desultor

There's a lovely poster on LEGO.com's poster download page, too: But I was really hoping for a poster download of this year's Advent Calendar image - that thing looks built and awesome! Anybody have a hi-res scan?

USA Toys 'R' Us in-store and on-line December 13-19: 33% off LEGO City: Horse Trailer (7635) now $16.74 [out of stock online] LEGO City: Single Drum Roller (7746) now $21.43 25% off LEGO Star Wars: The Clone Wars Anakin's Y-Wing Starfighter (8037) now $45.74 free shipping LEGO Star Wars: The Clone Wars Separatists Shuttle (8036) now $23.24 free shipping LEGO Star Wars: The Clone Wars Republic Attack Shuttle (8019) now $46.49 free shipping [out of stock online]

I think the other 2010 sets aren't excluded from the sale. I had to do the math for myself: BOGO 50% only works out to 25%-off at best (with equal-value sets). Factor in TRU markup and local tax....

Here's the fine print on the Toys R Us sale (2009-11-29 through 2009-12-05) Online: Buy 1 Get 1 HALF OFF ALL LEGO Sets! Excludes LEGO Star Wars sets. Free Shipping on this item when you spend $49 or more on eligible items! In Store (USA): Buy 1 Get 1 HALF OFF ALL LEGO Sets! $3.49-299.99 Excludes Star Wars, Bulk, Alantis and Mindstorms.

Yeah, pretty sure. The e-mail says "all LEGO construction sets," shows three Star Wars boxes, and states this is "our biggest LEGO sale of the season!"

Buy one get one half off all LEGO with this coupon (pdf), TRU in-store today only.

I just noticed the brown boot printing on the side of Jesse's (and Woody's) legs. You guys think that was just done for the display? (Sorry if this has been asked/answered already.)

The bricks are actually Duplos and not that exciting. But so far I've been shopping there both weeks anyway just for the LEGO sales. Last week they had a buy 2 get 1 free on all sets, and 30% off a few sets including the Pirate ship (making it $80 - down from their $110) This week they're giving a free City Farm Tractor 7634 away (14.99 value) with ANY LEGO Building Set purchase of $30 or more! This applies to TRU online as well, including their offer now to spend at least $75 and get free shipping.

Wow. Very exciting! It looks to me from the bottom center of the confidential box like they're packing in 3D glasses. I assume to tie in with the Toy Story 1 and 2 3D re-release. Also, I had first hoped from the other confidential box that Zurg's Actruction Figure would have a pneumatic blaster... then with this pic I thought the little yellow Technic nut was a trigger... anybody know how Zurg would shoot his Nerf ball?

Oh man that's great! I had completely forgotten about this, but I did the same thing for my favorite band growing up in the 80s - Silverwind. Just now I found I played with the lights down, shining a flashlight on my MOC stage as a spotlight. (And this brought back the huge crush I had on that singer on the swingset! ) You know, I'm glad I don't have pictures of that MOC - as I'm sure its totally more rad in my memory than in real life. Out of context that quote is quite ironic on a LEGO fan site! Here's another Bible reference for balance: "At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, 'Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?' He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: 'I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.'" - Matthew 18:1-4I was chatting recently with a friend about what he's observed in his kids' imaginative tendencies. His older son has a sweeping imagination, preferring to play out self-invented stories with pre-built action figures or models. His younger son likes to build things, without much thought to their place in a story. I wonder if that is because of their temperament, or perhaps just different stages of development. As a parent, he has developed the opinion that kids would be better off having to exercise their own imagination more. He considers modern kids to be spoiled with the accessibility and ease of stories in movie form, and that movies have stunted their imagination for making their own stories. He dislikes the expressioned heads and movie-scene replication of modern licensed sets. I think he'd prefer corn-cob dolls over realistic action figures for his family. I'm not sure where I stand yet on the realism of toys for my future kids (I have a a feeling that I'll allow LEGO), but I know I'll limit their movie consumption and encourage book reading. I had to try hard to remember how I played with LEGO as a child. I think I swooshed the most with this awesome set. I don't think I imagined long narrative stories, instead playing out short-term actions. "Ok, the crane picks up some rocks to dump in the chute for the truck... there the truck goes! Better push some more rocks into the box for the crane. Here comes the guy from the office..." Nowadays I take great joy in building my new and old LEGO sets from the instructions, though sometimes I attempt to recreate the model from only the box photos first, as an added mental challenge. I also enjoy making alts - MOCs built from only the parts in a set, like the pictures they used to put on the back of boxes. Sometimes I find the thousands of de-setted parts in my collection to be intimidating, and my brain likes to work within limits. So play for me, now, is primarily building. I love that LEGO can be enjoyed by each of us on one or all the different levels we've discussed; action-figure story imagining, model-building by instruction, free-form model building (alts & MOCs), and collection.

Just two months ago I was informed about Brickwiki and Brickipedia as wikis for LEGO content, but now Brickwiki is a "Fedora Test Page." Which is much less exciting than it sounds. I was all excited to contribute, too! Anybody know what's happening with Brickwiki?

After reading this thread, I dropped in to the LEGO store on my way back from Vegas last Friday. I had decided to spend my small winnings ($25.50) on LEGO. As a tangent, I have to say the Ontario Mills, California LEGO Store is my new favorite place to buy LEGO. The staff are super friendly and nice, and they seem to stock sale sets much longer than any other store. I wonder if that's what they mean by "Outlet pricing on select items." They still have Indy Temple Escape 7623 sets for $41. (Though now I'm confused - S@H shows they're "available now" for $60....) Anyway, thanks to the OP and my craving for greenery, I bought my first Pick-a-Brick cup there. (To get another stamp on my card I threw in three Police Officers and a Fireman, impulse sets on sale for $2.50 each.) Here's what 30 minutes of packing got me: Knowing that some stores could be picky about their PAB policies, I asked one of the sales girls if I could take my time building into the cup, and if I could pull the ring of sprue from around the flower leaves (Check this guy's PAB pic to see what I'm talking about). She said I could do whatever I wanted, and pulled a sprue off for me. She stopped by later and checked the lid fitting. It couldn't seal at all, and would need tape just to stay on... she said "that'll be fine." Lovely! 51 tree leaves 198 flower stems 38 flower leaves 25 branches 13 seaweed 1 bush 60 pink flowers 541 trans-green cheese wedges 6 trans-green 1x1 tiles (bonus w/cheese) I did the math later by checking cheapest prices on Bricklink, and that $15 cup would have cost me $30.65. And that's just spending a half-hour stacking leaves and stems. So thanks Eilif, Ontario LEGO Store... and Vegas!

LOL! Oh man, I hate that experience. For me it's usually about half-way through a build, having thought "Wow, TLG is pretty great for including exactly the right parts in this box. Even some extras, I'll bet. I wonder how they manage that kind of accuracy? Wait a minute... I've been pushing bricks around looking for that part too long now...."I don't sort small sets. I'll sort a medium set into rough categories. Large sets without numbered bags get the methods I've used on my collection; for example, I group 2x4 and 1x4 bricks and plates of all colors together. I've found it's easy to find the right part this way.

Great question - I was honestly about to ask the same thing. This thread is just the kind that would be valuable in a pinned FAQ Index thread discussed here.

Wow. I gotta say, those characters look amazing! As a huge fan of all the Pixar movies, I am so excited that TLG has done such a great job capturing the fun of the Toy Story movies, and made it LEGO. Using three sizes of mini-fig to create a new scale is genius. What a great move to partner with Disney. The timing is perfect: the first Toy Stories in 3D will build momentum for Toy Story 3 which I expect will highlight LEGO for mutual benefit. I look forward to a new wave of Disney fans MOCing in Toy Story scale. (What do we call it? Maxifig scale? Woodyfig scale?) And just a word to the haters. I'm new to the AFOL scene, but I imagine a similar Chicken Little "The sky is falling!" panic must have arose here when TLG introduced flesh-colored skin, non-smiling heads, and BURPs. Now I understand we all get nostalgic when we think of the good old days when our taste matched the sets on the shelves. But we've grown up, and kids' taste has changed. (Kids love Spongebob, which I personally find repellent.) I think we need to recognize that we are not the target market anymore. The fact that LEGO has evolved to appeal to our kids, and will continue to evolve to appeal to our kids' kids, is a very good thing. Remember, we want TLG to prosper so they'll keep making those bricks we like to play with.

Great question. I like that there's so many different answers! MOCs intimidate me, so I've been limiting myself to re-working the parts from only one set. For example, right now I have a slow going MOC-in-progress using only the parts from my King's Castle. It's on my desk at work, with the rest of the pieces in a drawer. Wait, what's this?

This weekend I was surprised to see Indy's Temple Escape 7623 on sale at the Downtown Disney LEGO store (Anaheim, CA), at just over $40 - down from $60. I had purchased a used copy earlier from a Bricklinker for the same (plus shipping), but was quite tempted to nab another for parts, and thought about selling off the minis (having just read Nannan's essay on selling minifigs). That essay reminded me of my amateur business venture years ago, buying cases of Magic: the Gathering cards, ripping the packs, and selling the rares. It seems that minifigs are the rares of LEGO. My question though, is about selling unopened boxes after they've gone off the retail market. Nannan says "Don’t sell sets – they’re a hassle to ship and are also costly and space consuming. Shipping a large set outside the US will cost you nearly $50." Shipping doesn't concern me, as the buyer would pay that. Space isn't a problem. Up front cost seems to be the only issue, assuming MISB LEGO sets don't depreciate. On the contrary, they seem to spike in cost once they've gone off the market. Or do they? For example, say I buy three Temple Escapes on sale at $40. I open one for me, and save the other two for 6 months or so. By then they'll at least be worth full retail price on Bricklink, and I could sell them at $60 each to make back my initial investment of $120. Hey presto, free LEGO! Any thoughts?

What I was thinking in the OP was much less ambitious - just a place for FAQ and such on the EB site, about the site and the AFOL scene. On reflection it seems like adding wiki features just for that would be a lot of work for a little payoff. Maybe I'll take some time to post a thread worthy of pinning, that compiles a lot of the FAQ kind of stuff that I was looking for. Thanks for those links, though! I didn't even know they existed. I agree that reinventing the wheel would be foolish. I'm surprised that even two LEGO wikis can coexist. What's the general consensus of which is better? As cool as it would be (IMHO) to have one massive site that includes comprehensive wikified information on all LEGO sets, reviews, MOCs, techniques, etc, along with a rich forum for discussing all the above, perhaps it's best to use the right tool for the right job at this point: Flickr/Brickshelf for photo hosting, Brickipedia/Brickwiki for wiki info, and EB (of course) for all discussion.

Great question - I was wondering the same thing. I picked up my only three Bionicles (besides some McDonald's freebies) on a whim recently from the S@H sale (two Phantokoas and a Mistika). I'm sure from a collector's point of view it's worth keeping the boxes for resale value, but that's not for me. Perhaps if I kept all the pieces of each of my sets individually stored I'd want to keep the packages, but I compile my collection by piece, not set. I even throw out my cardboard boxes, except for my old sets that have idea pictures which aren't contained in the instruction books. I wish the packaging could be built with, like the X-pods. Seems like such a waste of plastic to me. But my Gorast Mistika can is pretty cool. Maybe I'll pull the stickers off and keep that one. Anybody know a good way to remove the container stickers?

One of my first new threads as a new member here was a duplicate topic of the Frequently Asked Questions variety. I should have dug deeper to find the topic, but I think it would be helpful to have an index thread of FAQ topics in the Website & Forums forum. (And yes, I did search for "FAQ" and "wiki" before posting this! ) It seems that within the limits of forum functionality, "pinning" indexes of important threads and putting them in the Important Topics section is the best way to collect info like this in one place. But a wiki would be a drastically better solution, in my opinion. Forums are a great tool for group conversation, but not cataloging information. Is there any possibility of adding wiki functionality to EB?

Wow - how'd I miss that? I did a search and everything! Thanks for the link - sorry to duplicate!

Hi guys, I haven't created an account anywhere for uploading pics yet. Before jumping in, I wondered if there was general consensus here for best photo hosting site. Which site do you use, and why? (Maybe this would be a good question to make a poll for, oh wise and esteemed site admins?) Thanks!

Thanks guys! I totally agree that Europe is cooler. I've gotten soft though, and now prefer the warmer climate of southern California. Thanks for your empathy for my addiction - at least we're all in this together! What is it they say... the first step is admitting that you have a problem.

Hi everybody, I'm desultor, a.k.a. Jack Wingard. I live in California, USA. I hope that's alright... I think I've seen other Americans on here, and the header graphic says you're "uniting LEGO fans around the world." I'll just pretend that Eurobricks refers to the fact that our beloved LEGO was born in Europe and mostly made there still. I found your lovely community by following a link from the Brothers Brick to some recent reviews by svelte_corps, and your awesome collection of reviews and thriving forums convinced me to join. LEGO was my favorite toy growing up, among Matchbox cars, Micro Machines, and Nintendo. My favorite themes were Castle, Space, City, and Technic, which I fortunately kept crated up through the Dark Ages. (Pics of representative cherished sets below.) This year I wanted something to do for my morning and afternoon work-breaks. I didn't want to waste time walking away from my desk, and reading at 10 minute stretches didn't work. So I tried breaking out an old LEGO set; instantly re-kindled love! I'm now MOCing my King's Castle at work, and at home I've built the Medieval Market Village and the $20 clearance Space Skulls. The Hail-fire droid set is up next, and my wife is rationing out a Soldiers' Fort piece each day I work on my master's thesis. The X-pod game is in the mail to complete my collection, and I'm seriously considering throwing down another $100 on Indy's Temple Escape and the new Drawbridge Defense. Clearly I need psychiatric help! Thanks for reading this; I look forward to meeting and further reading and posting with you fine FOLs! desultor.