puddleglum

The biggest cracking problem I have seen in parts in cheese slopes cracking at the low in end of the slope. I have had a number of these parts crack this way. For example: As for clutch power, I have also noticed that some of the newer parts seem to be clutching quite a bit stronger. I bought some 2x2 corner bricks in tan from the PaB wall in Houston, and their clutch was almost too strong. I also noticed very high clutch in the reddish brown 1x2 bricks with vertical clip that were in Troll's Mountain Fortress. I can't speak for other bricks in that set though, those were just ones I happened to have used in an MOC recently.

I'm not sure why everyone is so set on this being fake. A quick search in google news turns up a number of websites reporting this: http://news.google.com/news/more?um=1&...M35oPqwQ6WOGMaM The whole reason it's an issue is that company after company have been suing eBay to try to block them from selling their products on eBay, since the risk of fraud to consumers is too high. L'Oreal, has, for example, sued eBay in the US, UK, France, and Belgium to try to stop ALL L'Oreal products from being sold on eBay. It sounds ridciulous to us to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but that's what companies are arguing for. So far they have not been sucessful, but I don't think everyone should dismiss it as a "that could never happen" kind of thing.

If you are looking for specific, out of production minifigs, BrickLink is pretty much your only option. eBay is a possibility but you'd have to be patient, and spend a lot of time looking through auctions to find what you are looking for. There is a chance you will find a deal there, though. If the minifigs in current castle and pirate sets are useful to you, then you'll probably be well served to just buy some of those sets, since they will also come with acessories and parts that are good for castle and pirate building. As for selling your old SW figs, I strongly recommend opening a BrickLink store, especially if you are going to be building up BrickLink feedback through purchases there anyways. I have made over $600 selling my old SW figs on BrickLink! You will get higher prices than on eBay, and the fees are substantially lower.

Do you still have your bricks sorted by color? I'm of two minds about this. I'm still in the process of sorting, but right now I'm doing it by brick. (1x1's in a bag, 2x2's in a bag, etc). It's very easy to find the parts I'm looking for, but I think ultimately, any time I'm looking for bricks in a certain color, I'm going to need various lengths, and it would be nice to just be able to go grab, for example, a box of tan bricks if I want to build a tan building. But I'm too OCD to put all the tan bricks in a box unsorted, so right now I'm leaning towards having a box or large bag for each color, and having each size brick in it's own bag. I agree with setting very rare colors aside, but I've started using BrickStore to keep an inventory of my parts, so it's easy enough to see all the parts I have in a certain color. I let my old and new browns mingle freely, since most constructions using brown benefit from the “mixed” look anyways. My old greys I am quarantining to their own box since I don’t use them much.

You're right. If it wasn't for these silly gender roles and cultural baggage, women could be stars in the NFL, and men could nurse their young!

I applaud your efforts, and surely, no one person can be defined by their gender, race, country of origin, or other common demographic divisions. There are female AFOLs like yourself out there for sure, and speaking personally, I'm a fan of your creations! But I do suspect that LEGO has already invested significant research, development, and marketing efforts over the years into breaking into the girl's toy market. I think if making LEGO sets that appealed to girls in a way that was profitable for LEGO was simple, they would have figured it out already. The point I was trying to make is that I feel there is more going on here than the sort of sets LEGO makes, or even the influence of parents. With our son, we never taught him to like cars and trucks. He was fascinated by them before he ever had a toy car or truck, spotting them in pictures, out the window, etc. In the nursery at church, with all sorts of traditionally "boy" and "girl" toys to choose from, he always played with the cars and trucks. Now, this is just one example, and not at all a scientific study. Perhaps someone with a daughter has even had the exact same experience, with their daughter loving cars! But I believe there are innate differences in boys and girls, and that all other factors aside, the different genders tend naturally to be drawn to different toys, and later in life, different occupations and interests. Basically what I am trying to say is that I think whatever sets LEGO makes, it's always going to be more popular with boys than it is with girls. On the other hand, there certainly were a lot of girls at the Annapolis R2-D2 model build I helped with a couple weeks back. Side note: Man, I totally miss those animal creator sets! All we get these days are dinosaurs and dragons, which are fine and all, but they don't offer a great color variety.

Let's not confuse the rarity of the parts with the rarity of the sets. The sets themselves (meaning, the parts, bag, and instructions) are extremely rare - they give out 300 of these sets at each store opening, plus a copy to folks who help with the build event, and probably store employees as well. The sets are designed by master model builders that work for LEGO USA. The parts, on the other hand, are always relatively common parts, with most sets having 50-60 parts. The notable exception is the Raleigh lighthouse, which has 120 parts, including 1x1 plates in several colors, tan tiles and jumper plates, and the 2x2 plate with octogonal bar frame in black.

This is totally un-PC to say these days, but I'll let you in on a little secret: males and females are different.

Nice to see that the dark red goes all the way around the back of the top floor, and there are more windows back there, too! I’ll definitely be getting this one. I agree that it doesn’t quite live up to the standard set by CC and GG, but that’s a pretty high standard to meet. It’s still a nice building chock full of useful parts and colors, with a great parts/price ratio. I understand that it’s everyone’s prerogative to like or dislike the design of the set, and share their opinions, but the forcefulness of some of the complaints seems unnecessary. You’re all free to modify the set however you like – it’s LEGO! Or you can opt to not buy it at all. Personally, all these sets are just parts packs for me anyways, and wonderful ones at that!

I actually think it is ridiculous that they sell the Creator houses without brick separators. Without a separator, getting all those 1x1 tiles off the baseplate would be a really frustrating task. Getting tiles off of plates is my #1 use for brick separators. Besides that, I mainly use the separator for separating plates of equal size that are stacked, especially 1x2 and 2x2 plates.

US prices do not include any taxes. Do those Euro and Pound prices include VAT?

I'm a big fan of the Power Miners line, but this set really seems to come up short. I can't get over how terrible it looks from the side!

I'm really surprised at the generally negative tone about this set. I just built it the other day and was really impressed. I think it looks great, has nice details, is full of useful pieces and stickers, and is the sort of set I would have loved to play with as a kid. The cockpit opens in a really cool sci-fi way, and I found the attachment mechanisim for the safe to be clever. This set is $20 well spent, in my opinion. I also think it's neat that LEGO made a VTOL, but that's a minor point really. In contrast, I don't find Galactic Enforcer very appealing. (But all we have are pictures at the moment)

At first I was not interested in this set very much, even as a Castle fan. But the new minfigs, along with a very nice parts selection, changed my mind on it. Lots of brown and dark brown, along with the tooth in dark red (new part/color combo), and some dark green as well. Not to mention loads of slopes, which you can never have enough of. I think anyone who likes to build Castle has to like the set as a parts-pack, even if they don't like the final appearance of the set itself. I ended up buying the set and selling all the trolls for $70, so I could have all the great parts at a reasonable price!

At Toy Fair it was listed as MSRP $5.99.

Holy Pricey Parts, Batman! Those droid bodies and exo-force arms in white go for about $.30 a peice on Bricklink right now, making just those six parts worth $1.80. Nice to see an impulse set with multiples of a rareish part!

!!!!!!

I especially like that this set has five of this new part! Definitely picking this one up as soon as it's available near me.

Thanks for the review! I've like this set since pictures first surfaced, both because it broke from the mold of other PM sets, and it looks like a fantastic parts-pack. Maybe next time use Flickr to host your photos, and you won't have a problem with exceeding bandwidth restrictions. EDIT: At least, the first time I looked at this thread, all your links were broken. Now they're back.

I really think the carousel looks fantastic, and I'm seen tons of great parts in there. I'm especially impressed that they go the horses to go up and down. (Has that been confirmed?) Anyways, this unfortunately isn't the sort of set for which I could pay $250. I'll set aside $175 for it in case it ever goes on sale, though. At that price it would make a super-fantastic parts pack.

That's funny, Bricklink's classification of these as Technic parts totally makes sense, but I was quite surprised to learn that these parts have never been in a Technic set!

So what is the deal with purple then? The purple elment jumped out at me as well. Misunderstanding or not, none of the early 2009 sets had purple elements in them, and as far as I have seen, the canopy for that merchant's stand is the only one in the summer 2009 lineup. Does anyone know if it is it a new purple, or if it is meant to match one of the many past shades of purple LEGO has produced? Back on topic, all those sets look great, and the Venice and Cairo sets at a minimum are must-buys for me. I can't believe all the minifigs and cool accessory-type peices they squeezed into the Cairo set. It will be hard not to buy a half dozen copies of that one!

Wow, this one really looks like it turned out great. I'll definitely be picking one of these up as soon as they hit the shelves!

A little update - I decided that getting into PF wasn't urgent for me, and that I could just wait for an opportunity to get a Technic PF set on sale. I figured that would probably mean waiting until the next after-Christmas sale, but I was okay with that. Then I was in my local TRU the other day, and they had Monster Dino on sale for $70! I remembered you recommending it and decided to go for it, espeically since it has every PF part but the lights and pole reverser. The PF parts alone would be $50 to buy separately, so I'm pretty happy about this. That's getting the nearly 800 other parts, including Technic stuff I don't have much of like gears, cams, and lift arms, for $20! Not to mention the instructions for three different models should help me get on my way towards learning how to us PF. So yay! The only thing is I promised my wife I would finish my current sorting/storage project before cracking this thing open.

First, thanks for the reviews. Maybe it's just the pictures, but I can't help but think these look more like Megabloks than LEGO. I also have to agree that these don't seem to put LEGO in a good light at all - they look like cheap toys! Sure, they are OK considering that they are "free", and I understand that prices dictate that there is no way to put "real" LEGO in a cereal box without losing money. My feeling is that if that's the case, they probably should just not be doing this promotion. But what do I know!