David Thomsen

First of all, I think putting this question in the Pirates forum is going to make any results kind of meaningless... Also, pirates. Sailing ships. They always look so elegant with their big sails billowing. Castles just of remind me of this blocky playground castle back in my home town. Pirate wardrobe versus knight wardrobe? I'll go with patches and peg-legs and hooks and bandannas, please. You can't swing from the chandellier in armour. Knights in one colour versus knights in another colour... or pirates versus soldiers? The factions actually have meaning other than 'good colours' and 'bad colours'. I still love the original Pirate pictures in the brochures. They always look so exotic and romantic and I wish I could be there. I'm sure the Castle art was nice, but it doesn't stay with me like the Pirates did. Pirates make me want to be there. I want to be in the captain's cabin, watching the sun set over a Caribbean island guarded by soldiers and inhabited by natives. Castles make me think of poor living conditions.

Don't forget about the hat and the hatless hairpiece. I don't think every torso and facial expression is going to be unique, unfortunately. More likely they'll 'cheat' and have two torsos, two heads and the two hats, and mix them up to make up to eight 'unique' combinations. I can see the hat being used for Davy Jones, but they'll make a new tentacle beard.

The windows look about right to me. A bit cartoonified, of course, and the skulls I think should have been skeleton legs, which for once would be appropriate. I love the little canopies at the back.

Aren't there six cannon ports on each side? Maybe the two at the rear and the one at the front are too awkward to get cannons to. I like that the bottles can be printed on. Not because of the 'ship in a bottle' print, which looks kind of cheap, but in the future they can have other things printed on the bottles, like 'rum' and 'milk' and all kinds of things. Things I am excited by that can be used with my Classic pirates: Blackbeard's hat! Tan tricorn! Gold ingots! Musketeer hats in good quality plastic! Compass! Globe! Sword harnesses! Things that confuse me: Blackbeard's sword? Blackbeard's beard? Meh... they just don't look right. Actually, I wonder if Blackbeard's hat will look oversized without the enormous beard. I'm still undecided as to whether I will get the sets themselves, but I'll definitely be getting a lot of the pieces. Damn the tan tricorn for only being in the most expensive set. The QAR does look very nice, though, in dark brown and dark red. I could easily see myself getting wooed by that.

I'm trying to figure out what figures we are likely to get with the sets we've seen so far... 8 x Jack Sparrow (7 normal wardrobe, 1 Cannibal chief) 3 x Barbossa (1 skeleton, 1 original wardrobe, 1 new wardrobe) 1 x Elisabeth Swann 2 x Gibbs 2 x Cannibals 1 x Will Turner 1 x Norrington 1 x Conch Head Man 4 x Generic Pirates 2 x Blackbeard 2 x Generic Soldiers 1 x Stagecoach Driver 2 x Mermaids 2 x new character? 2 x Zombies 1 x Angelica Some of these I'm pretty certain on, some are just fuzzy guesses. No cheap set with the Generic Soldiers in it, ha ha, going to expensive for those army builders.

I'm one of those obsessed with cleanliness, unfortunately. Wash hands, use paper towels to dry hands on to soak up any oil left, if my hands begin to feel a bit sticky during building I clean my hands again. It tends to get socially awkward when visitors come over who want to handle the sets. How do I get them to wash their hands without offending them? Especially when different people have different ideas of what counts as 'clean'. "I got icecream all over my hands an hour ago, but I totally licked it off and now they feel fine. What's your problem?" Yeek. To be honest I'm not entirely sure why I care so much about cleanliness, I think it's just the way kids pick their noses and then handle things without thinking how gross it is for other people. It gives me a bit of a complex about clean toys. As for the other building rituals, I tend to just pour out the numbered (or unnumbered) bags into a heap together and sort it as I go. If I'm looking for a small black piece, I put all the black pieces into a separate pile until I find the one I want. I don't have the patience to sort everything into colour beforehand, neither do I have the patience to search for the same black piece I saw a minute ago but have now lost because I didn't do anything about it at the time. I used to be very anal about finishing each instruction before moving onto the next, but have begun to give myself some leeway. If I can't find a piece but it isn't necessary to continue immediate construction, I will move on and eventually the right piece will surface. Oh, and there is one very important 'ritual'... if a set has more than 500 pieces, there will be one piece that I can't find for ten minutes, will eventually conclude doesn't exist at all, and will only find once I have almost completely given up.

Don't forget that most of the minifigs are preliminary in these pictures, so the globe might be as well. Maybe someone printed on a Zamor for this image, but they intend to do something else for the final product.

With an image of the new Maersk train cached at Lego.com, I wonder if the next modular is hidden there as well... who knows how to search for such things?

Re: the theory that they might reduce the number, I think all of the series so far have had this kind of 'group shot' with only half of the minifigs visible. This isn't anything new, and certainly not a portent that they are reducing the size. I'm holding a bag of Series 3 right now and it only has nine of the minifigs pictured on it. Anyway, why would you want them to reduce the size? The more the merrier, I say.

I think the 'ship in a bottle' is just the new bottle piece. While a 'ship in a bottle' piece would have been fantabulous, the new bottle itself is a welcome enough addition to my rowdy pirate crew. Now they can be drunken and rowdy.

I think she is Cleopatra. Cleopatra was killed by a snake bite... Speaking of female equivalents, I'd love to see female versions of: The forestman. The cowboy. The musketeer. The spaceman. The robot. The magician. (Zatanna?) The disco dude. The explorer. Actually... everything. And male versions of female figs, too...

My jaw hit the floor when I saw the cavewoman. I always wanted one to go with my caveman, but I didn't seriously expect one. My girlfriend says the gladiator is a 'myrmillo'. The Queen's Guard, I'll have to do some research to see how well it fits in with my Pirates theme. I think the shako works better than the weird fur hat thing, which doesn't seem very nautical at all. Not that a shako seems nautical, but whatever. Maybe in the London Chase from POTC, though...

I'm completely perplexed by the Bank & Money Transfer. I've called all chains and even Lego head office trying to figure out who has it as an exclusive. Not one seems to know, and all the information I got from the lady at head office was that it was an exclusive, probably to Toyworld. Toyworld know nothing about it. Anyone know anything?

Just looking through the Ninjago minifigs looking for items I can 'borrow' from other themes and it occured to me... why does a skeleton need a loincloth? On the whole, this is a very, very strange theme. Historical ninjas versus biker demons. Uh? I do hope we see that straw hat elsewhere, though. Maybe the Modular range can have a little Chinatown shop.

Ah, the cardinal rule of Lego: Never not buy what you might regret not buying later. (In the real world, the cardinal rule would be less confusingly worded)

I personally don't like the orange lines on recent Flesh faces, like this: For a long time I thought they were scars and cuts, and didn't understand why there were so many of them. I really hope the POTC minifigs don't have these details. They make the face look too crowded, and don't actually work the way they're supposed to. Black dimples and cheek-lines were fine already. The Indiana Jones minifig doesn't look anything like Harrison Ford but I don't need it to, neither do I need a Ben Kingsley head. I'm also conflicted on waist-lines for female torsos. If 'yellow' represents all races, then all torsos should represent both genders. I don't like the idea that the female police officer in the 'police chase' set looks like a cross-dresser because her uniform doesn't have the waist lines that have become standard. I also think female minifigs should be able to have faces without lipstick. The classic smiley face was okay for both genders, why is it that now a 'neutral' face with no facial hair or lipstick is always assigned to males? Are all minifigs inherently male? On the other hand, I do like the new hair moulds, especially these ones: Unlike torsos and legs and heads, there never was a standard hairpiece. I have fond memories of classic minifigs with classic faces and classic hair, but now there's enough variety to have five female minifigs for my pirate theme with unique torsos, unique heads and unique hairpieces in unique colours. I don't think I could imagine a whole society any more where every minifig has either a conservative male haircut, plain long hair or pigtails. [edit]. Of course, none of my pirate-era females can turn their heads. I guess this is a bit of a downer.

I'm actually 100% sure. A lot of different people with a lot of different contacts in lots of different countries state unequivocally that it's a pet shop. Incorrect information usually manifests in a completely different manner.

So now that we are 99.999% sure that the next modular building is a pet shop, I'd like to see the Conspiracy Theorists come up with a way that the Grand Emporium somehow gave a clue that this would happen... Something incongruous that doesn't quite fit into the GE, but would be in a pet shop... Hmm... there's a street light, and dogs like to urinate on street lights, and dogs are pets... but all the other buildings had steet lights, so this doesn't make any sense... Not so easy, is it? So who will now concede that the cherries in a trash can were just cherries in a trash can, the fire hydrant was just a coincidence and the girl with a satchel was just taking her dog for a walk

Damn it. I really thought I had found something new there.

Sorry if the use of NZD pricing is confusing... I thought about estimating the USD or EUR price for each set, but decided it would be better to go with definite prices instead of just guesses. Generally USD is half of NZD, but that isn't a reliable method of calculating prices. I'm particularly excited by the clinic. I'm building a Lego village, and often large emergency buildings just don't fit. A 'clinic' might just be perfect.

I too have been itching to share my idea, but we're just not allowed to I'm afraid.

I work in a book store that sells Lego products, and a whole bunch of 2011 sets have just been loaded onto the system. The problem is they don't give set numbers or themes, just names and prices. Here are a few of them: Nurses Car, $22.99 NZD Emergency Helicopter, $49.99 NZD Car Wash, $49.99 NZD Doctor's Clinic, $129.99 NZD Big City Hospital, $199.99 NZD Hillside House, $139.99 NZD Lighthouse Island, $79.99 NZD Listed for June, but our system is often wrong and for example lists things for release in the year 2101, so not very reliable. Not sure how many of them will be City theme, they might all be Duplo for all I know. The prices are in NZD, and $199.99 NZD usually approximates to $99.99 USD. Sorry if some of these have been posted before.

I would love more than anything else for Indy to return in 2012, but with Harry Potter, Star Wars and POTC all active licensed themes, I'm not sure if there is any room. Unless they find a way for them to take turns, or something. And I guess the Harry Potter saga is coming to a close soon.

I've been trawling Flickr, there are lots of pictures of the Brickvention event but no sign of any new official modular buildings. The Brickvention website says this: Maybe they are saving the reveal for the Public Open Day tomorrow?

I've finally heard back from them - it turns out I will not be participating further in this process, but I will be getting a complimentary box of Lego. Ah well. We'll see if anything in 2013 resembles the ideas I've given.