Blondie-Wan

Not really, I think. From what we were told at the time of Series 1's release, it's to be expected that Series 3 (and later series) is / will be much more readily available than the first two, and I think one consequence of that is that a lot more stores will carry them now that they've proven so successful, and that includes stores that normally don't carry a lot of LEGO products.

It's not, for the most part; it's almost completely gone everywhere, but my local Borders does still have some - I just confirmed it with another visit barely half an hour before posting this, and they have two partial boxes apiece of both Series 2 and Series 3, side by side - one box of each near the registers at the front of the store, and another partial box of each in the small LEGO area in the children's section near the back of the store. There are still quite a few S2 figures left there, even a Spartan that no one has claimed yet. As I mentioned earlier, I think the high price combined with the fact most people don't necessarily think of Borders when thinking about places to buy LEGO is what's kept them there so long. This was the first time I've actually seen Series 3 at Borders, incidentally; they might have had them on my previous visit, but I didn't notice them at the time if they did. I've also never seen Series 1 there, though it was reported Borders was among the few places one could get Series 1 in the US back when it came out.

While Meteor Strike is of course now available, I don't know what the deal is with Lunar Command. It's odd because it's actually among the games listed on the backs of the instructions for at least one or two of the earliest games released here (the gameplay instructions, not the assembly instructions) - the rulebook for Magikus, at least, has several of the games shown on the back cover, including Lunar Command, and Magikus was one of the initial five or so games released in the US, wasn't it?

I don't know, but I do see TRU is offering a number of LEGO sales / promos this week (at least in the US), and one of them is *specifically* for the S3 minifigures - a buy one, get one 50% off deal. That's the first time I can remember seeing a TRU promotion specifically focused on the minifigures (though as noted, they're also running several other LEGO deals right now, enough to make it all seem part of one big general deal, but the details are different from theme to theme and so on). I have seen the minifigures included in TRU BOGOs as part of larger BOGOs for LEGO stuff in general, but never as the single focus of one, the way I have certain themes such as City or whatever.

Yikes! That's way too much, I agree (though, if they can charge that much and still sell them...). I had heard last year that they were among the few stores offering Series 1 in the US, though they reportedly were charging $5 apiece for them. I've never set foot in an Urban Outfitters, myself (I don't even know whether there's one near me), so I haven't seen them there. I wonder whether any Series 1 would have lasted until now...

The space villain and the robot simply have long right arms, and that's all there is to it. The claw elements just don't go any farther into the arms. The renderings do show the claw elements pushed farther into the arms, but those are simply renderings, and there are some differences between them and the final production minifigures (just as the rendering of the fisherman shows his fishing line as being much thicker than the line that actually comes with it, and just as the rendering of the hula girl shows her grass skirt as having a different design / cut from the one that actually comes with that figure). I personally don't let it bother me - it's not like the right arm on either figure is going to be a match for the left one regardless of how far the claw does or doesn't stick out (that's the whole point of that arm design, after all, though I don't know why they gave the robot just one of that type of arm and one "regular" one).

Unfortunately I think you may be right. I wouldn't really describe it as "faded" or "thinner," exactly, but it's noticeably less opaque. For the other collectible minifigures from all three series, I've thought the quality was fine, albeit different in some ways (mainly in that the minifigures have more of a matte finish than the shiny one usually found on most minifigures in other sets, but I think this is more to do with slight texturing in the molds than the actual quality of the plastic). With the samurai, however, the plastic used for the torso and legs is a bit more translucent than with other minifigures, and I think it should have been a bit better. I wouldn't say it's nearly as bad as the shockingly bad Santa Claus minifigure included with the Christmas magnet, and I do still appreciate the samurai and I've gotten two so far, but it is still a bit disappointing. Fortunately it's not really noticeable over most of the assembled figure, apart from the legs, since there are multiple layers of plastic everywhere else (especially the torso, since it has the armor worn over the body). If it's lit from behind, though, it's not hard to see some light shining through the stud holes in the backs of the legs.

Well, isn't that the point? Shouldn't the ones with the greatest overall demand be the most common?

As a fan of LEGO Indiana Jones, I was somewhat torn over LEGO Prince of Persia. One the one hand, reportedly it was for this theme that LEGO Indy was put on hiatus to make room in TLG's product lineup (as the two themes were supposedly considered similar enough that LEGO didn't really want to be doing both at the same time), and I was honestly not just disappointed but a little miffed that they'd take a terrific theme based on a classic movie series and put it on ice to make way for what I guessed would be a short-lived theme based on a new videogame-based movie that I also guessed would come and go without making much of a dent in the popular cultural consciousness. On the other, the new theme turned out not only to be absolutely terrific (and even the movie itself better than I'd expected, IMO), but the theme also turned out to be in many ways a great source of material for Indy. There's so much here that's really useful for Indiana Jones (including elements that might well have actually been designed for Indy first, but wound up debuting in PoP instead). I, too, noticed how particularly well-suited so much of Quest Against Time turned out to be for recreating the Grail temple from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, enough so that partway through assembling the set myself I felt compelled to put on the Last Crusade soundtrack to listen to while I finished putting the set together. Like the OP, I plan to eventually use substantial portions of this set (perhaps not even just elements, but sections of construction) in my own Grail temple eventually, though I haven't gotten around to it yet. Nice to see someone else doing it, though.

That does indeed answer my question, thanks! And I believe I will go ahead and get it.

Not only are those sets generally available, but frequently there are assembled copies on display in glass cases. They look great!

*ker-bump* This set is now discounted in Shop at Home, and I find myself wanting it, but I do still have a couple questions... Has the teacher minifigure (or just the torso, really) shown up in any regular sets yet, or is it known to appear in any upcoming sets? Also, I understand they've started gluing the magnet sets together - that is, gluing the minifigures to the magnets, presumably because Hasbro continued complaining about LEGO selling "Star Wars figures." Blech. If that's the case, does it extend to all the magnets, even the non-licensed ones? And if so, would this older set from last year (that's presumably being discontinued, and may be older stock they're trying to move) be likely to be glued? Obviously, if anyone just picked up one of these yesterday, I'd love that person's feedback on whether they're glued or not.

Right, but the approach tazosure describes would still apply. LEGO's cowboys could be seen as contemporary, but the idea behind them is clearly one of a wild west milieau; they get a pass because of their historical association. Of all the sets in which revolvers have appeared (as revolvers, as opposed to being used as construction elements for other things), I think the closest ones to the present would be some of the Indiana Jones sets, specifically ones from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and that still takes place fifty years before the first sets based on it were released, so that would be considered a historical setting (and a fantasy / sci-fi one, for that matter). That film and those sets do also reflect the real-world Cold War conflict, but that's still historical. I'm not sure they are making a big deal about it, actually - doesn't this come from a report intended mainly for internal company use, even if it's available to the public? It's certainly not as though they're announcing it in their TV commercials or proudly emblazoning their product boxes with large snipes saying "NOW FREE FROM REPRESENTATION OF REAL-WORLD VIOLENCE!!" in giant red letters of something.

I don't think they pat themselves on the back for it at all; if anything, from what I've read, it's more like wringing their hands over some of the things they feel compelled to represent in some of the licensed sets. I've seen articles describing how some of TLG's own designers would "wince" at the representation of things like machine guns in the Indiana Jones sets, for example, and I now half-wonder whether TLG's aversion to such overt depictions of violence is at least part of the reason why the Indy and Batman lines were put on hiatus or discontinued even though they apparently sold well.

Goodness, how did I miss this before now?! I need to check out the Town forum more often. Regarding this MOC... And furthermore, I know repeated emoticons are generally frowned upon in the EB community, but I believe this occasion warrants an exception. There can hardly be too many s to adequately express my response to this. Beautifully done, Michael S, and welcome to Eurobricks. Please stick around.

Though this is one of their most overtly regular military-themed sets ever, it's perhaps worth noting the minifigures here depict not actual soldiers, but simply other toys - ones actually about the same size as their LEGO counterparts, and whose weapons are molded right into their hands and cannot actually fire. (Speaking of which, this set is one of the few LEGO sets that's actually considerably more complex than the thing it represents - the original army men are cheaply-produced, single pieces of plastic with zero moving parts. Of course, that's overlooking the fact that the "real" army men, like the other Toy Story toys, are secretly "alive" and active whenever no human is looking - but then, our LEGO set is a toy, too... )

Hm, that's really surprising. I have occasionally seen negative reviews there - not often, but more than once or twice, and I've always assumed the overwhelming preponderance of positive reviews is simply because most people who use LEGO's site enjoy the products and think highly of them in general.

That would be awesome - indeed, I think I've said before that I'd love it if they treated all Pixar's stuff as an ongoing umbrella theme with lots of subthemes gathered under it, and each year they would do sets for whatever was the newest Pixar movie, along with sets for older movies in the off-season (so that we'd eventually get sets for The Incredibles, A Bug's Life, etc.), and in those years in which the new Pixar production was a sequel to a previous one, they'd do sets in multiple waves based upon the whole overall series (as they did last year with Toy Story and are doing this year with Cars, and have also done / are doing with non-Pixar creations like Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean). I'd be utterly tickled to have the entire Pixar canon represented in LEGO bricks. I just think that if any one Pixar property would be capable of supporting an ongoing theme to itself regardless of whether LEGO did other Pixar movies and movie series or not, it would be Cars. I really think Cars could easily go for several years and produce lots of sets - perhaps not on the order of Star Wars or even Harry Potter, but certainly at least as many as Spongebob Squarepants, say.

Indeed, and hey, why not? If one's designing a theme centered around ninjas battling evil skeletons who practice a spinning-based martial art and drive Mad Max-style hot rods and motorbikes, one presumably isn't facing too many constraints upon what one can put in a set. I did go back and get my Turbo Shredder (I was lucky no one else picked it up while I was at work), and checked the rest of the sets. They had ample stock of the other sets, and none of them were clearanced, just the Shredder (though I did find the $15 LEGO game Magma Monster down to $7.97, so I picked that up as well).

Indeed! Heck, I don't even need more of the exact same accessories included with some of them, but I definitely want more of the minifigure body parts. I absolutely want at least one more crash test dummy, for example (I'd like to have at least four, for crash tests at full vehicle occupancy, naturally ), but I don't really need more of basically the same wrench included in lots of other sets. The license plate 2x1 tile is very nice and immensely useful to have at least one or two of (for a single vehicle), but of course if multiple vehicles in the real world all have the same license plate numbers, it defeats the whole purpose of the plate, so... But that said, I do plan to pick up more of most of the accessories anyway if they do turn out to be there after all, even the license plate tile.

Well, sure, because "actual" sets (the minifigures are technically sets too, of course) usually have a lot more than five or ten pieces for £2 (or $3, or whatever).

I am very, very glad to see that quote saying the game is here for the long haul. I've been looking forward to it a long time, and preordered the game so I could jump in on Day 1 (and get the promo minifigure!), but I can't play it on my ancient computer - I was hoping to play it on my girlfriend's machine until I could finally get a new system, but then her computer's optical drive doesn't like the game disc.... *sigh*. I've therefore gotten to play the game for a grand total of maybe an hour or two of my initial one-month allotment, and all the rest of my introductory period was wasted. Meanwhile, I've been going crazy with my increasing awareness of the game's financial disappointment, while being unable to play the game myself but really wanting to. It's been terribly frustrating, and I was beginning to fear I'd never get to play it again before the plug was pulled. I'm very relieved to see it'll be around at least a bit longer. Now if only I can get the capacity to play it in the near future... Why play the game, when I have so many real bricks? Well, it does also still have all the appeal of an MMO, or even gaming in general. I love building my own little worlds for real, as do we all, but it's pretty tough for me to make those worlds come visibly alive the way they do in LU, to say nothing of interacting with others in our shared LEGO universe (something I couldn't really do in real life, unless I wanted to invite tons of strangers to my home and let them handle my bricks - no thanks! *whew!*

If LEGO Cars does go the way of LEGO Batman or Spider-Man, that'd be good, actually - both of those lines ran longer and produced more sets than Cars has so far (or will have by the end of this year), which would mean getting more Cars in 2012.

I can confirm my own Borders still had at least two nearly-full boxes of Series 2 as recently as the last time I was there, perhaps a week or two ago. They were still priced at $3.99, though (which may help explain their continued abundance there). I didn't want to get many at that price (I probably have more than enough S2 already), but I did allow myself to get one more Spartan and a couple more traffic cops (yeah, really - they're different enough from the regular City police that I can foresee using them in places I don't necessarily want the regular cops). I may go back and get one more additional figures, depending upon things like how much I have to pay for them (they do often have email coupons for 40% off something or other, but I have a hard time using them since I don't have a printer). And yes, lots of Borders stores are indeed closing, though mine isn't; it may well indeed be that the minifigures can be had more cheaply at the stores that are going away. If you're curious about your store, here's a map that should let you know whether yours is getting (or has gotten) the axe... though at this point, you probably know that already if you go there often. Anyway, yes, here in the US there are still brand-new Series 2 minifigures in some stores out there, though they're getting harder to find, of course. Series 3 appears to still be plentiful in most stores that have had them, though they seem to have disappeared from Target (where both Series 2 and 3 have been treated as seasonal items). I do still see them in TRU, though, as well as a couple of smaller independent stores, and I believe LEGO Stores still have them (LEGO's Shop at Home does, at least, though of course there's zero ability to cherry-pick specific figures). With Series 4 just around the corner, I think it will be soon be possible to purchase new figures from three different series simultaneously, but not necessarily at the same store. Series 1, though, is pretty much gone everywhere (and has been for most of the time since it was released).

I currently live in a tiny apartment with too little space for my LEGO collection, but I hope to move into a substantially more spacious place with my girlfriend at the end of the summer. I've thought about a dedicated LEGO desk / table / storage system for a long time, though most of my thought has gone toward the arrangement I'd like to have in my dream home one day, not the space(s) I'll be living in for the near future. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I mostly put assemble things while sitting on the bed. Ah, well.