Whittleberry

Ooh lookie here, TRU's running a Monthly Mini Model build (a la the LEGO Stores) but without an age limit this Sunday! (Easter Sunday). http://www.toysrus.com.au/Make-and-take-bunny-build/

Calm down mate. How you don't already have a tag concerning your obsession with DJ stocking the Fire Brigade is beyond me. When it shows up, you'll hear. Between us, the ANZFOL forum and the MUGs emailing list, someone will be in DJs at the right time, spot the Brigades, report them and then the info will spread around the web. You will find out about it when it happens. EDITed for typos :S

Oh really? I visited the Melb CBD store on Sunday and didn't see any signs. They didn't really have anything I wanted, but I will hand it to DJ, their method of selling LEGO must work well. If if doesn't sell now, wait a year or two till it's not available anywhere else, and then customers'll come in droves! Brilliance.

It doesn't include LEGO. When it says a range of toys it usually means no LEGO.

My Emerald Night had good colour consistency, it was one of the ones that were sold here in Australian Myer stores. If you have a problem, report it. If they send you dodgy replacement parts, report it again. Voicing dissatisfaction is the only thing that's going to make LEGO wake up, it seems. That said, the sets I have bought so far this year have been quite good. My Atlantis Wreck Raider, Green Army Men and Seaplane have all been up to scratch, although my Army Men Helmets were a little on the light side (I think the helmets are made in China, since a quarter of them have to be decorated there anyway). My Fire Brigade is also good.

Keep in mind that at the LEGOLAND parks the PAB is based on weight, and is apparently rather expensive compared to a LEGO Store PAB. I think there's a better variety though. But if you're in London, pop down to the Bluewater LEGO Store because they have a big PAB wall there, which was stocked with nice pieces when I visited at the start of the year. The store manager told me that they actively try to stock interesting elements in their wall, but I don't know really how much control they have over what LEGO ships them. Also, I didn't build any figs, but I found a turkey in the build a fig section! Now that would be a nice accessory

A new LEGO Store will be opening soon in Wiesbaden, 30km west from Frankfurt. I saw the store marked on the large fold-out map in the latest copy of The Brick, and this is confirmed by an ad on LEGO's cache for an assistant store manager. It's interesting that it's so close to the Frankfurt store, but it's very densely populated around that region as far as I know, so maybe not that surprising.

This is a superb review! I think this set would have been a great tan / sand green / dark orange parts pack back in the day.

Alright, I agree with what you're (Sieggy and Shadows) saying about discussing off topic stuff in another thread. I'm sorry for calling you (Shadows) a Nazi, that was uncalled for. I apologise if I came off as offensive. If you had read all of what I said then you would understand what I'm trying to say. Please don't use sarcasm to make me look like an idiot when I'm making a valid point, even if it is slightly off topic.

I said it's unfortunate because I'm generally opposed to LEGO moving more of its production into China. It's just my personal opinion, I didn't say you have to agree with me. I think that if LEGO owns the factories where its main elements (bricks and minifigs) are produced, then it can keep a shorter leash on quality control and care of employees. One of the things I like about European LEGO operations at least, is the Scandinavian corporate social and environmental responsibility that is evident in everything they do, and I believe that entrusting 3rd party factories to manufacture their core products, in China of all places, is a backwards step, especially considering LEGO's skyrocketing profit at the moment. Now don't get me wrong, I realise LEGO has improved the quality of what goes on there dramatically, and I'm happy with the various Chinese-made bits and bobs that have been put in my LEGO sets as of late. My MMV cows, tauntaun and Mola Ram headgear are of the quality I expect from LEGO, and I realise that Chinese production is necessary for the way the company works. My main disappointment is that the figs themselves and System elements from the new Collectible Minifigs are being made there. Shadows, lighten up mate. If so many people are voicing concerns about how LEGO operates, it deserves to be discussed without threats of banning or closing topics. Friendly discussion will lead to people becoming more open-minded about the issue; censorship will just make you look like a Nazi. Just because you're a moderator, it doesn't mean everyone MUST agree with your views.

I LOVE Florence and the Machine, I bought the deluxe version of Lungs and love every track.

Ah, thanks for that Shadows! I'll remember that for next time EDIT: Thanks for your nice explanations Chris! I've learned quite a bit. I gotta get me a special halberd for taking my creations apart!

Welcome to the forums, Guy Montag! Good to see another Aussie here. That makes sense, they probably decided to do the 3-for-2 offer to get rid of all the other toys they had leftover from Christmas, they weren't doing it to get rid of LEGO, there's hardly any of it. Congrats to people who made good use of it, and here's to more of this sort of thing

Also the image quality of the camera is really poor. If you want to buy this to get into brickfilming, a better idea would to buy a QuickCam Pro 9000 and use Helium Frog animation software. You can find out lots more about brickfilming at www.bricksinmotion.com

Hahaha, that's how I felt when I found out the Emporium's only $250.

Hopefully less in China, but I think the increase in Mexico and Eastern Europe is more due to increases in overall LEGO sales and also expanding production capacity for the future. In The Brick, the figure given for "percentage of LEGO that AFOLs buy" is 11%. But I don't know if that is based on number of sets, or taking into account the number of pieces in a set, or even how accurate it is.

I thought the arm mark indicated that it was a Chinese-produced fig? Considering the limited number of figs produced as a promotional offer, this seems kind of likely, although unfortunate.

Craziness, that whole Myer thing. Unfortunately when I looked in the CBD store today there was nothing of interest to me, they're quite low on stock.

Jumpers in the middle of a large plate or baseplate are the WORST, the brick remover doesn't work with them and unlike tiles, there is no groove underneath to dig the tile up with. Lots of tiles in the middle of baseplates suck too, the modular buildings all take ages to pull apart because of this and your fingers hurt afterwards. EDIT: this would suck too:

Is this meant to be an idea for a new modularity concept for HP sets? Or is it meant to be a fan-made modularity idea, like moonbase/modular houses? A hogwarts-moonbase thing would be wicked!

As Svelte pointed out, the price for the Imperial Flagship and Grand Emporium are the same in a lot of countries, so Aussies can assume that it'll be about $280. I'll wait til they arrive in DJs and are on sale to get mine. Hopefully there won't be a ton of ebay d*cks waiting to pounce on them and buy DJs out, selling the Emporiums at a high markup. I know that it's fine as it's a free market, but I really think it's just bad manners, and makes life harder for other AFOLs. I've had a really radical idea about LEGO's pricing in the US, although given I don't know a lot about economics it may be flawed. Say a set is US$30 to produce at cost, which LEGO sells to Wal-mart in the US for US$32 (I have no idea how much markup LEGO put on sets sold in the US but it can't be much). Then the same set is sold to Myer in Australia for US$52 per set. Obviously this means LEGO is making a much higher profit off selling the set to Australia rather than the US, and it needs to do that to keep itself profitable considering the low cost of LEGO sets being sold to the US. So my point is, why sell to the US? If LEGO stopped selling sets in the US then they would have to downsize but it would mean that they would be able to sell LEGO more cheaply to European and Asian/Australasian countries. Of course this wouldn't make LEGO fans in the US happy, but I just thought I'd put the idea out there to see what people think

Nice to see a pack consisting of women entirely, but I'm not buying one unless they've stopped making these in China. I want to show LEGO what I think of the poor quality of the Chinese figs.

I have a bar of Norwegian chocolate that has gone walkabout from my room...

I've wondered about this as well, KOREA is listed on my HP Marauder's Map set. Maybe this will help? I have no idea if anything was produced there, but given the small number of workers it seems like it was just a packing factory set up by LEGO, anticipating a boom in LEGO sales in the asia-pacific region. Selling it off was part of the big sell-everything-not-necessary-off phase they had when they were bailing out water and trying to keep the company afloat in the mid noughties.

I love the new torso, I just hope that it will be available in other sets though! I don't want to have to buy a whole lot of basic bricks just to get the torso.