Lord Admiral

True, but it doesn't have to be reflected in the set name. When there's only one vehicle, it really only needs the vehicle name. The action words sound "cool," but you know they're on the overused side when two separate SP3 sets have "Heist" in the name. And besides which, action words are specific descriptors of the events happening in the set. While this is good in that it creates a strong understanding in someone evaluating the set to buy of what's happening in the set, it's bad in that it puts that same person in a certain mindset of what's supposed to happen in the set, instead of what can happen. Power miners actually, has been pretty good about staying away from conflict-based names. But then again, the rock figures don't exactly have anything to fight off the power miners, so it's not like there's a second "faction" to build upon.

Look for Toys R Us or some other US or European brand store that offers toys. You'll probably pay a premium, but that's how it is in most places outside of the US. I wouldn't be surprised if local stores also offer Lego sets, but I can't offer you any degree of certainty for those stores. Either way, I'd look out for clone brand sets.

It may not be too late to ask for sets for the second-half 2010. That having been said, you're right about voting with your wallet. I tend to buy more of sets in a theme that I like and far less of sets in a theme that I don't like, even if one or two sets in the theme aren't amazing. Pirates are one of those that I've bought far more sets than I usually would have had I not liked the theme. I certainly wouldn't have bought 6239, which is a mediocre set at best, if I didn't like pirates. I think one of the reasons there aren't more pirates sets is because TLG is turning away from humans vs. humans. But maybe if they weren't so focused on putting conflict into the pirates line, they wouldn't have this problem...

It's pretty telling when the majority of sets have the same action modifiers in the names. Set names containing the same adjective pretty much indicates that their premise revolves around the same ideas. Which isn't terribly surprising. The majority of the sets are rehashes of old sets with a new theme. It's a sound business decision to continue to put out what's tried and true while slowly testing the waters with new ideas. I think the shift from set-based sets to action-based sets (these conflict-named sets that you're currently seeing) happened in the same manner. It's a little irritating that every set of certain themes are based on good vs. bad, but as long as TLG can produce decent models in each set, I don't think the name matters that much.

It's about time. I'll be picking up the Battle Of Endor and Echo Base, either the next time I go to a Lego Store, or I order from S@H.

Congratulations, Hinckley! There is absolutely nothing better than getting paid for doing what you like to do the most. All the best in your new job!

I'd personally prefer a relatively stronger grip for bricks, and a slightly weaker grip for plates, especially the smaller plates. Specifically, I think the underside of a plate's grip should be looser than other pieces. I actually like the gripping power of the plates as they are now. I think the bricks are still too loose though. I don't know if gripping power is related to the material or the mould, but I'd rather adjustments be made to the latter than the former. It's probably easier to change the plastic than to add .001 mm to the mould. I've never had discoloration or edge issues with sets from that time period, but I didn't buy too many sets after seeing my KK2 ones disintegrate so easily. My biggest gripe at the time was with bricks, though you're right about the plates. But the issue with plates and tiles should only crop up on poorly-designed sets or set features, while loose bricks will affect the whole set. Plate and tile hold issues probably affect complex MOCs, but as long as the sets are fine, I can't really complain. I never really noticed a problem with white, and I don't have enough sets that are yellow to know for sure. I have to build 6242 to see how the whites currently are holding. I have 7628 (yes, despite the decals), and they seem fine, if slightly better in fact, than the bley of 7079. Funny thing is, bley and black are probably the colors I have the most of, mostly because I have mostly castle and Star Wars sets. The only yellow bricks I have a lot of are the technic bricks of old, and they seemed to be on par with the ones that were gray. Admittedly, gray probably has different hold properties than bley... Anyway, as far as I can tell, the hold of all of the pieces is a lot better than before, even from sets I bought a year ago. As long as this upward trend continues, I can live with it. There are probably residual defective pieces from the years you mentioned still floating around in sets, but as long as there are pieces with a strong grip to connect them to, they won't be a problem. Interesting anecdote: I once got a clone brand with terrible hold back in the late 80's, and I couldn't build anything with it. But as soon as I combined them with Lego bricks, they were immediately useable. The clone bricks still sucked, but the Lego bricks had such good grip that it didn't matter.

I too have noticed that women tend towards the building sets, less so than the action sets. Building sets are stationary or largely stationary, and actions sets have movement. My experiences with women and Lego may be anecdotal, but I think there is a trend here. Correct me if I'm wrong, ladies, but I get the feeling that women like to build as much as men, but I think what they like to build is a little different from what men like to build. I think women are more drawn to sets like creator and architecture than even to playsets. As such, I think TLG already has made good inroads into attracting women. However, I think TLG is having trouble with girls. While the difference between the interestes of men and boys is mostly superficial, girls seem to seem to mature in a completely different way. There are absolutely social pressures involved that cause this difference, but at the same time there are natural psychological differences between males and females. Building, especially when done by a child, is a solo affair. You sit down in front of some material and you build. Boys are perfectly OK with this, and men like to be left alone. Girls, however, tend to prefer to socialize when they play. They don't like to play alone for the most part (I'm not going to go into a whole thing on psychology, but for various reasons, women are more receptive to doing things alone than girls). There are two caveats. One is that girls will be more willing to partake in an activity alone, if the results of that activity can be used as an asset in socializing later on. Two is that socializing does not necessarily require an actual person to be present; young girls will play with imaginary friends in the absence of real friends, and slightly older girls will personify their toys in the same situation. Thus the key is to make building a social activity, or at least, to incorporate socializing into building. And on top of that, to make it cooperative, instead of competitive. The pastels color scheme for sets for girls is not only pandering, but probably mildly offensive. Which is also why Belville has never done well, and continues to not do well, as it's taking the dollhouse stereotypes to a condescending extreme. Very young girls might fall for the pink and purple, but older ones (7-12) wise up to these tactics as they mature and end up being put off just as quickly. It's not an easy task to figure out how to market building sets for cooperative play. I think the only time I've ever done social building was in school, with 5 large boxes of BASIC and a community workers minifigure pack. Myself and about five other peers each took a minifigure to represent ourselves and set off to build a one-floor mansion with the large green bricks as baseplates. Several more of my classmates joined us as we continued to expand the mansion as we opened more boxes, including a fair number of girls once they caught on to what we were doing. Perhaps the best start would be to have a community workers pack that contains the same bodies as the regular community workers pack, but with half female heads and half male heads. Or perhaps offer a large freestyle set with 10 minifigures, 5 male and 5 female minifigures, with lots of base plates or bricks. On the box would be a picture of several girls and boys playing together. The idea is not only to facilitate communal construction, but to promote that idea with box art and other marketing devices. The unfortunate thing is that minifigures are expensive. Since girls prefer social forms of play, the abundance of minifigures are absolutely essential. So the real trick is to put out sets that promote social building at affordable price points. And that's more a business decision.

Knex also has Duplo-sized bricks. They don't hold very well though, and feel kind of soft.

The one problem that is very prominent is that the bricks no longer have the snapping power they once did. This is most noticeable on the bigger plates often used as base plates. It is present in all bricks, but because of the way other bricks are used, it's not as objectionable. Plates, base plates in particular, are connected to the rest of the structure sometimes with a few 1x2 bricks, a few as 4, so if I pick up a structure like that from somewhere in the middle instead of from the bottom, the bottom falls out from beneath me. Often, the baseplate is the weak link, but it can be any part of the structure that's a little weaker. I find this to be very irritating. Black bricks appear to hold the best, and are the hardest. Some of the more exotic colors appear to be very soft, and bley in particular appear to be straight up loose, while the primary colors (red, blue, yellow, white, etc.) fall somewhere in the middle. And while I've always known that the black plastic is strongest while bley is considerably softer, the reliance of bley pieces everywhere makes me wonder if it's not a quality control issue, but a business issue. I did a comparison of bricks in sets I recently bought to bricks that I bought around '01 and before. While the older bricks make a slight creaking sound when snapped together, the new bricks do not. The old bricks are glossy, while the new bricks are dull. And the old bricks feel harder and firmer, while the new bricks feel mushy, like 24k gold as opposed to platinum. Heh, if only the bricks were actually made of 24k gold or platinum. The quality of the pieces actually has gotten better over the past 3 or 4 years. I have a couple of KK2 sets, and buildings from that line would go to pieces if even a stronger wind blew against them. For example, I knocked over 8799 when it was standing on a thick carpet. It fell onto the carpet, and pieces still fell off the top and the bottom of the set. It was flat out disgraceful, and I stopped buying sets for about 2 years afterwards. Even now, I am reluctant to buy the really big sets, for fear that there will be lots of bad bricks, and the set will crumble on me. I have the modular buildings, since they look sturdy enough, but that's about it. But the new castle buildings, especially the newest ones, at least feel sturdier, and this trend, should it continue, is a good thing. I also have grievances against the really soft plastic that that they use. One great example of this plastic is the baseplate for 6241. While that particular instance is marginally acceptable, I've seen small parts that use the same soft plastic, and that really bothers me. But that's a trivial matter compared to the hold issue of normal bricks.

I say, just have 5 main forums--Town, Pirates, Space, Castle, Others--and stick the MOCs not belonging to existing themes in its own little corn...I mean forum. I kid, I kid. But too-generic names aside, I think a lot of themes past and present fall under multiple categories or form niche categories of their own regardless. Beyond the 4 classic themes (6 if you include trains and boats), there is no perfect way to group the rest of them. They're just whatever TLG thinks makes for an interesting line of toys at any particular time. So I think the mods (or someone) should put their collective feet down, make a final list of which themes will go into which forum, and call it a day. It seems kind of harsh, but people will otherwise be indefinitely arguing about who goes into what. But that's just MHO.

Wow, these numbers are a lot closer than I thought they'd be. I initially thought the results of this poll would more or less reflect the original vs. licensed sets poll, but that seems not to be the case. There's no reason to believe that a different set of people voted in that poll than in this poll, so it might be fair to say that quite a few people like fleshie figures despite not liking licensed sets. One has to wonder how people would feel about fleshies in original sets. Given the majority still like yellow minifigures, that won't happen anytime soon, but if it does, I wonder if people would still be ok about fleshies.

One particular solution that I've seen to the problem of drawing the line is to have a garbage or junk forum, where all the seriously wacky posts go to die. Depending on the technical limitations of the forum software, the garbage forum could be configured so that anything that ends up there either doesn't affect post counts (if that's really that important), or gets pruned after some time and the post count goes down as a result. The real spam threads (selling replica watches or something) would be outright deleted. Threads that end up in flame wars end up closed and/or moved to the garbage forum. But then you'll end up with people complaining about why their post was moved to the garbage forum, so maybe it's not such a great idea.

I think "tabletop game series" is more like BrickWars or Warhammer than board games. But that's just the way I read it. Ok, to consolidate what I've said in other posts, and to make a few more suggestions based on what's currently out: General: Space pirates and ninjas as the baddies of SP3 Sky theme (blimps, airships, floating cities) Licensed: Transformers - minifigure-scale, USD 100+ sets released two a year or two every half year. Replicas of mass transit systems around the world Lord of the Rings (maybe it's been mentioned, but it's not listed on the first post, so here it is again) I'm not going to comment on the new board games yet, as some are still a mystery, and I'd rather not repeat something that already exists in some form or another.

Yellow it is for me. I don't like fleshies. Realism and creativity are inversely proportional. Of course, when it becomes too abstract, then nobody can identify with it, including children, but my preferences lean towards abstraction over realism nonetheless.

You're absolutely right. There are two sets that actually look promising, the flagship being one of them, and the vehicle being the other. But two decent sets doesn't compensate for a line of 10+ sets. Even if you include the impulse sets, or exclude them, the numbers still don't look so good. SP3 should've been a castle, or a pirates, not an Agents or Exo-force (at the same time, I'm really, really glad they didn't blotch the pirates re-releases). Heck, if Mars Mission didn't feature stiff aliens and instead had real minifigures, I'd prefer that over SP3.

Thanks for the very entertaining review! I never got this set, but I do have several Ice Planet sets that are in storage somewhere. It's the last of the classic space themes that I liked. It's a shame there weren't more sets, though IIRC, there weren't too many sets for any of the classic space themes. I like how snug the old bricks fit. I think the new ones are sufficient and acceptable (though there was a time when they were too loose, and I quit buying for a year), but I miss the snap of the old ones.

I'm actually quite torn. The licensed themes thus far are done really well. Batman, IJ, SW, all have great sets. In the meanwhile, the recently-released new themes have been a mixed bag. While pirates is great, SP3 has been by and large a disappointment. Classic space it is not, and I'm really not at all interested in the KK2-style themes (Agents, Exo-force, SP3, etc.). Power Miners and the new city sets have been decent; not great, but not terrible either. I'm not terribly engaged by the farm and construction sets, now that I've seen them. On the other hand, I think quality has gone down in general, what with fewer printed bricks, bad designs, and overpriced sets, so maybe it doesn't really matter whether the theme is original or not. But I thought that way about the early '00 sets too (though I did get the impression set quality had gone back up with the post-KK2 castle line, batman, IJ, modular town, and then pirates), so maybe it's just me. Not that these new licenses sound terribly exciting; I have to wonder how they're going to pull good sets off of a movie about other toys. I think what really makes me cringe are fleshies, and that's probably going to throw the vote towards original sets. I have both Luke in yellow and in flesh. While his flesh body was a lot more detailed, his yellow face and arms I liked much more. And I'm not even big on building MOCs. As for limited shelf space, I think the new licenses are only going to replace the old ones. Batman, Harry Potter, and even Indiana Jones are probably going away. Sponge Bob is probably close to its end as well. Star Wars will likely not have anything new past the winter '09 sets, except for perhaps more UCS models and playsets. So I don't see the new licenses taking shelf space from new original themes. I do have to wonder where they're going to take Agents and castle, which seem to be the next two to go. I'm suspicious that Power Miners and pirates will be their respective replacements, which means no new original themes in the short term.

And their enemies the space ninjas.

A similar color scheme applies to both, but PoP is a little different. For starters, no whip and no fedora. I played through Sands of Time. It's half-puzzle, half-action, and I'm thinking that we'll see some interesting puzzles in both the movie and the Lego sets. But I don't know what exactly is going to be in the movie. Hopefully, it won't bomb, as Lego will have trouble selling the line to the mainstream market if it does. Us fanatics probably would buy it, whether we'd seen the movie or not, or liked it or not.

I agree with much of the existing sentiment, that chrome, silver, would be best applied to the castle and space themes. In fact, I'd love to see a complete chrome robot minifig, including the head and hands. I also think chrome minifigs would work as statues, specifically in the city and pirates line.

Thanks for the excellent review, even though I'd already made up my mind about this set a long time ago. The cruiser actually looks like a gas guzzler from the '50s and '60s. Very retro. The set looks like it'd go for $50 USD, which IMHO, wouldn't be worth it even without the mass of stickers. I might still get it at $50 if it didn't have decals at all, and if it had no decals, I'd definitely pick it up at $40. As it were, it's not even up for consideration. That having been said, I still think the retro look of the cruiser is nice, and in nice contrast to the futuristic look of the police ship. I disagree with the new white color scheme of the new Space Police overall (it looks like future police, not space police), but I still like the ship's design. The only other thing that bothers me is that there are no nameless baddies, no generic inmate that could be anyone. And none of the baddies are even remotely human, though all of the space police are. That bothers me.

This was a great set. Two bridges, a staircase, a jail, a cannon, a raft, a small boat, not to mention a dungeon where I put the treasure, along with a ghost or skeleton from another set (I don't remember anymore) to guard it. That's a lot packed into one set, and definitely hard to find nowadays. My only complaint is that the blue plate kept breaking off from the rest of the set. But there really isn't much anyone can do about that.

No, they're not really rare. I can't speak for all of the grand openings, but it doesn't seem like there are any special pieces or whatnot in these sets, and no minifigs IIRC. The sets are nice to have, but if you're into sets with minifigs like me, they're not terribly interesting. Do a search for "lego store" on google, and click like the second or third link. It gets you to the official page of the Lego Store, which has updates on the next openings. The list CopMike has at the bottom of the first post is of the stores that are opening later, which is also on the official Lego Store page. If you live near any of the ones on the list, then just keep checking the page for updates every week or two. Otherwise, maybe the actual storefront will have a sign indicating the approximate month of when it'll open. But I've never seen that with Lego Stores, only other stores in certain malls.

Thanks for the info, CopMike. I'm just waiting for a store to open on the east side of the Hudson. There are almost 3 stores on the west side within 100 miles: West Nyack, Bridgewater, and King of Prussia (there used to be another store in Rockaway, NJ). And there's Paramus, opening this year. But there's nothing to service Long Island, Connecticut, and the city itself, which I think is a real shame. Paramus will be the closest to the city, but city and Long Island folk will have to pay the $8 premium to cross the Hudson. Ah well. One can dream of a Lego store in Times Square to compete with the likes of the Toys R Us and M&M store.