Hey Joe

Which motor and what type of batteries (normal or rechargeable)?

Thanks for the photos of the 'Tobees' Annie, I've not been to the store in awhile and haven't seen those here yet. The HUGE market I like to browse in is way down south so it's a bit of a struggle to get down there. I'm looking forward to your review of the BanBao train set. What did you pay for that, can I ask? It's about US$ 50 in the stores here in Beijing and less than that online ($ 35 maybe, I forget). I'm kinda off BanBao to be honest but that train could be ok. I wish Sluban or Enlighten would come out with a decent RC train set.

The origin of that lot could very well be a store manager getting rid of his leftover stock? Maybe not, but that really is quite a lot of polys for one little greedy pig to buy. We get a few polys here in China, I've got a few Ninjago and City ones. Some stores give them away as a bonus if you spend a certain amount of money on Lego. Themes such as LOTR and Monster Fighters aren't even sold in stores here, I imagine because Chinese don't understand the cultural angle of the sets and thus they wouldn't sell well.

"Technic for teh win" Huh? What does that mean? You're really bending my brain here! Thanks for the review, I'd like a free book.

IMO the best backdrops would be something along the lines of the ones on the early Lego Pirate boxes, for example. Simple images that are a little blurry with large swatches of simple colors, they make the models stand out and complement them. The backgrounds are a little too busy and/or in focus in some of the images here.

The abundance of brick bricks looks great. MAYBE you could break it up with the off color brick here or there but maybe not. Why mess with success?!?

Well, I'm glad this topic got bumped back into circulation as there were alot more replies than I'd expected when I'd originally posted and I was a bit overwhelmed, being new to the site (and the hobby) . Anyway; are we sure that licensing increases the cost of the set in an adverse way? I mean, look at the price per piece of a lot of the City stuff, it's right up there if not higher than the licensed stuff. They spend big dollars on the licenses of course but perhaps they sell a lot more of the sets which allows them to achieve more economy of scale than they do with their in-house stuff? I don't know, I'm just asking.

A nice freebie, along with free shipping and VIP points. My son will love the horse. Thanks for the heads up GRogall

They've got them in the special PAB section at the shop in Billund, just mention "Eurobricks" and you're in

Really great, thanks. I guess the submarine is my favorite but it's hard to choose for sure.

Yes, congrats. I've read most of your posts (I think) and have enjoyed them. I particularly liked the ones about Enlighten bricks which are a hard sell around here!

I like mine a little better, take a look: What do you think? Ha ha, couldn't resist. Your MOC is cool, thanks for sharing.

Huge! Awesome! Love it!

Awesome, thanks. I've been staying away from Superheroes (although I used to be a massive comics fan) for budgetary and space reasons but might have to look into that one. There was a story about stopping "The Sun's" page three photo in "The Guardian" a few days ago, wasn't there? I didn't realize it was a joke. Personally, I'm in favor of allegedly topless women anytime, anywhere

Awesome, I'm not into licensed themes at all myself and love nice castles.

Which minifig are you using for your avatar Kez? It's cool.

I guess it saves them the salary of a design team. If you can just throw an already-made product in front of someone and say, "Copy it!", it's a lot cheaper. Some of those Sluban sets are ok though, I think. They're very reasonably priced here in China. I forget how many pieces the battleship is but it was a huge box crammed full of parts and I paid less than US$20 including shipping. The plastic doesn't seem so bad, I can't really tell the difference.

Sorry for my late reply. Yes, it is a Sluban. Is Oxford a Korean brand? I never see Oxford in Beijing.

Great stuff, many thanks for taking the time to post. My little boy will enjoy this if I can pull it off.

I've got most of the Enlighten rolling stock which is ok, especially if you're on a budget. I just have one engine, the greenish diesel. It's not bad but it seems a waste to put expensive PF in it. Their other engines don't look so great design-wise IMO. I purchased them here in China so they were very reasonable and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality (guess I wasn't expecting much). I'm going with Lego engines and cars with some Enlighten cars mixed in myself.

Decent photos of consistent quality would be nice.

Well, I said this awhile back in a different thread so hope I'm not getting tiresome BUT; if we could afford everything we wanted, it would probably get boring pretty quickly, right? I'm hoping to stumble upon some sets I need dirt cheap at a garage sale some day. Green Grocer, brand new in the box for US$ 5 or something. Hey, it could happen! It works for me.

Well, I'm not sure why we're chatting about this in an ancient review - the moderator is going to have a fit! - but for what it's worth; Grand Emporium is no longer sold online by Lego in the US or Canada as of mid-October 2012. That's a bit strange, isn't it? It's a newer set than Fire Brigade.

You can download the instructions and Bricklink the parts. If you do a little substituting for the rare ones you could probably build those sets fairly reasonably. You could do Green Grocer for about US$ 200 or so I think? I'm not quite sure as I need to look into doing one myself.

I've seen that set at the markets here in Beijing. It's not a bad set but the school bus is eight bricks wide, too large. I kinda like that Sluban brand, I've got one of their battleships and some (smaller) buses and a big old-fashioned fortress set I've not yet put together. I'd have to say it's the best Chinese brand, the bricks are the same size as Lego (unlike BanBao) and the clutch power and quality is mostly there. I haven't had any missing pieces yet either. The minifigs aren't that great but the price is right. Lego is really expensive here (double US prices). Enlighten isn't so great IMO but those knock off Lego train cars that they make are passable. The tires of the cute little forklift that came with the boxcar smell highly noxious. That Enlighten tank that's pictured above looks like it's copied from another Chinese company (Sluban I think) so that's kinda funny, they copy from each other which I guess is what Lego did too back when they were starting out.