Blondie-Wan

I get set duplicates all the time, both Star Wars and otherwise - well, when my financial circumstances permit it, anyway. Any LEGO set can be good for parts, so I'll buy any set when it's a really good deal (sales and clearances), as well as just getting as many as I like of a set if it has enough parts of particular interest to me in multiples (Stormtrooper minifigure elements being one obvious example, but it can also be standard bricks of particular shapes or colors, etc.). Referring to my Peeron set list, my LEGO Star Wars set inventory includes: 7201 Final Duel II x24 7668 Rebel Scout Speeder x12 8083 Rebel Trooper Battle Pack x11 7667 Imperial Dropship x8 7139 Ewok Attack x6 7111 Droid Fighter x6 4476 Jabba's Prize x5 7113 Tusken Raider Encounter x4 8084 Snowtrooper Battle Pack x4 7749 Echo Base x4 7250 Clone Scout Walker x4 7657 AT-ST x4 6205 V-Wing Fighter x3 8031 V-19 Torrent x3 7119 Twin-Pod Cloud Car x3 7146 TIE Fighter x3 4477 T-16 Skyhopper x3 4500 Rebel Snowspeeder x3 8089 Hoth Wampa Cave x3 7655 Clone Troopers Battle Pack x3 6212 X-wing Fighter x2 30051 X-Wing Fighter x2 7263 TIE Fighter x2 4479 TIE Bomber x2 20019 Slave I x2 7163 Republic Gunship x2 7121 Naboo Swamp x2 4501 Mos Eisley Cantina x2 6966 Mini Jedi Starfighter x2 6967 Mini ARC Fighter x2 4488 MINI Millennium Falcon x2 4486 MINI AT-ST & Snowspeeder x2 20018 MINI AT-AT Walker x2 4489 MINI AT-AT x2 7204 Jedi Defense II x2 7143 Jedi Starfighter x2 4480 Jabba's Palace x2 7166 Imperial Shuttle x2 30005 Imperial Speeder Bike x2 7127 Imperial AT-ST x2 7666 Hoth Rebel Base x2 4481 Hailfire Droid x2 7115 Gungan Patrol x2 7200 Final Duel I x2 7106 Droid Escape x2 7252 Droid Tri-Fighter x2 3343 2 Battle Droids and Command Officer (Star Wars #4) x2 ... without counting things like reissues with only minor or no differences and different set numbers (7140 and 7142, for example, of which I have one apiece). I may even update this list with a new purchase today.

It'd also be more expensive for them to hand out for free. The cake may not be the swankiest set ever, but it's still quite nice, all things considered.

Huh. I always liked that set quite a bit; I actually wound up getting six copies - it's an excellent army builder for both sides. I mostly actually appreciate the fact that the Ewok characters are so plain; it lets me use them as "generic" Ewoks, adding variety by mixing and matching torsos and legs for differently-colored Ewoks, while using them together with the more distinctive ones from the two later Ewok sets (which represent specific, named characters like Logray, Chief Chirpa, etc.). Different strokes for different folks, and all that, I guess. As for my own pick for worst set? It's hard to say - for me, with LEGO renditions, I find I often prefer some slight deviations in color, since with LEGO models of Star Wars objects, strict accuracy to the source material actually often results in rather drab, boring-looking models - the weathering and slight variations in all those grays that look good on the "real" ships and whatnot get lost in the LEGO versions, and yield what often seem like just big ugly blocks of gray (for example). I'll have to think about this...

From my own limited experience, the contents of the PAB walls change frequently enough that unless you get an answer with fresh information shortly or immediately before your visit, any answer you get is likely to be fairly inaccurate, with inaccuracy increasing with the amount of time between the time the info was gathered and the time you visit. Sorry; I know that's not particularly helpful, but there it is. I've certainly wanted to know many times what's in the PAB wall (and the Build-a-Minifigure kiosks) before my own visits, but it seems tough to know in advance.

This sounds like a question best addressed directly to TLG itself (perhaps it should be posted in The Embassy?). I'd suggest sending an email to someone in their PR department.

Nice review! Very nice, in fact - you really went the extra mile on all the nifty graphics and whatnot, and made for an entertaining read. It's such a fine review I hate to quibble, but I do feel obligated to point out one eensy little thing: Just four? I count eight - burger menu tile, life preserver tile, Plankton's suit body (astromech cylinder), Plankton figure (1x1 round brick), Spongebob's head/body piece, Patrick's head, Patrick's torso, Patrick's legs. From the picture accompanying the caption I gather you're excluding the minifigure elements (well, unless one counts Plankton), but they are printed elements, after all. Or did you mean there are in fact only four nice ones, and four that aren't that nice?

Well... I must respectfully disagree. It's an expensive set, and speaking for myself I've wanted it ever since it was announced, yet I've never been able to afford it. I'm sure I'm not the only such person on the planet. I'm aware it's been around for over two years now, and probably won't be around all that much longer, so I very much intend to try to snag one in the not-too-distant future, but it's going to be tough, and I just don't know whether I'll manage it or not. I'd bet there's any number of other people in the same boat.

As I'm still very much in a "getting started" phase with trains, I don't have a lot of track at all, and none of the flex track, and haven't actually set up a layout yet. That said, I was watching the trains theme in general when they were introduced, and like many here I was torn between finding them useful and finding them ugly. That said, I do still plan to make use of them in my own train layouts I hope to do sometime, but I'll make only limited use of them, in some of the ways already discussed by others in this thread. I half-suspect that once I get some I'll use at least half of it not for train track at all, but for things like detailing on spaceship hulls. IIRC, some time before it was released, there were rumors and leaks floating around about this forthcoming flexible track, and at some point somebody linked to a leaked photo of some prototypes that showed a couple different versions of the track, one of them more "regular" looking, like you describe (with gaps between sleepers), as well as what became the final version we actually got. The former was pretty clearly more visually consistent with regular track pieces, and my uneducated guess is that TLG would have gone with it if there weren't some specific reason not to; perhaps it was more prone to derailing, or to the piece actually breaking, or something like that. But I really don't know.

Very swanky! :) Red wheels are (well, were) readily available in the Toy Story set Western Train Chase. Even though the model doesn't use blinds, it includes them, probably because when the new large steam engine wheels were first designed for the Emerald Night, they created a mold that molded a full set of the wheels (flanged drivers and blinds) all together, and since they used the same mold for the wheels on the Toy Story train, they had to mold the blinds anyway even though they weren't going to be used, so they apparently decided to include them with the set.

OOoooooh, this one's tough. I'm not sure if I can narrow it down beyond three (but if a mod tells me I need to do so to have a valid entry, I'll edit this post; FWIW, though, this is already cut down from five). Here goes: 497 / 928 Galaxy Explorer. The "classic" era of LEGO Space holds so much nostalgia, so much emotional weight for me, with its cheerful little spacemen happily exploring the cosmos; something about the theme just evokes pure joy, and somehow symbolizes everything imaginative and creative about this plastic construction toy we all love so much. For me, this set is perhaps the most representative set of this classic theme, and it's one I longed for when I was a kid but never had. 10179 Ultimate Collector's Millennium Falcon. I dearly, desperately wanted this one, for so many reasons - it's the ultimate official LEGO expression of the single vessel most central to the narrative of the classic original Star Wars trilogy, the ship aboard which nearly all the main Rebel heroes travel in the course of the trilogy, one that represents adventure and excitement and all the things Star Wars is about; it's the ultimate parts pack, featuring desirable elements in rare or unique colors, or with unique prints, on top of simply having literally thousands of parts; it's the single set arguably most central to a LEGO Star Wars collection - and I just couldn't afford it at any time within its original availability timeframe. The LEGO Brickmaster 2008 San Diego Comic-Con Indiana Jones exclusive. Design-wise and part-wise it's perhaps not a particularly notable set, featuring no exclusive elements, and a model with perhaps a less coherent, cohesive design than some others, based upon the source material only in a loose way, but because of the latter I value it for its more imaginative quality, like sort of an extension of the official LEGO theme into the Indy "expanded adventures" not delved into in the other sets; it also works as both a parts pack and an Ugha army builder, and (aside from certain "extended line" items like magnets and keychains, if they count as sets) it's the only official set I didn't manage to get in the Indiana Jones theme, one very near and dear to my heart.

What about the graduate, diver and crash test dummy? The diver's suit isn't necessarily a uniform, but could be one, and the graduates and dummies would clearly look similar or identical to large numbers of others.

Wow, that's cool! But it does make me wonder about the ghost one, if they already have a separate MF LEGO Store promotion to offer this one. Hopefully we'll get the ghost polybag as a Target offering or something around Halloween... It really would be excessive of them to knock themselves out making a figure for a polybag they intend to give away for free, though. Besides, the theme has specific characters, like most of LEGO's "action themes" of the past several years; in the "canon" of the Monster Fighters scenario (to whatever extent such things matter with an inherently customizable, creativity-inspiring toy like LEGO), this could well be intended to be the same zombie driver found in those other sets. It's perhaps less than ideally helpful to AFOLs planning huge zombie-themed MOCs, but this promotional polybag really isn't aimed at those fans anyway (though the Haunted House is, and it indeed does feature another unique zombie). I, too, want lots of zombies, and I don't want them all clad in identical zombie uniforms (as I've noted a number of times in the CMF-related threads over in Special LEGO Themes), but as it happens, we are getting a total of four different zombies in this theme, in addition to the Minifigures Series 1 zombie, plus whatever we can cobble together mixing and matching all those zombie parts with various other figure elements from other themes, including skeletons and whatnot. Don't get me wrong - I'd love it if we got a polybag with yet another, totally different zombie minifigure, but even then it'd go only so far, unless they were to offer a whole slew of different polybags with their own unique zombies, and clearly that's not going to happen. I think we're lucky to get this freebie as it is, and there's nothing "lazy" about it on TLG's part. If anything, they're already going kind of overboard in their overall treatment of this theme, when compared to their other so-called "action themes," at least the single-wave ones.

I'd probably go to more science fiction / fantasy conventions, see more movies, buy more movies on Blu-ray / DVD, have a Blu-ray player and an HDTV to watch them on, buy more soundtrack CDs, buy more books, and/or do more traveling. Alas, I not only can't afford to do any of those as much as I'd like, I can't afford to buy as much LEGO, either. I have too many interests and too little money to divvy amongst them all. *sigh*

I concur about the zombie; it's why I've said before I'd love to see more and different zombies in future series. I don't quite understand your statement about the limited quantities of dwarves giving it potential for army-building, though. Doesn't reduced availability just make it harder to build armies of them? I mean, the figure is still desirable in quantity either way, but... ______________________ While there tends to be a certain amount of obsessing over military / warrior-type minifigures on the part of AFOLs, I should note they're not the only minifigures one might reasonably want to amass in vast quantities. Speaking for myself, one of the handful of figures I'd most like to have huge numbers of is the Series 5 Graduate.

I understand what you mean, but I do think that while the design approach to dinosaurs has been revised nearly every time a new theme calls for them, I personally do think there's enough "LEGO-ness" permeating each version that they can be used together. The design of the print deco might help, of course - some of the older dinosaur figures could work pretty nicely alongside the newer ones, if they had prints in the style of the new ones. I was actually kind of hoping they might rerelease the old Adventurers Dino Island pterosaur for the Dino theme as part of a promotional polybag, say. I think it could work, though it appears clear they're doing no such thing. I could see that as well, and I agree, but I suspect Dino is another single-wave theme, and that we've gotten all the sets we'll get. Alas...

Wow, Elrond looks great. Where, when and how will the figure be available? I can see already the promos and polybags for this theme are going to be immensely frustrating for those of us who want to get them all. I'm glad Indiana Jones has a single SDCC-exclusive set to worry about, with no unique elements; it appears I won't be any luckier with this line than with Star Wars or Superheroes... Wardancer, I don't know for sure what platforms the LEGO Lord of the Rings game will be on, but essentially all the previous TT LEGO video games based on licensed themes (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Batman / DC, you name it) have been available on multiple platforms, including all the major consoles on the market at the times of the games' releases, as well as the PC (with lots or most of them eventually getting Mac ports as well). While I have no specific information, I'd fully expect there to be a PC version of the game. BTW, is there any chance the initial post in this thread could be updated to include the known promo sets and whatnot that have come out or will come out this year? It'd be helpful to have a list of everything all in one place...

I don't know, but I've found this sort of thing at Walmart from time to time. A while back I picked up the NinjaGo Turbo Shredder for two-thirds off after it had been out only two or three months.

Apparently there's more than one team in the world. Who knew?

As a matter of fact, it's already being discussed over in the General Discussion forum... although this is probably the better forum for it, actually. I think it's nifty (of course, freebies inherently are). And welcome to Eurobricks!

Your complaint seems reasonable to me. If it was described as "all pieces are accounted for," which suggests "complete" without using that word, you have a right to have it be complete (with the correct parts rather than substitutions, especially non-LEGO ones), and if it says everything is in "excellent" condition, the condition of the minifigure used for the figurehead should be much better. I think the seller needs to make it up to you.

Whoa - a Lord of the Rings polybag? This is the first I've heard of it. I must check the Historical forum... Back on topic, is there any word on US availability for this set (the ghost polybag)? I'd love to pick up a few...

I'm not sure how I feel about the increasingly more detailed Boba Fett minifigures - I'm still adjusting to the 2010 one - but this still seems a fine set on the whole, and I do look forward to getting it. Nice review!

Mm, I think I'd recognize it as a slice of cake, albeit a squarish slice cut from a rectangular cake instead of the more archetypal wedge-shaped piece cut from a round one. And how can people get excited? Well, judging from this thread, people aren't exactly "excited" ("...I think it's pretty cool, though I'd probably be able to use a commemorative figure alittle bit more," "Nothing special," "I think it looks neat with a cute little design," "A nice freebie, but would of have preferred it if...," etc.); it's just a nice little surprise (i.e., getting what you pay for plus a small free additional set > getting what you pay for and nothing else). And personally, I think the element being used for the plate, at least, is rare and desirable enough to make it worth buying this set on its own, anyway.

Wow! It certainly looks like it might have been, though I'm honestly not sure. It certainly appears to be a photo from a LEGOLAND park in that era, though, whether it's from that particular World article or not. Thanks for digging it up!

So if you don't want them, why not just ignore them? It doesn't do anything to you if a bunch of other people are able to get them.