Blondie-Wan

I think it's on sale, not on clearance - it's one of a whole bunch of sets across all themes that just got discounted for Black Friday (and perhaps staying at the discounted prices, perhaps not; we'll see). If by "IFS" you mean the Imperial Flagship, that came out in early 2010, so it's been out well over a year (though I'd prefer it to remain even longer). As I recently noted over in the Star Wars forum, for the past few years they've released two advent calendars each year - one City and one from some other theme, which changes from year to year: 2007 - Belville 2008 - Castle 2009 - Pirates 2010 - Kingdoms 2011 - Star Wars From this, I think it's clear their strategy is to choose a different theme each year, and it simply worked out that 2008 and 2010 both had advent calendars from the current castle theme; even then, I think they did it only because they were different eras / subthemes (Castle and Kingdoms) of the overall, decades-old castle theme. That's not to say we absolutely won't get a castle advent calendar next year, but I don't think it's especially likely, even if Kingdoms continues.

Well, as a matter of fact I have listened to the radio dramas (I have all three movies' adaptations, as well as the scripts for at least the first ones), so I'm acquainted with that, but I do think the point still stands, since it's abundantly clear that the Empire doesn't send out swarms of thousands upon thousands of TIEs, which I'm sure we all agree it could have done, regardless of whether we put any stock in the specific numbers of TIEs carried by the Death Star are cited by EU references or not. But that said, if a TIE Interceptor with a Death Star is truly a concern, we can always imagine this Death Star to be the Death Star III, and TIE Interceptors were certainly around then... Funny you should mention that; I do as well... to an extent. Sometimes, given the state of the franchise, I find myself adopting a sort of chronological purism; I accept the movies and some EU material produced by a certain time - generally my cutoff date is around 1987 (ironically about the time there began a concerted effort to corral all the EU material into a cohesive body of canon and have narrative, data, etc. from one story in one medium reflected in others). I started off loving the stuff that began with West End Games' original SW RPG in '87 and the new novels and comics that Bantam and Dark Horse began doing in the early '90s - well, more Zahn's "Thrawn trilogy" than the first comics, the Dark Empire series, but I enjoyed it all. After a while, though, I found lots of authors just had... well, their own views of the universe I'd adored for so long, and they didn't always mesh well with mine. Then came George Lucas' own prequels, the movies I'd waited literally over half my life for, and, well... you know. These days, when I think about Star Wars and representations of it in LEGO, I nearly always focus on not just the OT era, but depictions of it in the real-world era in which it arose. Believe it or not, when I was originally writing the response to StoutFiles, I actually originally had something along the lines of "I can't believe I'm citing EU to support this, but...," since it's really not my preferred way to go, either (at least for the more recent stuff supporting the idea of TIE Interceptors having been in existence sometime around 0 ABY). It's the same reason I wrote "Vader and his 'TIE Advanced x1,'" with "TIE Advanced x1" in quotes like that, since I grew up with it simply being Darth Vader's TIE Fighter, and wanted to evoke a feeling of "so-called" for the official nomenclature that arose in the EU. If pressed, given my own curious variable receptivity to canonicity of things depending upon when they arose, I personally would rather explain the set (if it truly needs explaining) by rationalizing that it's the Death Star III (as Star Tours came before the stuff I found more disenchanting) than by rationalizing that TIE Interceptors were around at the time of the Battle of Yavin even if we didn't see them, since I thought you guys would be more accepting of the latter idea, but I'm actually a little pleased to find someone here who's a little more purist than I'd originally thought. Mainly I just don't see this ship's inclusion with the Death Star as that big a deal. If nothing else, modding this into a standard TIE should be trivial, anyway, if that's what one prefers. Same here (well, except that the figures are also a big deal to me along with the planets themselves), and FWIW I do think TLG has plenty of people who realize it wasn't there on film at least, and they opted for it anyway because at least there's still some support for it in the "official" canon (i.e., all the EU), so since they could allow it they went with this over a "regular" TIE possibly because the Interceptor has less representation in sets (though granted, if that were their reasoning then they should have gone with the Bomber)... *whew* And yes, I realize I just wrote a heck of a lot more about this minor issue than it really warrants, but perhaps some of it may be of interest, I hope. If nothing else, my own odd little approach to what elements of canon I tend to favor will undoubtedly inform any MOCs I choose to post here, so perhaps telling you about it in advance will help you better understand some of the choices I make in my creations... assuming I do ever get around to posting any here, anyway.

It wasn't around that we know of from the movies, sure, but absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, and according to a lot of EU stuff it actually was. We do know not all of the Death Star's TIEs were sent out - far from it, actually, just a tiny token force to deal with a few Rebel fighters launched in what the Imperials initially considered an act of desperation that didn't pose any threat. That said, an ordinary TIE fighter would have been a better choice (though FWIW, turning the Interceptor into one should be a trivial modification that might not even require much in the way of additional parts). I'll just note that personally I'm ok with an Interceptor, and would have been fine with a Bomber, too; I think either of these would be more desirable than Vader and his "TIE Advanced x1," even though Vader's TIE makes more sense for inclusion with the first Death Star, simply because I'd rather have a small, inexpensive set provide a way to get more regular TIE pilots than more Darth Vaders. That's a nice idea.

Eh, I wouldn't say that. Both Death Stars are massive Imperial constructions, and it makes sense to include an Imperial fighter. I know, they're putting a fighter seen only in proximity to DSII with a "planet" DSI, but given how the "planets" work only the first Death Star is likely to be made (since the DSII is missing huge chunks), and is probably representing both of them together as an overall Death Star concept. Including any kind of TIE with a Death Star isn't the same as, say, putting a Sandcrawler with Bespin, for example.

I've wondered that as well. If TLG sticks to the pattern of the past several years, it won't, but of course we don't know whether it will. TLG has done advent calendars since at least 1998. Since 2005, they've done a City calendar each year, and beginning in 2007, they've paired it with a calendar from some other theme, for a total of two calendars each year for the last five years including this one. The non-City themes differ from year to year: 2007 - Belville 2008 - Castle 2009 - Pirates 2010 - Kingdoms 2011 - Star Wars While City always gets one of the two, the other theme is always different, unless one counts Castle and Kingdoms as the same theme (the latter being the replacement for the former in the overall castle line). They've never repeated one of these "co-themes" that gets paired with City. That said, this year also marks a couple firsts, in that the Star Wars one is the first licensed calendar, and I believe also the first one more expensive than the City one released the same year (though apparently not the first one with a different price; the Belville one cost less than the 2007 City one). TLG shifts various practices over time, and perhaps five years of this "standard practice" with the calendars is long enough that it warrants shaking up. Of course, it's also probably worth mentioning that Star Wars is probably one of the two most popular LEGO themes, with City being the other one...

In fairness, I'd say the stickers in that particular set, more so than nearly all other LEGO stickers, are about more than merely improving the aesthetics; the reflective stickers are meant to work as reflectors, after all, so they really qualify as functional elements. That said, it would have been nice if they'd just used a chromed element, though of course it would probably have made the set more costly.

Just received my latest Shop at Home order, including the LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar. Huzzah!

I don't know that they are charging more for them, though. The thing is, it's tough to do a direct comparison since different sets are different sizes and have different pieces and so on. However, they clearly are doing more sets based on The Clone Wars right now, and it simply makes sense - after all, it's the most current Star Wars production, and it also happens that there's simply more of it - since it's a weekly TV series, even with episodes being "only" a half hour, it's taken just a couple seasons or so for the total running time of The Clone Wars to surpass the combined total running times of all six live-action feature films released over a period of twenty-eight years. At this point, in fact, I believe Star Wars: The Clone Wars all by itself comprises the majority of all screen-produced dramatic narrative set in the Star Wars universe - that is, I think there's more of it in terms of sheer volume (measured in running time) than there is of two live-action movie trilogies, the made-for-TV Ewoks movies, the other animated TV series (the first Clone Wars plus the Ewoks and Droids shows), the Holiday Special, etc.

Are you proposing a new line of sets, similar to the Planets line but with small models of ships packed inside larger ones, or that future Planets sets each come with two vehicles instead of one (and if so, what planets are supposed to come with each of these)?

Well... lookswise, maybe not, but functionally, it's certainly closer to a "real" AT-AT than almost all other LEGO AT-ATs, by virtue of the fact it, you know, actually walks. By this standard, the only other official LEGO AT-AT that even comes close is the one from the Mindstorms Dark Side Developer Kit.

Were you in the USA then, as well? I don't remember ever having seen any of those three themes' advent calendars (Belville, Castle and Pirates) in US stores, either before or after Christmas; I was under the impression that prior to last year, when they did a Kingdoms one, their non-City calendars were never officially released in the US (in fact, I recall some discussion on FBTB about the US Shop at Home getting a limited quantity of the 2008 Castle calendars by mistake, and LEGO Ambassadors working something out with the company so that rather than redirecting the calendars to the European S@H that was supposed to get them, they'd allow US fans who called on the phone and requested them to order them). Perhaps I'm wrong, but I thought last year's Kingdoms calendar was the first non-City calendar in several years (if not the first one ever) that had gotten a US release.

I keep seeing the price of that set brought up, but I don't get it. It seems to me fairly typically priced for a set of that size and complexity. Are people judging it on a straight price-per-piece basis? If so, doesn't it have a number of largish elements that one would normally expect to cost a little more in quantity? Or is there something else about it that makes it so "overpriced"?

Wow, that is really interesting (re: the audio dramas). I'd love to hear those (well, to hear them and be able to understand them). It'd be wonderful if there were translations to other languages, and if all of these were still readily available. I'll go ahead and note that if we include licensed LEGO themes, the total number of planets increases dramatically.

I respectfully think there's at least one obvious option missing from the poll (keeping Indy around), and a less-obvious fourth option (having some mix of these, with Johnny, Jake, and/or Indy, and their respective companions and adversaries). I personally would love to have more Indiana Jones sets, and I was hopeful we'd get at least one more for this anniversary year, but it now seems clear LEGO Indy won't return unless and until a fifth movie comes along. Barring that, I tend to consider the Pharaoh's Quest sets an extension of / successor to the Adventurers theme, with Jake carrying the torch from Johnny. I would dearly love to see Johnny return, though.

The question is interesting to me, since I'd actually thought about this very topic, only from the opposite position - I've often wondered whether they tend to price the OT sets higher than ones from the prequel era. Certainly I think it's true if one simply breaks down all sets by era and then figures out the price ranges and average prices, simply because the most expensive sets in the whole theme are all UCS monstrosities from the classic era - the top six most expensive sets by MSRP (in USD; I trust the order is similar for other countries) in the history of the theme are the 10179 Millennium Falcon ($500), 10188 Death Star ($400), 10221 Super Star Destroyer ($400), 10143 Death Star II ($300), 10030 Imperial Star Destroyer ($300), and 10212 Imperial Shuttle ($260). Only upon reaching the seventh spot do we get a single prequel-era set, 10195 Republic Dropship with AT-OT Walker ($250), and then the next several top slots are more OT sets. Moreover, even ignoring the UCS stuff (which is naturally aimed more at adult fans, who probably tend to favor the OT in their passion), the release patterns for the first few years of the theme struck me at the time as putting a slight premium upon the OT. For those first several years, when the then-current product lineup at any one time tended to be a mix of sets from a single prequel (whichever one was most current) and sets from across the overall OT, typically the "flagship" set of each year's primary retail assortment (as opposed to LEGO Direct exclusives and such) was something in the $90-$100 range, and of these, the prequel sets (7171 Mos Espa Podrace, 7163 Republic Gunship, 7161 Clone Turbo Tank) were all $90, while the OT ones (7190 Millennium Falcon, 4504 Millennium Falcon, 4483 AT-AT) were all slightly more at $100. Additional sets during this time that cost $100 or more included 10123 Cloud City, 7194 Yoda, and so on - all OT sets, save for 10018 Darth Maul Bust ($150) - I think that was the only prequel-era set above $100 for several years. Since then, of course, the theme has really exploded, and there have been scads of sets from across the two trilogies and The Clone Wars, plus a handful of miscellaneous EU things, at all sorts of price points, and I haven't really compared the price differentials between groupings. But in the early years, at least, it certainly appeared to me that there was (occasionally) a slight premium associated with the OT; whether it was purely the pricing, or also the sets / models themselves (and the things they represented), I don't know, but I certainly wouldn't say the prequel stuff cost more, at any rate.

For me, it depends on a variety of factors - how useful the parts will be with and without the stickers when I MOC with them, how much they improve the model, whether they're across multiple pieces, etc. There are lots of sets for which I apply all the stickers, lots for which I apply none, and lots for which I apply some. With some sets of which I have multiple copies, I may apply the stickers in some copies but leave them off in the other copies.

Swanky! You should submit those photos for the games' entries at BoardGameGeek.com.

This wouldn't be as funny if it came from someone else.

Not with Bricktober leftovers, but when they had the Jack Sparrow minifigure polybags for preorders of the videogame LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, my local TRU put out five of them priced at a penny apiece like your Bricktober promos. My girlfriend and I got them all.

He's dead only in the "Ultimate" Marvel universe, isn't he? Isn't the "classic" Amazing Spider-Man still running?

While I'm certainly aware of the evolving minifigure design aesthetic over the years, it doesn't bother me for the most part; I have no issue mixing Citifolk of different eras. The one area in which I do find the design changes problematic is any sort of uniformed characters produced over a long period - principally certain Star Wars troops, but I think the redcoated soldiers of the Pirate themes would also be an issue for me if I had any of them from the older Pirate sets. With Star Wars, I naturally want to make the most of my element inventory and include all of my stormtroopers, say, in large Death Star MOCs and so on, but the various design changes to all the "generic troops" figures over the years have begun to vex me. I have dozens of the older Rebel pilot torsos, for example, and now they've been obviated by the newer, double-printed ones introduced last year. These actually aren't as problematic as some other groups from that longago faraway galaxy; I was always a bit limited in how many of them I could use anyway, since there are only so many helmet designs to go with them - half my Rebels' entire fighter pilot force is made up of Luke Skywalker, over and over again. I think I'll just continue to acquire the newer torsos in new sets, and mix and match heads and helmets with ones from older sets to create as large and varied a pilot force as I can, with as many different helmet designs as possible. Not a huge issue, even though I do find myself left with a bunch of torsos of the older design that I won't use in Star Wars creations much anymore (fortunately, I do have something else in mind for them). Since the range of helmet designs already imposes a certain limit on how many Rebel pilot minifigures I'm happy using together (I don't mind some repetition, particularly for the more "generic" designs such as the simple blue insignias on Dack's helmet, but I don't really want dozens of pilots with Luke's helmet, say), the existence of different torso designs doesn't concern me as much as it does with some others - I'll simply get as many of the new torso as I need to until I have all the unique, named pilots officially represented in sets, plus a judicious selection of repeated helmet designs (and redesigns, in the case of Luke's more detailed helmet with the current AT-AT; I can happily use that for him and a couple of the older version of his helmet for other pilots). The headgear redesigns for Hoth Rebel troopers and Imperial pilots (TIE Fighter pilots) are more troubling. I have a bunch of Hoth Rebels from various sets produced since the early 2000s, and while I guess I can go with mixing the old and new torso designs for, say, officers and non-officers (since TLG itself did in the battlepack that introduced the new ones), I'd really like to use the new headgear for all of them, but of course there's no way to get it except accompanying another whole trooper figure in a set, and of course I want to use all of these troops I can. One thing I've contemplated is doling out the newer headgear to either just old torsos or just new ones, and using other headgear (such as the previous white aviator helmets) for the rest, but it's kind of tough balancing out the numbers, and I'd really rather just have everyone in the new headgear, but as a licensed element it's not the sort of thing likely to show up in Pick-a-Brick, and I'm kind of leery of Bricklink. The alternative is to just not use the older figures, but I don't want them to go to waste while I'm trying to amass as large a Hoth Rebel force as I can. TIE Pilots are kind of the same - I have nine of them with the older helmets (just stormtrooper helmets in black, with different printing), and I'd love for them all to have the newer, more accurate helmets, but there's not really a way to get them on their own. Next year will bring us a totally unnecessary redesign of the stormtrooper torso and new printed legs for the same (I am aware of the Imperial Inspection ones, but of course they were never abundant). I have lots of older stormtroopers, but not as many as I'd like for some of those huge layouts I've been dreaming of, and I was planning on continuing to get more in new sets and so on, but with the redesign I don't know. Should I ignore the differences and just mix old and new? This might actually work for me; I don't know since I haven't seen them together yet (the previous refinements to the helmet printing is a similar situation I haven't quite decided upon, but I think I've been leaning in the direction of that particular difference not being significant enough to bother me, and I was thinking I'd just go ahead and use them together in order to make the most out of my total inventory of stormtroopers). Or should I commit to using only the older torso design? If so, how will I get enough additional ones to satisfy me without resorting to Bricklink and the like? Or should I commit to the new version, in which case all my old ones go to waste, and I have to begin building my entire stormtrooper force again from the ground up? I'd be interested in hearing how other "army builder" types resolve such issues - not just the Star Warriors here, but also the Pirates fans with their redcoats and so on, for example. With some lines (and even with some factions within lines), I don't consider it a problem - to my eyes, all the different knights and soldiers and so on from different Castle eras are clearly just different factions from different kingdoms, for example - but I do want all my uniformed troops from that longago, faraway galaxy to look more, well, uniform, while at the same time not wanting to let all the forces I've amassed over the last decade go unused. Similarly, I do wonder about how best to make use of certain uniformed professionals in my LEGO Cities. Perhaps it's fortunate that I don't actually have a whole lot of (for example) World City cops to worry about incorporating into my current City police units, but as figure designs continue to evolve I'm not sure whether I'll want to stay with the cops, firefighters, postal carriers, etc. I have now, switch them out for new designs that come along, or use all of them from all different eras together...

It's great, but... John Glenn, the astronaut? Was he previously deceased in your LEGO world? The real John Glenn is still alive...

This wouldn't be an issue for me, but my girlfriend and I live together and she has a dog. He's pretty sweet, though, and doesn't seem interested in chewing things up or otherwise messing around with most of the inanimate objects; his main avenue for mischief seems to be wandering out of the house/yard on his own out into the neighborhood. Nevertheless, I'm pretty paranoid when it comes to my bricks (not that anyone here would relate, I'm sure ), so I keep them all safely in what we call our "fun room," an extra bedroom where we keep LEGO, games, etc. - sort of our all-purpose hobby/recreation room. I'm pretty diligent about leaving the door closed.

Absolutely lovely, and I particularly adore the medium green. I'm flabbergasted and astonished that others here find the color choice questionable, and I don't even understand the description of it at that link - the green is rather light in color, but not intense the way the description seems to characterize it as being. If anything, I think the color shows a bit more... restraint than some other color might. What on earth is that blogger smoking? I so wish I had some bricks in that color!

Quite nice! If this is to be considered an actual Jurassic Park creation, it should probably go in the Licensed forum, since LEGO actually had an officially licensed Jurassic Park subtheme in the Studios line.