David Thomsen

It's impossible to fathom the way a big business thinks. Where I work, we got this email one day telling us to mark down a bunch of $100+ books to $2 each. An hour later, an urgent message goes around saying "What the HELL were we thinking - STOP!" No one ever found out what they were thinking. Has anyone seen the Castle advent calendar anywhere? I've seen the City one, but not the Castle one.

I think he's just the highest ranking Dragon knight for the time being. I'm sure mid next year there will be a full sized Dragon building, with maybe a full sized Dragon king and a full sized Dragon dragon. I should have visited this thread a long time ago. A Kingdoms windmill for 2011??? This promises to be fantastic. Just wish there was a little more information about it... I do hope it has brick-built sails instead of those one-piece ones though. Although if they used those, it might actually turn if you put it in a breeze... fortunately I live in Wellington, and anything will turn in a 'breeze'. Why do the Dragon knights and the Lion knights both have crossbows, but neither side has any bows? I wonder if they're reserved for the Forestmen faction...

Pirates for me... they were my favourite toy as a kid, and althought the 2009 revival was slightly disappointing, it did give us the Imperial Flagship which is basically the best thing ever. Give me an empty surface anywhere in the flat and I'll want to build my Imperial Flagship on it. Modular building was my favourite for a while, but I have them all connected together now, and they look slightly... mismatched? Some look European, some look American, some look old, some look moden... I can accept that old buildings commonly exist next to new buildings, but I still think they work better individually than as a theme. Doesn't stop me anticipating the next one more than anything else though. I like town/city a lot, but I'm a completist, and I can't complete this theme because then I'd have one large police building for every three civilian buildings.

I calculated that their full price for one item, minus the 'discount' and with 'free shipping', is actually the same as buying it full priced and being charged for shipping. Frankly, if I'm going to buy something for full price and with shipping, I'm going to do it somewhere where they don't try to fool me into thinking I'm doing otherwise.

I'm 28, which I think is about in the middle of the age spectrum for adult Lego fans... I second the recommendation for the Imperial Flagship. Sometimes I think it's better to buy one $300 16+ set a year than lots of smaller 4-12 ones. I'm usually over smaller sets shortly after I get them, especially when I get so many, but I'm still in love with the Imperial Flagship.

This dress from the Kingdom's advent calendar: Looks extremely similiar to this dress from the Imperial Flagship:

Okay... so maybe 'novelisation' isn't quite the right word. Brickbeard's Treasure. 48 pages! Ages 4-8! Pictures! Ghost written by Jonathan Franzen maybe! ...or maybe not. I like to think this indicates some continuing commitment to classic pirates, although since the Clutch Powers video featured ranges that were already going off the shelves, this could just be them once again failing to coincide toys with media. Kingdoms also get a book called 'Defend a Castle'. I hear it was ghost written by Thomas Pynchon.

I think the options they give in the multiple choice part are all randomly selected from options other people have given. I added that if they can't bring back classic pirates, then they could still keep the line alive with the occasional Exclusive pirate set... it's the only way I can see classic pirates being continued while POTC is on the shelves.

Does anyone know if Toy World are having a sale this Labour weekend? If they have 25% off the freight train set, I'm almost certainly going to get it...

I don't think the farm range really took off enough. It wasn't kidsy enough for the kids, having no ray guns and sharks, but it was too kidsy for the adults, especially with the farm buildings having no walls. Even the Toy World Exclusive Pig Farm is on special now. I think Toy World is the best place to try though. I don't remember them being widely stocked anywhere else.

I can wait... you were the first to offer and I don't want to look like the kind of trader who will renege on an agreement because someone else might be able to get me what I want sooner.

I'd like to see them combine forces with some of the award-winning game designers out there who make some amazing stuff on their own, and could possibly do something very sublime with Lego. Some of the Lego games look very... role the dice, move a piece, collect a thing, trade a thing. The rules seem kind of interchangeable and not very sophisticated. The best games think of whole new concepts. Like... imagine a large Technic engine, each turn you could add or remove a cog or turn a wheel or shift a gear. Maybe you could use these parts to shift parts of the board around. It's the sort of thing that can only be done with Lego, and it could be done brilliantly, if the right minds were put behind it. Looking at the current games, I'm only really looking to see if I need any of the parts.

I personally find the whole bluecoats/redcoats thing a little bewildering... is it just about what your favourite colour is, or is there more to it than that? My favourite colour is purple... does that mean I should like a cross between bluecoats and redcoats? The Spanish have nice helmets, but I prefer the shakos and tricorns and bicorns, I think they fit in better with the 'pirates' theme... but other than that, I have no real preference between blue and red. I think if I had to choose between blue and red, I'd go with red, because that's what they wear in that Hornblower episode 'The Frogs and The Lobsters'. Red it is then.

I'll wait to find out what the status is with Logbo first...

Hi, any progress on this? Not sure if you're waiting to find one on sale, or if you changed your mind when I said I wanted one in a sealed bag because you don't need another train station anyway... let me know either way because I need to plan accordingly.

To be fair, those two sculptures linked to from their forum aren't anywhere near as bad as Mariann Asanuma seems to think. There's no point bashing megabloks just out of rivalry. And someone on that forum even admits that they didn't like Megabloks POTC that much, just as Lego fans are capable of criticising Lego. Maybe the two brands aren't so different after all... Oh, that's right. LOL.

Do you have one in a sealed polybag? I'm one of those pedants who likes things to be new when I get them... also I've never bought anything outside of Ebay and Trademe before, so I'm not sure how payment and stuff works.

I think the taxi with two minifigures would be worth about $20 on its own, so maybe $30, plus whatever shipping is required? If I go too high, it will kind of defeat the purpose of buying partial sets to save money. It's the only set with the white girder pieces, so that might be a reason to want the station but not the taxi... Did anyone go to the Coastlands Lego show? I might go along if the weather is nice enough. I've tried to get involved in hobby communities before, I tend to be lazy to attend more than one meeting when I have video games at home.

I've been collecting the civilian cars from the City range, but Lego have got into this habit of bundling all the cars with things I don't really need. First the taxi with the train station, and next year they're going to have three civilian vehicles with large police vehicles I don't need. I need to figure out a strategy for acquiring the civilian vehicles when someone else can have the rest of it. If I bought the train station set and sold polybag #2 with instruction booklet #2 and the relevant stickers on TradeMe, is anyone likely to bid for that, and am I likely to make much of a loss? I realise that I'm always going to end up having spent more than the taxi is worth whatever I do, but I'm willing to do that if the numbers are within reason. The other option is that someone might be willing to buy the train station and sell me the taxi?

I don't think it's over-reacting too much... it's like if I were writing a book, and a preliminary copy of it was leaked that was full of typos and rough bits I hadn't sorted out yet... I'd be quite angry about that. As much as I like to see preliminary images, I also respect that it's Lego's right to choose when and where to reveal their products. I'm glad these images don't really get seen by most of the people in the world, just a minority of enthusiasts who are on the look-out for them.

Hokay. I seem to like the ones where less is more, because my votes go to: 12: Really nice use of non-standard building techniques! I love the flying foam effect too. 19: This one makes me laugh. The emptiness is kind of 'spartan'. Get it? 'Spartan'? If you aren't laughing now, what is wrong with you? Aside from the pun, the architecture is convincing. 21: It just captures the scene perfectly. It would have been easy to get carried away and build a wall with vines and a tree with a birdnest in it and some rubbish on the ground... no, all we really need is some steps, a bannister and an overgrown lawn.

Hokay. My votes will have to go to: 22) I love the way the stars were made. People are constantly thinking of new ways to use Lego pieces, and sometimes they astound me. 29) I'm sure this one is breaking the rules in some way, but if it hasn't already been disqualified, then it gets my vote for thinking outside the 8x8 square. 45) Sometimes things don't need to be complicated. This one looks just like a picture perfect postcard to me. I also really like 4 and 25 but I can't divide my vote five ways.

Ooh, hi def! I love that new crowbar in the police theme, wish it came in black though... or chrome. It could be used in a harbour theme as well, or other freight themes. I'm sure TLC will find innovative places to use their new minifig tool. I'll probably get my crowbar in a modular building, in the back room of a post office or something. Shame there's no city buildings that aren't police or space program. Ah well, I save money.

Ah, sorry... I just wanted to write down some ideas but didn't think they were worth creating an new thread for, so I put them where I thought they might fit best.

I wonder if it's possible to accurately predict what will appear in future series of minifigures, now that we've seen three and kind of know what to expect? There have been lots of 'what do you want to see?' discussions, but not many 'what do you actually think is likely?' Sports figures... soccer player with ball; golfer with club and ball; hockey player with stick and puck. Historic figures... Greek philosopher with tablet, Roman legionnaire, Scottish highlander with claymore (reusing the Islander girl's skirt as a kilt), girl in dirndl, boy in lederhosen. Music figures... guitarist, keyboarder, violinist. Space figures... different kinds of alien; retro-type space adventurer like Flash Gordon. Western figures... sheriff with rifle; prospector with pick axe, gold ore. City figures... fireman, builder, businessman, graduate, reporter, etc. etc. forever. Fantasy figures... wizard, king, prince, princess, queen, knight. Or, any of those with the word 'dark' in front of it. Pirate figures... pirate, redcoat, bluecoat, male Islander, conquistador. Random figures... absolutely impossible to guess, hence the term 'random'.