Legoist

Let's see... what do I think is next? Last time I tried to answer was probably after the 7939 cargo train of 2010. What was next? Another cargo train, the Maersk exclusive. And then what was next? A City cargo train, just one year after the previous. I don't really think the next train set will be a cargo train, but then this is what I thought the last two times. I just cannot figure it out

Maybe it's a wrong impression, but I think these sets have already disappeared from most shops around here...

Thanks! I checked out your codes against the first 3 minifigs I got (in Finland): Lizardman, Cavewoman and Gladiator and they match exactly. Once again the "rarity score" of the minifigs are nonsense to me. They don't seem to match neither the "usefulness" (i.e. in multiple copies) of the minifigs, their "cool factor" (but that can be highly subjective) an neither their presumed quality/cost.

I really hope these leaks are really making it into Series 6, or later, because they are great! Maybe the quality doesn't look perfect on some of them (the butcher's plastic for instance), but the subjects are amazing. The Statue of Liberty and the Genius are really original ideas! Mah... competitor companies do this all the time in every market, as long as there is no industrial espionage (e.g. stealing confidential information), I think it's normal. Also, I give credit for Playmobil to have introduced Pirates in the 80s long before Lego did.

I've seen them yesterday here in Finland. I haven't been checking the Lego shelves for several weeks so I cannot say when they arrived, but at least the boxes in the shop yesterday were half emptied already. Oddly enough, I didn't think of checking the price to see if it's been increased...

Thanks for the review! I think this set is a bit below average, but still ok. The build is fairly interesting (probably very similar to the MMV blacksmith area) but the resulting structure is a bit too small IMHO. I would have removed the soldier from the set and replace its cost with a few more bricks to make the building larger. I actually quite like the weapons, with the exception of the bow, and they add a little more variety to the current weapon parts. I prefer built-brick birds definitely, but I have to say that they could not have done a better job with the new chicken! Finally, I guess that if they had included just one pitchfork here, it could have boosted the sales of this set by a good 20%, since it would have been the smallest set with one of them.

I have no idea about the sales figures of those theme, but personally I just think that the biggest reason is the one you mentioned later on: aesthetic. Simply put, Fabuland figures looked nice and friendly, Jack Stone figures looked like crap.

28. aka the "Uncle Scrooge" state: you've spent so much time with your trillions of Lego bricks that you know the history of each of them by heart; it's become a natural concept for you that no two apparently identical e.g. 1x2 red plates are actually the same and could never be confused with one another; you can now easily locate any one of them by smell.

2 - Below Average For me it has too many cons to be worth: - mix of various themes, some of which are discontinued (could be a pros or a cons, depending on the buyer) - no new parts or parts in previously unavailable colours, or new prints - standard male heads - double-faced female heads (hate them) - useless spare bricks - fairly high price per minifig (considering that they are nothing special) None of the above is a terrible cons, but enough not to leave any reason to buy this set. Overall it looks like a bigger advent calendar with a mixed theme, but from a GOOD advent calendar I expect either good micro constructions (see the 2010 City calendar) or good assortment of themed useful accessories (see the 2010 Castle calendar). This set has no micro constructions, the few it has are really a joke. On the other hand the minifigs accessories are fine... but since it's a mixed-theme set then part of the usefulness is wasted, unless you dabble in a lot of themes at once.

I think the whole idea behind "build your own Minifigure" is similar to LDD My Own Design (or whatever it is called): a "cool-factor" service targetted at KFOLs which are supposed to buy it once just for the fun of it. The second time is not that cool anymore, and any AFOL can see that it's never worth the price.

I regret a few specific sets but not a theme as such.

A Zoo theme would require quite a bunch of new molds for the wild animals, since so far how many have been produced? I can remember an elephant mould, and then there are the recent ostrich and camel (both not really too common in a zoo but usable). It's doable but I would have expected TLG to capitalize on the new molds of farm animals rather than making new ones. Anyway... that section of the italian version of the page is written in quite a poor Italian language, not majorly flawed but still sounds as if it was written by a kid, IMHO.

Brickset, Peeron and Lugnet websites are used by a lot of people to keep track of sets and spare minifigs/parts, but not for MOCs. You have to be online to use the services tho...

With some important exceptions, I buy sets mostly to use their parts in MOCing. Because of that I have two main "drivers" for my purchases, a positive driver being the availability of useful and interesting bricks within a set, and a negative driver being the price of the set (with the exclusion of CM Series and a few small sets I don't think I've ever yet bought a set that wasn't on discount). This means to me that dabbling would be the norm for me, as long as sets belonging to an alien theme have good useful parts and low price. However, it also means that practically all licensed themes are off-limits because even when discounted they're still low in the parts/euro ratio. Fancy action themes also usually have bricks in too funky colours for my tastes, so even when discounted I'm not really interested. The end result is that when it comes to retail sets I've bought mostly City (the most commonly discounted ones), Creator and Castle. They have lots of useful bricks but also the key property that the main model is rarely too good to be unable to tear it down for parts.

Good point, even tho it doesn't concern myself. Thanks everyone for clearing this issue up

There is something like that in Duplo trains, but their main piece is very large so I don't know how big the sound chip inside might be.

You are doomed. Like us. Congratulations and welcome!!

If you mean the hockey armor, is this really a new piece? I thought it was the same as in the NHL set (except for the printing of course): http://www.peeron.com/inv/sets/3578-1

Thanks for the review! Overall the set doesn't look too bad but... 50e for 300 pieces = FAIL. All these sets of the marina subtheme share the same features: they have a nice cool look overall, but to me they are too quick to build and don't offer much in terms of bricks.

That's really visionary!

Well for me nothing beats the return of the pitchfork but these new buckets are interesting pieces that may later end up released in lots of colours and used in the least expected ways in other sets (remember the monocular piece? or the skeleton legs?). But also the new animals are nice, I was totally caught by surprise to see goats. Now if only TLG released an accessory set with cows/bulls, pigs, goats and chicken, that would sell out easily

I had this set as a kid and I loved it, I think it was my only castle beside the older yellow castle. Considering this was designed in the 80s, for me it deserves the top grade! I remember however, that I always had problems with the portcullis, it was getting stuck very often. But it's very possible that I wasn't building it properly at that age

It would be nice to see a picture of the inside of this sound brick. If it's possible to reprogram it, there might be possibly an interface/port visible, but I really doubt it is meant to be programmable... it's more likely to be just a printed chip.

That looks great, thanks a lot!