ResIpsaLoquitur

I do encourage everyone to keep up hope. I went 23 days being prizeless last year and got a nice surprise on day 24. :) I will say that I already have a complete GOTG set, so if I win Prize E I'll be happy to swap with someone.

Great review as always. I love Hot Dog guy, but I wonder why he didn't include a sausage.

Don't the odds change from day to day as well? I think last year somebody calculated our odds of winning on a particular day based on the number of entrants and how many had won by each day. So if there were 210 entrants, everyone left is now competing against 204 over 23 days.

That's cool! I just wanted a reminder of how it was done last year. Thanks.

Wasn't there some swapping of prizes last year? I forget how that worked--if people could ask CopMike to pre-swap prizes, or if winners had to do that themselves. I think it was the latter.

I'm in the U.S. I've got some SW Advent Calendar on my eBay page--I just posted about it in another thread here. Good luck if you want to throw your hat into the bidding...

I've got a bunch of the 2014 Advent Calendars listed on eBay right now, along with one Ideas Research Institute. Here's the link. Good luck if you're looking.

Oh, gee...with a little modding, that King could be Burger King's mascot. http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/burger-king-red-carpet-9800896.jpg

Is that a Unikitty horn on Unicorn Girl, or a new piece? Wondering if they can recycle the head to make a horse person and stick a mane in there instead.

So I was already building a "mom and pop" general store for the Winter Village when this contest opened, and it was decided that it had to be North Pole/mythological themed. I wanted to keep the store going, but what mythological character would possibly be running one at the North Pole? I'm betting we're going to see a lot of gingerbread houses, so who's left? And then I remembered: Old Man Winter. I'm not sure if Old Man Winter is a real mythological character, but he's a popular representation of the dry, grumpy feeling we get in a bitter winter. Fortunately, my Old Man is a little merrier than that and runs a nice (if somewhat chilly) store to sell provisions to North Polers and other visitor. Old Man Winter runs a traditional old-fashioned general store, though it gets frosted over quite frequently. He has it decorated in sparking blue lights and he's helped by an Arctic Explorer who brings supplies, a helper who gets rid of the icicles, and the Abombinable Snowman who's available for pictures with visitors. It's a great place for the Fantasy characters to stock up on tools and goods--just look at Santa with his new wheelbarrow. The roof is removable for easier access to the interior. Inside is a store full of, well, everything. You never know what's for sale at the North Pole--like any general store, it's "whatever's in this week." There's plenty of ice cream, though! Or you can read up on the latest Lego news, buy some frozen fruit or canned goods, get some tools, spare cheese for your fondue, or even some old tires. You didn't expect to be getting hot coffee from a guy named Old Man Winter, did you? The Abominable Snowman is not somebody you want working in a store full of stuff, so Old Man Winter keeps him happy with popsicles and lets him pose for pictures with visitors. He sits on a chair made out of pure ice! (Fortunately, it's padded so the Abombinable Snowman doesn't freeze his bottom.) Here's an alternate shot of the interior. I have more pictures available on my Photobucket site. I think I'm going to still be doing some mods to this set to get the colors more consistent. I've put in a Bricklink order for a bunch of white doors and windows and some blue shutters to get a colder, wintry look going. In the meantime, I'd appreciate any feedback or suggestions on this shop! I've been slowly modding this building for the last two years (and I had to buy a ton of 1 x 4 brown wood bricks) to get it just right, but there's always room for improvement. I look forward to your suggestions and to everyone else's entries!

Oh man! The prizes go where they go, but my daughter will FLIP if we get those two Unikitties! Thanks for doing this, CopMike!

Can I use a sticker I got from a 3rd party as opposed to one I made myself?

No takehome, at least at my store. This literally turned out to be a pile of bricks for the kids to make into whatever they wanted and then display in-store. There were some freebies, like some magazines, the Friends beach accessory set, and, uh, a Kre-O.

Half-cow, half-orc?

I think the complaint with the rack tend to be that the weapons could be included with the minifigs and the racks could be replaced with another ship or figure. I will concede that this year's fireplace makes a cute Star-Warsey item which would look festive on the Death Star.

Anybody know where all these sticker are supposed to go? I plan to put the "Awesome Mix" stickers onto some 1 x 2 tiles and I put some of the stickers on per the instructions...but there's a lot left over. I may put the cracked stickers onto some 2 x 2 sidewalk tiles in my City for some sidewalk variety.

Sorry, no idea specifically what this is--if it's a "build and take home" event or if it's "build in store and maybe we'll give you some goodies." TRU's website specifically says: "Come and build an amazing winter city scene with LEGO® bricks and more!" This seemed like the best forum to post this. Anybody know any more details about this event?

For us U.S. people, there's a free "winter scene" at TRU next Saturday. No idea what the final product looks like.

I hit another one of my Targets today and they were clean out of this set. Could be that they had more in the back, but there were none on the shelf. I recommend grabbing it while you can.

Where does CopMike get all those figures from, anyway? I know EB gets samples of sets for review, but I'm trying to figure out where anyone would get that many Tower of Orthanc or Ewok Village figures.

Maybe, maybe. I stopped at one of my Targets tonight and they had no Star Wars or Friends calendars on the shelf (but they did have spots for them). Still plenty of City calendars. It could be another hot year.

Well, I'm still going to get it, but I'm annoyed that it's not more Ep-III centric given how the last two calendars went. I'd have loved to have gotten a Wookie and a Clone Pilot for some army-building goodness, along with a Santa Greivous with red and green sabers. Any word on how this is selling? Last year's calendar cleared out before Thanksgiving and sold for a lot of markup on the secondary market.

For Christmas, I want Lego Sets, obviously! So does my daughter, and my wife...well, not so much, but I found something for her too. So for me, my dream present would be Benny's Spaceship Spaceship SPACESHIP! from The Lego Movie. My daughter is a Friends nut, so she'd like Olivia's House before it goes from the market. My wife isn't really big on Lego, but she loves Lord of the Rings, so The Tower of Orthanc would probably be right up her alley. (I hope that when you say "the MOC needs to be new," that my entry counts. It's not like I took an existing set and added a new decoration to it--I just made really tiny models of existing sets!)

I'm in. Although now I need to figure out what the heck I'd want for Christmas...this is harder than you'd think.

The Brick Fan is indicating that the Store MMBs may be going away for the foreseeable future. This makes me sad (though I haven't been to one since June since my daughter's schedule no longer permits it). I am grateful to Lego for the years of freebies (though I know it's ultimately a sales pitch to get us into the Stores). I'm sad for the kids who will no longer be able to get them. If true, I wonder what's driving the decision. Cost? We got some pretty good builds this year....