David Thomsen

I'm not all that inspired. They just look a bit... busy? Too many colours, too many blocky points of articulartion in the sphinx and the snake... the small set with the golden staff is made up of tan, dark tan, black, dark blue, dark grey and gold... it just looks to me like someone found a buch of random bits and cobbled them together into a kind of... thing? I do like the mummies though, especially the winged ones, and I like the new swords and head pieces... I like the availability of the motorcycle in a cheap set... some of the torsos would look very good on Cowboy figures... vintage vehicles are always awesome. I'm also a little disappointed that most of the faces are 'generic' Legomen. One of the charms of the original Adventurers for me was that they had the same characters, who dressed differently for different environments. Generic legomen are good for MOCs, but sometimes I like my legomen to be individuals. They might change this by the final release, though.

My absolute favourite is the 2010 Admiral's Flagship. I only just deconstructed it last week after probably seven months of being the centrepiece of my Lego table, and as soon as I put the last piece away I was itching to build it all over again. It's actually very hard to sit here and not build it again, knowing that I can. From the original range, I'd have to go with Shipwreck Island. It's small, but I didn't have anything larger than Sabre Island, and it's so full of character. It had all of my favourite pirate elements: cannon, treasure chest with coins, parrot, monkey, pirate flag, palm tree, island base plate, wooden tub with oar and two minifigs with different pirate hats, faces and torsos. For a set with only 71 pieces, it had such an amazing abundance of pirateiness.

It just occured to me - we're beginning to see so many images from 2011 retailer catalogues, how come we haven't seen any POTC images pop up yet? Are they not in the catalogues? If they're being launched in January, it seems strange to exclude them. Oh well, they shouldn't be too far away, as Achris said: Although I still have no idea what a 'Licensing event' is.

I started doing a map of the figures with lines between the figures to show how they were connected thematically, but somehow it ended up as this continuity arc instead. Starting at the bottom left, every minifig is somehow kind of an evolution of the previous one until until it ends at the bottom right. In some places the connection is tenuous and you probably have no idea what I was thinking, in other places there's a clear progression from one fig to the next and then on to the next.

Grass skirt... lei... black hair... that doesn't sound at all familiar to you? She's an updated Islander! I'm kind of surprised I'm the only one that seems to see this.

I'm a bit sad the elf argument has ended. Normally I can't stand internet arguments, but this one was about something so amazingly trivial that it kind of transcended to another level. It's a toy company's interpretation of a mythical creature with no definitive appearance. You can choose to hate it, you can choose to like it, but... to argue about it is just hilarious. A more worthy debate is the one about how many parts got re-used from series one and two. Personally, I approve of it - these are unique moulds, it's nice to be able to get the ray gun in silver, black and steampunk bronze. And we'll also end up with gold, silver and bronze minifig trophies eventually. The lance is now in grey and brown. The maracas are also a new colour, so with them and the poncho I'll be able to form a Peruvian folk band. (Though I think if the maracas appeared a third time, fans will storm the Lego castle and hang someone) Incidentally, I actually think these are the final minifigs - the preliminary images we saw for series two were way less polished than this. Nothing in these pictures says 'temporary substitute', and although the race driver doesn't get a utensil, he does get hair and a hat, which kind of makes up the piece count.

I've been collecting these by theme, and the three themes here I'm going to be collecting are Castle (the elf), Western (the native American chief) and pirates (Alohilohi the island girl). A ukulele would have been cool, but a ukulele would have turned her into a modern woman on vacation... the maracas make her a pirate-era Island girl, which makes her compatible with the pirate line. I've been waiting since the first series for a Pirate themed minifig, and if this is as close as I'm going to get, I'm taking it. I usually get a 'wild card' as well, a minifig that doesn't match my themes but which I like to get for the sake of it. In this series, I thnk that will be... the tennis player. I have always liked tennis uniforms.

When I heard about the 'Hula Girl' from Minifig Series 3, I thought she was going to be a modern vacationer. Looking at her now, she's actually very 'Islander' looking. She doesn't have a mask or anything painted on her face, but none of her clothes are actually very modern. She could easily fit into the pirate theme. What do you think? Is she Alohilohi, the daughter of the chief and the first Islander minifig in more than a decade, or is she just Susan from accounts, getting in touch with her wild side? Edit: She is like this, but less of a racial stereotype:

What about the Ferrari driver? We already have plenty of Ferrari drivers in the Ferrari line.

If one set is called 'duel in the air', then there will very likely be two teams. What mythical Egyptian creature could a biplane be fighting in the air? It would have to be another biplane. I really hope they visit different countries from year to year, which will give them an opportunity to have different clothes and vehicles. Desert gear... jungle gear... polar gear... In other words, I want the 'adventurers' back.

It seems like they still haven't exactly sorted it out yet. What happened to the artist? And wasn't a pirate mentioned at one point? I guess this is why they hate leaks - nothing is ever set in stone until the official announcements.

It does very much... right down to the biplane. I'm not interested in the Egypt theme itself, but if they have a new country each year for the adventurers to visit, I might be into that. Also, if they bring back Adventurers this soon after Indiana Jones, it seems plausible that they'll bring back classic pirates a couple of years after Pirates of the Caribbean.

My Toy World has a Winter Toy Shop as well, I'm tempted to buy it so I can build up a Christmas Scene over time... but then I think, I don't really like Christmas anyway, I'd just be collecting the line because it's there to be collected. I'm a bit like that, sometimes. "Hey, there's this new magazine where you can collect Agatha Christie DVDs!" "Er, do I even like Agatha Christie that much?" "Who cares, I can totally collect the DVDs!!! And when you line them all up, the spines read 'Agatha Christie'!" And then I have to sit down and calmly explain to myself why I am so poor all of the time.

This issue has already been discussed and closed... it's basically the Word of Mod, and if the topic keeps being raised, I think we'll eventually suffer the Wrath of Mod.

They didn't need to reprogram the scanner, anything they scan will come up on the screen as a number and they just match that number to the sheet. They actually had the same cheat sheet I had, so I'd been carrying it around for no reason for the last week. I got mine today. I guess its easier for them to scan it than have everyone handling them, and also people are going to buy them from some place where they know what they're going to get. It's good service and good for business. I wonder what they'll do when the packets no longer have barcodes... start playing by the rules, I guess. Incidentally I saw the 'City House' at the Warehouse yesterday.

Some pictures have appeared of Ian McShane's Blackbeard character... The guy on the right is holding a dark reddish brown lightsaber blade with a black 1x1 round brick on the end. Ian McShane is wearing a tricorn and Dumbledore's beard. Penelope Cruz has Agent Trace's hair. Is it wrong that I see everything in terms of Lego pieces?

Uh... you have one right there in your avatar. If you take that torso, add some white trousers, gold epaulettes and a shako... instant bluecoat soldier. He even has Battle Damage! I'm surprised it hasn't been done more often...

I used to be very precious about having my minifigs hands the 'right' way up, until I realised that when I turn the hands upside down, my soldiers can hold their rifles over their shoulders, which looks much better when marching in formation. It seems that having the large side up when they are holding a tool means that tool is 'active', but when the hands are upside down the tool becomes 'passive'.

I used to be strongly against them because of the quality issues, but have since given up. I've never had a misprinted one, and the pieces are unlikely to get mixed up with my regular Lego. The cheap plastic is forgiven by how adorable they are. I can't wait to get my ones. Then I can stop feeling like a Weirdo, going into Toyworld and asking if the new minifigs are there... I'm sure that's not normal behaviour for an adult...

If we use Indiana Jones as a model, POTC Lego is only going to have about 17 sets over two years. The two franchises are similar in many ways - they're both classic trilogies revived by a fourth film. They're both well enjoyed, but not at the level of Star Wars where fans are compulsively going to acquire every piece of merchandise related to it. I don't see why they will continue the POTC range longer than the Indiana Jones range, unless a fifth POTC movie follows three years or less after the fourth. But then, why would they revive Classic pirates so soon after the 2009 revival and then the POTC range? They haven't revived Adventurers after Indiana Jones. I imagine Classic pirates won't be revived for a long time, unfortunately. I think the only way to enjoy Lego Pirates for the next few years will be to learn to enjoy POTC Lego. I'm open to it, but I want to cut down how much money I spend on Lego from now on, so the range will have to be very impressive for me to invest any money in it. One main thing is that they focus more on the world in which the Pirates live in, and less on particular scenes. This doesn't seem very likely given Lego's approach to licensed themes, so I think my wallet is safe. When are we likely to see the first pictures? Early October?

I'd actually like an intermediate range between Creator and the Brick Buckets. Brick Buckets have a lot of different colours in different shapes, but all of the shapes are a little too basic. Creator sets have some more interesting shapes, but in their own way they are also limited... a Creator house might have lots of white bricks for the walls and a lot of red slopes and some doors, so all you can really make is a white house with a red roof. A compromise would be sort of 'variety' packs. They'd focus on three or four colours (say white, dark reddish brown and blue), and each colour would have maybe 35% bricks, 25% slopes, 25% plates, and 15% miscellaneous pieces, like hinges, bars and even minifig accessories.

If you could find any, I'd be grateful if you could post them on this thread - it's surprisingly hard to find these scans.

So we were reading through this thread in another forum titled 'You Nostalgia, You Lose', where basically every post contains a nostalgic image (mostly from the 1980s - is anyone nostalgic for any other decade?) and you have to see how long you can read it before you start feeling nostalgia. I was doing fairly well - I passed 'Guru Meditation Error' and 'Rescue Rangers' with barely a twinge - until I got to the scans of Pirate dioramas from old Lego catalogues. Is it just me, or were Lego catalogues way more beautiful before lazy computer generated backgrounds became easy, back when people actually put effort into lighting and composition? I don't think I'd be anywhere near the fan of Lego I am today if it weren't for these warm images of Lego pirates and soldiers fighting against the sunset. Other themes also used to have much better catalogue dioramas, but for some reason the Pirates dioramas in particular always really struck me. I'm just wondering if anyone can cite these brilliant catalogue images as part of the special kind of nostalgia they have for Lego Pirates?

City House set 8403... anyone seen it? The brochure says it's released in August, and there isn't much August left. Still no Minifig Series 2 in Welllington. I really need that Mexican so I can give him a rifle and maybe a stick of dynamite. Hee hee.

Huh... totally should have been paying more attention. I didn't even realise that was the same person twice, just saw confirmation of what I was expecting to see here anyway.