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I would be very surprised if Visa and Mastercard and similar would not be accepted at the Hotel. (Can't find information on their homepage http://www.legoland-village.dk) You can withdraw money from similar cards at Banks in Billund. Generally you can pay with cards everywhere in Denmark.

Thursday the 22nd at 9:00, I'll be there.

Just browsed your picture of this fellow on flickr. Excellent creativity, funny fingers and toes.

You can't buy shares in LEGO, it is family owned. Divide by approx. 8 to get from Dkr to Sterling Pound. Figures for specific themes etc. are confidential, you don't tell competitors what works and what does not.

Today LEGO released the 2009 annual report. Growth and success are two key words. 2009 Report on LEGO.com

It would be very cool if we could have reviews of other brands. I thought they were supposed to be in the Community section of the forums, but I looked yesterday and found none. I haven't seen the Oxford sets or touched their bricks, and I don't think I even saw them at Nurnberg Toy Fair last year. It might be because they actually copy the design of Lego sets. But I did get my hand on bricks from other manufacturers, and these were of poor quality. They were European brands.

First off, yes there are Lego bricks that has been put into boxes that never should have reached one. They should have been recycled. Secondly, it is just not only a matter of tolerances, it is also a matter of the mean dimension measured on large batch of parts. Be my guest to name a clone brand that works better as a system of building bricks than Lego, because they are engineered better and manufactured better. If you think some other company currently are making building bricks with a better functionality because of less variation (tighter tolerances), I think you are far from reality. Now someone in this thread claims that another brand makes bricks to just the same standard. Please try and make a large-scale structure like an extreme high tower or similar, which has been done with Lego bricks. See how it fit. ....edit.... And btw. my post did only talk about mixing bricks from two different companies. That will always result in a larger variation, hurting the functionality and possibly damaging bricks from either company.

Putting building bricks together from two different manufactures are in my view problematic. When you e.g. put a 2x4 brick on top of another 2x4 brick, both pieces deform. That deformation is more or less elastic and not plastic, i.e. when you separate the bricks again, the deformation will be gone and the original shape is restored. But to ensure this functionality, the bricks has to be designed and manufactured to certain dimensions with quite tight tolerances. If you start putting bricks together from different manufacturers, the gripping forces and the deformations are suddenly dependent on two different designs of dimensions and tolerances. The chances that one brick will make another deform, not with elastic deformation but plastic deformation, though mis-shaping the element for good, is so much higher. In other cases pieces may break more frequent, because a piece from another manufacturer, made with slightly different dimensions, may strain the pieces more than they were ever designed for. Will you call the costumer service and complain that the bricks are failing because you mixed them with another brand ?

Those poster are just simple prints glued onto some cardboards. I threw them away after the event. I think a lot did take a quick swim in these blue bricks during the 4 days.

Hero Factory guy **edit** and here a bionicle pART designer nERD: Hero Factory Nerd

I haven't got this set, but it was displayed at Lego World in Copenhagen 10 days ago. So was a truck scaled 6:1, built by members of Danish AFOL community "Byggepladen". Here a couple of pictures I took. Flickr link

One thing I really like is the idea of making a titan or large set of a 12.99 set. That idea I've been having for a while, but I think I might not start with Gresh, as I actually have though about. I like the mask Gresh have very much, It was designed by Christoff (his first Bionicle mask) and engineered by me :-)

You did a great job integrating the masks into the thighs. I could learn something there. Neat use of parts between shoulders and neck too. The shin design looks interesting, but I think you should have made built-up larger feet. Also double connections and/or pistons would make the moc more stable. Although I don't know the weight etc. of the moc, I have a feeling it would not be that stable. Overall it looks nice, but the feet....

Sunday just before closing, I realised that I had not picked any of the puzzles yet. I'm glad I did manage to get some. Compared to last year the text Lego World on the yellow background is printed slightly smaller.

Usually when I build Technic I don't rush it and take my time. I remember speed-building the Bionicle Xalara in 105 minutes (kind of a semi-complicated Technic set), and 1/3 of the way through I realised that I made a mistake. Instead of taking the set apart, which really was needed, I could pull the beams apart, and kind of adjust the mistake.

Check out the 2009 line of sets. 2009 Bionicle listing on Brickset To me 2009 was the best Bionicle year ever, and the nice thing is that many sets can still be found in stores etc.

It looks like the inlet from the mould, which should not end up in a box, but be recycled in yet another mould cycle shortly after it was created.

In the original picture I can hardly make out the name, but I think first name is Rob.

I've started uploading to flick but more will follow: Erland's Lego World pictures

I built Ben10 sets at Lego World in Copenhagen this weekend, but more importantly disassembled maybe 1500 sets put together by children of all ages. The AFOL kept telling me that it's not real Lego, as the Ben10 display and building table was just besides the AFOL display. But I kept reminding them to look at how the kids loved to build them. I gave my nephew Big Chill this friday, and at 4 years he struggle to build with System Lego. He always ask me for help and end up doing simple stuff like putting tires on the wheels etc. But with Big Chill he may have experienced his first true pride of creation. He did it with only a few hints from me, and we did not open the building instructions.

You can find some on flickr, here are some pictures by the British guy that made the red railway bridge (also features in a BBC clip earlier this year): Photo Stream of Warren Elsmore I hope to upload all my photos from the event later today.

There is a store at Legoworld, they may have exclusives.

The cube solved in a nearly industrial way. Looks awesome. I have solved the cube 2-3 times as a kid, back when they appeared, and I'm proud to tell that I did not follow a system, but used my own mind to rotate it in place. I have no idea how many hours I've spent on the cube.

Thank you Aanchir for your in depth analysis

Welcome to EB. You started out with quality indeed, nice sets. Technic is my love too, although I kind of buy all kind of Lego.