David Thomsen

How do you know it's Duplo? The Western Train Chase is also listed as Duplo on various sites, when it's clearly not. Oh wait... there's also one called the 'Great Train Chase'. No wonder I was getting confused.

It's VERY good computer graphics, but it's NOT real. No way can they get all the minifig arms to exactly the same angle like that. All the heads pointing perfectly forwards. Both the sets of bows and arrows at a perfect 90 degree angle. And even if they could, why would they?

Does anyone know if Jessie's Round Up will be compatible with Woody's Round Up? Woody's Round Up has those modular connections along the base, except that with only two buildings, there's not that much variety. If you can make a whole Western town by combining Woody's Round Up, Jessie's Round Up and the Western Train Chase, I might just be tempted to collect them all. Also, why are some of the upcoming Toy Story sets listed on various Lego sites as being 'Duplo'? They don't look Duplo, from the pictures I've seen.

But if you have two crash test dummies, you'll have enough license plates to make a car... Three, and the car could have a trailer.

You're right. If you overlay the two sets of bows, they're being held at exactly the same angle by Robin Hood and the 'Native American'. I was fooled by the skateboard - if you go to the highest resolution, you can see where the magic wand tool in PhotoShop didn't correctly select the ground when they cut it away. But I guess they could have rendered it and then cut the ground away in Photoshop... for whatever reason. Edit: Oh, and they all have their arms at exactly the same angle too... duh. (Except for the skateboarder who's obviously some kind of rebel)

They look high quality to me. If you zoom in to the highest resolution you can't see any odd rectangles on the insides of their arms. Also, none of the pieces use the complicated printing methods that need to be done in China. A lot of moulds are new, but this might just be a feature of the range. To have new moulds used in this range before they appear anywhere else definitely increases the excitement. Also it helps to pay for these new moulds if they're sold in this high-profit manner. Look at how many light sabre handles and robot arms appear in regular sets because Star Wars was so profitable. I really hope there's a way to get all these figs in a complete collection. That's what I thought it was when I saw this new picture.

Ooh, great thread, I'm always looking for new webcomics to read. Here are the ones I have bookmarked: Order of the Stick Cat and Girl Sinfest Freefall White Ninja

Just to make it more specific to pirates... it could have a compass printed on it.

I actually know exactly what you mean, and I've wanted to mention it here for a long time but it's been too hard finding pictures of what I'm thinking of... if I search for 'musketeer' it's much easier though. Something like this: I'd been searching for 'highwayman hat', which mostly comes up with tricorns.

Kind of like this? BTW, I love the tankard idea from earlier. It could go with vikings and castles so well. Maybe another foodstuff could be... a generic, round bun, maybe with two lines, one vertical and one horizontal, indented on the top. It could go in almost every other theme as well, and would be appropriate rations for a long-term voyage.

Does anyone know if they're planning a Construct-a-Woody or a Construct-a-Jessie or a Construct-a-Stinky Pete? Or maybe like a large set including a Construst-a-Woody with a Construct-a-his-horse? I was browsing upcoming Lego titles at work today, they had things like the Pizza Planet delivery truck and the Train Chase, but no Construct-a-Characters. I'm a bit surprised because I assumed they were going to be an ongoing concept. It works so well... the large Buzz and Zurg and and the two Aliens and the Green Army Men are all in scale with each other.

If I were any good at Flash programming, I'd make a simulation of running the Lego company... too bad all I've ever been able to do is make a square move around the screen.

Okay, so imagine that you find a Golden Ticket in a box of Lego, which grants you a tour of the magical Lego factory. At the end of the tour, the owner of the company is so impressed with you that he decides to pass on leadership of the company to you. What would you do and how would you change things? Me, I'd start out by producing 'colour booster packs'. So say you want to build a purple building but it's too hard to get enough purple bricks, you could buy a 'purple booster pack' that would give you a large quantity of basic purple pieces and a few of the more specialised parts. Also, things like minifig packs would become more common. I'd also focus more on expanding the range of basic useful pieces, like creating inverted cheese slopes and L-shaped plates and that sort of thing, and cut down on large parts that could be made up of smaller parts, and things like this that are kind of unnecessary. The idea would be, if there are enough useful basic parts you should be able to make ANYTHING that would otherwise need a special mould. More sets would have 'alternative builds', even if it's just a few extra pieces that make a minor variation on the same model. Pirates would be one of the ongoing ranges. Because pirates are awesome. Edit: A thread like this has probably been done before... if that's the case I don't mind being merged. Edit: Maybe a better scenario would be 'pretend you're campaigning to be elected President of Legoland'.

I'm sorry, but I like the Fire Brigade more than the Grand Emporium everyone is raving about. The Emporium looks kind of square compared with the Green Grocer and the Corner Cafe, with the top two floors looking exactly the same. At least the Fire Brigade didn't look the same from top to bottom. I think that's the main thing my opinion differs from that of everyone else. Although I was one of the only two people who gave the Town Plan four bricks out of five on Brickset, everyone else gave it five. I don't mind stickers, but I detest it when stickers go over more than one brick. Town Plan was particularly bad in this respect.

I found quite a few at the Warehouse on Tory Street in Wellington. This after the staff at Toyworld and Moore Wilsons both informed me that nothing would be available until mid february. Goons. Nowhere else in central Wellington seems to have anything yet. I might hit Lyall Bay Warehouse in a couple of days.

It doesn't seem like much of a big thing, but one day on a whim I bought Thunder Blazer. It was a small, cheap, discounted Lego biplane... at the time it was going to be my 'one' set. Of course, no one ever just has 'one' Lego set. After that I started collecting sets randomly because they were heavily discounted or I just liked them. Now I've settled down and am methodically collecting particular themes. Unfortunately most of these themes, Pirates and Indiana Jones, appear to have reached a conclusion. Oh well... if Lego don't want my money I'll spend it on other things.

Random comments: What the heck is the weird flower piece at the top corner of the building? What's going on in the back room behind the escalator? There's a flag grey shape, it doesn't have any breaks and it doesn't curve like any piece I can think of. Hats! I didn't notice the hats in the other window before now. If I made the mannequins walk around and behave like ordinary minifigs, would that be too freaky? There are green bricks under some of the objects outside, like the brown box and the post box. Is this to make them fit in better with the green baseplates of the other sets? Because the silver grills still have beige under them. I hope other sets will include the grassy area behind the building. It was becoming a feature.

I was going to say exactly the same thing about the vegetables in the trash can. Astra just beat me to it. I think a post office is the next natural choice anyway... We've had a place where you can buy goods, a place where you can buy food, a place where you can eat food, a place where you can stay the night, a place you can live and a place that protects people from fire... all distinct themes. What remains: Somewhere that keeps you healthy. (hospital, clinic, dentist) Somewhere that protects your safety. (police) Somewhere you can dispatch or receive items. (post office) Somewhere you can learn. (library, school) Somewhere you can do business. (office building) That covers the very basics, I think, and all of the buildings so far covers some basic element of society. Out of the things I listed, I think a police barracks or a post office is the most likely. And if you believe in these 'clues' they include in each set... the next building will be a post office.

Really? I actually prefer the fire station. This one looks kind of pale and flat and like someone has used the 'clone' tool in Photoshop... the fire station looks dark and vibrant with several very different but complimenting layers. The 'SHOP' sign looks kind of gaudy for a 'grand emporium'. Eh... I'll stop now because I don't want the only one to have negative things to say when everyone else is drooling. Edit: I do like the mannequins, the chandelier (from what I can see), the escalator, the green awning and the way the giant minifig head has plates instead of tiles for the eyes, making the pupils pop out... so not all my thoughts are entirely negative.

There are two pirate torsos! How cool is that? I dunno... I'm not as impressed by this as I was by CC and GG. The middle floor looks too much like the top floor, the other sets had distinctly different floors. However, at least it fits in with the blocky fire station better. I'm still going to get this set, of course... it's just not going to be my favourite.

Legoliner only seems to have one picture, and it's of the exterior. I kind of wish I didn't already know about this set. The wait is intolerable. At least official pictures can't be that far away.

I would love to be able to make the kind of MOCs I find on this forum, but the truth is I just don't have the time or the resources. My time is stretched far too thinly already between work, my girlfriend and a project I'm working on. I barely have time for Lego as it is. I voted for 'sets', not because I prefer to build them, but it's all I can really do. The exception is my Pirates collection, where I pool all the BrickMaster and Advent Calendar pieces together to make rickety pirate structures. But they're usually just thrown together randomly.

Well... Flash is a useful tool that is often used to make websites unnecessarily big and ungainly, Twitter is a useful tool that is primarily used to broadcast information about the toy that came with your breakfast cereal... But I mean Lego Click. Possibly it is in its Beta stage, I don't know.

I didn't stay there long before I gave up. I didn't understand the point of it. And yet, someone went to a lot of effort to create it. Did I miss something?

Wow... and I thought the toy store workers where I live were bad. It seems like making stuff up because you don't know the answer is a universal thing. Statistics are never going to be definitive, unfortunately. Look at these statistics from Brickset, for example. They are the most owned sets excluding Star Wars (because Star Wars is always going to skew the statistics): 23 City sets 7 Castle sets 6 Bionicle sets 5 Indiana Jones sets 4 Exo Force sets 2 Modular Buildings 2 Pirate sets 1 Creator set This suggests that Indiana Jones is the fifth most populer range after Star Wars. Things like Power Miners don't even register. However, this doesn't take into account two things - Firstly, that mostly AFOLS use BrickSet, casual collectors and children are unlikely to register their sets. Secondly, that because of the license, Indiana Jones probably has to sell more sets than other ranges to make a profit. So these statistics could be taken as evidence of the popularity of Indiana Jones... or they could be treated as an interesting curiousity with no real meaning. My point is - it's useless to try and guess which ranges are making the most profit.