Legoist

Thanks for the review I had this set as a kid, as well as the yellow Castle. I remember that already at the time there was some discussion about the modern horses instead of brick-built horses and the wall panels, but as a kid I loved both. Now the horse has been the standard for over 20 years, a clear success. And I actually still like the wall panels as well: I think they look fine together with normal bricks, they simplify the design, speed up the build, and make the overall model lighter in weight. When you just need a flat wall with regular openings, panels are absolutely ok. Castles like this 6080 were all very good. They had a realistic feel of sturdiness, and the fact that they always opened was a big playability boost. This introduced some "modularity" with the other Castles or smaller towers and castle-walls in other sets, that could be immediately attached together to form a larger construction or small fortified village. The only drawback of this Castle era is the usual lack of interior details, and details are nowadays one of the key most-wanted features in a Lego set. However your review reminded me that 25+ years ago I had a lot of fun with the prison cell (for some reason I really liked the "wooden bar" closing idea) and the drawbridge/portcullis.

How many people have actually used Factory/DesignedByMe? With the incredibly limited selection of bricks and the high costs, I see no reason to use this service.

I'd love to make it a poll for quick counting, but I couldn't find the option to. It would be good to start your reply with a quick answer: a) regularly, b) occasionally, c) never. Think a) if you have done it more than once, last time was fairly recent, and you very probably will have the chance to do it again Think b) if you have done it but either only once, or last time was more than a couple years ago, or you don't see more opportunities in the near future ------------------------------------------------------ Add some extra information in your reply, such as: - how often do you contribute to public displays with a MOC or layout - what kind of events/occasions (incl. shop displays), and who organized it (TLG, local Lego club, a specific shop) - in which way do you contribute, e.g. layout design, MOCing, technical support etc. - how much did you share your task (e.g. in MOCing: did you build one thing alone or with others; in layout planning: were you the only designer or did you share the job) - how did you get involved, e.g. you belong to a Lego club - did you have an assignment or were you free to choose, or how much freedom did you have - did you use your personal Lego material or were you given the bricks by the organization of the event

Let's keep in mind that the discussion was in fact supposed to lead to some generalization on AFOL's habits. Certainly not to decide what is the best way to be an AFOL One question coming to my mind as I read the posts is how many of you actually take part in public displays. This complicates things significantly, because even if I have seen public displays with official sets (mostly for commercial/promotional purposes) the typical Lego public event is focused on original creations. That's at least what I suppose, please correct me if I'm wrong... I will create another thread with a poll to ask how many people participate in public Lego displays; so far I assumed that only a relatively small minority of AFOLs actually have that opportunity.

Very nice. I think it's great that you're showing the work in progress and turn suggestions into actual improvements

I prefer the old brick-built type track, hands down. The individual rails were great for creating other stuff, like mini-monorails (like in 6970 Beta I Command Base), they took less space to store, you could customize them more easily, and if you want you can also leave them partly disassembled to create an area of your train layout where the railway is under construction.

Hello AFOLs I was wondering how much the collecting/building habits of AFOL depend on the Lego themes of focus. I noticed that when talking with other AFOL I tend to assume they most commonly live their Lego hobby as follows, depending on the theme: Castle: medium or large MOCs (buildings), big MOC layouts, or army-building Pirates: medium or large MOCs (buildings and ships), big MOC layouts, or army-building City: medium or large MOCs (buildings and vehicles), but layouts with official sets Trains: locomotive and wagon MOCs, big MOC layouts with both MOC and official trains Space: small to huge MOCs (spaceships) StarWars: collecting official sets, or army-building The interesting difference (if my feelings are not too wrong) is that I rarely see AFOL using the official sets when making Castle or Pirates layouts: they tend to be entirely original. Instead, most City layouts have several official sets and sometimes they are completely made of them with almost no MOCs. Trains layout are more varied: some use official trains but MOC the rest, some MOC everything, and some other just design the track and use almost only official sets. Collecting some old or special sets for display is a common habit for everyone, but in case of StarWars (and pirates ships) it is a major part of the hobby. Particularly, it seems to me that in the StarWars case this is basically the main part of the hobby. Army-building is another fairly common AFOL hobby, limited to Castle, Pirates and StarWars. As far as I know basically nobody builds armies of City or Space other than StarWars. Obviously there is variations, I'm just thinking of the most stereotypical habits of AFOLs. I guess if you look around you can find for example AFOLs who build space buildings and stations, but they are much less than Lego space fans who build spaceships and other vehicles. But please let us know what are your own AFOL habits and approach to the hobby, and if it varies from theme to theme

The yellow castle 375 was my first, a present from my grandparents. The set is from 1978 but I think I got it in the early 80s, soon after I started getting my first Lego sets (the very first of which were classic space however).

Thanks a lot We only have the Duplo cargo train 5609 (found half price ) ready to be opened, we were supposed to give it to the 2-years-old on Xmas but delayed because the kid might need a few months more to appreciate, at the moment is just stacking Duplo bricks on top of each other or playing with the minifigs and animals..

Heh, I'm still thinking about 7867 when talking about light posts. I am too old

Thanks for the review. I found the set for 9e and was tempted. It's an average set, which means it's good but nothing memorable. I like the fact that it is designed asymmetrically, with the two opening compartments on the same side (the sidewalk side). I like the crane mechanism, but is it sturdy enough? It looks quite flimsy. The green trashcan is a great piece and very "retro" (I haven't seen them green for years), hopefully we'll see more in upcoming sets. I am unsure whether 6 is the right width for this... could have been 4 and still make sense. I don't mind the stickers: printed parts are nice... until the day they start fading away. Stickers are not so good-looking but at least you can always print more and replace the old. However, transparent-background stickers would be much better. The only part which I don't like is the streetlamp. Great to have one, but the stem is really a bad flimsy piece. If it had been just a simple 1x8 plate it would have been better.

Me I still don't understand why the Emerald Night came with a wagon. It makes no sense to sell a set like this, one huge locomotive (the tender is pretty much part of the locomotive) that is twice as long as the only carriage it comes with. A carriage which is not particularly innovative in design, but is based only on the "wow factor" of its colour, and new windows pieces in tan, which you aren't going to find anywhere else if you want more carriages... If it had been the locomotive only, no one would have ever complained that it didn't have carriages: it would have been just a continuation of the recent habit of releasing unmotorized locomotive sets targeted at AFOL, like the Santa Fé and the BNSF locomotives. The Santa Fé had carriages, but sold separately, and this was absolutely the best and most obvious thing to do. People who wanted the locomotive didn't have to buy carriages, and those who wanted them they just picked how many. With the EN either way you have to bother about either reselling the excess locomotives, or hunting the 2nd hand market for extra carriages. So they simply should have made either only the EN locomotive with tender, or made the carriage a separate set.

Hello all... I'm the Legoist. I am just an AFOL who's past the exit from his dark ages but still not yet into his renaissance Meaning that my overall Lego "collection" (although I hate that word) is very small. As soon as I finally took the decision about three years ago to get massively into the hobby, children took the decision to get massively into our family, and house and wallet suddenly went on a dieting spree. On the bright side, kids are a great excuse to buy Lego Lego Trains has always been my favourite theme. In my childhood I only had two trains, the 7725 , and the battery train 7720 , and a couple of individual wagon sets. On the other hand I had a good bunch of railway-related building sets, among which at least I remember the 7822 and 7824 stations, the 7838 and 7839 cargo points, and the electrified level crossing 7866. Unfortunately all my childhood Lego was given to charity by my parents. Nowadays I again have two trains, the very old 7710 and the still recent 7898 , plus a few extra wagons from various sources. I have no real layout because I have no space for it on a location that could remain out of reach of my still-in-Duplo-age toddlers. That means whatever I build has to stay at best displayed on high shelves or otherwise boxed away

I don't know what army you want to build, but last Castle series had quite good small sets for that. For example 7090 and 7092 were cheap and with a good minifig ratio, at least if you count skeletons as minifigs.

Of course it's not the end, just another pause. A few years of hiatus and then we'll have Pirates again, and maybe a bigger selection of set, the current one is quite small.

What, were you planning more than 5? I guess the limit is there to avoid excessive buy-and-resell speculations.

I don't like licensed sets and I won't probably buy any this year too, but if I do it will certainly be Prince of Persia which is in fact quite cool, all other licensed themes are outright horrible (except Ferrari which is ok). Actually I just remembered that there will probably be Harry Potter again. That's usually again not so interesting to me, but I'll check out the new Hogwart Express.

That's a, not b. And yes I meant that multiple chargers are a lesser problem. For me personally (but I'm one of the few) the best would be non-motorized train sets, and motor sets sold separately. This because I haven't yet found a motorization system that fully satisfy me. I'm thinking that I'm going to have to design and build my own system one day, when the kids are older and I have more spare time. I don't believe that unmotorized train sets sell poorly. The two Santa Fe locomotives, the Holiday Train, the Hobby Train and the Emerald Night all sold very well. When you have no motor, any adult Lego train fan can apply his favourite motorization system to all these sets. Full trains are probably different because they are targeted at kids more than AFOLs. However, there are already power function motorization sets sold in shops, like the 8293 for around 30$. It should not be difficult to design a variant of this set specifically for trains, and then sell the train set without motor for 20-30$ less. I think TLG doesn't do that because it's easier for KFOL parents to just buy 1 box without the risk that the motor is sold out, but also because now that they invested a lot of research funds in the Power Function system they certainly want to spread it as much as possible.

I thought that was called "light blue", not medium...

As the title says... I noticed that both these terms are used on Bricklink. Was there some discontinuity in the shade of blue pieces at some point (like the grays), or does it really refer to two different types of blue bricks?

Blue, gray and green baseplates should always be available although I would also like smaller ones to be available, such as 32x16 and 16x16. Then they should also release tan and brown baseplates.

I think they will keep this in mind when designing the truck stop, and won't include 2 full trucks, but only 1 full truck and 1 front engine of a truck. Or alternatively, the second truck is a flatbed to save on pieces: wood/tube transport or car transport (without cars, although 1 small car might be included in the set anyway). I don't think it'll have a whole motel but just the gas station and snack bar. I know it's a TRU exclusive, but it probably won't cost beyond 100$, so let's just look at the amount of stuff in the 7642 Garage and be realistic that for such a price it just can't have two whole trucks, a service station, a kiosk, a car, a motel...

As a train fan of course I'll want to check out the latest version of Hogwart Express, but I don't have much expectations. I think H.P. sets usually are not that well designed and just capitalize on the general coolness of the licenced theme to attract buyers. Still, a red steam locomotive with a couple of nice wagons would be great if done properly so let's check it out

Thanks for the nice reviews! I'd rate both of these a 1, but's that's just my humble opinion. I really hate the style of the "goodies" in the Atlantis series, everything from the colour scheme to the helmets. The speeder (or whatever you can call it) in 8072 is not terrible but still quite poor. The minifig in 8073 is not bad, it's pretty interesting... I don't understand the shirt however, it seems like it's a mechanic shirt that was worn out by the salted water, I guess there may be an explanation of this in the Atlantis backstory. However at the moment it makes not much sense to me, and so the black gloves. However as an impulse set it's pretty ridiculous: it's really just the minifig, the rest is a joke. Note however that even if I'd rate this too a "1", I'm actually thinking I might get a few of these to use the minifigs in some Dungeons & Dragons game so don't get too angry at my negative review. Maybe the mold and decorations of these new impulses are costly, and that's why they have so few pieces. It's not a general trend for all impulses: check the new Farmer impulse set and see that it comes with two animals (dog and pig) and there is still room for some more little pieces.

The pictures of it are pretty much final in my opinion. It's a minifig very similar to that included with the red Tractor set, but it comes with a dog and a pig, plus some small bricks. I think that due to the pig it will sell very very well even if the minifig itself is quite common.