Blondie-Wan

What a fine-looking train. Very interesting that it appears to so closely resemble a real-world train without actually being named as it, just as the Emerald Night apparently was. I like all the detail and playability in the interior. I actually think I see the aesthetic connections to the rest of the Creator line, even while at the same time it does stand up to all the expectations one has of the exclusive, D2C, AFOL-focused sets. I'd love to get this one myself. Well done, Mr. Berard! And for not only having sex/gender equity among the minifigure complement, but also putting a woman in charge of the train. It's still a shame such things are rare and unusual enough in LEGO sets to warrant commenting on, but at least it's nice to see here. I love how it features the running joke of using wheels on a vehicle. What illegal techniques - the sloped planes of the "cheese wedges" being right against one another? Or do you mean something else? I'm not sure I see any illegal techniques here (though there actually have been plenty of other LEGO sets before that used what are now considered illegal techniques).

"Collectibility" isn't necessarily perfectly synonymous with "rarity," of course. If a minifigure is available in one of these collections, it's still collectible; indeed, it's arguably even more collectible, since it's more easily collected. Anyway, for those of us for whom LEGO is first and foremost a construction plaything and only second (if at all) an investment, it's much more useful to have figures be readily available. That said, it'd be nice to know what the quality of these is like, and nicer still if it were known the figures would be available at TRUs everywhere, though from this thread it's starting to look like it's a Canada-only thing. Ah, well.

The Monsters set is no longer currently in Shop at Home, at least in the US - it's not just "sold out," the entry for 850487 has completely disappeared. I can't quite believe they've allowed themselves to permanently run out of such a perfectly Halloween-themed set to run out while it's still September, so I'm holding out hope it'll be back soon. But I was hoping to put it in an order soon. Oh, well...

Agreed, though of course the polybags aren't necessarily designed with theme collectors (people who'll get all the sets anyway) in mind (so the fact it means the same zombie driver appears in four different sets, two of them similar little polybagged car sets, probably wasn't much of a consideration). That said, I actually think the real value of this set may lie in the opportunity it offers not to get more zombies, but to get more of those coffins (too bad it doesn't have the lid)!

Indeed, that's when this set was first offered; I got mine either right in February. I was a little surprised to see it offered again now, but it's not the first time I've seen a polybagged set reappear in Target several months after it initially appeared for some holiday from a completely different time of year.

First of all, thanks to the OP for the review, especially for the nice comparison pix of the new figures to their earlier iterations. It's much appreciated! It's not a matter of the old designs being "lazy" or whatever (and others fans' preferences aren't simply a matter of being "stupid" if they disagree with yours, thankyouverymuch ). It's a matter of how "LEGO-like" the designs are. There's arguably a certain elegance and simplicity to the older designs, at least some of the time. Some of the new figures' headgear and headpieces are arguably so detailed as to approach action figures - which might be great, if you're an action figure fan, but arguably don't look right when placed next to more conventional LEGO minifigures. Speaking for myself, while I might like the functionality of something like the new Boba Fett helmet (i.e., the ability to turn it since it's no longer a single piece with the backpack), I still prefer the look of the older one - yes, it's less realistic, but given that his head is already comparable in size to one of his legs, he has a trapezoidal torso, etc., I think strict realism isn't really what we're going for. Traditionally, there's a certain aesthetic sensibility to LEGO, and it's not necessarily in keeping with strict realism, but rather interprets the look of the movie characters, ships, etc. through a very stylized filter. Mind you, I do like some of the updates and revisions and whatnot, and I think I'll make room in my own version of Jabba's palace and sail barge for both the earlier and later versions of the Gamorrean guards, but I can certainly understand having a preference for one over the other, and it doesn't necessarily have to be for the later one. Moreover, even if one does like the new one, it's kind of annoying to be put in the position of wanting to start all over again if one's already built a force of several Gamorrean minifigures in the earlier style (don't get me started on the recently "updated" Stormtrooper torso print...).

Thanks for the review, gordongordon! It's most informative - I knew very little about these, and it's good to be able to find out about them (and everything about the promotion), even if it's a little frustrating for someone such as myself who isn't able to get them.

Thanks for that! I did think it was oddly different from the Commodore logo I'd always seen before, but at the same time it obviously has enough similarity that I hope I can be forgiven for thinking it was just some logo variant (given that the OP had referred to it as a Commodore as well). Still very interesting, though, and I wouldn't mind having that one myself, although it appears to be one of those "out of the question" things for us mere mortals.

Homer_S, have you tried asking LEGO itself? They might be able to tell you...

Nifty little set! It may not be strictly essential since the contents are readily available in so many other things, but it's certainly useful and desirable all the same. I hope to scoop up at least one of these myself. Thanks for the review! Indeed, it's hard only to get the money to begin with (well, at least for some of us) - I do find that if one does have money, it's only too easy to spend it in a LEGO Store.

Whoa! A Commodore minifigure?! What's that from?? Too bad it's stickered rather than printed, but still...

I wouldn't call those rereleases of sets - rereleases of ships, or buildings, or characters or whatever, perhaps, but not of the actual LEGO sets. To me, "rereleased set" implies the same (or very nearly the same) specific assortment of LEGO parts, arranged the same way, as opposed to a completely different model of the same thing. That said, though... Actually, they have done this a few times (or at least, they've done reissues that were very nearly identical, with only minor changes for things like using later versions of parts that have undergone modification). Two of the first Star Wars sets, 7140 X-Wing Fighter and 7150 TIE Fighter & Y-Wing, were reissued three years later as 7142 and 7152, respectively, with essentially no changes (just some slightly tweaked versions of some of the parts); there was also another "TIE Fighter & Y-Wing" set two years after that, 7262, that used a different design for Vader's TIE, but used the exact same model design for the Y-Wing as in the two previous sets, even down to using the same traditional classic yellow head for the pilot despite the fact they'd switched to flesh tones for minifigures in licensed themes the year before). They've actually done a lot more in the way of set reissues outside of licensed themes, though. A few off the top of my head: Enchanted Island - 6278 & 6292 Red Beard Runner - 6289 & 6290 Guarded Inn - 6067 & 10000 Rapid River Village - 6766 & 6763 Sheriff's Lock-Up - 6755 & 6764 Fort LEGOREDO - 6769 & 6762 Pizza to Go - 6350 & 10036 LEGO Truck - 2148 & 10156 Main Street - 6390 & 10041 6597 Century Skyway & 10159 City Airport Lots of these do have different details here or there (for one prominent example, look at the tree in the earlier Main Street and compare it to the tree in the reissue; the old cypress tree was discontinued by the time the reissue came out), but these are just functionally-equivalent parts to replace discontinued elements in sets that otherwise use the same design, construction, etc., even when the names are changed, as with Century Skyway / City Airport. That's different from simply having multiple different versions of Hogwarts or the Millennium Falcon or whatever. Having said that, from what I understand they generally avoid doing straight reissues of sets like these now. All the ones I've listed here were reissued sometime from 2001 to 2004; my understanding is that they've abandoned the practice.

While I understand your disappointment, I can't agree with your assessment of the email that they "don't have the slightest respect" for their customers - phrases such as "We appreciate your loyalty and we would like to thank you for being such a big LEGO® fan," "Please accept our apologies" and "We would like to thank you" hardly connote a complete absence of respect. I don't see how the wording could be any more respectful, actually. I do realize you're not talking about the wording but about the pricing, and the email doesn't change the pricing, but that's hardly a matter of respect or a lack thereof.

I just acquired a second copy of last year's Star Wars Advent Calendar at clearance.

There's probably also a "walkie" / "walking" joke in there somewhere, though I can't quite seem to pin it down.

I guess that's to be expected from someone with the handle "has a differing opinion," but I have to ask, what's wrong with the witch? I think it's an excellent archetypal witch. How could it be any better?

Congratulations to the winners!

Wow, both of these are great. Ones with straight-up reissues of the minifigures in the Minifigures line would be great, too, but while these don't help the people who missed out on those get another way to get the figures, they do permit even greater variety, and that's immensely welcome. I'd love to get multiples of both of these sets.

Oh, they do post parts lists newer than that... sometimes. They've had brand-new sets inventoried sometimes, but not always; I think the inventory updates simply have a lot to do with the popularity of certain sets and themes (for example, it seems to me Star Wars sets are likelier to get inventories posted earlier, presumably because lots of people are interested in the theme). But I believe you're right about the instructions; I think they have a specific policy against posting instruction scans within a certain timeframe from a set's original availability.

That is indeed a lovely review, Pandora. I appreciate your writing, so much that I'll forgive you for not showing us the set with the stickers. And yes, it really appears to be quite a lovely set. I'd love to have this myself. I'm not the expert on LEGO castle theme history I'd like to be, but just off the top of my head I can think of this one boasting four (!), albeit with the caveat it's not exactly four whole horses (but then flesh is so overrated in war beasts, isn't it? I mean it just gets torn asunder in battle anyway...).

Peeron is all about this. The only thing is that it doesn't seem to get updated as regularly as one would like, and a lot of recent / current sets still aren't inventoried, but it does have enough information to be useful.

Thanks for taking the time to review this, and for going the extra mile with the inclusion of images of the "real" characters. IIRC, this set took a fair amount of heat from the community at FBTB at the time it came out, on account of the low parts-to-price ratio and the tiny portion represented of the Cantina (and with it, the dearth of Cantina patrons). I always liked it, though - the size of several of the pieces made the high price per piece completely understandable, IMO, and it's always great to get more stormtroopers, and then of course there's the Dewback... Nowadays, it's also notable for being one of the last wave of sets from this license or any other to have traditional yellow-skinned minifigures for human characters, as well as a rare source of sand red elements. Most of us who are into licensed themes have long since adjusted to the move to realistic flesh-tones now, but at the time it was controversial and the presence of this set on store shelves, at the very same time sets with the new "fleshies" were coming out, was much appreciated by some as a final opportunity to get "classic LEGO yellow" versions of such core characters as Luke, Han and Ben. Nowadays, though, the relative wealth of sand red is what makes this set truly special for LEGO fans in general, while for LEGO Star Wars fans in particular - well, at least this one, anyway - it's great to have since, prior to the release of the current version of the Millennium Falcon (7965), it was the only set in which Han's dark blue trousers from A New Hope actually came in dark blue (TLG's "earth blue"), unless I'm mistaken; all other Hans had pants in either the regular blue or in some kind of brown or tan (somebody please feel free to correct me if I'm in error).

Thanks, but it's not nearly complete. I still don't have any minifigure-scale version of the Millennium Falcon, for example; I desperately wanted 10179, but was never able to get it. I do intend to MOC my own versions of all vehicles, but doing so using lots of parts (and some design ideas, here and there) from official sets, and I very much wanted to make a Falcon using parts of 10179 (both design concepts and actual pieces). Oh, well. I will get the current version (7965), but my own final MOC'ed Falcon will undoubtedly look a lot less like the set than it would have looked like the UCS one if I'd gotten that. I don't get everything I want because I just can't afford to; the main reason I have so much as I do is because I do my best to take advantage of various sales and clearances. See those 24 copies of 7201 Final Duel II I have? Most of them came from a clearance at Kay*Bee Toys several years ago; I picked up a bunch of them for less than eighty cents apiece (!). There are several items on my list of duplicates for which I've never once bought a single copy at full MSRP, but instead scooped up a bunch of them when they were on sale. As it turns out I never did wind up getting any more Star Wars sets the day I posted that, but I think I might today. :)

Even if the movies are coming out "only" until December of 2013, I can easily see at least two additional waves after that. After all, the last Indiana Jones movie came out in May of 2008, and there were not one but two additional waves of LEGO Indy released after it, one in January 2009 and another in August 2009. And while Indiana Jones is popular, The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings is even more so, and there are more movies in the series (Indy also has a TV series, but it's not as well-known and TLG never made sets from it), and all the Lord of the Rings movies were released much more recently than three of the four Indy movies (meaning they're probably more relevant to TLG's core market of kids), and the movies are simply longer (suggesting more material to draw upon for sets), so if Indy got two additional waves I'd expect The Hobbit / TLotR to have at least that. It therefore looks likely that any Castle-esque sets released the year after the last of these movies will be from the movies, not from Kingdoms or another homegrown original LEGO theme. And that movie won't be out in 2013; it'll be in 2014 - The Hobbit is now set to be three movies, not two (presumably they're filling it out with additional material from the appendices and whatnot from the various books). Given all this, I wouldn't expect a new LEGO castle theme until 2015, at the very earliest, and probably more like 2016. Not to rain on anyone's parade; I like Kingdoms too, and personally I'd love to have Castle, Kingdoms and The Lord of the Rings sets all out together, so long as I had some way of affording them all. I just don't think we're going to get any more castle-type sets from "homegrown" LEGO themes (unless they're "special" items like the Kingdoms chess set) for quite a while.

I know the original question was asked a long time ago and presumably everything turned out Ok, but FWIW, if anyone is still wondering about this... Some (well, at least one - the one at Downtown Disney in Orlando) of the official LEGO Stores actually sell engraved bricks themselves. One can even get them engraved with various designs (Classic Space tributes and such), as well as with the store name and location. Custom bricks can also be had, I believe, though they're more expensive, IIRC.