Mithrandir

I had an extra file tote lying around and figured out that the instructions fit perfectly into it one day. Last month I ran out of room and I haven't gotten around to buying a bigger tote yet.

Uh no, they're all incredibly similar, especially how they start off. the first 8 steps of all 4 are identical, and the legs of the stealth hunter and the fire vulture are the same, and the legs of the grand titan and the thunder fury are the same too.

Yeah, that was one of my main complaints; the four $15 mechs are virtually identical in construction, and so are the $5 mechs (and the two that came with the gate assault). I spread building them out over a few days, but it was still annoying. However, from a piece-point-of-view, these are some of the best sets I've seen in a long time. Plus, the Supernova switched things up a bit and made it more interesting, and it looks like Striking Venom and the new Bridge Walker may make things even better on top of that.

That looks cool. Does anyone know if they're going to continue Exo-Force after 2006, or is this going to be another one of those "one year only" themes that Lego is so fond of lately? I think this would be a really good chance to create a large running theme for Lego. I hope so, because this is the closest we've got to the old Space stuff (I gave up on a space revival when they announced another 3 years of Star Wars earlier this year, sigh)... I just wish they wouldn't use those stupid anime figures for everything (I put alpha team and dino attack figs in my human mechs, lol). yay robots :)

It depends on how much I like the set. Most of the time I disassemble them after about 2-3 months, but a few I've kept and may not ever disassemble them. Such as the Shark from Deep Sea Predators (4506), the Street Bike (8420), the Mobile Crane (8421), and the 1:10 F1 car (8386) I really want to build the alternate for 8420, and got halfway done before I ran out of pieces from my loose parts collection, and I can't bring myself to disassemble the original model yet, so I'm hoping to snag another copy of it when it goes on sale for 35% off or more. The Mobile Crane I might disassemble when the new tow truck comes out; for now I like having an F-ing huge technic model around :) The F1 car I will definitely disassemble when the new 1:8 F1 car comes out. And the shark... well... that shark rocks and I don't ever want to take him apart :)

Obviously this isn't demonstratable with minifigs, but a lot of real-world-ish mechs use the leg movements of the driver to control the legs of the mech. Say, if you lift up your left leg, sensors in the mech will detect it and left the left leg of the mech itself.

I found some REALLY neat MOC's using just the pieces of 4888: Here and Here This is simply a brilliant set. I don't remember why I took it apart :\

Looks like he's got the Sailbarge as well. edit: I take that back. I guess that's a MOC, as the Sailbarge is actually brown. Brilliantly done, though. :)

Problem is that BrickLink isn't that good of an answer. This set, for example, has 178 pieces, but the cheapest I can find on BL is $29 in the Netherlands, where shipping is probably going to be at least $10 (probably more). I like the set a lot, but there's no way I'm paying $40 for something that small. :\

Stuff on my wishlist that I've bought so far this year: 4891 Highway Haulers 4892 Prehistoric Power 6206 TIE Interceptor 6207 A-Wing Fighter 6208 B-Wing Fighter 6209 Slave I 7016 Viking Boat vs. Wyvern Dragon 7018 Viking Ship challenges the Midgard Serpent 7704 Sonic Phantom 7781 The Batmobile: Two-Face's Escape 7782 The Batwing: The Joker's Aerial Assault 8281 Mini Tractor 8282 Quad Bike 8283 Telehandler 8671 Ferrari 430 Spider 1:17 8877 Vladek's Dark Fortress Stuff that wasn't on my wishlist that I bought due to boredom/impulse: 8661 Carbon Star 8663 Fat Trax 8664 Road Hero 8666 TunerX 8667 Action Wheelie 8668 Fly Wheel Side Rider 8669 Fire Spinner 360 7700 Stealth Hunter 7701 Grand Titan 7702 Thunder Fury 7703 Fire Vulture 7705 Gate Assault 7708 Uplink 7711 Sentry 7712 Supernova Stuff still on my wishlist that I haven't bought due to it not being available yet: 4893 Revvin' Riders 4894 Mythical Creatures 4895 Motion Power 4896 Roaring Roadsters 7706 Hero Tank 7707 Striking Venom 7784 The Batmobile: The Ultimate Collectors Edition 8284 Tractor/Dune Buggy 8285 Tow Truck 8287 Motor Set (at least 2 of them, probably 3 or 4, though) 8288 Crawler Crane (maybe 2 of these, for the chainlinks *wub* ) 8289 Fire Truck 8674 Ferrari F1 Racer 1:8 8813 Battle at the Pass 8823 Mistlands Tower ???? NXT education resource set (just technic parts, not an actual NXT) Stuff I *might* buy, but I'm undecided about: 8527 Mindstorms NXT 8821 Rogue Knight Battleship 8822 Gargoyle Bridge

That's weird. I just built my red mech last night, and he has 4 stars. It's exactly the same as the pilot from Supernova. :\

Is that what they mean by "airline promotional set"? I'm in the US and our airlines don't sell anything, so this is actually kind of weird. So what is the deal, then; do the airlines sell the set, or do they give it away as a free toy on flights, or what? And why airlines? And why not here in the USA; some of these sets are really cool and I feel like we're missing out big-time! :P

I haven't modded it myself, but I just wanted to say that I love this set. It's the first designer set I ever picked up, and I instantly fell in love with the entire line. :)

I grabbed this set yesterday after work. It was a crappy day and I felt like rewarding myself, and I noticed that this doesn't come with the Heros and Villians pack from S@H, so I bought it. Price: It's a good price, only $20 for almost 300 bricks. Pieces: Great piece selection for space-type stuff; mostly slopes and click hinges Aesthetics: It's a very visually pleasing set, and once you get it posed right, it looks pretty good. Durability: this is the only negative part of the set; it's not very durable. I really wish Lego would stop designing sets where you have to put a cone on an axle. They don't fit right and keep falling off. Furthermore, the jets on the legs keep falling off, as well as the fingers on the hands too. If anyone were to seriously play with this set (I won't), I imagine they'll be pretty darned disappointed with how it keeps falling apart... unless they are constantly blowing it up :P I have a question about The Light Brick. It's a cool little piece, but so far I can't seem to figure out how to replace the battery. So what happens when the battery eventually dies? Is the brick now useless? Furthermore, how come all the exo force sets I've built so far don't actually attach the brick to the model, and just leave it lying loosely on something? It's braced well in the Supernova, but it was a major pain in the butt on the Sonic Phantom. Anyway, good model, glad I bought it; I'll probably disassemble it in a month to make something better though :)

I voted for Pirates, but it was a really tough call. Castle has been around forever, and will probably be around forever too. Pirates were only around for a few years, though. So this means that there are FAR more castle sets than pirate sets. And of course, this also means that the quality of the castle sets has gone up really high, or come crashing down really low, depending on the year. The Forrestmen and Black Monarch sets of yesteryear were some of the highest quality sets I've ever seen, and I miss them dearly. But KK2 (series 1 and partly 2) were pretty disappointing, what with it's "Knights of the Pastel Round Table" theme going on there. I couldn't stand it. Unlike Castle, Pirates had a far shorter run, but overall, the set quality was better, which is why I voted for Pirates instead. We had ships, cannons, parrots, sharks!, monkeys, sabres, pistols, chests of gold, etc. Pirates introduced non-smiley minifig faces, too. I miss pirates. A lot. When I got back into Lego last year, I was SHOCKED to find out they didn't make them anymore. They were absolutely my favourite sets as a kid, and it's just one of those things you take for granted, and assume that it'll always be there (same thing with Space; Star Wars just doesn't cut it as a substitute). Bringing back Pirates would make me happy as a clam. I've always wanted a freaking huge capital ship.

I don't really hate Bionicle, but I don't really like it, either. Last May, I got a new office job, and I went to TRU to look for a few office toys to stick in my cube. While there, I found the Lego aisle full of this newfangled stuff (the last time I touched Lego was probably back in 1994) called "Bionicle". To be honest, at first it looked really damn cool, even if it was completely unrecognizable compared to the Lego I used to know. So I decided to test one out; I bought this little bugger for $4, brought him home, built him, and was pretty impressed. S@H was having a bunch of 50% off sales at the time, so I grabbed a bunch more Bionicle sets too, but after the 4th or 5th one, I got really bored. I guess maybe it's because I started branching out into other areas of Lego (Alpha Team and Technic) and got annoyed at the limitedness of the Bionicle pieces (there's really only so much you can do with ball joints). Granted, sometimes they come with a really cool piece that you can add to a MOC somewhere (like this), but for the most part I felt that they just can't compare to the other Lego lines. And THEN I found out that Lego was discontinuing thousands of pieces this year due to costs, which really soured my opinion of Bionicle, since the sets mostly use very specific pieces that you can't find in most sets, meaning that Bionicle probably takes up a huge number of unique pieces, and some really cool pieces aren't going to be made anymore because of this. So I'm just not really keen on it anymore. But I do have to give it props for A) bringing me back into Lego, and B) keeping TLC afloat for the past few years so that we can have all these other cool sets.

Is it really that bad? I've had my eye on the Ice Planet stuff for a while now, and I intend to get it all eventually (my dark ages started at about the same time IP2002 came out; I loved the sets but somehow got distracted and never got any of the big ones). :\

I just gotta say... the picture for the Ofnir Dragon is amusing... there's this tiny viking dude holding chains attached to this huge MF'ing dragon, spitting fire... yah, right :P

Yesterday someone posted a bunch of pics for some new 2006 sets; among them was the new Striking Venom Exo-Force set. Up until then, I didn't pay much attention to Exo-Force, as it seemed more of a kiddie play-theme and I usually go for the more advanced stuff (technic mostly). I bought the Sonic Phantom for Christmas for myself, simply because I like the giant fans and I can put those into some custom stuff later, but overall the set didn't really wow me, since it was way too flimsy, and I just ignored Exo-Force from then on. But damn that pic of the Striking Venom impressed me, and it convinced me to take a second look at Exo-Force, and after looking at all the part inventories and stuff, I finally decided to buy the Heros and Villians set from S@H: 7700 Stealth Hunter 7701 Grand Titan 7702 Thunder Fury 7703 Fire Vulture 7708 Uplink 7711 Sentry They look pretty good, they all come with alternate sets and combination instructions too (except the last two), so hopefully I'll be happy when they arrive sometime next week.

ooooh, finally some better pics of the new F1 racer. I would have rated that set at 140% awesome, except for the fact that it's... red. So I'm taking off 50% awesome because of that. Too much red!!! (yeah yeah, Ferarri license, yadda yadda). And what's with the schizophrenic tractor? Is it a tractor or a dune buggy? Heh... Every box I see advertises it as a Dune Buggy; every time I see it built, it's a tractor. Which is the main and which is the alternate? I'm guessing the Dune Buggy is the main set, since we've already had a tractor this year; plus I've never seen a Lime Green tractor in real life anyways. And finally: The tow truck looks like it will be even more awesome than the Mobile Crane. 1800+ pieces! (no motor though; hopefully it should be cheaper then?). Woot. Edit: I noticed they used 12-axles with a joiner on the boom of the truck; this brings up an interesting question. Why does the mobile crane use that gimongous 32-axle? I once read a lego rep saying something about 12-studs is the longest they can make an axle and have it remain reasonably sturdy; and then last year we get the forklift with a 16-axle and the mobile crane with a 32-axle. Weird, no? Edit 2: Hmmm; only one differential on the Tow Truck; that's weird. From my understanding of physics, wouldn't both rear axles need a differential?

The only bit of good advice my dad ever gave me: "If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is." :-)

Well yeah; I imagine that this bridge is intended just for that purpose :P In fact it can hold a Lego train rail piece perfectly, so I imagine this will be popular for train layouts.

Speaking of Znap, has anyone noticed that they're bringing back a znap piece for 2006? 7900 Heave Loader with bridge I probably won't get it, since I'm more of a technic/designer guy, but that certainly looks interesting.

Since my package with the two things I ordered from Amazon didn't come on friday (see two posts up), I decided to go out to Target and grab the new Slave I to build over the weekend. At first, it seemed like it was really flimsy, but the design ended up being a lot sturdier at the end. I'm impressed by the overall shape of the model, but the colors just don't seem right to me. Granted, Lego probably doesn't have the proper colors and used the closest they had available, but that seaweed green just bugs me for some reason. *shrug* Verdict: I should have waited until it was on sale. Plus the wings are pretty flimsy.

I had this issue in a used 8435 4WD I got on ebay. A few studded Technic beams were a different blue than the studless beams. You can only see it at close range, not when it's on the shelf. I dunno if that's true for a new 4WD set, but it's annoying anyways: blue isn't just blue anymore... I didn't notice that in mine. I've since taken it apart and sorted all the pieces into my collection of loose parts, so it's doubtful I'll be able to verify this anyways. However, one thing I did notice about the new Telehandler set is that this part, when in red, was a slightly darker red than the beams and liftarms. Did anyone else notice that? I looked at my 1:10 Enzo too, and noticed the same thing, which is weird, because I never noticed that when I first built it.