burlington Mall (the two towns abut, you just need to cross the highway) and absolutely hate the idea of driving in towards the city Boston itself. I'm guessing TLG has figured this out because it seems like, although we have 4 stores in the greater Boston area, they're really situated in places that attract traffic from people coming in from Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut and the central and western parts of Massachusetts, but no store in Boston proper (probably because downtown rents are ridiculous and people in Boston are more willing to head out of the city than people from the suburbs are to go into it). Another point is that, at least in the US malls where I've been to Lego Stores, the store are located in the higher end malls with a fair number of Direct Brand Marketing (Apple, Sony, Omega, etc) not Kmark or Walmart or Target style discount superstores. In many cases they are the _only_ 'toy store' listed in the mall directory so they're not directly competing with any of their neighbors; and when parents need to bribe Johnny to quiet down after a long boring day of shopping, Lego is the only game in town. And speaking of competition, toy stores (at least in my area) have gone the way of bookstores. When I was growing up, they were everywhere, now even Toy-R-Us has folded up shop and moved on due to on-line retail competition and outrageous retail rental costs. Finally, and probably most importantly, Massachusetts has multiple store because, apparently, it can sustain them (in this regard I suppose you could call me an enabler...). My Lego store always has a line at the cash register and on multiple occasions has been sold out of high end kits like the Death Star and the SuperStar Destroyer. At 400-500 USD a kit, being able to sell these sets in quantity - in this economy - has to say something about the thought that went into choosing the store location.

Thanks! I know the CUUSOO proposal is a long shot - only 9,956 votes to go before TLG officially tells me that this isn't an appropriate kit for a six year old but until then I'll count every vote as a victory. Thanks again for your support and be sure to tell your friends ( I could use all the support I can get... ) And for those of you that have asked for better photos and/or something showing a mini-figure for scale, I'm putting together a new photo set of the Argonath complete with both figures and a couple mini-figures and I'll be sure to post it here when I'm happy with it. Thank you to all who have taken the time to look and comment on this guy.

"Then he saw that they were indeed shaped and fashioned: the craft and power of old had wrought upon them, and they still preserved through the suns and rains of forgotten years the mighty likenesses in which they had been hewn." -JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring. You'd think that after building, rebuilding and occasionally breaking The King of the Eastern Shore that creating the companion figure would be easier. As it turns out, the left hand ws the only part of the original design that ported over directly. The left foot was similar, but not exact and the head had to be explicitly reworked from scratch as there's not a lot of detail there and they keep looking like twins with one of them wearing a fake beard. I'm still not entirely happy with the beard. I've lost track of how many times I've torn off his head and rebuilt it, but I figure sooner or later you just need to step back and take in the whole thing rather than fixate on a dozen or so bricks. (But I reserve the right to rip his head off and try again later...) Like its companion piece, the King of the Eastern Shore stands roughly two feet tall. I've totally lost track of the piece count at this point but despite being mostly hollow, it weighs more than Olie the Dragon but less than the Statue of LIberty so I'd guess it would break into several thousand parts were I to drop it. The hilt and right hand proved particularly tricky. I had one prototype that I really liked, but them I realized that the hand was bigger than my own and if I'd kept going at that scale the statue would stand over eight feet tall, so I had to think smaller. In the end I had to sacrifice a lot of detail (and fill it with more SNOT than a kindergarten class in cold season) but I think it hit the essential forms. I'd imagine that this must be what it would be like to sail past this monolith in the early morning with the rising sun gleaming on the hewn and polished stone. Now that I've got this one done I think I'll be reworking the first one (again) to make them look a hair more like a set. Once that's done, I'll post some fresh photos of the two of them together to get the full effect. In the mean time, if you like what you see and would like TLG to produce Ultimate Collectors Series kits along these lines, please support my proposal over on Cuusoo. Thanks.

I'm a middle aged engineer and former professor with no kids of my own, so I'm a bit on the opposite end of the consumer spectrum than andythenorth. When I buy a kit it's usually for the build experience, so I favor detailed models made from lots of small, generic parts, preferably with a clever dash of SNOT here or there. The Emerald Night was right up my alley. I bought several of them. I justified it by telling myself that one was for display, one was to motorize and one was for customization/parts, but in the end it might have been just to get extra passenger cars. I tend to favor steam engines over more modern designs as I think they inherently have more character to them but there's still something to be said for offerings like the 10020 Santa Fe Super Chief, the 10133 Burlington Northern and the 10219 Maersk engines. Marketing-wise, I have to say that the "My Own Train" line really drew me in. I hadn't done much with Lego trains in years but that line of sets got me to open my wallet and start laying down track again. Again, I like the brick-built nature of the rolling stock and engines (the general lack of oversized, specialty parts found in many of the City trains), the level of detail (I've seen better, but for a kit, not bad) and the "pick and choose" nature of being able to buy engines and cars individually. As an AFOL, there wasn't a lot to complain about (I wish they'd do the same with some of their recent bundled rolling stock). That said, I can appreciate where andythenorth is coming from, the lower-end, play-centric, complete train kits serve a very important purpose; not the least of which is giving parents the chance to bond with their kids while doing something creative and (speaking as an engineer and former teacher) educational. Besides, the more kids we get interested in Lego Trains today, the more AFOLs ( demanding the high-end, complex-build, detailed kits that I love) there'll be tomorrow.

Excellent review. Thanks for sharing. The protruding clock faces have been a sore point for me ever since I saw the first photos to come out of the toy fair (I'm one of those die-hards who'd gladly pay more for a slightly larger model with recessed faces) but now I think I'll pick this one up anyway; other than the top of the tower, it looks like a fine addition to the line.

I think the key to drawing in the non-Lego LOTR fans is to release sets that go well beyond the current array of "mini-figure play set" kits already announced. Mini-figures are great collectables, don't get me wrong, but I just don't see them sustaining or growing a product line with a new audience. It's just a matter of time before things go the way of the Harry Potter line - Lego fans get a bunch of redundant figures and sell off the excess on Brick Bay or eBay (A non-Lego friend of mine got Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Hagrid, Snape, and Dumbledore from eBay for $12 plus postage). The secondary market does little for TLG's bottom line. If Lego wants to draw in the LOTR desk toy crowd, they should think seriously about non-minifigure-centric kits. Over on Cuusoo I've proposed a LOTR Architecture-Style line of micro-buids. I've got a MOC tower or Orthanc (Isengard) model on my desk at work and a LOT of people (none active Lego fans) have asked me if its a kit because they love LOTR and the tower looks cool (but mature) sitting on a desk in an engineering department. I think the subject matter also lends itself to an Ultimate Collectors Series targeted at AFOLs (i.e. more complicated sets for people with more disposable income) with architectural builds akin to the Taj Mahal or Tower Bridge kits. I've been working on a MOC sculpture of the Argonath, and based on the number of times I've built, re-built, redesigned and just generally driven myself to wonder why I call this a hobby, _I_ certainly would have paid several hundred dollars per figure to get ones that looked good right out of the box (some assembly required )

I'll sometimes fiddle around with a few sub-assemblies inside either LDD or ML-CAD just to get my mind working on the problem without randomly rummaging through bins of parts trying to figure out what best matches the shape I'm shooting for. I use the virtual results as a shopping list to ensure that I have plenty of _potentially_ useful parts on hand. In the end, however, it almost always comes down to fiddling with actual parts - seeing how they look, feeling how well a SNOT idea holds together when clattering along at ridiculously non-scale speeds over flex track, etc. Maybe I'm just a bit old-school (the irony being that I have a Ph.D. in Computer Science and an extensive background in data visualization, 3D CGI and Virtual Reality) but I just find nothing produces a better finished product (for me) than the tactile and visual feedback of tinkering with a tableful of physical parts - building, evaluating and rebuilding as I go. Besides, the tinker approach invariably means that I buy lots of parts that I don't ultimately use in the finished model so my collection of parts on hand just always seems to go up.

I think a lot really depends on what TLG decides to _do_ with the LOTR line. The kits announced so far are pretty much giving it the Harry Potter treatment - lots of great minifigures but not a lot of sets that make any sense _without_ minifigures. I'm really holding out for more of the Star Wars treatment (UCS line, mini and micro scale builds in addition to mini-figure play sets and battle packs). There's so much to the LOTR that could make great sets that have nothing to do with mini-figures. I've got a two foot tall pair of Argonath statues monopolizing my desk at the moment. I've done micro builds of Orthanc and Helm's Deep and am working on Minas Tirith. I'd love to have a UCS-sized Barad Dur or Black Gate that looks good sitting next to my Taj Mahal, Tower Bridge and Super Star Destroyer. Minifigure play sets are fine (and I'll buy them all, I already know that) but Middle Earth is just such a fantastic world filled with building and sculpting opportunities that I'm going to be terribly disappointed if all TLG does is revisit old Castle and Kingdoms ideas with LOTR names, minifigures and loosely recognizable settings. On the other hand, the castle line (and its descendants) was all about the figures and the fortifications and I think that's GREAT. It was exactly what it needed to be nothing more and nothing less. Castles were for _my_ imagination to run wild in a world _I_ created, not to recreate a world of someone else's imagination. I guess I'm saying that, unless TLG comes out with LOTR UCS kits and LOTR "Architecture-style" kits, I'd have to give the edge to the castle line - even in the days of bright yellow bricks and simple boxes pretending to be battlements, the castle line never failed to live up to my expectations.

That is one fine looking engine. Great job!