Legoist

a - If they don't include the recharging tool, the train is useless. b - If they include the recharging tool, anyone who buys more than 1 train wastes some money on extra rechargers. They are surely going to go "b".

I think it would be more interesting to know which was the 1st 6-wide-truck that started the trend of the present.

It's probably a 4.5 for me The locomotive is almost perfect, and the red and blue wagons are really good. I don't like the open wagon because it makes a bad use of space, and the truck but that was the era of 4-stud-wide vehicles and it was hard to make great trucks.

I vote for 7905 Building Crane, since it's the set that finally convinced me out of my own dark ages It's not a huge set in terms of true size (i.e. weight) or piece count, but it stands impressive. It's not hugely detailed as many exclusives, but it's fully satisfying to AFOLs. It would be easier to vote one of the "biggies" like the Millennium Falcon, but 7905 was a set that everyone could afford, and this IMHO is a bonus.

"City" sets are my main interest only because Trains are my true main interest, and Trains include everything around the railway: houses, shops, parks, construction sites can all be part of a railway layout. I prefer cargo trains, so industries would be perfect, but with the sets and pieces at our disposal is currently easier to build small villages than cargo centres and maintenance buildings. Normally anyway I like rural or suburban stuff, not "city centres", and I generally prefer small builds with details rather than making gigantic builds. For instance, I have no particular interest in the modular buildings, even if I agree that they look fantastic. I never bought any, and if I do in the future it'll be mostly to use their pieces for something smaller. Vehicles are cool for me (although we probably have too many), as long as they aren't oversized. I like 4-stud-wide cars, and 6-stud-wide trucks since all our trains (at least for now) are 6-stud-wide and it makes no sense to have trucks bigger than trains. I passed on some cool sets of last year such as the Dozer and the Harvester because they were just too large for our tastes. I kind of like ships but it's a bit harder than the rest to allocate them with Trains, and most of the ships in sets are not fun to build due to their 1-piece hull.

Are the Apple Tree House and Family Home actually the same baseplate size? I thought the latter was bigger since it costs 50% more...

BTW, I think that the packaging needs some improvement for the Cargo Train before it goes on sale... Highlighting the locomotive and leaving so much stuff on the background makes the set look significantly smaller than it actually is. Well, it's not all their faults, it's a combination of higher VAT, higher manufacture costs (made in EU vs made in US), higher retail profit margin (because they have to pay higher taxes again), and then yes there is also some irritating price policy by TLG. You can see that there is, because there are otherwise unreasonable price differences in S@H.

Not bad... Personally I think the small castle is the best of these sets. I don't know if I'll buy any of these, but I'll certainly keep an eye on them.

You should get a prize for this

Here is an incomplete list of sets which appeared in the 2H 2009 catalog but don't show up anymore on the 2010 catalog. Of course it's more fun to talk about new sets rather than old sets passing away, but perhaps this could be useful for someone to decide whether to get a set before it's gone. A few things to keep in mind: - this is based on Finland catalogs, please post the differences with your country if you find any - a set disappeared from the 2010 catalog may still be produced anyway, and sold either in shops or S@H - I have not included Duplo, Technic, Racers, Bionicle and have not checked StarWars sets yet --------------------------- Whole themes/subthemes discontinued: - Castle - Agents - Indiana Jones - City: Coast Guard 2009 sets discontinued: 6193 Castle Building Set (basic set) 7685 Dozer 7686 Helicopter Transporter 8396 Soldier's Arsenal (impulse set) 2008 sets discontinued: 4997 Transport Ferry (creator) 5610 Builder (impulse set) 6117 Doors & windows (basic set) 6118 Wheels & tyres (basic set) 6119 Roof tiles (basic set) 7732 Air mail 7733 Truck & forklift 7734 Cargo plane 2007 sets discontinued: 4956 House (creator) 7945 Fire station 7990 Cement mixer 7991 Recycle truck 7997 Train station 2006 sets discontinued: 7897 Passenger train 7898 Cargo train deluxe

No I don't, which explains why. But in many european countries it's pretty much the norm to "slightly ignore" speed limits.

Let it be 10 random things... - I have never got a fine for driving over the speed limits - I bought the DVD box sets of both my favourite movies (Lord of the Rings trilogy) and my favourite TV show (BBC's Coupling) on the same day at Stansted airport, London sometimes many years ago. Since I bought them, I've never watched the LoTR movies (I only watched the many extras), but I instead watch the whole 4 Coupling series once a year, and yes, I pretty much know all the jokes by memory by now - I once won a prize in a regional school contest for designing a car - today I counted that I have 8 different types of bags of chips in the kitchen (and no, I am not at all fat, I just like stashing snacks for the upcoming weeks ) - the last music record I've been listening to from start to finish is "Spirit of Eden" by Talk Talk (1988) - all my identity documents say my eyes are brown, as it seems from normal distance, but if you look from a short distance they are definitely green - I was very good at school, but in high school I managed to get once a negative mark in a test for every single subject (except Computer Science) - after I was born, I never slept in a hospital until the day my first child was born - the last book I've read is a heavy tome about jazz harmony and melody composition techniques - if I remember right, I should currently have 13 still-unopened Lego sets waiting in my storage room

Indeed I was. I was tempted to buy a second box when 2 weeks later it went down to 69e! And probably I should have Unfortunately the bad side of it was that the reason behind the huge discount was that the shop chain had decided to downsize their Lego shelves to 1/5 and never had any good deal anymore since then

I must be the only one that is not excited at all, and yet I'm supposed to be a great train fan... From a train & structures design point of view, I almost think that none of these are better than the RC train sets. The cargo train has great vagons for sure, and two small cars in one wagon is much better than the usual one. The locomotive is ok, but not top notch, certainly less beautiful than the previous RC freighter. The crane is ok, but actually very simple to build. We've had already 4-5 cranes like this at least in construction and harbour sets. The truck is a nice addition but also raises the price by a good 25-30e... The passenger train is ok, but only slightly better than the RC passenger train, with which it shares a few problems. Of course it's a better brick-built front, but that's where the improvements end (although there is good hope for the interiors). The RC had a better colour scheme (although that's very subjective). The train station is quite bad. The overpass is bigger than it should be while the actual station is very small, which isn't generally bad (I prefer reasonably-sized village stations that big ones) but it's also very blunt and simplified. The taxi is horrible. The crossing itself is really really simple, no structure whatsoever. The track-repair vehicle is nice. However this in no way can cost 40e, it should be 25-30e. What is really quite a good idea is the inclusion of the flexi-track in both trains. This should provide some good help to design a layout, although the sets don't have an amount of track pieces that allows for too much variation. As far as I know, PF is generally much better than RC as a system, so that's good. But I would have preferred the PF motorization system to be sold separately, and the trains be unmotorized. That's easily 50e price difference, but I guess TLG knows better what's convenient... Still in the case of RC trains I've seen them gathering dust on the shelf for a year until the prices dropped and dropped (when I bought the deluxe cargo train it was already 77e, and later it went down to 69e!), meaning that very simply people weren't willing to shell out 150-170e for their kids. But let's see, maybe now that we're getting out of the crises tunnel, everyone will go on a shopping spree... As for myself, I don't think I'll buy any of these sets, unless I'm really lucky to find the trains down below the three digits (unlikely, as I was lucky once already). Absolutely utterly not. The correct Lego conversion is 1e = 1$. We european just get the shaft. So the most likely prices in US will be ~150$ and ~170$ or even less. Good for you

That's right! They had the same colour scheme and other similarities, maybe that's why I forgot about the first one. BTW I checked the Finnish catalog 2010 and 4956 is in fact missing.

My opinion is that you shouldn't buy Lego if you are not going to use it for the intended purpose, i.e. to build and play with it. If you just want to make an investment, there are thousands of things which give you a larger profit and take up less storage space.

Sales are now going on in many shop chains in Finland too. Basically anything that isn't a 2010 set or a licenced theme can possibly be found with a 20% to 40% discount. Some interesting finds I spotted were the 7642 Garage for ~60e, the 7633 Construction Site for ~55e and the 7637 Farm for ~48e. I was tempted by all of them, but I ended up getting the 7637 only (although I have the feeling that later on during 2010 this set can be found for less than 40).

In Finland you can still find it in several shops, of course it might be just leftovers but at least in one shop I've been recently they seemed to have quite of a bunch of them stacked, and they looked like recently delivered to the shop. I'm not 100% sure but I think it was the first creator house produced, and it sold a lot through the years. However it was probably surclassed by the following creator houses, all of which had at least a more interesting colour scheme. This to me means that if you really want this set, you may easily find it for a cheap price on the 2nd hand market.

The only reason why I'd want this set is the dark blue roof pieces. It's not bad at all, but not essential certainly. From the outside it looks good in all 3 models, but they really should start adding some furniture to creator sets, and make some more space inside, because it's clear that most people want to put these houses together with the other City sets!

I'm glad they keep releasing new Creator houses in this price range. It's better IMHO to have 30-40e houses than 60-80e houses, and then let the fans buy 2-3 copies if they want to design bigger models. BTW, how common are dark-blue roof pieces? This is the first time I see them! The overall color scheme looks very nice, although personally I have plenty of white bricks already so I would have preferred a different colour for the walls. I don't judge the price until I see the parts list: the 4996 Beach House seems more convenient but has more than 100-120 pieces which are actually 1x1 plates, round plates or tiles.

Some of use would so much need a "set" (accessory pack) like that... that's something to buy in the multiples of 10.

Actually... yes it does The RC Passenger Train is usually 90-99e in various shops, while the 2009 Garage is minimum 89e and maximum 108e. But it's very possible that it will decrease a little if it doesn't sell well enough.

But they did do what AFOL wanted... Perhaps the majority of Trains AFOL would have wanted to stay 9V, but the truth is that the whole Trains AFOL community is anyway characterized by being split between 12V fans, 9V fans, and people who wanted something new. So TLG did one of the best thing they could do: started selling locomotives (the 2 Santa Fe) and trains (Emerald Night) without any motor at all, and then let each AFOL motorize them the way he wants. The absolute best would have been if they didn't discontinue the 9V accessories productions of course, but probably they realized that AFOLs were already relying enough on the second-hand market. They instead went for PF because another chunk of the Trains AFOL community wanted more versatility than 9V. You're right that the RC system was made for KFOL. If you want to sell a whole train set to a KFOL, it'd better be motorized and have a track. That nowadays easily makes the set 100$+ with RC, and PR is even more expensive. But RC doesn't sell to AFOL well because of its limitations, and PF would be too expensive for shops... This is why I'm thinking that either they will sell unmotorized City Trains next year (with motor separately) or they won't sell anything at all in shops and go full-exclusive. Unless they found a way to drop the production costs of PF elements, which I doubt. BTW, there is a way to significantly drop the price of a train by 20-30%, and it's based on reducing the number of pieces, starting from using larger pieces in place of the smallest ones. I don't mean LARGE pieces like the RC passenger train's front, I just mean to avoid using hundreds of 1x1 plates/tiles and cheese slopes, and use 2-studs or 4-studs sized parts. But I guess that many AFOL would then complain for the lack of details in the result. But if we take classic locomotives like 7760 (only 150 pieces in the set), 7750 (263) or 7710 (447 including the track), can you honestly say that they SUCKED?

The roof and the orchard are just fantastic...

Prince of Persia because it's the closest one to historical. I think some Indy and Potter sets were quite good too, but so far I don't buy licenced themes at all.