Faefrost

Is it just me, or is this sorta kinda one of the least Star Warsy Star Wars ships they have ever made?

They have not made any sets of those to date, although there are some nice MOCs out there. The best hope we might possibly have for seeing a set is either EA revives the series as part of their SW game contract, or Filoni and company sneak the Moldy Crow and crew into the Star Wars Rebels series, the way they have with some other classic EU ships.

The mech is kinda interesting. I've been kind of mixed on Chima. Some sets have really grabbed me while others have left me flat. The mech in this one is great. I'm not as thrilled with the Minifigs as I thought I would be. I was hoping that the Gorillas would lend themselves more towards MOC'ing. But the heads and torsos seem a little overly printed for that and a little too cartoony. I was kinda hoping for the stuff of Planet of the Apes.

When a site moves it sometimes takes a few hours for the DNS changes to fully propagate out across the Internet. So it may be working for some, but not all. I would not be surprised if the new site offers a mechanism for better seller visibility. I would guess that that is something the BL sellers would desire. But I can't see where banner adds or outside adds would be beneficial to them. BL is a commercial service. They make money off the transactions with BL sellers. It would be like EBay putting up ads to Amazon. If anything I would expect to start seeing more banner ads for Bricklink popping up on other Lego themes sites.

The Tie Crawler is certainly on the list. It's a good looking and intriguing distinctive display piece. There is just no way to pick it up or actually play with it, without the whole thing flopping around wildly.

Hopefully if nothing else he new ownership will bring some security upgrades and improvements.

It changed back in the early 70's. the change corresponded to the time when Ambulances, privately owned vehicles mainly just for simple transport, and often owned and operated by private hospitals and funeral homes, transitioned to become true Emergency Medical Services and a branch of the civil Emergency Services. (If you have ever seen the old American TV show "Emergency", that show not only documented this transition in Los Angeles, but actually became a mechanism that drove the transition worldwide). The actual symbol that Ambulances used to use was an orange cross on a square background. Similar but not identicle to the Red Cross symbol. But close enough that there were questions about its use. The use of the Red Cross emblem is governed in part by the Geneva Convention and there was some potential conflict or issue in using it for civil emergency services. The new Star of Life was created by the US NHTSA and Department of Transportation. It is an official symbol that designates a certified emergency medical vehicle or provider, and in theory requires some degree of certification to display. It was designed to be both distinct, highly visable and to reflect the professional medical nature of the services provided. The use of this symbol to designate Emergency Medical Services has since spread world wide. Lego actually gets the use of the symbol entirely wrong more often than not. The Symbol exclusively designates EMS services. Ambulances, EMT's, etc. it will never be found on a Hospital except possibly on a small sign telling the Ambulances where to park. Hospital personnel, Doctors, Nurses etc will pretty much never display the symbol. The only exception might be if the hospital is one that hosts a regional EMS Medical Control Center.

Given that Lucas has said that he openly avoided reading any of the post RotJ stories, be it books or comics, and i don't believe JJ Abrams has looked that way as well, I think it is pretty much a given that most of it will no longer be direct cannon.

They seem to try and do a mix of such sets. But there is no mistaking that the distinct unique or wanted Minifigs drive set sales. Some sets are very much Minifigs plus some basic meh thing for them to do. Others are much more focused on the set itself. The Sail Barge, Jedi Defender, Republic Gunship, Jedi Defender and ATTE seem to be the standouts in terms of actual focus on the set. And yeah they are also the pricey ones. Although to be fair, it is not always limited to the upper end. There were some surprisingly good little sets at the lower price points in this last wave. A Wing, Clone Walker and Barc speeder come to mind.

Great review, and thanks for the look at the ship. This one is high on my list. And to help clear up some Jedi confusion. For purposes of the SWTOR game Jedi Knight is not a rank. It is a role or character class. Jedi Consulars are Jedi scholars dedicated to soft arts. Healing, research and knowledge. Jedi Knights are the more combat focused members of the order. Offensive and defensive warriors. Either group may be Masters.

I like the speeder. I've been trying to work out how to do one of those to go along with my hot rigged speederbike. That's nicely done. I would love to see some better pics of it.

TOS has some of the best stories. But it is that earlier style of scifi. Basically a stage play. So it can look a little dull today. It benefited from some great character chemistry. TNG Solid cast, wonderful chemistry. At its best in the mid seasons. 3 to 6. By the end was getting a little repetitive. Probably the most universally liked Trek series. Ends almost perfectly. DS9 My personal favorite. The only non "Ship Show" it focused on life in the 23rd century. Life in or near the Federation. A huge cast with some great points of chemistry. And even larger recurring and supporting cast. Politics, Intrigue, War, Mysticism. And the best ending of any ST series. Particularly noteworthy is DS9 characters changed and grew and had full character arcs. Just good stuff. ENT Actually not a bad show. The beginings were slow and cheesy retread stories. Once they got Berman and Braga out of there and the actual Trek Writers took over it became fantastic. The 4th season was some of the best ST ever put on screen, excepting the nauseatingly bad last episode. Watch the 4th. Skip the rest. VOY ZzzzzzzzzzzzzzZzzzzzzzzzzzzzZzzzzzzzzz Sorry I know this incarnation has fans. I just don't know why. The show had 2 or 3 good characters. Paris, The Doctor, Harry Kim and Tuvok, and a whole lot of really really bad or boring. (The rest) The stories were just awful, and rarely had to do with their plight. Their plight made no sense. Capped off with the absolute worst ending of any ST show. (beating out even ENT's ending, which takes some doing).

She could pass for Mara Jade. But the age doesn't seem to match up with Mark Hamill? It will be interesting to see who or what she is.

You're not 9. LotR's are really targeted at older kids and AFOLs. Castle is targeted at the kids. I know I have said it before, but LotR's is not a licensed replacement for the Castle IP. It never has been ( and it differed from PotC vs Classic Pirates in this regard.) LotR and The Hobbit are replacing the Harry Potter theme and it's target audience.

I think those coupons were only on the catalogs sent to people within a certain distance of Lego Brand Stores.

What does the shared border have to do with pricing? Germany is Lego's largest single worldwide customer by size and population. Just simple rules of economics from that should be reducingprices to German customers. They get more individual sales for the same flat fixed costs. And what are the fixed costs for Germany vs those for Holland? What are the comparative fuel costs? Real estate costs? Labor costs? Costs of credit for a given supply chain? Hidden or pass through taxes? The problem isn't that German prices are lower than other European nations. If anything there should be a greater disparity. Germany's pricing should be much closer to US pricing just from looking at sales volumes. The fact that its not is more likely an indication that German sales are being used to buffer the rest of the Euro zone. What's the old saying "Germany is too small for a continent and too big for Europe"? The pricing is just an outward manifestation of that same effect.

That's a good looking fig. Although with that face and hair it almost looks more like Captain Jack.

My only suggestion is that you not use those horrid LDD backgrounds when generating pictures for presentation. They distract and overwhelm the projects, and almost guarantee that it will be glanced over by a good number of people browsing CuuSoo. Either pull the pictures from the build screen where you get a nice clean white background, or loop the build through LDD2POV to generate a nice rendered image.

Not entirely true. GA has no state sales tax. It is all by county, city or town or in a few cases regional (Marta taxes). And it varies throughout the State. If you buy from the Sugarloaf store it is 6%. Alpharetta is 7%. Phipps Plaza is 7% + an extra 1% City of Atlanta. In theory S@H might have to charge you if you lived within the tax area of one of those three stores. But in practice no online merchant goes to the local level like that. (Not trying to be a know it all. I just live in GA like you, and worked out where Lego is cheapest.)

Europe normally gets the Star Wars sets a month before the US. It balances out. We seem to get the LotR stuff before them.

There is no national sales tax in the US. Up until last month online merchants were only required to collect sales taxes for states and localities that they had a physical presence in. So if amazon had a warehouse in NYC they would have to apply the sales tax to NYC customers, but not to South Carolina ones. The US Congress just passed a law to change that and force online merchants to collect sales taxes for all states, but there remains some doubt as to whether such a law will pass court challenge. Prior court decisions seem to indicate that the court might find the extension of a states power to compel another states merchants to collect their taxes to be a gross violation of the commerce clause. Which is really supposed to prevent just that. Published pricing in the US does not reflect sales taxes. Those are added in at checkout. Sales tax will carry wildly by state or municipality (with NYC being the highest.)

Possibilities A. Lego hates you and expresses that hatred via higher pricing B. actual economics, the combined forces of currency, local demand, fixed costs of doing business, taxes tariffs and governmental policies all combine to make the costs of doing business higher in your locality, and this is then reflected in higher pricing to the consumer. Oh and just to add some flavor to the pot. Pretty much every country that Lego sells directly into is a member of the WTO. As such TLG cannot use the profits in one region to subsidize or drop bellow fair market value the pricing in another. They can't subsidize US prices from German sales. They can't subsidize Australian prices from US sales. The different regions have their own internal accounting and pricing.

The starting point will be the hair from the CMF Dsco guy. The main problem will be the fathers torso design. It doesn't exist as a minifig. The closest thing to it would be Dereth from the Ninjago TV series, who has also never been made as a real minifig. But you may be able to find some decal templates out there for him and recolor them to make Lindo.

Anything that starts with a 10 xxx is almost always an in house Lego exclusive. So Lego stores and s@h. 75025 will be a store exclusive. Probably TRU. They tend to like the pricier ones.

A few. Stuff like making a different Jedi's ETa 2 or Aethersprite 1B. Whick are fairly simple swap outs of just a few plates. I've also been contemplating what would be needed to convert the horrid red SWTOR Republic Striker to a more correct Light Grey with red markings. I've never tried anything quite as involved as your gunship project.