AndyC

But wait, surely Monster Fighters is in the Action Forum? Friends + Monster Fighters = Teh Win! Time to get Olivia out of her basement and kicking some Zombie butt, methinks....

To keep things balanced though, my poor Ann Lee has a massive scar right through her eye, TLG should really pack the figs more carefully. It's even worse for the Zombies, those guys look like somebody has beaten the life out of them....

You're pretty much on the right lines. Keep the central gear fixed in a static position, separate from the frame all the other gears are attached to. Then have some mechanism to rotate the frame holding all the outer gears. As it moves around, the fixed central gear will force the others to rotate, spinning the 'dancing' figures as the rotate around the central point.

Dunno about that (can't anyone make a brickipedia page?) but according to the official Lego Facebook page the Hayabusa model is going to be available worldwide soon (not just in Japan as originally), which is good news for Cuusoo fans I think!

I wonder if it is Portal itself, or the fact the designs contain no less than four new elements that has it ruled out. Requiring new parts (not existing parts in new colours) is pretty much an instant kiss of death to a Cuusoo project.

I'm sure your translations are as well done as possible, however there is still a possibility that whoever in TLG originally converted it to Czech may well have been less precise. Although one thought I had about that, what if they used the new bat-wing arms in black to create a suited vampire with his arms open. Now that would be sweet.

Video drivers are notorious for lying about what they do or do not support, Windows actually performs a bunch of tests to catch out lying drivers in a whole raft of situations, but that's by no means a guarantee. A HD3000 should be perfectly capable, but it's possible the drivers on Dell's site aren't actually the latest available - generic drivers might be available from Intel, but you never quite know whether they might cause other issues. If newer ones are available I'd suggest contacting Dell support about the issue, they might well be able to advise better.

And, let's not forget, they will have already been (mis)translated once before into Czech, so it's entirely possible for mistakes to have crept in already. The only one that is curious is the Vampire, as it seems very odd timing when the Monster Fighters sets will be out and about giving everyone enough vampires as it is and it's also the least likely to have subtle translation errors. Although I suppose it is equally possible that the CMF version could be one that was designed for, but not used in, the MF line. And I'll add in another vote for the "I'd quite like a decent Santa" group. It would be a useful addition to Christmas MOCs that has never been entirely possible so far. Sure, it's not really an army builder fig, but I don't think ever figure really needs to be one. The "red cheerleader" is rather more of a dial-in sounding figure, but I'd defintitely not complain at some more cheerleaders. Looking forward to seeing them all nonetheless, it's often the case that opinions change dramatically when the figs are finally revealed.

Hehe, that's at least one of the tasks on my list!

I've got a few sets still waiting to be unboxed, namely the UCS SSD, the R2D2 and the VW Van. I'm keeping them aside as a present to myself for doing a bunch of tasks around the house that I need to do, but don't really want to. Nothing quite as motivating as seeing the stash of boxes and knowing I'll have fun building with them once I've finished the boring chores.

Licensing just throws more complexity into the mix, since it's entirely possible that different licenses need to be negotiated from different companies for different parts of the world. So for a single "brand", you might end up negotiating different deals with, for example, Sony US, Sony UK and Sony Europe, all with differing terms and conditions. Global economics and business is rarely as simple as it often seems it should be.

Coming soon, on September the 1st. Darn you TLG, you teases! I shall just have to get myself Monster Fighter'd up in the mean time, whilst waiting for this beauty to surface.

It'd be obscenely impressive if it were an actual brickfilm, although I suspect it'd border on the impossible. It's still very cool though, I like the way they've carried across some of the humour style from things like TLG's own videos and the TT games.

Given they're not only nearly identical visually, but also have exceedingly similar set numbers, I doubt you're the first person not to notice!

That's actually the subtly different 10231 Shuttle Expedition, rather than 10213 Shuttle Adventure that's reviewed here. There were a bunch of small changes between the two sets, mostly to reinforce the model as parents were buying it for kids and finding it a little too fragile. The astronauts also gained some hair along the way, so they can take off their helmets without having to go for the whole bald look!

Small parts. And lots of them. :-) For example, all the little black 'wrench' pieces sticking up to create the spiky effect on the railings.

Well that's an absolute must-buy, if ever there was one. Every time I look at it I see even more little details that just look amazing. It may already be THE set of 2012.

The eBook version sounds cool and it'd be handy to have on my kindle, but I'm wondering if it's likely to be dependent on a lot of colour pictures etc, in which case it might be better to get a physical copy.

The chances are you're bypassing local sales taxes and quite possibly import duties in those kind of cases though. Not to mention potential differences in running any given store in differing locations. And you're definitely ignoring the differences in local wages and so on. I'm not saying it makes perfect sense, it's just the way global economics is. Short of unifying all laws and regulations across the entire planet, it's not about to change. 'Handling' is the bloke packing it in boxes and the guy who deals with invoices etc. It rarely, if ever, is a term used to cover global import/export tariffs etc.

They aren't though. There are massive differences between the US and Australia in terms of things like taxation, import duties, economies of scale and typical wages etc. Australia pays the price the market can sustain for luxury toys like Lego. It's just not a simple as "paying twice for shipping", no matter how much people want it to be.

Great review. Wasn't overly convinced about this set when I first saw pictures, but I think you may have won me over. Dunno what I'm going to do with all these red roof pieces though....

I believe they said there were parts and figures in Series 1 that were currently exclusive to the Minifigures line at the time of launch. I don't think there was ever a guarantee that it was always going to be that way and given that figs have appeared elsewhere since, it's not unexpected.

I needed some more storage this week so picked up a couple of those official Lego brick shaped boxes (the 8 stud variety). A little Googling failed to get a definitive figure on their capacity, though I did find one site claiming they were 12L. Having emptied the contents of a full 9L Really Useful Box into one, it's basically full so I guess the real capacity is around 9L too. Which means I either having to do some finer grained sorting of my "small 2 wide plates" or I need yet bigger boxes. Still I have to admit they do look kinda cool and it's neat that you can build them like real bricks (the temptation to buy loads just to build a big wall is probably not a great idea!)

Getting it mentioned on the official Lego Twitter and Facebook would be pretty difficult too. They are quite definitely real.

Strictly speaking, TLG would prefer you to use the term "LEGO Bricks" as opposed to either "LEGOs" or even just "LEGO", as it helps to keep the trademark seperate from the item itself and theoretically therefore keeps their claim on it stronger. In a world in which Hoover is used as a generic term for a vacuum cleaner, Google a common term to search the Internet and all seemingly without any threat of diluting the respective Trademarks, I'm not sure it's really that big an issue anymore. The world has become too protective of corporate rights to allow such things these days.