Legoist

Ok, sorry... I searched for "nightmare" but not "dream", thinking that I would get hundreds of results like "what's your dream set".

Yeah I understood Legomilk... and I actually hope that this is what is going to happen. I hate exclusives because they cost me twice as much as normal sets I'm a train fan, but because of that I'd rather buy a *good* set from the shops like the Deluxe Cargo Train, rather than a *great* set from S&H spending twice as much. Speaking only for myself, because it's obvious that people with no budget limits would always prefer the second type of set... But there were rumours on this forum about half a year ago that Trains was going to be exclusives-only from now on because of the difficulties of selling such high-priced sets from retail shops. Someone pointed out that stores might have given Lego some feedback that too big and expensive sets were hard to stock and sell, and at the moment it seems that the PF system would make a motorized train set even more expensive than the RC sets. It's easy to imagine big problems in selling a 200$ Lego set in a retail shop... I definitely hope that they do release new train sets in shops in 2010. But they would need to be motor-less to contain the price. Otherwise the only other option would be to sell the locomotive separately from the wagons and the tracks. -------------------- Regarding the releases of more fire sets... While it sounds pointless for Lego to keep designing more fire, police and rescue sets, that only applies to AFOLs. Let's keep in mind that most KFOLs have something like 5-7 years of Lego fandom (e.g. from 8 to 14). Once they become teenagers, most of them stop playing with Lego. In that time span, you can easily sell them 2-3 fire stations or police stations, but you need to change them every 2-3 years to do so... you can't design 3 "ultimate" fire stations and keep them forever on the catalog, because you need the word NEW to advertise and boost sales. Also keep in mind that new kids are born all the time If a new version of recently discontinued sets like the building crane or the troll warship were produced, they will still be totally unprecedented to a lot of KFOLs.

This is probably going to sound really ridiculous but... have you ever had nightmares involving Lego bricks? Years ago, while in my dark ages and just after the shocking news that all my old childhood Lego had left home for charity, I started having Lego nightmares on a weekly basis. Usually the nightmares involved one of these three scenarios: a) finding Lego bricks in an unlikely place (e.g. behind garden plants, in the dishwasher, or even my own pockets), collecting a large amount of them and then losing them again b) buying a great unseen-before set, then discovering that it is something horrible (e.g. made of paper or jelly) or that in the rush I took the wrong one from the shelf c) being in a shop with countless boxes and feeling the irresistible urge to steal some Getting out of my dark ages and starting to buy new sets actually helped me got rid of the nightmares, but once in a while I still have one of them... Maybe I need a shrink

I think this set is very good for the vehicles, the minifigs, the animals and all the accessories, but it's very poor for the buildings and their bricks. It's way too fast and simple to build, and it's got too large parts for the walls and the roofs. It's probably ok to buy on 30% sale. But if you only want the animals, you can be sure this isn't going to be the last set with cows... Now that they designed cows and pigs and purchased the molds for them, it's quite likely that we'll see them produced for many years. Horses have now been produced for about 25 years!

These are reasonable considerations. I wouldn't say that they failed tho, I think they made a deliberate choice: Emerald Night is for AFOL and therefore has an AFOL price. I think someone pointed out last year that perhaps Trains will no longer be sold in retail sets but will become only exclusives for S&H and Lego brand stores. On the other hand, City sets can be exclusives only if they are very large, with rare colours or pieces, and generally a ridiculous amount of bricks. Any City set below 100$/e is unlikely to be an exclusive. 7897 may not have a high building value due to those large front pieces. However the Emerald Night also benefits from a large "wow" factor that makes everyone wants it, but indeed it's got issues, starting from the fact that the engine and its tender is twice as long as the whole rest of the train. It would have made much more sense if they sold only the engine, and sold the wagon separately. But they probably needed to reach the 100$/e threshold to make it look more valuable.

70e = 100$ in the bank 70e = 70$ in any Lego shop 80e = 60$ in Finland (check the Winter Toy Shop for proof)

Nice review. I am one of those who don't get the colour scheme For me, it's the red/green combination that really doesn't work. The red pieces are but a few, however they do have an effect; I bet that if red pieces were replaced with black, grey, dark grey or green, then the look would improve much more than one would expect from a handful of pieces. It's also quite a general thing: using more than 2 or 3 colours in a scheme risk the "soup effect", where the scheme just equals to "colourful". On the other hand, the shape, design and functionality of this spaceship in my personal opinion is 10/10. I don't think the lack of weapons is a big deal: the police corps rather capture than destroy... they have police cars not tanks!

Anything can be done... it would certainly be successful at an exhibition. Lots of design challenges however: - it's a 3-dimension movement, so the pulling system is going to be quite complex, and it cannot move at constant speed if you want the plane to land and stop and then take off again - it needs a lot of work to attach the strings on the plane in the proper positions, so that the plane keeps moving straight without spinning for example - the plane bricks may probably need to be glued together to minimize the chances of the plane to fall apart while flying - definitely requires weeks of testing before finding the right dynamics of the pulling system Were you thinking of using only Lego parts for the pulling system itself? One crazy idea could be to create a monorail track (because it natively has up/down slopes that will be put in places corresponding to takeoff/landing points) and attach it to the ceiling above the airport. A Lego monorail engine would run on the track, with strings hanging down from it and linked to the airplane. I don't know if you can "program" the monorail engine to change speed and stop for a while by using only Lego stuff (I guess at least with Mindstorm you can, but it'd be really expensive), but you can do that more easily if you accept to use custom electric circuits.

How about a split into two different themes (which don't necessarily need to be supported in the same years)? A) "Lego Medieval" for historical, classic castle sets. Not only castles but also houses and other buildings (farms, windmills, watermills...) from the middle ages. Soldiers of two factions, bandits/rogues, nobles & various courtesans (incl. knights, jesters, priests, etc.), and lots of peasants. And farm animals... B) "Lego Fantasy Era" for the fantasy action elements: soldiers of one faction, orcs, skeletons, dwarves, elves, trolls, wizards, witches, dragons, new monsters (both unique and brick-built) such as giants, demons, oversized spiders, golems, lizardmen, goblins... Would be actually nice if Lego would get a license for Dungeons & Dragons material... having played RPGs I know that a lot of players already use Lego minifigs for playing those games.

It doesn't look terrible, I wouldn't think that people must not buy it, it's still Lego and as such it can't be truly bad But we have 5 possible votes and I use all of them. If "3" is average, technically the average result from every vote in every poll about every set should be... 3! But in practice is more like 4.5 because we're all too hooked up on Lego bricks Just think of that "1" of mine as the result of comparing this set with others, in particular (but not only) with the previous advent calendars, and then also thinking about the potential ideas that didn't go into it. PS I'm not even so sure I will not buy this...

That was actually pretty funny I guess that Lego just treats each country separately when setting S@H prices, for whatever reason. I don't question their motivations, however let's just say that it's very odd. Online sellers (of anything) don't usually do that. They price each product once and for all, it doesn't matter in which country the buyer lives. Then taxes and shipping may vary of course. You can buy something from Amazon anywhere in the world and the price is the same (if you buy it from the same Amazon website, I mean). It must be that Lego can make a little more money in this way (although I guess they also have to pay someone to calculate the optimum price differences), but it still sounds odd and conveys a feeling of unfairness that perhaps Lego should sometimes think about.

In Finland, the gap between prices in S&H and in shops is probably the largest. From S&H, we pay the catalog prices which are the highest prices of the world for Lego sets (for instance the Emerald Night is 109e before shipping). Shipping isn't low either (we're close to Denmark but probably the Finnish postal system is more expensive itself). Usually only the very useless stuff is discounted on S&H (like non-bricks Lego toys, kitchenware etc.), and when sets are discounted they quickly turn unavailable in a matter of days. From shops, you rarely have to pay as much as the catalog price in the first place; the retail price is very often lower since the start, and every few months you can find any set for at least 20% discount. Discounts of 30% or 33% are common too throughout the year, and occasionally you can even find a 50% discount on the largest sets. I think that very few people from Finland buy from S&H. Unfortunately it's the only option for exclusives, since there are no Lego stores here. But for the rest, it would almost always be very stupid to do so... unless you're really lucky on grabbing the discounts. And even for exclusives, at the moment it might be even cheaper to buy them from resellers overseas, even considering the shipping costs and reseller's profit margin.

Really great. My favourite touches are the pigeons, the broken window, and the broken bicycle :)

If it only had doors, it's be a perfect tiny set...! I think the inclusion of environmental elements such as the tree and the phone booth is a great idea, since you can dump them anywhere in your town. It actually even makes the set attractive for multiple purchases.

Nice review, and very nice set. In my opinion, it's pretty good design, decent colour scheme and good minifig ratio. The opening system is quite odd, I'd have to see how strong it holds to judge it.

I actually thought it was MISB because it looks really clean and the box doesn't seem damaged the least! That's a way too lucky deal, I hope you are going to be biten by that chicken. It's a bit bulky shape for a spaceship, with no wings, but I think it's a very good classic space set. You're review is spot-on.

Not anymore in the Finnish catalog either. The "set" or piece was actually quite interesting and certainly useful for large trains layout, but too specialized for the mass market.

Thanks for the great review! Unfortunately I voted 1- poor. I do think this year's selection is quite bad. All the minifigures are pretty unimaginative, use the most common faces, and there are no females Some of the little accessories are cool however: the bench, the tree and the sled at least.

What... I practically wanted to make each and every comment of these myself! I think we'll get the sea airplane (I hope it's as cheap as the mail airplane) and maybe the tank truck, but the latter is really too long, it would have been better if its trailer was as long as the garbage truck. Probably also means it'll be a 40e set

Thanks for the excellent and long review! I think the set has some strengths, particularly in the colours and the overall shapes of the buildings, and although overall I am not very interested, if it came out here on the local Toys'r Us for 100e I'd consider it. Definitely not for the 150e+shipping from S@H. I noticed from your review that while some of the detailed building techniques are indeed interesting, others are in my opinion a waste of pieces (ex. the gas station sign and glass roof, the blue car...). It's a pity that there are so many 1x1 pieces in all sets nowadays.

I know this may not be a "nice" topic, but I'm curious about what do you think has kind of failed in 2009 from a sales point of view. It's just a feeling, but I have noticed that some sets around here have been constantly discounted since a few months ago already. To me that's a sign that these sets aren't selling well, and the shops are trying to improve sales by reducing their profit margin. Of course, the reason may very much be that the sets were originally prices too high, but the point is after all quite the same (that people weren't buying them). So this is what I have noticed in my home town: Dozer 7685 priced at ~40e on catalogue and has been discounted to ~30e almost everywhere since the beginning... Creator Transport Ferry 4997 is always discounted down from ~90e to something which varies between ~60e and ~80e. Combine Harvester 7636 and Farm 7637 have been on discount since about 1 month ago in several shops. 7636 down from ~40e to ~30e, and 7637 down from ~80e to ~65e. Star Wars sets 8015 Assassin Droid Battle Pack, 8016 Hyena Droid Bomber, 8018 Armored Assault Tank very often discounted with varying degree. Then there are the old Mars Mission leftovers. Basically all shops who still have the largest Mars Mission sets sell them with a discount varying between 30-50%. On the other hand Power Miners and Pirates are never discounted (except of course when there's an "all Lego discount" going on in a certain shop for a few days).

What are the methods and products you have been pleased most to use to clean old bricks, such as bricks found in the attic after 20 years or bought from someone else? Do you have any trick to share on specific tasks such as how to clean difficult-to-reach spots or transparent pieces? How to clean without destroying stickers? I've washed bricks by hand with the help of a dishwasher brush and dishwasher soap, but it takes ages. For large quantity of bricks I've dumped them into the washing machine with mild detergent (and inside a laundry bag) but in this case I've always been afraid of damaging the printed parts...

Are you sure that "collecting, building, displaying" isn't in fact just your new way of playing? And by the way, if you have kids or you're going to have kids, I bet you also "play" in the old fashioned way. I do that with my 2-year old daughter and it's even with Duplo

Another set with new animals They should make a set with animals only: 2 black&white cows, 2 brown cows, 2 pigs, 1 dog, 1 cat, 1 rat... I bet this would be sold out.

I grew up with the old 80's OldGrey roadplates, but to be honest my favourite roadplates are the green ones which came right after. So I have to go with green... Green baseplates and green roadplates because my kind of Legoland town is always a quite suburb, or a countryside village. I guess the current larger-street DkStone roadplates are too large and too dark anyway for my tastes, for a big city centre I'd still prefer the OldGrey narrower roadplates.