robuko

Since seeing The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (outstanding, 11 out of 10 from me) I have been on a Western mission. Saw A Fistful of Dollars (7) and A Few Dollars More (8) and Once Upon a Time in The West (8, great stuff from Henry Fond and Charles Bronson) all for the first time. Bring on the Lone Ranger! And Superman Returns, which surprised me with its faithfulness to the original films.

Letters from Father Christmas by JRR Tolkien - beautifully illustrated letters from Tolkien to his children The best of 2000AD - much inspiration here Of Men and Their Making, a collection of stuff by John Steinbeck. Fascinating

Hammerstein, you are on an awesome roll with your figs right now. That teddy bear is the business. Nice pipe too

Thanks for this review. I am torn 2 ways on this set. It's kind of lame, really, and a bit expensive, so I guess I'll regret buying it. But the minfigs are awesome, so I would regret not buying it too, and probably by more...

My son (2 1/12) is vastly more important than my lego. If he breaks it, I fix it. He has his sets, I have my sets. He breaks mine (especially the vehicles), I raid his for MOC parts. It all works out fine. He is not so interested in minifigs and he doesn't bite parts, so I am lucky.

I feel this way too after the review. I was excited to get the new rock parts, but this overall design is unappealing so maybe I'll BL them. Thanks for the reviews on all these new figures VBBN.

Oh look, hostilities start at the end. Apparently the new Challenge 6 storyline is all about desperately hoping for survivors after Mesodraconem gets razed to ashes and dirt by Revolword. Bad luck Z.

@Faefrost, thankyou very much for posting that presentation, it was very interesting. Yes, I should have said I was coming at this from the perspective of the current environment, so my thoughts are context sensitive - I I run Lego, my business is firing on 12 cylinders right now, Friends guarantees me growth for 3 years. My biggest worries are Star Wars (lull between CW and new film) and CMF (copycats from Playmobil and Hasbro in the "boy doll" market) running out of steam at some point, uncertainty over my 1-hit franchises like PoTC, potential Chima failure (as an AFOL I don't believe this, but if I was CEO I would take good note of my Marvel sets flying off the shelves and my Chima sets staying on them), and speculator revulsion in the secondary market if the bubble overheats. Oh, and now that Disney owns all human boys age 2-15, if they buy Hasbro we're toast. What am I looking for to move the needle over 5 years? I agree with BrickG that these earlier ideas can work from the current position of financial strength in a way they could not from a position of weakness. But, I would need the systems to manage them - which TLG now has, I think.

If you say people who are interested in Lego are buying it anyway, that's an argument that always applies to any country at any point in time. But sales have gone up, so it hasn't been a valid argument. As articulated by several in this topic, distribution and pricing is clearly an issue in Asia that is holding back sales. Lego should look to develop a customer base, and develop sales per customer through time, in any territory. I think the reason they have not really made a big push in Asia is partly your point on IP protection. As I noted in this topic, IP theft is a real issue and the copycat quality is good and improving. But also, they just don't need to bother with Asia while the developed country territories are quite simply on fire, revenue wise. Asia is just harder. I actually think the strategy is to put Asian growth on the back burner and save it for for a rainy day. After all, the CMF boomlet won't last forever and Star Wars will have weak years. @Faefrost, Lego does have several direct consumer stores in Japan under the clickbrick brand, but I think it is run by a licensee.

Beautiful build. I was really excited by my WIP, until I saw this. I know it's very early, but I call winner. Great posing. Micro giant. Think about it. Beautiful.

Harrison Ford - Indiana Jones and Han Solo

I disagree with this. There are plenty of rich people and talented enthusiasts in Asia. There are more rich people in China than the UK, for example. And populations are getting quite nucleated so distribution is becoming easier. As far as I can tell, machines and plastics are the same price the world over and TLG production is highly automated so I don't buy the low-cost labour story. Lego makes 70% gross margin, cost is not really an issue.

More support for LUGs in developing territories is a winner for me, my LUG makes big losses on shows because it is not allowed to have ticket sales or revenues, and these shows do drive footfall and sales for retailers. I would put the alternate build ideas back on boxes/instructions, and move to more pieces per instruction step in the AFOL sets. I would also have a hard look at the developing country growth strategy. TLG doesn't need to now, because it is winning share globally, but I don't think they are doing enough in Asia. Demographics won't be a free lunch here forever. I would put more blue sky stuff in the pipeline too. for example, why is Mindstorms only a hobbyist product? Can we get this into real factories? What more can we do on education? Friends has been a superb example of this. And, I would have a theme like Lego Legends, one AFOL model a year in the style of quite popular classic themes, for example ice planet, Exo-force or Orient adventurers. It wouldn't be a big seller but as DTC it would be good for brand equity and fandom longevity. I guess this distribution concept is working for trains, in a way. And I would have a gigantic palace with enormous themed play areas full of classic sets.

Wow, Kai! Just, wow! What a lot of work! Thanks for this, it will be very useful

A reminder of who's who at the PGTC and a brief summary of what we've been up to What, briefly, has been happening at the PGTC. Some of the below might turn out to be plot points The PGTC stockpiled vast amounts of oil, food, and ice at Lost Vegga at the first assassination attempt against the King. Doktor Frankenstein learned the secrets of Physick and Optick from Cristoph Doktor Frankenstein and Herr Leibniz of the mountain mummies converted a temple into a totally innocent non-military experimental heliotrope, which operates as a civilian glass factory and which has substantially increased our GDP, trade surplus, and net income. Duc LeStrange hosted a ball in Abyssan, Nocturnus where he spread a lot of love, and learned of an ambitious neighbour, Daniel. After Sinbad recovered the Holy Crystal, Revolword betrayed us all and started his terrible war. Daniel sided with Lord Darecold and the defeated Valsharess in the Nocturnus civil war, and left Abyssan under a truce. He later purchased the Mitgardian village of Snowfell at auction in Lost Vegga. Duc LeStrange fled Abyssan carrying important information to Flagg. We learned of the terrible destruction of Caestra at the hand of Revolword and the Elementals. The PGTC removed its base of operations to the holy protection of the Necropolis of Amset Ra/Temple of the Mad Monks. Here, Biarssh has learned the secrets of the Order of Eden and we have uncovered the plans of the Hand of Corruption. Doktor Frankenstein has joined his father and Herr Leibniz, and set up a workshop for the production of portable high-powered heliotropes. Herr Leibniz has established the pattern of protected sacred sites. Rasputin, Sally, Urthrak and al Jebra are hanging out for Dugal Maclean's wedding. The whereabouts of the others are currently unknown... to be continued... in Challenge VI

That's right Aanchir, sorry it was ambiguously worded. Yes, BOLE is much better plastic than Decool/unbranded. The plastic and moulds are not as good as Lego, but while I would give Decool a 5/10 here, I would give BOLE a 7 or 8. As I noted before, the printing for both is surprisingly good. Not on a par with current Lego standards, but better than 2009/10 standards (in my judgement).

We watch Cars 2 about twice a day at the moment - my son is 2 1/2. While I am overall pretty much a fan of Pixar's art and storytelling, there are a lot of things I really don't like. These are films for very young kids, but there are so many unnecessary guns. Toy Story even opens with a gun. My worst scene in any Pixar film is where Holley electrocutes Tombey for no reason at all in Cars 2, and totally gets away with it. What a terrifying message - agents can torture you with impunity, tough luck for the victims. Even worse than all the shooting and murders. I really wish there was a way to edit out the violence.

Rhino for sure. Unless the bears have pandas. Until then, crocodile.

This totally fits something I have really wanted to build for a while. But what I want to build is probably a bit too obscure to win votes. Is this public voting? Tough call. As usual I will probably build what I like!

It's going to be tough to beat the trophy, that's one sweet build!

Happy New Year everyone! What a great way to finish. I have had a bit too much real life stuff to do since Hallowe'en so I haven't been building, I even missed the University and Valryrio challenges. Hopefully I will get something in for Challenge 6. Well done to those who have been holding the fort lately, there have been a lot of very interesting stories posted

That's a beautiful build, love the dark green!

An update with a new brand I found called BOLE. These have much better quality plastic, and good printing - although sadly there is no back printing. The figure serial numbers appear to follow the same numbering as Decool/unbranded figures but with 90 in front. From the left, we have BOLE NRG Jay, BOLE Lloyd ZX, unbranded/ possibly Decool NRG Cole, and a real Jay ZX for comparison. Clearly different moulds and better plastic quality. Good selection of accessories, including a half-pin in green and a new circular flat underneath-plate. The 2 cards on the left are from BOLE, the one on the right is from an unbranded maker. The packaging appears to be designed to confuse children into thinking they are genuine, with the lego typeface and red square. Both sets of instructions were for Cole These set me back HK$20 or around US $2.60. These BOLE figures are better than the unbranded ones I posted earlier, at around the same price, which is around 1/3 of what they would cost on bricklink before postage. As the figures are the main thing that interests me in Ninjago, I am pretty happy with these at the price - but don't get faked into buying them on ebay or bricklink. I am still hoping to find a Pythor.... @Aanchir, I am afraid I do not know what the real ninjago cards look like , or indeed the real NRG figures - but from the bricklink reference images, I would say the metallic printing looks very close to the real thing. Although these did not come with spinners, there are also sets with spinners available, I just wasn't interested in them.

Welcome to Eurobricks BlueBrick TARDIS! You will find a number of Doctor Who fans and builds here. Looking forward to seeing your builds.

Great review mifody, thanks very much. Your modifications make the set a lot better, especially the minifigs . The Jeep makes this a buy for me. Don't worry about your English, thank you very much for making the effort.