Mithrandir

Heh, I was thinking the same thing. The extra sets (dragster, SUV) look good enough to stand on their own, so I was thinking of at least two copies, maybe three if I find it on sale somewhere :P

Definitely :) Anyway, I am REALLY looking forward to this. I missed out getting 4404-1: Land Busters by a few months, and have been kicking myself over it for a while, but this set looks even better!! Won't be missing out on this one :)

The new Education Resource Set is available from the Lego Education Store, I'm wondering if anyone bought it yet? The old Technology Resource Set (for the old mindstorms) was incredible for technic parts, but it was mostly older-style studded stuff, so I'm really looking forward to the NXT version, and I was just wondering if anyone has a parts inventory. It's a little disappointing that there's a lot less pieces (first one was 1110 pieces, new one is only 671 for the same price), but it's still above the 10c/piece limit, so it's not all that bad. Hopefully it should include the new L-pin connector (you can see it here, next to the bionicle teeth parts), and a bunch of other useful technic stuff. edit: Dang, nevermind, I just noticed that it's only pre-order, and won't be available till August. *eesh* Still, anyone wanting to discuss it, or has any details on it that I haven't found, feel free to chime in :)

Well I live in Buffalo, NY, and the closest lego stores I can find are 2 hours away in Toronto. I'm not driving to Toronto for Lego :P On a side note, I bought a bunch of small sets over the weekend from TRU, and they charged above retail for them... what the heck? 7016-1: Viking Boat vs. Wyvern Dragon: retail $10, TRU charged $12.53 8666-1: TunerX: retail $4, TRU $4.50 8661-1: Carbon Star: retail $4, TRU $4.50 8664-1: Road Hero: retail $4, TRU $4.50 (I highly reccomend this set, by the way) 8663-1: Fat Trax: retail $4, TRU $4.50 8667-1: Action Wheelie: retail $10, TRU $11.43 8668-1: Fly Wheel Side Rider: retail $10, TRU $12.53 I didn't notice until I got home, but wtf?

My take: - It's rather difficult to post things there. I managed to post a few things once, but haven't been able to for the past 8 months. Every time I post something, it says I need to log on, and when I do, it doesn't post it. So after 5 different attempts, I just gave up and found a better place to talk (here). - It's also pretty difficult to navigate the posts. Yes, I know it's usenet; but there's a reason most people stopped using usenet a long time ago (heck, I'm willing to wager more than 70% of internet users now have NEVER used usenet); it's just organized badly. - Lack of discussion; no doubt caused by the first two problems I listed. I go into the technic forums and there hasn't been posts made in months; or maybe once every 3 weeks or so. So that's why I come here. Other sites: Legofan - very low frequency of posts, not very interesting FBTB - too much bias against non-starwars Lego. Yeah, it's a star wars site, but still...

Man, I'd be pissed if I was a train fan. When you think about it, no other area of lego can have this much of a problem. Take technic, for example. They recently switched to the studless design. But all of the studless stuff is still compatible with the studded; you can join them together to your hearts content. But with the trains... your old trains won't run on the new track. As your old engines die... you won't be able to replace them. This sucks.

No way, that looks like an authentic Viking hall. Heck, the first thing I thought when I saw that was "OMG BEOWULF" Good work :) No scratch that, GREAT WORK :)

Last year I would have agreed, but from what I see of the new stuff comming out, I think they've gotten their mojo back. First off: * Vikings was a huge start in the right direction. Sure, it can't replace pirates, but it's a start at least! * Technic. From 1996 to 2004, technic was almost completely crap, with the occasional gem here and there (F1 racers, super street sensation). Now all of a sudden, 2005 brings us the Street Bike, easily my favourite set ever, the mobile crane, and now it looks like the 2006 sets will be even better! * Batman. Nanananananananananananananana BATMAN! Need I say more? :) * Okay, I'll say more. The minute I put together the Batwing, all I could think of was... "My balloons. Those are my balloons! He stole my balloons!!! Why didn't anyone tell me he had one of those... things?!! Bob, gun. *BANG*" * Designer/Creator. I think this takes Lego in a huge step forward, and brings it much closer to the original concept of Lego. They give you tons of pieces, cheaply priced, lots of instructions, and a bunch of ideas to help you build your own stuff. Granted, they use a lot more than just the "classic" pieces, but that's evolution for you. I bought Gear Grinders, and let me tell you, that small set deserves an 11 out of 10 rating. (I wish it came in blue though, grr). Castle: I kind of miss the days of the Black Falcon's Fortress, and I thought the whole "Knights of the Pastel Table" thing was just... goofy. But it looks like they're heading away from the pastel colors. Vladeks castle was really cool (I was disappointed it was basically just a castle front, but that's what Lego is all about, being able to build it how you want!). So in general, I really like the way the sets are heading. Granted, there are a few things that concern me. I'm not a huge fan of the stuff like Exo-Force (I bought the Sonic Phantom for the space-type-parts and the huge fans), and I really wish they would bring back the Space theme (Star Wars does NOT count; I want stuff like Blacktron, Space Police, Ice Planet), and I'm a little wary of the new Train system (anyone notice how ALL the old train stuff is on sale on S@H this week? Are they discontinuing it all ?!). Bionicle was cool at first (I actually got back into Lego because of a Bionicle set I got for $4), but it kind of wore off after a while. There's really only so much you can do with all those ball joints. The new City, I can go either way on. On one hand, the sets look spectacular, and brings back memories of the olden days. But on the other hand, those freakin HUGE wing pieces and nose pieces on the airplanes bug the heck out of me. I mean, there's no excuse for those wings. They should have split them up into at LEAST 2 pieces, so you can make a variable-width plane, or better yet, 4-6 pieces so you could make variable-sized wings! Or heck, why not use any of the many existing wing-type pieces? Worked just fine for the Batwing. The nose cone doesn't bother me as much; I saw someone make a freaking bullet train out of it, so that made me realise that no matter what, someone will find another use for any special part, but still... So anyways. In general, I think Lego is headed towards a positive direction; I'm just worried that many retail stores are going to sabotage it by not carrying enough.

So over the weekend, I had a kick to buy some lego sets; I was impatient and wanted them right away, so I checked out all the stores in my area. The results were rather disheartening. Target had about one section of an isle for lego's, only Bionicle, Harry Potter, Racers, and Star Wars sets. Not even the good ones either, they were all tiny. In K-Mart, I asked for the Lego section because I couldn't seem to find any, and the guy took me over to a shelf filled with Megabloks. I said "No, I want Lego" and he said "This is all we have". :\ Wal*Mart was pretty much the same story as Target, except it had way more Bionicle. KB Toys was pathetic, they had the top 2 shelves of a section, only Bionicle and tiny Racers sets. Media Play used to have a decent collection (almost every small-medium non-technic set), but unfortunately they went out of business. I saved the best for last and went to Toys'R'Us (which is closing in a few months!!!), and found the best selection of the day, but still pathetically pale in comparison to the olden days. TRU had vikings, star wars, bionicle, three technic sets, 2 designer sets, all the batman, and a few racers, and some World City sets, and that was pretty much it. Almost no big sets whatsoever (the only big one was the viking fortress). It took up about 8 sections of an aisle (4 sections, both sides). By comparison, Megabloks had 10 sections (5 sections, both sides). Now I remember, as a kid, TRU used to have an entire freaking TWO AISLES full of legos, every big set that you could imagine. A Dozen copies of the monorail sets here, a huge space display there, a train display, town, pirates, castle, duplo, everything. What the hell happened? When our TRU closes, who's going to sell Lego in this area? Our only option will be online... and while that's okay for us enthusiasts who pay attention to what sets are available, most parents won't really have any idea, and will buy whatever is available in the toy sections of whatever superstore they shop at. I think Lego is in trouble.

I was originally not going to get this set, but after reading a few reviews, I decided to break down and get it. First off, I was disappointed by the huge rotor piece on the jokers copter... but I didn't get this set for that anyways. The most striking thing about this set is: Whoa. The wings on the Batwing are a HELL of a lot sturdier than you would think. From the pics it looks like they'd fall apart in a second, but that's not so! In fact they haven't fallen off on me once! 9/10 Side note: I remember when I was little, the pirate cannons were supposed to shoot stuff. Then, when I got a pirate set, I was sooo bummed out that it didn't actually shoot anything (stupid "safety" concerns). So now, 15 years later, how come lego seems to have fallen in love with the technic competition cannon? Those things are appearing on more and more sets lately, and you'd think they would be just as cautious? *shrug*

I grabbed this over the weekend, and I think I'll give it a 7/10. At first I was kind of disappointed; while building it, it seemed like it was going to be very ugly. Somehow, it got a lot better at the end though; most of the ugliness is covered up by the outermost layer of bricks. I like the Black batman; honestly the gray batman looks dumb to me; but the weird thing about this is that you can't see Batmans eyes through his mask. That just seems too weird to me. Oh well; the bat-weapons are good, the Batmobile is good (I wish it were bigger; about 40% of the pieces in this set went towards the truck and stop-sign-thing), so I give it a solid 7/10.

I've had my eyes on this set for a while now, and I almost didn't buy it, because every review I read mentioned that it had a ton of "special pieces". I had $38 of Amazon.com gift certificates though, so I decided to go ahead and grab it. I must say, I am very pleased. Honestly, I think this is single handedly the prettiest set I've ever bought, and I'm really happy that I got it. I'm not really a non-technic person; almost every set I own is technic. I enjoy challenges when building things, and I guess I got bored of the whole studded thing when I was a child. But damn, this thing was very fun to build (it took me about 2 hours, with 2 breaks) And I really want to know what in the heck people were talking about when they said it was packed full of "Special pieces"? There were only two special pieces, an arch to go over the front wheels, and the wheel hub caps. Quite frankly, I like those pieces. A Lot. To be honest, I thought the hood piece was "special" at first, but upon further review, it's just the train-road-crossing wedge (6x8). In my own personal view, a piece cannot be considered "special" if it appears in 10 or more sets. Does anyone else agree with that assessment?

I 110% agree. About a year ago, I pondered the idea of getting into Lego trains. I don't have the space for a layout at my apartment, so I put the idea off until I buy a house. But now, with all these changes, I'm starting to think twice. Pros: - Remote control is actually a good idea. Think about it, no more requiring every train to run the same way at the same time... - Cheaper track Cons: - Batteries. Oh GOD how I hate batteries. It is such a freaking pain in the butt; the darned things never last long enough, and replacing them with new ones is a hassle. Rechargables aren't really a great solution, because they usually have lower current, lower running time, and take a long time to recharge anyways. It would have been great if they included some sort of rechargable battery inside the train, where you could simply plug it in to recharge... ie: have one special piece of electrical track, so that when a train is sitting on it, it will charge it. - Infra Red. Eeegads!! whose brilliant idea was this?! I HATED how the spybotics used IR, their range was crap, and flourescent light interferes with it quite easily! It's not that hard to make a radio-singal control. To me, IR has absolutely no advantages over radio whatsoever. Heck, ever since I got a Tivo, I can't stand regular IR TV remotes anymore (Tivo is radio controlled). I can't imagine trying to control a train in a complex layout with IR... ugh.

you'd think that, wouldn't you.... but no.... not with lego! i think they're trying to promote the s@h by giving new sets to them first, before releasing them to the regular shops. that way, the impatient fans among us would be able to buy the sets asap, but at a full price thru the lego chain, and not at tru or whatever... Heck, that's not even the case. The new technic mini tractor and quad bike were available on amazon.com and in TRU stores back in December, and they finally just appeared on S@H last week. I don't know. I think Lego is bowing to the whole "One Set One Year" standard that Crap*Mart and Target seem to love. For example, most of the 2004 Technic sets were discontinued at the end of 2005 (I'm glad I got them all when I had a chance!) And a lot of the Star Wars Episode 3 sets were discontinued after only 9 months!! I kept putting off buying "Wookie Attack" (7258, I wanted the chain links) because it was a brand new set and I wanted to focus on getting some older sets first... and then when I finally got around to it in November, it was nowhere to be found! The Arc fighter is on S@H now, but I can't find it in any normal stores anywhere (Glad I bought it back in september). So I guess we ought to get the sets when they're available. *shrug* When I first saw the viking line, I told myself that I'm going to get every single set. Over Christmas, I ran out of money and decided to only get the one set I wanted most, the Viking Longboat. I've always had a thing for boats, and this reminded me of the old pirate boats that were out when I was a kid (those were the days, sigh). However, after I built it, I just felt like something was missing. I'm not really sure what it was; I think the boat was just too empty. The figures were awesome, the axes were damn cool, but something just didn't rub me right about it, and I've held off getting the rest of the viking sets because of it.

Yeah, I get the feeling that these two sets are just for the first half of the year, and we'll see more come Christmastime. Lego would be insane to not make more of these; I remember going to TRU after I heard they were finally out in December, and every set except the fort was gone within a week. I missed out on a great deal on the small boat. Grr.

I agree, sorting is a HUGE pain in the butt. However, I find that it is soooo worth it in the end, because when the parts are sorted, it's incredibly easy to build your own creations with a minimum of effort. Rather than having pieces hiding away in the depths of a huge box, you can see exactly what you have. Plus, you can tell what parts you are low on. For example, I noticed, after sorting my parts, that I have very few 13m studless beams for some odd reason. Before I sorted my parts, I kept looking for these, *knowing* that I must have a lot, when I actually didn't. I'd like to know how the Lego builders keep parts stored when they're making sets. I mean, they must have some sort of system; I can't possibly imagine keeping over 12,000 unique part types sorted using any methods available to me (plus probably a lot of prototype parts that we've never seen either)

For the past few months I've been trying to figure out a good way to store all my lego pieces. At first, I bought 2 large Akro Mills small parts cases (05905). That was pretty good at first, when my collection was: 1) mainly technic 2) small 3) still mostly built Now, fast forward a few months, and my collection has ballooned to 23,986 parts (that's what peeron says, though I may be forgetting a set or two). I had been buying new containers occasionally (once a month?) and rearranging my parts, but recently, it just won't do anymore. So I went ahead and bought one of these: 10124. Unfortunately, the dividers aren't really good, so I couldn't use it to store small parts well, and I ended up using this container to store all of my technic studless beams; one or two bins per type. (2m, 3m, 5m, 7m, 9m, 11m, 13m, 15m, 4x4m angle, 4x6m angle, 3x7m angle, 3x4x7 J angle, 4x2 L, 5x3 L) And that took up an entire container. Daaaamn. I recently grew fond of all of the Designer sets which use primarily studded non-technic pieces, and this has posed quite a problem for me, because I have a ton of pieces and I don't know how to organize them now. Initially I wanted to keep all the "technic" pieces together, and all the "studded technic" pieces together, and all the "studded system" pieces together, but it's getting increasingly difficult to categorize the pieces that way anymore. It seems that most studded sets nowadays come with a fair amount of pieces that I used to consider technic, but aren't actually in any technic sets. For example: I have a ton of these new click hinge type things that are pretty technic-ish (48170), but aren't actually technic. So I've been trying to figure out how to organize my pieces, and it seems that separating technic from non-technic is a losing battle. (ie: is this a technic piece? I have no idea!!). So some other ways of sorting them I've thought about: * Keep all related pieces together. Plates will go in one container, bricks in another, bricks with holes in another, and so on. This method has the problem of the fact that there are a ton of pieces that don't really fit neatly into any one category, because a lot of pieces transcend categories. * Sort pieces by size. 1x1x1 pieces first, 1x2x1, 1x3x1, 1x4x1, ... 2x2x1, and so on. The problem with this method is that related pieces may be stored far away from each other. ie: a technic 1x2x1 liftarm is technically the same size as a 1x2x1 plate, but they are VERY different pieces and shouldn't be stored near each other. * Sort pieces by color. I dislike this idea the most. I *hate* the idea of mixing different kinds of parts together. So what say you? What are your storage solutions? Which works best for you guys?

Ever since I ordered something from Shop@Home, they just mail catalogues to me.

Damn, and I thought I was lucky when Media Play sold me "Record and Play" 4095 for $1.79 and "Motor Movers" 4094 for $7.85 4 months ago. (Boxes were banged up, and someone accidentally labeled the clearance prices on them waaaay too low; they honored them and I didn't even argue about it. I'm betting that some employee purposely marked them down so he could grab them later.)

Is it just me, or does this look better than the UCS Batmobile?

So they could make two sets, knowing that all the diehard SWLego fans would buy both. Personally, I'm waiting for the 2008 Clone Tank or maybe even the 2009 UCS Clone Tank. I'm not patient enough to wait around for the 2011 Clone Tank though. ... *wacko*

In the Mindstorms NXT article from wired, they said that TLC is cutting down the number of unique parts that it manufactures in order to save money. I guess the Air Tank didn't make the cut. Considering that it's only been in 5 different sets, I'm not all that surprised. Someone on Lugnet surmised that maybe they're making a newer "studless" airtank, but frankly, I doubt it. There's no reason to make it studless since you can easily fit it into a studless set as it is, and if they were going all-studless, then why didn't they make the big pneumatic pump studless as well? Oh well. Underutilized and prematurely killed. We shall miss ye, Blue Pneumatic Airtank.

I quite like the Enzo but it was never marketed as technic it was Racers. Yes, that's true, but I feel that they probably could have made the darn thing look better. I built it about a month ago and I'm already tempted to take it apart (mainly so I can play with the CV joints *sweet* ), because it's just so darned ugly. The fairings are the worst part in my opinion. They were designed to be used on smaller scale models, so when you put them onto the huge 1:10 Enzo, there's a TON of open space and the entire thing ends up looking pretty ugly. The worst part is the hood; it's about 40% open space; plus the doors are pretty flimsy too. However, I do like the frame of the car, and I was having a TON of fun putting it together up until the very end, so maybe I'll strip off the Enzo features and try to make it into something better. Also, I think the Nitro Menace is a beautiful car; that's what Racers should be about. Almost no technical stuff, but damn it looks good and was fun to build. I think the reason it looks great is because it's a smaller scale and the fairings actually do a good job of covering up everything; unlike the enzo.

I bought 8455 last month; spent $170 on it, which was probably a bit more than I should have spent, but overall, it's an amazing set. It's kind of frustrating at first, because pneumatics are very hard to illustrate in the instructions, so you're constantly staring at the instructions, wondering if you've got it right. Luckily, everything turned out right :) As far as I'm concerned, 8455 is THE pneumatic set. It has 10 (TEN!!) pneumatic cylinders, 7 switches, 500cm of tubing, and 14 T-pieces. The only thing I'm disappointed at is that it didn't come with any airtanks. By the way, Lego has officially discontinued the blue air tank piece and will no longer be selling them anymore (I managed to grab 5 on bricklink for about $12 each, and now there's only 1 left @$20). Anyway, back to 8455, it's simply amazing how it all fits together. The outriggers, front shovel (lift and dump functions), and back scoop (turn, lift lower arm, lift upper arm, dump scoop functions) are all pneumatic, and the way they made the pumps work is INCREDIBLY clever. Hell, they even threw a 3-cylinder engine and differential into the set, when it really didn't need it. Overall, I'm happy. Only problem is that it runs out of air very quickly (with 10 cylinders to power, that's not a surprise!), so it's a little curious why they didn't include any airtanks with this set. *shrug* I'll try to build one or two into it someday I think. I've been pondering getting 8439/8464/8459 for a while now (does anyone know why this set was made with 3 different numbers?! It's so hard to track down because of it!), but I'm not sure if it's worth the cost. If you can, post your opinions of it after you build it, I'm interested in hearing! Also, while I'm on the topic of pneumatics... does anyone have any good way of attaching two of the new pneumatic cylinders together end-to-end? I have 8421 and they use a special piece to do this, but I'm not ready to take my crane apart yet, and the damn things sell for $6+ on bricklink, so I'm not really sure I want to go down that route yet.

I'd like to add that there have been several studless disasters; Most notably is the 1:10 Enzo. In my opinion, a technic set needs to have at least one of two factors in order for it to be a great set. It must either a) Have lots of technic functions b) be pretty The Enzo does neither of these, and the only reason I'm not kicking myself for buying it is because it came with some cool CV joint parts, and was well worth the price as a parts-set. Somehow, the Smaller, studded version looks a lot better. Furthermore, I *HATE* technic panel fairings. Bloody useless...