M'Kyuun

There are some good suggestions here; ultimately, it is your money, you've earned it, but you also have looming responsibility. It comes down to moderation; let your mum know that you intend to create a budget for yourself, setting aside a certain bit each paycheck to go towards your your driving expenditures, and just for the proverbial rainy day. On the other hand, don't give up on what you enjoy; you'll only be miserable. Given that you're on a limited budget, pick your hobby purchases with care and save for them. Obviously, this is simple advice, but it's amazing how many young people, and indeed, even older people cannot manage money at all. This is a good opportunity for you to be responsible for yourself, and to demonstrate to your folks that you're capable of making judicious decisions with your earnings. And, it is a great feeling to save up and get something anticipated by making good choices, and still know that you've covered your other bases. You sound to me like a sensible fellow; use your head, establish good spending and saving habits now, invest where you can as you get older/earn more money, practice moderation and accountability. Best of luck to you! This goes for young and old alike; I'm 37 years old, and I'm buying a house, for which I've been saving for about 10 years. It's a good feeling to have saved what I need, and indeed the banks are always impressed when young people have achieved a relatively sizeable savings, as most people lack the discipline to do so. One final thought, credit cards are not good or bad; our choices, however, are.

I don't have Office installed, but if someone out there likes these ideas, feel free to submit: Car lot: small office with or without showroom (rotating dais for display) with 3 or 4 6-stud wide cars, at least one looking vintage, one sporty, one utilitarian (maybe a mini-van type of vehicle), and a pickup truck, with a salesman sporting a too-big cheesy grin, and a prospective buyer fig. Comes on base plate with dealer sign..cheesy slogan or dealer name. subset 1: Repair shop with wrecker. Modular, can attach to Car lot office. Subset 2: Car-Transport Lorry(tractor-trailer) cab and trailer are preferably 8 studs wide and can carry approx four 6-stud wide cars; trailer is double decker, with aft section of upper deck raised and lowered by the new Technic friction cylinders. Comes with 1, maybe 2 cars, and driver, of course. Another idea my wife and I came up with was a strip mall, with a barber shop/salon (all those new hairpieces put to good use..even the Exo-Force hair), ice cream parlor, and a new pizza shop, or an electronics store selling cameras, walkie-talkies, movie cameras, and laptops. Any additional ideas are welcome. City needs some diversity beyond Police and Fire stations. A Museum would also allow for a great assortment of history-based themes to be thrown all into one. A dinosaur skellie would make a fantastic centerpiece for a set like this, surrounded by exhibits featuring pieces and architectural flavor from all the various historical themes over the years, and maybe some Greek/ Romanesque statuary or columns thrown in. Actually, a set like this, to be done well, would be best released as a Cafe-Corner type set; however, if it makes it into City as a System set, I'll be happy. Another idea is the Octan Off-shore Drilling Rig, complete with platform and retractable spinning drill, pipe wrench/tools, life vests/preserver, hose sections, hand-rails and ball park lights around the periphery, small heli and heli-pad, shark, swiveling crane to move pallets of oil barrels around. Minifigs include boss fig in open collar shirt with breast pocket(with pen sticking out) and sunglasses, 3 workers with hard hats, oil stained shirts. subset 1: Oil Freighter using either Coast Guard hull or cargo ship hull, similar to Cargo ship, white Hull with Octan decals, heli-pad behind bridge, cargo deck in front for pallets of barrels. Minifigs include captain, mechanic, deckhand, and pilot. Subset 2: Oil tanker Lorry 6 stud wide, winchable hose with nozzle, plumbing detail, control panel, ladder on rear of trailer for top access to tanks. Cab has storage box for wrench(s) Again, I can't post b/c I don't have Office installed on my PC; if any of these sounds good, and you have suggestions or ideas to make them better, please submit them with my blessing.

While I like your thinking, I doubt Hasbro would want to share another of their most popular licenses with TLG. But, I do think TLG has the talent to produce an original transforming robot series of their own, as long as they're willing to move away from the overly simplistic EF design. I'd like to see them take a whack at it, anyway. It'd be nice to see a line of new parts tailored for the series, especially in the area of ratcheting joints and hinges, and smaller ball joints. Smaller parts to create fingers would be great, too (I still love Gla-Gla's mini-fig arm-as-finger idea). I had a similar idea for the face, i.e. separate parts that can be mixed and matched to create a number of different faces. If they made the series in such a way that they blended in with the rest of the current City scaled vehicles, both 6 and 8 studs wide, I think they'd have a winner. If they could make them accommodate a minifig in vehicle form, that would be even cooler. I hope the remarkably terrible BTR line would be their prime example of what not to do..TLG are better and more talented than that. I also think a non-combat oriented Space theme would be a nice change. Since mining and exploration have been done to death, perhaps a terra-forming theme, or a space city, with "futuristic" buildings, vehicles, etc. It'd certainly breathe new life into the City theme, which has really become great again over the last few years, and putting the focus on the buildings/vehicles rather than the conflict would make for interesting sets. I miss the old sets with smaller ships fitting into larger ships, opening back doors and lowering cargo ramps, vehicles with steering and suspension features, etc. Basically, all the things that made Classic Space so great and enduringly popular with collectors today should be resurrected. Mission to Mars is on the right track, but, IMHO, still not there. And, apologies to the fellas who created the Factory Space sets; their efforts are cool, but too limited by the Factory pallette, and just lack the awesomeness of the Blacktron, M-tron, Space Police, Futuron, Classic Space, and Exploriens themes.

I'd like to see a redesigned AAT, too. The blue and grey colors don't bother me; it's the Clone Wars motif. Amidala's ship in the new silver would make me happy; I don't expect it to be chrome due to expenses, but I think the silver pieces would be acceptable. I'd expect the ship to be about the size of the Sith Infiltrator, perhaps slightly larger, given the cost of all those silver pieces. A crab droid ( http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Image:Crab-droid_negtd.jpg ) would be cool, and I hope the unused tank droid concept ( http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/9161 ) makes an appearance in the CW series and eventually becomes a set. I don't expect to see it anytime soon, but I'd like a new, non-motorized AT-AT slightly larger than the original with a head that can accommodate 2 drivers. The original was pretty well done, but given the quality that's been put into the SW line, and the other lines for that matter, I think TLG could churn out a much improved AT-AT, at maybe twice the piece count of the original. And, like all redesigns, it gives people a chance to get something they may have missed out on during the original release, only improved.

My wanted sets are all Classic Space: Cosmic Cruiser Spectral Starguider Magna Core Magnetizer

Mini-fig scale transforming mecha with a Macross/Transformers aesthetic Given the revitalized popularity of transforming robots due to the success of Bay's movie and the new Transformers: Animated show, I think the time is right for TLG to delve into this kind of theme. I've seen some brilliant efforts on Brickshelf and other sites, as well as creating some of my own, and I know that it's certainly possible to do without becoming too complex for the target age range. If done well, with the same kind of thought and effort put into the Agents, Batman, and Star Wars lines, I think TLG would find themselves with another hit theme with more than just a couple years' longevity, much like Bionicle. The prospect of a live-action Robotech movie, produced by and possibly starring Tobey Macguire, also gives me hope that a transforming theme will be made, even if it is Robotech, derived and re-imagined for American t.v. from the superior Macross series. For me, it'd be a step in the right direction as far as the LEGO sets go. I'd surmise that a Wild West theme would, ironically, find more popularity in Europe, where history, and the interest therein, are far more prevalent. American kids are a bit removed from the old West, as there's very little in pop culture today to incite kids' interests...that's not to say there aren't kids who read about it, or are exposed to the lore and culture by virtue of curiosity or location, but I'd venture to say that in this age, stuff like Ben 10 is more of a draw than the old West. For the record, growing up in western Pennsylvania during the late 70's, and 80's, neither I nor any of my friends had much interest in wild west stuff. The old show Wild, Wild West was the closest I came to watching anything based on the old West, and that's b/c it was more like James Bond in a steampunk world. Now, steampunk would definitely be an interesting theme, with Old West styled buildings, but with retro-styled machines and mecha.

I tried a search, to no avail. Sorry if this has been asked already, but does anyone know if this is going to come with a certificate like the UCS MF?

I'd say the number of mini-figs , esp with new paint apps, are driving the price up on this. I'm fine with it, especially since the unique figs in these sets often become more valuable than the sets themselves. On a different note, I hope the parts bags are numbered and correspond to the various levels, unlike the massive jumble of un-numbered bags in the UCS MF. I haven't much room to spread out, so building the MF often used less time than finding the parts amidst the gaggle of bags.

Just threw a quick TIE together based on the pic...it'll fit a fig, if just barely. Can't wait for this set. My thanks to Svelte Corps for the pics; today, the Earth reached environmental equilibrium, peace erupted in the Middle East, hospitals across the globe shut down due to lack of business, oil is free, and every person on earth woke up this morning with an inkling that something earthshaking was about to be revealed, and now all the world's governments have reached an accord under the banner "Leg Godt".

Wow. This is above and beyond. Wish there was a Death Star Gunner in there instead of Stormtrooper Luke or Han, but that's the only fault I can find. I expected something on par with Cloud City; I've never been happier to be wrong! This really should have been a milestone set, as it'll be nigh impossible to outdo this set for all its attention to detail, playability, features (love the little Advanced TIE..it's the icing on the cake), and bevy of highly detailed mini-figs. Finally, a fully painted dome on R2! This would have been a brilliant high note to end the license; that we're getting something this well designed in mini-fig scale, no less, in addition to the UCS MF, really makes me wonder what other incredible sets like this are being talked about or are already in the design phase. Sets like this are the reason LEGO is and ever shall be my hands down favorite passtime and brand name. They've come a long way from the original X-Wing #7140. Can't wait to see what they make next!

I'll buy at least one of each, as I've done with nearly every SW set since 1999. Collecting just a few years ago wasn't as expensive, as TLC didn't make a great deal of stuff that appealed to me, but now Batman, SW, Agents, City, Exo-Force, Mission to Mars, Creator, Castle are all so well done. Tough choices are made in the LEGO aisle. "Clunkadunk" LOL! the Spider Droid looks great...can't wait to see clear pics. The Twilight is pretty boxy, but I'm hoping it'll have some neat features to offset its lack of aerodynamics. I've been hoping for a Droid Gunship ever since I bought the art book, and the DS set is an absolute must-have...I hope it's done really well, better than the Cloud City. Something like this would be the bee's knees. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=235894

Good job! Great idea for the doors...the shooters were a bit unnecessary. Shame that TLC has moved so far from a minimal amount of shoot-ware to putting it everywhere, often awkwardly or to the detriment of what is otherwise a cool model. Anyways, you managed to pack alot of figs into a tight area, not an easy task given the odd, oft aggravating yet so endearingly awesome proportions of the mini-fig. I had planned on making mods to one of these, to alot of my sets actually, but I've never gotten around to it, so I'm always glad to see what others come up with..inspiration, you know.

I'm in the military and we used to have Alert weekends, where we'd spend the whole weekend in an old Cold War underground bunker. I started building my UCS Imperial Star Destroyer there...we had a particularly unsavory boss that weekend, so we ended up being busy for most of the time, but I did manage to build some of the frame.

I just finished putting the Agent's Turbocar Chase #8634 and Mobile Command Center #8635(huge friggin truck), and I was really impressed by the parts in these sets. Lots of dark blue and silver parts, esp the 1x1 cheese slopes, and the new 1x4 curved slopes. The truck comes with lots of accessories and some great figs, including a female with the new ponytail hair that is designed with enough clearance to allow her to sit in a minifig chair. Arkham and the HP castles sets, and the second Hagrid's Hut were all great parts sets as well. For black slopes, the UCS batmobile is a winner.

I just finished this today. Comes in at 2,084 pcs. I wanted to put an elevating platform in it, on the backside, but LDD doesn't have string to make a proper winch. It started out small; I just wanted to try my hand at the floating rock idea, and it just kept growing as I worked on it. I'd love to buy it and figure some way of hanging it up(it's terribly overbalanced...virtual reality is great! No pesky gravity), but it's a bit pricey, someting like $224 USD. There's just too much official stuff coming out that I want to get, plus I'm buying a house, so....sacrifices.

I always wanted the Century Skyway airport as a kid, but my LEGO acquisition was limited to birthdays and Christmas, so I had to pick and choose, and Space always won. So when this saw re-release, I snapped one up, and I have to say it's a great set with lots of realistic features. The new City airport was kinda disappointing, but then I think the building was sacrificed to put the new plane in there, since the large plane parts are more expensive to produce. Personally, I like the new bigger, more realistic planes, as I always thought the 4 wide planes, cars, and trucks were a bit too small. Still, I think the new airport would have been better served by including a small plane, helicopter, a few more play features, and base plates, with the large passenger planes sold separately, but easily integratable. This way, everyone would be happy, as long as the new base plates were made to accommodate the larger planes, and additional plates could be bought off SAH to expand the runway as necessary. Just had a thought (it happens occasionally): the new plates could also be made to double as City road plates that could accomodate 8 wide vehicles, with sticker sheets or a clever paint job to turn it into a 4-laner for 4-wide vehicles.

I think I'm the only one here that's happy TLC's finally making the Droid Gunship, even at the expense of losing the TIE Defender. I love the Gunship's design, personally. I've never been too enthralled with TLC's blue and black TIE cubes, esp when they made faceted pieces for the Divers sets years ago that would approximate a spherical shape much better than the blocky TIEs we 've been getting. On that note, there are some parts which I wish TLC would bring out of retirement b/c they were just really useful parts. The upper and lower faceted corner pieces from the Divers sets were excellent and made me think of TIEs way back before TLC was producing Star Wars sets.

Sure, makes sense. I take it you don't like the movie. Wasn't my cup of tea either. Fortunately, for those who dislike the PlaySkool TFA and the 'poopy' shardbots, there's Classics 2.0. While I have a few Titanim 6" figs, their transformations are very simple. I like more complex figs with more poseability, but the die cast is Titanium's selling point. The Hero figs never interested me, but it's good that Hasbro puts something out there for everybody. Bottom line, I hope Hasbro/Takara-Tomy do well with all the lines to keep the brand alive as well as improving the product itself. IMHO, Alex Kubalsky's addition to the Takara Transformer design team was a great plus for us collectors.

Go to www.tfw2005.com or www.seibertron.com Both of these are excellent sources of news and pics of all lines of Transformers. My dissatisfaction with the movie is hard to sum up briefly. Basically, for a movie called Transformers, I think the title characters should be the absolute focus. I love how the original show and now Animated had a couple human character with whom the transformers interacted, but kept the focus on the title characters. Bay's movie was "The life and times of Sam Witwicky, with special cameo appearances by his Transformer friends." The humor was just, well, juvenile and not really humorous. Sector 7 was pointless as well as the hacker girl and her friend. Frenzy was a Transformer in name only/ I would never associate that design with Transformers had it not appeared in the movie. The Decepticons had almost no lines, no personalities, and almost no appearances. If I'd made the movie, I'd have started on Cybertron, establishing the characters, their war, and their reason for having to leave Cybertron. As far as the look of the characters, the Movie creations fragment unrealistically to assume robot mode. Their vehicle modes would be crisscrossed with separation lines to allow the various body panels to break up. The Alternators were a line of Transformers based on licensed vehicles and approved by their respective car companies before the final production models could be released. It drove Takara's designers nuts, as many companies, esp American, didn't want to see the hood of their vehicle splitting in half, and other such nitpickery. In the end, the toys were very complex, accurate, and still retained a 'Transformer' look. IMHO, the two best designs were the Mazda RX-8 and the 2005 Mustang. I understand Bay's reluctance to not use the classic 'blocky' look, so I think using an endoskeleton was a good beginning. However, as a matter of realism, body panels should remain and not fragment to the point of disintegrating into the robots' structures. They should shift or otherwise form various parts of the robot. Most importantly, each character should transform the same way all the time. ILM, in interviews, have said they never transform the same way; the sequence was always based on the particular angle of the shot and the CGI folks basically designed the transformation as they went along, fragmenting the various parts of the car and then moving them helter-skelter or eliminating them until they arrived at the established look of the robot. I suppose they explain it by saying it's nano-technology. To me, it's lazy and the result doesn't look so much like a Transformer to me as a generic robot skeleton to which shredded car parts were cut and pasted. Ergo, I much prefer TFA; the characters have defined personalities; the humans are there and they're engaging without being the focus; while very stylistically cartoonish, the toys match their tv incarnations well, are very articulated, and most have virtually no kibble. The writing of this show is well done, IMHO. I balked mightily when the first images were released...I still wish they'd gone in a more Batman: The Animated Series look, but it's grown on me. I think the toys being produced for this series are some of the best ever made, cartoonishness notwithstanding. Hopefully, the TF2 toys will see great improvements, as I understand the great folks at Takara had a tough time translating them into toys. As they are, the first movie toys were ok, but were pretty inaccurate when compared movie artwork/CGI captures. I don't blame the Takara people at all...Bay's Transformers use Pure Magic to affect transformation, and toy designers need to establish where everything on the car goes when it transforms. As far as Cartoon Network goes, you're so right about their not promoting the series. CN is funny anyway; they shift schedules at whim, promote some stuff and not others. Odd, and not very professional at times.

I hope the nose of this opens allowing the Technic grab to snake out on a flexible arm and draw the treasure in. While I'm not crazy about the use of Bionicle/Technic pieces like this in system sets, if they are at least employed in a workable fashion, I can suppress my dissatisfaction. I wish TLC would bring back the old arm pieces or design a grab like the Classic Space sets used.

I also think that TLC received a little info, maybe some speculation as to how some scenes were going to play out very early in the movie's production. So TLC took what they had and began the design process, improvising what was unknown or impossible by virtue of scale or economy. As the movie continued along in production, various things changed, including some ideas and concepts given to TLC. Whether or not TLC was aware of those changes, we may never know unless the designers are allowed to speak about the experience. If they were made aware of changes, TLC may have been too far into their own production process to make changes. Regardless, the sets are fine as they are, retaining enough accurate elements of the movie to be recognizeable while also exhibiting many charming LEGO touches. I realize I'm writing an apologetic; I try to see both sides of the process. As a film producer/director, your movie is your primary focus. However, merchandising is a large part of the movie industry, and I'm sure there are many companies making everything from socks and sleeping bags to toys and food products. The production team no doubt has a rep who provides a basic info package with images and basic plot points to the various merchandisers fairly early in the movie's production. Beyond that bit of sharing, I doubt much more time or effort is expended to keep these companies updated on all the changes. So, perhaps there really was going to be a Russian in a tree watching our heroes in their aquatic car, followed by more Russians in a dinghy, and it got cut from the movie for whatever reason. Does it subtract anything from the set? Not really...there's more playability, but some accuracy is lost. So what? More LEGO bricks in the box is never ever a bad thing. Too, the greatest thing about LEGO above all other toys is that it is infinitely changeable if one has time, imagination and a few spare bricks. M'Kyuun

Thanks, Legomilk. Always good to see that there are even more choices in my favorite hobby. Since Exo-Force is no more, I hope we get another good sci-fi theme to replace it, one with....robots, perhaps?

QFT! I saw 'robots' in there and everything else just faded out of existence. For me, there is absolutely nothing more boring and pointless than either the Wild West or animals. Better designed battle suits would be cool, but a transforming line would be my lifelong dream come true. I've mentioned it before, but if Tobey MacGuire successfully brings live-action Robotech to the big screen, i hope TLC rides the merchandising wave. A fully transforming VF-1 with fast packs, if done well, would be a huge seller, i think. I definitely think it would do better than Speed Racer, which is a bit more obscure and much cheesier. i wonder, though, how they'd make a Zentraedi fig..that'd be one BIG mini-figure. Voltron would be neat, but there's just something really awesome about realistic fighters becoming very poseable robots with armor.

Here are my thoughts on the Temple set, having seen the movie yesterday: First, i think playability was the definitely the emphasis over accuracy. I don't remember the tracked vehicle at all, but i'm not complaining. One needs to use his imagination a bit to see the sequence of flow in the layout, but given the amount of space and shape of the baseplate, i think they did ok. Many of the traps, including the breakaway stairs, are TLC's contributions. This is all i can think at the moment, although I'm interested to see what others picked up from the movie in comparison to the various sets. M'Kyuun

Looks cool. I liked this theme from the beginning, and this looks interesting and different from the other mini-fig scale subs they've produced, which is good. I think TLC is giving their designers a lot of freedom to incorporate some cool sci-fi style into this line, and so far it's great! MM is also getting some neo-retro sci-fi styling( both treaded vehicles from the line evoke 50's and 60's explorer bots). As with Blacktron and Space Police, I wish they'd change the color scheme for the second wave: orange =