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I've been looking at getting these sets, and I'd also like to avoid the huge aftermarket markup. The Lego site has the Winter Village Post Office marked as "retired" while the Winter Village Bakery is simply "sold out." I also noticed that none of the other Winter Village sets are listed. Does anyone with more knowlege than me know if any of these sets will be available this year at Christmas? http://shop.lego.com...st-Office-10222 http://shop.lego.com...ge-Bakery-10216

Work and kids are making it hard to find time build it. My kids are rather young, so they can't be much help in building the ship unfortunately.

Currently the only Lego train that I have is the 7722 Steam Cargo Train: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/7722_Steam_Cargo_Train_Set I'm thinking about picking up the Emerald Night set, but I'm wondering if this train will be compatible with the track the 7722 runs on? I already have a ton of this track available, including special pieces such as road crossings and switches. It'd be nice if I can run new trains on this track as well. Thanks in advance!

I was lucky enough to find a nice used version of the Imperial Flagship, which is now built and sitting next to the Caribbean Clipper. First I will say that I love the IF, it's a great looking ship and I really like the slimmer ship hull. However, I still give the win to the Clipper: 1) Imperial Flagship does not have an anchor, which is about as odd as the Renegade Runner not having a steering wheel. 2) As you mentioned, the rudder steering mechanism takes up the entire cabin. This is really a novelty feature and doesn't add to the model, I'd much rather have a nice cabin for the captain. I might remove the feature in the future and add a chair and desk for the captain. 3) While the slimmer hull looks nice and might be more realistic, it starts to feel crowded when you start putting figures on the ship. 4) I'm biased towards the bluecoats, I like their look better than the redcoats (no one said I had to be fair and balanced!) Like I said, I do think the Imperial Flagship is a beauty of a Lego ship. I had no idea that the sails had that tea stained color to them instead of being white. I don't necessarily like the flag and sail graphic of the Imperials with the crossed cannons, but I love the color of the sails. It makes me want to tea stain my Clipper sails so that the white is that same color. I also like the sail configuration and rigging of the Imperial Flagship better, I wish Clipper had one more sail on that rear mast. Of course, I have the 10210 Imperial Flagship sitting in the box waiting to be built, which is going to dwarf both of these ships!

Upon inspecting the bricks, it looks like some have hairline fractures that are causing them to not grip well. Same with the minifigures, I'll probably just end up replacing the damaged parts.

I always thought I'd just give my old Lego to my kids. But when I finally dug them out, I realized that even as an adult I still love playing with my old sets and that I don't want to see them chewed up/destroyed/lost/etc. I think I'm going to compromise by giving my kids new Lego sets to call their own, and they can play with dad's Lego under supervision.

I just used this technique, figured I'd report my results. I recently purchased a used 6271 Imperial Flagship, which had a lot of yellowed bricks. Both of the plastic flags were very discolored, along with most of the white, blue, and light gray bricks. The minifigures were also discolored, mostly the admiral's bicorn hat and the torso's of the figs. I mixed up a solution of 2 cups of 3% hydrogen peroxide, about a tablespoon of standard oxyclean, and mixed them together until dissolved. I submerged all of the discolored parts in a clear bowl, placed a sheet of aluminum foil under the bowl to reflect light, and put it under a desk lamp for about 4 hours. At this point, all of the bricks looked brand new, even the flags were bright white again. However, the minifigures seem unaffected. The backs seem to have gotten a little brighter, but the discoloring on the printing, and the white part of the admiral's bicorn have seen no noticeable improvement. Has anyone had any luck using retr0bright on minifigures? Maybe the plastic is of a different formula than regular bricks, or the fading is on the actual paint/printing on the figure, and has nothing to do with the abs plastic? I should note that the retr0bright did not affect or fade any of the printed parts. I had a large and small Imperial flag, along with the minifigures, in the solution, and none of the printing faded at all.

I'm not sure, the problem bricks are from sets I've bought used on the secondary market. I've read that about that happening to bricks that are stored connected, but I also read that if you leave them unconnected they could go back into their original shape in time, might be something I'll try. Like I said, most of the problems are with 1 stud bricks, which never seem to clutch the greatest anyway, even when new.

I came up with an easy solution for the bicorn - I cut a little piece of plastic (bubble wrap, saran, whatever you have on hand) and stuffed it into the bicorn. The added material creates a nice tight fit.

Doesn't look like the minifigure arms are cracked, so it must be that the hand is worn down. I'll probably just look into replacing the bricks and minifigures.

In some of my older Lego sets, a few of the bricks have lost their "connective strength," ie they don't stick together as well as they used to. I'm assuming this is caused by regular play wearing the plastic around the studs out. This seems to be most common with 1 stud pieces, like the 2x1 brick with 1 stud on top. I've also noticed this with a number of my older minifigures. My pirate captain's bicorn hat doesn't stay on his head very tight, it doesn't have that "snap" when you put it on, and a light breeze can knock it off. Also, some of the hands from my minifigures are rather loose and come out easily. Is there any reliable way to fix this? I thought about maybe putting a light dab of clear nailpolish on the inside of the pirate hat, for instance, so that there's more stuff for the head stud to grab onto. I could simply replace some of these pieces, but since they'll most likely be used there's no guarantee that they'll be better. Thanks in advance!

This is the first brand new Lego set I've ever purchased for myself. All the rest of my Lego sets were given to me as gifts when I was a kid, and I'm not counting the couple of used sets I bought post dark ages. Just thought of that as I was drooling over the box. This thing looks like a beauty, and I can't wait to build it. Finally my Black Seas Barracuda will have a worthy opponent!

I hear you on the time crunch issue, it sucks being an adult sometimes! I have a plan though, I'm going to sort and build up my old Lego sets with my kids. That way I get quality time with the children, my kids can experience some of the toys I played with when I was their age, and I'll get to build a lot more!

That's good to hear, thanks for the info.

I just rebuilt the Caribbean Clipper, and even though the sails were in a sealed container they were still a little dingy, probably just from play. I decided to not wash them, I kind of like the look of them slightly dirty and off white. I doubt many real ships had perfectly white sails for long!

When I was a kid my routine was to flip open the front flap and stare at the awesomeness for a bit (I guess I had a lot of patience for a kid!). Then I'd carefully crack open the seal and slide out the parts tray. I'd sort out the special parts, build the minifigs, etc. Then I'd start ripping open bags and dump everything into one pile of bricks. These numbered bags are for the weak, you haven't built Lego until you've hunted for a 1x1 flat dot brick amongst a pile of similar color bricks for an hour I would build in silence in the living room, and then parade the model around to show my family when I was done. Today, I build at my office desk, with some music going in the background. Desk space is limited, if I'm going to get back into the Lego hobby I'm thinking I need a dedicated space. Also, even though the bags are numbered in today's sets, I still dump them all in a big pile to get the full Lego experience from my childhood!

I should add that I'm completely fine playing with my Legos with the kids, but only when I'm around supervising. I definitely want to share my Black Seas Barracuda and Monorail transport system with the little ones, but these sets are in mint condition and I'd prefer to not lose parts, or have anything chewed on. I think it's a generational thing. I'm in my 30's and it seems that a lot of people my age kept a lot of their important toys, or are collecting toys from their childhood that they've lost or always wanted but can buy for themselves now. So our kids will have to compete with us :) We're the "never gonna grow up" generation!

I think the biggest fail with those raised baseplates is the ramp. It's a gigantic waste of useless space. You can't build anything on it, and minifigs or vehicles just slide right down. Why the ramp isn't studded is beyond me. I much prefer the generic flat plates, and to build up a base using regular bricks. As a project, I'm thinking about replacing some of my set's CRAPP with a brick-built base.

If TLC would just go back to the old style boxes, where you could flip the front lid and see all the special parts, including the minifigs, this wouldn't be an issue.

Glad to see the company doing better, but sad to hear about plans to shut down a plant in Denmark. I was always willing to pay higher prices for Lego because I knew that they're made in Denmark, with quality and responsible labor practices. I hope Lego isn't following the global trend of shipping manufacturing and jobs to third world countries where labor is exploited. TLC has always been a leader this way, so I hope they do the right thing in the end.

I've been contemplating this question quite a bit lately. I've been in my dark ages since the early to mid 90's, and haven't really given Lego much thought until recently. I got married last year and now have a couple of stepkids, and a new son on the way. I purchased a few smaller sets for the kids, and my stepson seems to be pretty interested in building. This caused me to start going through my old Lego collection at my parents, and in doing so I learned that a lot of my sets are pretty valuable. I'm just going to keep them at my parents for the time being, and keep sorting them out into sets to see what's actually there in total. I know all the parts are there, I was pretty anal about not losing anything, even though the parts are mixed together in several large rubbermade bins. I'm sure there will be a bunch of leftover brick, so I'll probably donate those to the kids and display my prized pieces somewhere out of reach.

Great review, really brought me back. My parents bought me a "big" lego set every year for Christmas during my Lego golden era, and this was my big set for Christmas 1988 (I believe). I was really into the space sets at the time, and when the Futuron stuff started to get printed in the Lego catalogs, I had to have it! I remember thinking how cool the helmets with the new visors and the zip up spacesuits on the minifigs were. I probably started asking for the monorail set over the summer sometime so that Santa was sure to hear I know this is in my parents basement 100% complete, with original instructions and box, as I just went through a bunch of my old toys. This motivates me to go rescue it and get it set up and running!

What do you mean by that? Is there a flaw in the construction of the IF that damages the sail?

My dark age went from around 1995 to, well let's see, maybe a month ago? I started playing with Lego in the mid 80's, and have quite a few very nice sets. My favorite system was space, and I have most of the light and sound sets, the original Monorail Transport System, Blacktron Renegade, to name the big ones. Plus countless other ships, bases, etc. I was a big train geek as well, and had the Lego 7722 train, one of my favorite sets. My brother was big into town, and he has a lot of sets from that system. When the pirate sets came out, I begged for the Black Seas Barracuda, and it appeared under the Christmas tree in '89. Got Forbidden Island on my following birthday, and my brother got the Caribbean Clipper. The pirates got the most play out of me for whatever reason, I was just in awe of those ships after I constructed them. I think it was because they were so different from anything Lego was doing at the time. Over the past year, I got married and now have two young stepkids in my life who hadn't been exposed to Lego yet. Of course, I had to buy them some sets of the coolest toy ever created. Returning to the Lego aisle in the store after such a long hiatus, I was disappointed by what I saw. So many licensed Legos, I loved the charm of the Lego's from my youth with their unique designs and minimalist backstories; they let you run wild with your imaginiation. I ended up purchasing several of the 'Creator' sets, they have the feel of the old sets and allow you to build 3 different models with one box. My wife has now learned that she married a Lego maniac! In fact, for my birthday she went out and bought me my first set since I was a kid, the Lego Star Wars X-Wing!! I'm now officially out of my dark age. I'm in the process of rescuing my Lego sets from my parents basement. They have given away most of my old toys, but they kept all the Legos. My mom even had the forsight to keep all the instructions (organized in a file cabinet!!) AND kept all the boxes for my sets. I'm having a blast building up my old sets, and already have ideas in my head for making some MOC's sometime in the future.

As a kid playing with Black Seas Barracuda and Carribean Clipper, the sails became creased quite often as the ships were stored in a big bin along with the rest of the legos I had. Back then I just used a regular hot iron to flatten them out, never had any issues with the sails being damaged or colors running. As for fraying, you could probably apply a very small amount of glue, with a qtip or something, to prevent that. They also sell a product at the fabric store that has the same effect. As a side note, does anyone know if there is a pattern online for these sails so we can make our own? Might be useful if your sails are so gone that they need replacements, I bet there's a lot of very appropriate fabrics that would make good sails.