blueandwhite

You must have an insane collection. If it is anything close to your estimate, that would imply 1.5 million or more bricks. I assume that you've got a bricklink store or that you're a professional builder because I couldn't imagine anybody having a personal collection that large. Later.

I'm far too disorganized to come close to estimating an appropriate value, but I would hazard to guess that it easily approaches the $6,000 mark. I mean, how do you value 100,000+ in lose bricks?

I guess when it comes down to things, American and British bands are the ones that stand out for most of the english-speaking world with a few exceptions. I mean, sure there's INXS and AC/DC, or even smaller mainstream acts like Silverchair, but for the most part non-Australians like myself aren't going to have a great deal of awareness when it comes to the Australian music scene. I mean if you want to flip this thing on its head, how many Canadian bands have you heard of? Just like the Australian music scene, not many non-Canadians will recognize the majority of Canadian acts. I could probably name countless Canadian acts that you've never heard of that would be very recognizeable to most Canucks. When it comes to english-singing bands, if you're not well-known in the US or Britian, chances are that the majority of the world has no idea who you are.

Well, I don't exactly swim in my bricks if that's your meaning :-D .

Honestly, as an adult (30 years), I can definitely say that I would prefer age separation in most videogames. For the most part, teenagers and adults are a very different breed when it comes to gaming. While there are certainly mature young people, the inverse also holds true. As an adult, I enjoy the fact that these forums aren't cluttered with the words "noob" or "suxxorz" to name a few. I enjoy dealing with mature intelligent young people, but at the same time I do feel that age segregation has alot of benefits and I'm not talking about security benefits either. Alot of adults would prefer to keep company with mature like-minded individuals. In an all-ages online game, this isn't likely to happen. Just my opinion.

I guess the one thing I miss about the old forums was the fact that clicking the banner took you back to the main page of the forum rather than the front page. Is there any option/way of returning this feature. I generally enter the site using the front page, but once I've seen what's new, I prefer to focus my attention to the forums. It's one feature I truly miss.

Kid or adult; it's rather irrelevant. If it's a kid, they have a very wealthy set of parents. If it's an adult, he or she undoubtedly makes a more than decent living. There are always going to be KFOLs and AFOLs with seemingly huge collections. Heck, some of us drive fancy new BMWs; others drive beat-up Toyotas. It's not like it's a big deal. Whoever owns this collection could be a real class act, or conversely they could be absolutely abnoxious. There's no point in taking cheap shots though. The fact that this fan has a very expensive collection is really not that impressive. Heck, I'm sure that there are several wealthy fans on these forums who have collections that are just as impressive (ans some poor ones who dump every penny into their LEGO ;-) ). In all honesty, I'd be more impressed if this mass of LEGO goodness was used to create an elaborate scene or MOC. A big pile of bricks is nice, but putting them to good use is definitely part of the equation.

I'm not surprised. This judgement sounds pretty similar to the 2005 judgement. The fact that LEGO couldn't get a trademark on the studded building brick sort of put the nail in the coffin on this one. Honestly, the idea that a company should be able to create a permanent monopoly is absurd. Patents give the inventing company twenty good years to build a reputation (and LEGO has a rock-steady one at that), so I'm not really that put off by this latest decision. From what I'm reading here, LEGO having failed to secure a trademark for their bricks in 2005 has now attempted to make an argument for "passing off". Unfortunately, I'm not sure that there is a court out there that would support such a claim. As a LEGO fan I feel bad for my favourite company, but could you imagine if every company could create an indefinite monopoly on anything they invented? Yikes! I like my LEGO, but I like a free fair market just a bit more. I wonder if we'll see LEGO attempt to find another way to attempt to curb the surge of clone bricks in the future?

Well, this is nothing new. Given that LEGO's patents have expired, I'm not really sure what they could do to prevent clones from producing similar building bricks. From what I remember of the Canadian Supreme Court case (covered it in Law school), the court held that the LEGO brick was not subject to copyright. It's very rare for courts in different jurrisdictions to contradict each other on matters of copyright law as most developed countries have signed onto the Byrne Convention (which governs copyright law). This lawsuit by LEGO simply seems to be a runaround of the previous one that they lost the last time. As I can't read Italian, I'm not sure the details of this lawsuit but I would love to hear about it. Perhaps LEGO was claiming that MEGABLOKS were passing themselves off as being LEGO brand bricks? Any details from our Italian members would be greatly appreciated as this stuff is always good for discussion. At the end of the day, it hardly matters to us as AFOLs. MEGABLOKS have been around for years and they haven't hurt us in the least. As far as I'm concerned, LEGO quality will always prevail :-D .

The new coat of paint looks fantastic! With the new skins, Eurobricks is looking better than ever. I really have to hand it to the admins; this is about the nicest site update I've ever seen for a LEGO related sites (which is saying something considering the old forum was pretty nifty to begin with). It's good to see this place looking better than ever!

Man of the Hour - Pearl Jam live at Kitchener 2005. With this I expose my age! I'm an old man :-D .

I agree. The funny thing is that the Market Street didn't actually go that well with the Cafe Corner, but with the Green Grocer stuck between them the combination of all three looks utterly amazing! I passed on the Market Street last year, but seeing all three combined I'm probably going to have to empty the bank for these.

It's a good kind of hurt :-D . And remember, it hurts even more outside of the US. Looking at these photos, this has to be the most beautiful set I've ever laid my eyes on. It's simply an amazing set with an unparalleled amount of detail. No wonder the city line has become so popular. I too love this line, but I will never abandon my medieval heart *knight* ! Looks to be the set of the year.

Look in the pile of bricks. There's what appears to be a new brick (a 3 x 1 post with two clips). these undoubtedly go next to the new two-wide :'-( windows to attach the now 2.5 wide shutters. This is definitely not the direction I wanted to see LEGO take. It's not as if the molds for the old windows suddenly up and disappeared. These <insert that tiresome argument> windows and shutters are just terrible.

While I'm not a huge fan of the "Tumbler" (I perfer the Burton and Animated versions of the Batmobile), this is one of the nicest Tumblers I've seen. It's not too bloated or oversized (something that many Batmobiles including my own suffer from). The design is also quite true to the movie version making it instantly recognizable. A fantastic MOC that really puts LEGO's own Tumbler to shame.

Hate the new shutters! The giant hinge looks terrible compared to the old-school sutters that we've had for ages. This really disappoints me as I see the window pack as being something of a step backwards.

Not bad. That being said, I'm still waiting for an Idea Book that is aimed at AFOLs. The catalog is a great companion to any collection, but more than anything I would love to see an AFOL idea book representing the best of the LEGO world in a high gloss, professionally photographed format. The catalog seems almost like something a stamp collector might purchase. It's a great piece for set collectors and such, but I've always been more of a MOCer. This catalog is nice but I think I can probably go without.

That's too bad. Maybe you can corner the market :-D . In all seriousness, this is pretty nice. It's actually the kind of adult oriented model I was hoping LEGO might one day produce for us castle fans (mind you, I wouldn't expect something that mirrors the cafe corner THAT closely). Nice job.

I'm guessing into the thousands. That build is considerably larger than anything LEGO has sold to the public to date. Such a monstrosity (in size, not appearance) would cost a small fortune. UCS sets are certainly larger than the average LEGO model, but alot of fan created MOCs dwarf even the Millennium Falcon. This ship looks to be easily twice the Falcon's size and piece count.

Many of the newer space themes get a bad rap simply because the respective lines only lasted one year. One of the crowning achievments of classic castle, space and town was that each theme carried over from year to year, meaning that the sets integrated well. With newer lines like Ice Planet or Space Police II, fans were given a throw away line of sets that didn't match up with their earlier collection. This made collecting a large, coherent collection pretty much impossible. When windscreens are blue one year, hot orange the next, green the year after that and so forth. I suspect alot of people simply got fed up of not being able to develop a comprehensive collection of sets.

Well, it's about time you space fans got some genuine respect from the powers that be over at LEGO. This is fantastic news, and the fan/ambassador involvement is simply wonderful. It's really amazing how much the ambassador program has given us considering that many fans were initially quite skeptical of the whole process, accusing LEGO of being too secretive. This is the kind of thing I love seeing. Congrats to all you space fans. Given the love that LEGO has given townies and castleheads, you guys deserve this!

Oops :-D . Still, at $17.99 (before tax), that still works out to be almost $4.00 a pop. After tax we end up paying just over $4.00 CDN, which works out to be about $5.00 NZD. Bricklink offers far better than this.

My "battle packs" shall be purchased exclusively through bricklink. For Canadians these things are highway robbery. At $17.99 that's $4.50 a figure! I can do much better on Bricklink. Heck, I can even get some classic figs like the BF or Lion Knights for a better price. This was probably the easiest set I've ever passed on.

While adult collectors and a few wealthy kids may flock to rarer figures, for the average consumer this isn't an option. Most kids don't want troop builders when they don't even have many of the main players. The minor characters that collectors love don't necessarily appeal to kids who still haven't picked up a Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, or in the case of Transformers and GI Joe; Optimus Prime, Megatron, Duke, or Cobra Commander. And every few years a new generation of kids comes along. While you've seen these figures and their hundreds of variants hit the racks, these youngins are only getting their first crack at these toys. Walmart (and other retailers) aren't asking for these figures to spite collectors; they ask for them because they know that certain products are easier to push than others. Moving a large quantity of Darth Vaders is probably alot easier than moving an obscure EU character that most kids haven't even heard of. Again, Walmart isn't in this to sabatoge Hasbro or any other toy company. At the end of the day they are simply looking to push product as fast as possible. I'm sorry to say it but as far as I can tell, female figures have never been popular with younger boys. You can mock the market research of Walmart if you like, but to suggest that Walmart doesn't know the marketplace is pushing it. This is a company that while brutal, does everything it can to understand and control pretty much every market it enters into. Right now GI Joe isn't exactly a kids toyline is it? The licence while popular with older folk who remember the good ol' days isn't exactly familiar to alot of kids. There was a push a few years back with Sigma Six, but how popular is the line with children? It would seem to me that this product is aimed more towards you collector types who already have their fill of Cobra Commanders and Snake Eyes. That being said, with the movie you can bet that you will see alot more Cobra Commanders and Snake Eyes figures in the future. The fact that Walmart doesn't cator to the collector's market probably won't change anytime soon. Adult collectors may make up a good portion of some productline sales, but with the exception of a few lines like Star Wars I very much doubt that adults will ever constitute a majority of sales for most toylines. Toys R Us is simply picking up a smaller segment of the market that Walmart doesn't want to waste shelfspace on.

I'm loving the new dark brown. Unlike reddish brown which was a major step backwards from the original (and superior) old brown, dark brown is amazing! I really hope we see alot more of this colour in the future. Those dark brown arches at the back of the ship would be perfect for making trees, and the colour seems ideal for dark wood furniture. Now all we have to do is wait until LEGO actually produces enough pieces to make it useful.