Blondie-Wan

Wait, what's this about torsos (or any other parts) being of lower quality in the Pirate / Castle battlepacks? I thought they all came off the same production lines as each other. Are the battlepack knights, pirates, etc. more like those quasi-minifigs in the LEGO licensed pen sets, or what? That said, I think the simple fact those battlepacks do include more minifigures accounts for the difference. Five minifigures are simply typically going to be more expensive than four, sometimes even if the four-pack has some additional regular bricks on the side. Minifigures are made of articulated, multi-piece parts, many of which are printed, and we know LEGO doesn't consider printing a trivial expense these days. And that said, the thing I've been wondering about most is the 8401 City Minifigure Collection. It's a perfectly nice little set, and not really "bad" on value, but it does strike me that one actually gets a more substantial set with the typical licensed battlepacks and comparable licensed sets like Ambush in Cairo. 8401 has four minifigures broadly applicable to the Town / City theme - figures whose elements can be reused again and again for years on end, which have no associated license costs, etc. - and just a tiny handful of additional parts besides, with which to assemble a number of small, street sign-style "accessory"-like items, whereas the Star Wars battlepacks, say, actually have much more substantial whole little vehicles and so on, with more and larger pieces. No, I haven't noticed any "quality difference" in the 8401 minifigures; I do just think the set offers less building potential than the comparably-priced Star Wars sets, and I don't know why this should be.

Yes, I've glimpsed some of your (terrific!) creations and I've been alternately delighted and dismayed that you've been doing the same things I want to do - dismayed obviously in that I'm not going to be "the first," but delighted as well to know that there's another fan out there who "gets it," and is into LEGO and Indy enough to want to recreate not only scenes from the movies, but from the wonderful, shamefully underappreciated TV series as well. It's extremely gratifying to see another LEGO Indy enthusiast who's as interested in MOCs with Remy, say, as with Marcus or Sallah. While I really do want to avoid looking "too much" at yours, lest I be unduly influenced, I've seen enough of them to notice both things I was planning to do with my own (integrated lighting into the Akator throne room, for example, or the sand-green-on-top, white-on-bottom color scheme for the Flying Wing), as well as things we'd differ on (I'm probably too much of a purist for my own good, and want to avoid not only custom parts like BrickArms stuff, but even things like custom, non-official decals - I've been seriously wondering how to handle the graphics on the sides of the cars in the circus train). It's a bit moot at the moment, as I simply don't have the resources (money, space or time) to do all the stuff I want to do anyway, but hopefully that'll change soon. I don't know about local LEGO Train groups; there's a local LEGO group that's just now getting started with monthly meetings at a local hobby store, but there's very little to it so far (I went to the first meeting a couple months ago, and a friend of mine I'd brought and I were two of the three people there), and nothing I know of with a trains-specific focus. But we'll see what the future holds... :)

Argh - see, I didn't need to hear this; I swear I really, honestly have been planning on doing all of these myself, and didn't want to look like I was simply copying what another fan had already done. But that said, I'm sure you'll do some great work. Since it seems clear I won't be able to do mine anytime soon (among other things, I lack a lot of parts I want / need, plus also don't have a lot of space; I was planning on doing a lot of mine after the next time I move to a larger place to live) and you're already going in the direction I'd like to explore anyway, I'll go ahead and note I've long wanted to do a series I'd call "LEGO Indy Rides the Rails," or some such thing. Essentially, it was going to be every single rail vehicle seen anywhere throughout the movies and TV show ("rail vehicles" as opposed to "trains," to also allow for mine cars and the rocket sled, of course) - everything from this Pancho Villa / Mexican Revolution scene to the Utah 1912 circus train to the various trains Indy takes around Europe to the "Phantom Train of Doom" to the train he's taking out of the station and (seemingly) away from his life and career at the university when Mutt Williams calls out to him from his bike on the station platform. I also hope to do the usual assortment of ancient temples, dig sites, fights and the like, but this series on all the rail vehicles in the series was going to be a particular emphasis of mine. I hope to get around to it anyway, though it will be a while.

I'm duly impressed, in large part simply because you chose this particular train. As a huge Indy fan myself, I'm planning on a whole series of Indy MOCs from the entire range of his adventures, and I actually already had specific plans to do the trains you've done (and others in the series). I'm actually avoiding looking at yours too closely so as to avoid being influenced by it whenever I finally am able to get around to doing my own (it's going to be a while - for one thing, I have no Trains sets in my brick collection at all yet :( ), but I'm going ahead and voting for yours all the same, mainly just on the strength of your build as seen in even a quick glance, and partly I have to admit out of pure favoritism for your subject matter. ;) Nicely done!

It appears you're right about it ending next year (or rather, going on hiatus, anyway), but there's still a ton of stuff they could do: - the Dunn & Duffy circus train (seriously, a LEGO Indy train set would also still be a LEGO Train set, after all, which means it'd have crossover appeal, especially with the animals and all it would have to have; if done, this would likely be the largest Indy set ever) - Lao Che Air Freight's Ford Trimotor (a recurring concept in this theme has been the $50 plane set - Peril in Peru, Fight on the Flying Wing, Fighter Plane Attack; this could be one more, and it'd be arguably the most attractive plane done, and from an iconic scene) - the elephant trek / jungle campsite on the way to Pankot Palace - the Hatay tank ... and that's just for starters, and just some of the more obvious candidates, just from the movies. If they ever chose to do stuff from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles / The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones or the "expanded adventures" (novels, comics, games, etc.), there's a huge range of stuff they could do, limited only by what the market would bear.

Pardon me for the tangential corrections, but I just have to note a few things: Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in 1981, not 1980. There actually were action figures for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom back in '84 (as well as for Raiders a couple years earlier), though there were just a few of them and they weren't all that readily available. There most certainly were soundtracks for each of the original movies when they came out. There were even four soundtrack volumes released for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

I know I'm walking into this late (I've been away from the whole EB forum for a while - my attentions have simply been pulled elsewhere lately), but just on the off chance anyone from TLC is following the thread, I want to add my own voice to those here expressing their love for this theme, and their hopes it will continue a bit longer. I can certainly see some life left in it, even if they stick with just the movies - the circus train is a natural for a LEGO set, and if they did it at all it would surely be the largest Indy set ever. There's also the Lao Che Air Freight trimotor, the Marshall College bike / car chase, the tank, and numerous other things, including the entirety of Young Indy (which I don't think would ever be represented as heavily as the movies, but I do think they could do at least a couple sets from the show to fill out the line; personally, I'd absolutely love for them to do dozens and dozens of sets, including something from every episode, but I know that's not going to happen. Ah, well...). There's all kinds of stuff they could do. (And yes, the Thuggee battlepacks would be an excellent idea!)

Oh, it's beautiful. :pir-wub: I'm agog at all the complaints here. This is a gorgeous set. It is indeed the first distinctly American set, to be sure, but to my eye it actually fits quite nicely with the other modular buildings, which certainly wouldn't be out of place in some US cities, particularly in those parts of town that might also have a historic old firehouse like this one still in active duty. And the detail? This thing is still pretty lavishly detailed, really. Oh, my. Such a wonderful parts / colors selection, too! And that fire truck! I love it love it love it. The only thing I can think of that might improve this would be retro firefighter uniforms to go with the vintage building and truck - the Classic Town firefighter currently available in the Vintage Minifigure Collection Vol. 1 would be perfect, actually.

Wow, I'm really surprised to see all the hate here for Classic Spacemen; I'd have thought they were the major selling point for these collections. I thought surely it was the most beloved vintage LEGO theme ever. :( Vol. 2 would be one I'd need multiples of, but the inexplicable printing of the Space torsos has made me pause on buying it so far (has anyone heard anything about the possibility of them offering a corrected version, BTW? It seems like it'd be a very easy fix, since they're already printing the torsos properly with the same print for Vol. 1 and now Vol. 3, but one never knows...). Anyway, this does look like a gorgeous collection, though I have to admit the newer Pirate sets have spoiled me a bit with the printed shakos on the soldiers. I wonder how well this older-style bluecoat will mix with future additions to my still-beginning Pirate collection. But I definitely want this guy and his four friends anyway... :D

Incredibly enough, I actually got a full set of all six from getting a total of six boxes of cereal - one of each car, without any duplicates (!). For the purposes of just trying to collect them all, I really lucked out, though I think I'd like to get some more eventually so I can use some of those odd parts in MOCs and whatnot. Yes, they're very specialized pieces, but they're still traditionally "system"-compatible LEGO bricks that can be combined with other, ordinary bricks in various ways, so I think I'd like to take advantage of the opportunity to add to my parts inventory while I still have time to do so - I'm thinking some of these car bodies might come in handy for repurposing into robots and things like that.

I certainly wouldn't expect regular Brickmaster membership sets to be this large, but if these aren't some of the regular subscriber sets, how will these be released?

I requested a copy on April 6, and have yet to receive it. Has anyone else waited this long and still gotten it?

I, for one, would absolutely love, love, LOVE for them to produce sets based on the TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles / The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones (as well as the prologue from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). Like some here, I don't know that they actually would - it's certainly not nearly as likely as anything from the four feature films, of course - but since they're open to doing sets from the Star Wars EU (much or even most of which is unfamiliar to most kids in LEGO's target market), I don't think it's completely out of the question. I've actually already seen someone's Indiana Jones MOC gallery that includes at least one creation from the TV show in addition to a few from the movie series (including one of the circus train, as it happens), so clearly those people expressing their interest in Young Indy LEGO in this thread aren't the only ones interested. That said, I do acknowledge there are some potential obstacles to official sets ever happening. Aside from the relative obscurity of the show when compared to the movies, the show is stuffed with real-world, historical figures as characters, some of whom would really need to be represented in a lot of scenes that might be recreated in a set, but I don't know if LEGO is interested in producing minifigures of historical figures (though I guess some of the real-world basketball players and race car drivers and so on that they've done might establish a precedent).

Do you also know about the larger magnet bricks? LEGO is offering a couple varieties of magnets for "around the house" use now (in addition to the ones meant for things like train couplings). There are the ones like you've gotten, for attaching minifigs to the fridge, and there are other, larger ones that are essentially 4x4 bricks with magnets built into them (so, like the minifig ones, other bricks can't connect to the bottom, but they can to the top). Here are LEGO's various current magnet offerings; I don't know if they're significantly heavier than the minifig ones, but those 4x4 bricks at the top of the page look as though they might be worth checking out (and if not, hey, at least they're more cool LEGO magnets to stick on your fridge, right?).

Hey, at least you got it for $125 less than lots of other people (and in so doing, you also saved on the shipping)... That said, while $375 is a great deal for this set, it's still a lot more than I can afford. I went ahead and ordered about $20 worth of PAB, and I'll just have to hope I win one of the three Millennium Falcon sets they're giving away. I may place one additional small order shortly, to get a second copy of the poster and another shot at winning (not to mention the additional LEGO I want, of course)...

I see a lot of people complaining about the omission of every variant, or saying they "forgot" this figure or that. I don't think that's actually meant to be the point of the poster; it's not intended to be a definitive reference or something like that. I think it's simply meant to take a representative selection from the larger body of Star Wars minifigures produced over the years. Just because you've managed to get everything doesn't mean everyone else has. I'm actually quite doubtful "mostly all" of the people who want the UCS Millennium Falcon have it already, considering how expensive it is, and I imagine only a small fraction of all LEGO Star Wars enthusiasts have all the minifigures, or even all the ones on the poster. The unavailability to non-US fans does sting, though, I'm sure, and it's too bad TLC hasn't made it available to them. I imagine part of the reason for that is that it's being offered in conjunction with the contest for the UCS Falcon set, and the differing laws from one country to another make it difficult to have sweepstakes and the like that are offered simultaneously in lots of different countries (not impossible - Apple sometimes has international contests with iTunes download milestones, for example - but it does have a lot of legal barriers, and often companies just decide it's not worth the hassle), but I do wish all our non-US friends here had the same access to it. Hopefully LEGO will find some alternate means of distributing it for fans in other countries.

That's a shame; that scimitar is so perfect for the set. It's a glaring missed opportunity. That said, and acknowledging a few other quibbles here and there with the various sets, for the most part these are simply wonderful. My only concern is just how many copies of each I'm going to want versus how many I can afford. 7198: Fighter Plane Attack is the only one for which I might be satisfied with just one copy.

This poll is missing Disney, Dora the Explorer and Jurassic Park (though presumably the poll results would be about the same if they were there anyway)...

This "multi-theme" (Studios / Pirates) set was my first as well, as most of the classic Pirates era came during my dark ages; this promotion ran right around the same time my LEGO passion was rekindled. I actually wound up getting two of these even though the offer was limited to one per person, as I made a mix-up with my mail (I sent for it around the same time I was making a move) and thought it hadn't been delivered, so I made a customer service request and got another one sent to me, and only later discovered the first had made its way to me after all and had simply been set aside somewhere with some other mail. Oops. I swear I didn't do that intentionally... Anyway, after that I picked up my first "fully Pirates" sets, the 6921 Armada Flagship (the reissue of 6280) and 6292 Enchanted Island (the reissue of 6278); I no longer remember which of those I got first, but I do know I later wound up ordering another copy of Enchanted Island from LEGO Shop at Home when they put it on sale; that was in early 2003. Those five sets were all the Pirates sets I had until this year; I've just recently acquired three of the smallest sets in the current line, but I do hope to get more (and eventually, a bunch of the classics as well)!

Oh, I don't agree with my "conclusion," either; my post was meant as a joke (though I still want credit for calling it if it turns out I was right ;)). That said, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if it were a minifigure - the new figure that will otherwise be available exclusively with the LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary, for example - but I do also think a simple commemorative brick is also likely (such as one of the printed Duplo 1x2 bricks they gave away to promote the launch of the theme in 1999).

Just for fun, I'll go ahead and throw in my own wildly uninformed speculation and conjecture, because goodness knows one can never find enough of it on the internet. I'll assume it is indeed a special commemorative minifigure - we know it's a physical item, after all, and I don't think TLC would do a special production run of a whole discontinued set (or multiple discontinued sets) just for a two-day event, so I'm thinking it's something simple and small. It has to be something "nonessential," meaning something that there's not a huge demand for in a regular set - no major characters, say - yet at the same time have the sort of cachet to be a great fan-service item, and one recognizable to lots of the hardcore but not likely to appear in a set; this points to an EU character, one from some quasi-obscure tale(s) not frequently referenced today, yet appearing in something sufficiently well-known to be appreciable by a great many of the hardcore fans. This suggests a character from some really early EU production / publication. It also has to be something really distinctive, which suggests some new alien character, perhaps with a custom head element, yet at the same time, since it's just a promotional item offered for a brief time, it couldn't require some expensive new mold, so it must be entirely made of existing LEGO elements, but perhaps ones no longer in regular production, and / or in different colors than before, and ideally, something that could make use of colors heavily represented in the current production palette, such as one of the dominant hues in the Power Miners line. The answer, then, is quite clear: it's obviously a Jaxxon minifig, using the Nesquik Bunny headpiece in lime green. You're all welcome.

Great contest! A question... Are the straight and curved road baseplates in 6322 and 6321 permissible? The rules here don't specifically exclude them, but I thought I should at check to be sure. The plates I mentioned aren't period-accurate, but they're the only road plates I have, and I hope they're close enough...

Er... Well, yeah, actually; that's almost it, exactly (to be specific, I was thinking about a mine cart with perhaps up to two Thuggee minifigs, plus a short section of track - perhaps a bit much for a BM set, but perhaps not, since the mine car itself wouldn't actually have many pieces to it). I guess I shouldn't have said anything...

Well, unless you're a sports fan (or a football / soccer one, anyway)... That said, yeah, the point remains. LEGOLAND definitely and desperately needs more women...

Heh. Ok. The potential Brickmaster set I was thinking of would be a great companion piece for Temple of Doom (as well as a nice set in and of itself).