Blondie-Wan

I'm afraid I haven't heard of it, and your statement "It was a long time ago, definately 2000s" is making me feel even older and more decrepit than I already did.

I don't intend to keep any of my sets assembled forever; all the parts go into a common pool eventually, to use for other things, though I do also want to be able to reassemble any given set, UCS ones included. I actually have disassembled a couple UCS sets - the X-Wing Fighter (which I later wound up selling in a moment of financial desperation - hopefully I won't need to do that again), and Yoda. I'm interested in using the Yoda elements for various MOCs, mostly buildings, and for that I need the bricks. I actually wish I'd gotten a couple more copies of the UCS Yoda, simply as parts packs.

The word "snipe" has several meanings; in product package design I believe it refers to something like a sticker containing text, such as "limited edition," "Series 1," "Special Boba Fett mail-in offer," "collect all 16," "As seen on TV," etc. ... thus making this image of Yoda more representative of the PT than the OT, which is what I was getting at... but of course, Yoda is still emblematic of Star Wars generally, the OT included (albeit emphatically not of the original movie, the only theatrical installment in which he doesn't appear). Because he's a major Star Wars character? Who were you expecting - Indiana Jones? Why not Yoda? He's a very important character, and he's been sorely underrepresented on Star Wars toy packaging logos so far. As Oky notes, the installment taking center stage next year, Attack of the Clones, is also the one that first showed him in a conflict action-oriented role, allowing for the sort of dynamic pose seen here.

Not too shabby. As an OT fan I'm naturally inclined to favor Yoda over Maul (even if Yoda's brandishing the saber we see him wield extensively in the prequel era but never in the classic trilogy), and having green as the dominant color is just a bonus for me. That said, what I really want are Artoo and Threepio packages.

I created a separate thread about this issue over in the Star Wars forum, but since it obviously qualifies as "2012 LEGO Boardgames Rumours & Discussion," it probably should get at least a mention in this thread as well: does anyone know whether Star Wars: Battle of Hoth is going to be released in the US or not? Normally it wouldn't even occur to me to think it might not be, but a recent blog post on Board Game Geek suggests otherwise...

From BoardGameGeek: I know Star Wars licensees have gotten hot and bothered over the any perception of a fellow licensee spilling over into their turf in the past, but... still. Can it be? Does anyone here know whether there's any truth to this?

Amen to that! I hope we don't get more revisions to basic army builders like stormtroopers again. Mostly true, although it died down significantly from the mid-'80s to the early-to-mid-'90s. There was perhaps less stuff produced in a roughly ten-year period in that time frame than is produced nowadays in a single year.

We do indeed have a couple different Batman suits this year and had four in the previous Batman theme, all reflecting different eras and iterations and interpretations and whatnot of the character, but I don't think any of them specifically represent the '60s TV series, except in the most indirect of ways. I'm pretty sure the '60s show and movie is excluded from the variety of Bat-media and Bat-interpretations available to TLG - Warner Bros. owns DC Comics and most of the movies and TV shows based on their characters from the past three and a half decades or so (or more simply, "most of the movies and TV shows"), but the '60s series is actually owned by Fox, I think, in the same way Sony's Spider-Man movies are owned by Sony, even though they license the characters and stories from Marvel to make them (which is why TLG's current Marvel license includes the comics stuff in general as well as the movie versions of The Avengers and the various other characters/movies that tie into it, but not the movie versions of Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, etc.)

Wow. Looking good so far! All things with time. When LEGO Star Wars first launched in '99, there were just five sets from the original trilogy, including just one tiny one from RotJ (with Luke and a couple biker scouts with their bikes), and a small one from TESB (a $20 Snowspeeder). Such important characters as Leia, Threepio, Han, Chewie, Lando, Yoda, Palpatine, Jabba, and Boba Fett (and even stormtroopers, aside from the biker scouts) weren't available in the entire first year of the theme, and in some cases didn't come until years later, but they eventually happened. Similarly, there weren't any Temple of Doom sets at all in the entire first year of LEGO Indiana Jones, or any minifigures of Elsa or Kazim, or any minifigures of Indy himself in any outfit other than his classic "adventure gear" look... but they all came eventually. Middle-earth is a huge and hugely popular franchise, and I'm sure it'll be a major LEGO theme; we should get lots more sets with time, and I imagine lots of the "obvious" missing stuff will come.

Hrm. I first encountered the brick around '74 or '75, when I was about six or seven years old, and enjoyed LEGO throughout the remainder of the '70s and into the early-to-mid '80s; I probably drifted away in my early teens or just before, sometime from around '81 to '84. LEGO actually stayed around in mind, to some small extent, and though I had sadly parted ways with my older sets , my dark ages took an eensy hiatus in the early '90s when I sent away for these four free sets from a Kellogg's mail-in promotion, just as a lark. It would be another decade before I was pulled all the way back, though. Over the intervening years I occasionally found myself looking with admiration and just a slight pang of longing at set boxes on stores' toy shelves, but it was in 1999 that I finally found myself really captivated by the new LEGO Star Wars theme, and in 2002, after a few years of looking on, I finally took the plunge and started picking up sets again - just a couple small ones at first, since I wasn't going to want more than just a few small sets to mess around with... Yeeaaaahhhh. Riiiiight. A few months ago I moved in with my own girlfriend, just as we were both turning 43, and we have a "fun room" that houses the LEGO. She's a little overwhelmed by how much I have, I think, but she doesn't begrudge it, and in fact I've turned her into something of an AFOL herself. She enjoys City sets, and checking out Miniland with me when we go to LEGOLAND Florida. Eventually we'll have our own sibling cities - it'll be great!

Exactly. I just don't remove hands from arms, arms from torsos or legs from hips, since they're not designed for that. If a hand comes out of an arm I consider that broken, though of course it's generally fixable. I'm always a little taken aback at how many people take apart elements that aren't meant to be taken apart.

Holy smokes, that's awesome! I need this set even more now. If only those had been printed bricks and not stickers!

So was I, but before the event I somehow overlooked the fact it included the kitty (was it pictured on the in-store sign? I just remember the rendering of the lemonade stand itself), and of course I didn't know about the paired promo bricks at all. I think the kitty and the two promo bricks more than make up for not having the "LEMONADE" sign be printed. For promotional freebies, they were really quite a nice set of parts on the whole - not only a printed cat/kitten and two printed promo bricks (perhaps of somewhat limited usefulness, but still), the whole deal included a pink 2x6 plate, two trans-clear glasses / chalices, a trans-clear mug, two white 1x2x2 bricks, a red flowerhead sprue, a triple flower stalk, two black telescopes, and more. Not too shabby for freebies - and we got to enjoy seeing potential new fans of LEGO get their first taste of the brick, which was a pleasure in itself. (And it's also worth noting TLG is donating a dollar for each participant in the promotion to a children's cancer charity. :thumbup: )

I'm absolutely thrilled that the rat is finally in Pick-a-Brick, though I do wish it were less expensive. I think I'm going to place another PAB order this weekend. I know there are also lots of things in Bricklink I want, many of them less expensive, but I can't quite bring myself to trust the secondhand market yet when it comes to LEGO. Perhaps I should, I know, but... I just can't.

I'd love one of these for all sorts of purposes other than making faux-LEGO bricks, but I fear I'm in the minority here. What happens when Bricklink is full of people selling homemade knockoffs of LEGO elements?

It is very sad, yes. I'm personally frustrated because I preordered the game and had it in my hands from the beginning, but was unable to play for a long time because of computer issues, and I never did quite resolve them (I still don't actually have a computer of my own that can run it; I've been playing it on my girlfriend's computer while hoping to get a newer computer of my own, but never managed to). I've therefore gotten not really very many hours of play at all, but I was looking forward to spending a lot more time with it once I was able to. I also know it's a huge disappointment for TLG - just the time and money invested alone are quite substantial, and I'm sure plenty of people at the company also had a strong emotional connection to it. It's really sad that such a clever, imaginative game drawing upon the joys of actual LEGO building never was able to attract enough people. Countless delays that last multiple years are nothing new in the videogame industry, and there are numerous other games using the subscription model; it's simply a very tough one to pull off, and lots of other MMOGs have folded, while a select few live long and prosper, as they say on Star Trek. Most other games, even successful ones, do lower their prices eventually; I think the game disc was always going to drop in price after a while, regardless of how successful it was. But adding Free to Play was a good move, though also a bit late, as you note. However, the real problem appears to be that they simply didn't entice enough people to become paying players. Free to Play was presumably hoped to entice people to join, and it simply didn't entice nearly enough people. Alas. I don't think they meant it that way at all. I think what they mean is that they needed a certain number of people to become paying customers in order for it to remain viable, and they undoubtedly had demographic projections of what age ranges and so forth would contribute in what numbers, and presumably they hit their targets for other groups (AFOLs, adult gamers, etc.), but just didn't get nearly as many kids to join as they had hoped and expected, and since kids were the primary target that meant they didn't get nearly enough people paying for it in general. I don't think it means they'd have shut it down if they'd gotten tens of millions of adults but no kids; they just closed it because it simply didn't get enough players in general, period, and that that's specifically because far fewer kids signed up for it than anticipated / hoped.

I just got back from this at my own TRU (I was just a visitor, not someone running it as I'm not a TRU or LEGO employee). I saw several families stop by with their little girls, and several of them were quite interested, including at least one who may have just "discovered" the brick today. Let's hope! There were plenty of extra copies of these sets to go around, though, and I did get a couple copies for myself, plus one for my girlfriend. Something not everyone here may know is that there were actually a couple different baggies, one with the parts for this lemonade stand, and one with a couple LEGO Friends promo bricks - similar to the DUPLO bricks offered in conjunction with various other promotions, only these were non-DUPLO ("System") bricks instead - 2x4x3 bricks, probably the closest "System" analogue to the 1x2x2 DUPLO element commonly used for these promotions. Both bricks in the baggie are printed on two sides, "front" and "back" - the backs of both have the LEGO Friends logo, while the fronts are printed with the word "Best" on one brick (the "top" brick), and "Friends" on the other, and purple butterflies around both, including a large one printed between the two words, split across the two bricks - putting the bricks together brings the two halves of the butterfly image together, the way the TRU "Bricktober" Halloween promo DUPLO bricks from 2009 fit together to make a picture of a skeleton minifigure with a banner and a stack of bricks.

Indeed, the official LEGO Friends commercials and promo videos I've seen so far all pronounce it "An-DRAY-uh." Well, it is TRU, after all. As you've probably become aware since making that post, it is indeed a promo item, available free this week (today's the last day of the promotion) with any LEGO Friends purchase of $20 or more, though it can also be bought on its own for $4.99. As a freebie it'd be great, were it not for the fact that all the other Friends sets are also overpriced at TRU, and as far as I can tell there's no way to make a Friends purchase there of $20 or more that isn't at least $4 above the MSRP for the same sets sold nearly anywhere else (some of the sets are more than $10 higher than MSRP!). But I think the most "horrible" price-piece ratio ever would have to be for 10287 - $170 for one piece!

I think the TRU is meant to be just the store front, and there's a whole imaginary store extending back from it. It makes sense that it wouldn't be stackable (without modification, that is - all LEGO is stackable, obviously ). Are there any multilevel Toys 'R' Us stores (especially ones with the entrance on the second floor)?

In fact, that detail in 7621 is taken from actual set details in the Well of Souls in Raiders of the Lost Ark - the heiroglpyhs contain a number of instances of Artoo and Threepio. TLG more or less accurately recreated an Easter egg from the movie (I know others have mentioned it already, but I'm going to go ahead anyway, adding that the droids are actually in glyphs in several different places in the Well of Souls). Indeed! Are those really "Easter eggs," though? Humorous touches, certainly, but not that specific sort, I'd think...

From the context, I interpreted Oxus' use of "reasonable" to mean "affordable." If lamenting facts doesn't make any sense, then when does lamenting anything ever make any sense? That doesn't change the fact that regret, disappointment, etc. are themselves facts of life in the human experience. I'm pretty sure everyone here is aware 10179 was around a while and knows how much its MSRP was in one's own country, and is also well aware of how supply and demand work, and the resultant effect on 10179's going prices on the secondary market since its discontinuation. That doesn't mean we're supposed to rejoice over it. If people are unhappy about missing out, they're unhappy about missing out, and it doesn't make any sense to chide them for their lamentations; you might as well chide everyone who was ever disappointed or upset about anything that ever happened. I should also note that in not all cases is it simply a matter of one's "personal decision" whether or not to spend the money; the simple fact is that not everyone could afford to buy the set when it was new, let alone now, regardless of how much they may have wanted to. I don't begrudge those well-heeled fans who've been able to get this set their good fortune, but I also don't think it's unreasonable for those of us who haven't been able to get it to wish we'd been able to, and to hold out hope for either a straight reissue of 10179 or an even better, more definitive Millennium Falcon set.

Following up on my post of a month ago... Since Christmas I've checked out the local shops for various clearance deals on LEGO - not just Star Wars, but certainly plenty of that theme along with many others. In this time, counting the sets I've already mentioned, I've picked up a total of nine Rebel Trooper Battle Packs, three Snowtrooper Battle Packs and three Hoth Wampa Caves. I've also placed a number of orders from various vendors, and just today received the Tantive IV (yay!), and am currently awaiting the Slave I and the Death Star and Tatooine Planets sets.

In fairness, if the whole theme is actually called "Harry Potter," it does make sense to include Harry Potter; it's not as though he's in the same outfit all the time, at least. Moreover, there actually have been some Harry Potter sets that don't have Harry Potter in them... along with Batman, Spider-Man and Speed Racer sets that don't have Batman, Spider-Man or Speed Racer in them, respectively. I think the only licensed themes in which the title characters appear in all the sets of those themes are Indiana Jones, Prince of Persia (Dastan being the titular prince of Persia, of course) and Spongebob Squarepants.

There's a new LEGOLAND Discovery Center set to open March 17th in Phipps Plaza in Atlanta, Georgia, USA (apologies if you've already got this one listed; I can't see your page with the browser I'm using).

A minifigure hand isn't officially a distinct, separate part, though; it may be removeable, but as I understand it, it's not really designed to be, and removing it from the arm (or the arm from the torso) stresses it more than normal LEGO assembly & disassembly. IIRC, TLG itself stated somewhere that the smallest LEGO element was "the coin," though they didn't distinguish between the four different coins that existed then. I'll have to see if I can find where they said that...