AndyC

Strictly speaking it would be a matter of design copyright, which doesn't require you to pay or register anything. I doubt anybody is making sufficient money to warrant an actual court case though, so there is probably very little you can do about it in reality (dhort of having ebay auctions cancelled for selling a digitally delivered item or other ToS violations).

It's also the reason I can't read the Technic forum on my phone, because images that big eat into data budget quite heavily. And you don't really gain anything either, even on my laptop the forum software ends up having to resize them to fit them on screen anyway. Still, that aside it looks like a fun little model. I wonder what other stunts you can persuade it to do?

There's not really much space to do anything without some major reworking of the stern. The best I could do was to bulk it up a bit to look more like traditional Lego ship rudders something a bit like this: It's not much better than the flag design though, to be honest.

Well it's something of a self-selecting audience, so it's unsurprising that there's a positive slant. I can't see any appeal in NinjaGo and I think the whole Bionicle/Hero Factory style figures are ugly and some of the ugliest sets Lego have ever devised, however you won't generally find me saying that in those forums because I don't bother commenting on things I have no interest in. Lifes to short to be a hater. As far as Playmobil goes, they have the advantage that their standard figure has more 'normal' proportions, so it's easier to make them girl-friendly than the minifig (if we assume the TLG comments are true). If you look at their actual sets, however, some are very clearly girl-focused (doll houses, fairys, animals) whilst others more boy focused (conflict based, construction, police, fire) and it's reflected in the gender of the supplied figures. But even if you hate the Friends figures, its a much better prospect than previous lines like Belville, because everything is effectively minifig scale. As I said elsewhere, in a set like Olivia's House, you're complaining about 9 pieces in a 600+ piece set. You could just discard the figures and evaluate it as a Creator style house and it'd still be a good build and good value for money. If they were poor sets, I think you'd see that in reviews. As it is though, the first wave at least has brought some really good designs and I certainly hope that is something we continue to see.

Thanks. Oddly enough that's pretty much where the inspiration for the MOC came from. I was just sticking a few pieces together and wondered if I could make a sort of lighting effect with grey slope bricks. It looked alright, but I couldn't think of a good reason to have a basement without any windows. Reading the Friends controversy and encouraged by the great Fabuland Edge MOCs I've seen on EB, I wondered how far away from what's expected you could take the Friends characters and from there everything just sort of fell into place. I could give you a whole bunch of excuses for why I used Emma rather than Olivia, but the simple truth is I picked up the wrong fig and forgot to check. D'oh. Hehe, I do my best.

Having now got my hands on a few sets and had a bit of a play, I'm warming to the minidoll figures. There is a certain Lego-ness to them which is strangely appealing. I'd still have preferred minifigs, but I think these could well end up with at least as much of a cult following amongst AFOLs as Fabuland figs, possibly even more.

Every suburb, no matter how lovely it looks from the outside, masks deep and dark secrets. And Heartlake City is no different. Just what dark and mysterious things pass through the mind of our Friends? If we take a look into Olivia's Basement, it all becomes a little too clear: Stephanie may well have regretted buying Olivia the Dexter boxset for her last birthday. Olivia loves her chainsaw, so good for dismembering bodies.

I could buy that for the Spartan and Robot, they had pretty unique parts, but the Zombie was basically just a standard minifig with a shovel and turkey leg and either of those accessories could easily be substituted for pretty much anything and he'd still be a credible zombie. So I can only assume he didn't get the votes needed, which makes me rather glad I have lots of Zombies already!

The pearl gold scorpion isn't even new either. Not a very appealling collection of figs really, I think I can quit happily pass on this one.

Hehe, that's brilliant. Hope they do them for future series too.

I think it's always good to connect.

Eeek, those River Song/Amy Pond figures are hideous. I think TLG has done a far better job of creating likeable doll figures. I don't think you're supposed to put one on the flask, at least not from the instructions I'm looking at. It does seem that the top of the flask piece is printed a bit too dark though, maybe that's what you're seeing?

Given how massively successful Lego Star Wars is (to the point it's almost as big a draw as Star Wars itself), I can't see either party wanting to pull out of the arrangement unless there is some major change in fortunes over the next few years.

Nice review, these little sets make a good intro to the Friends range as well as a cheap way of getting the characters you don't have. On the subject of minidoll parts compatibility with Andrea, the legs for Olivia in the treehouse set have a dark blue skirt, pink leggings(?) and white boots and could just as easily be used on any figure. Maybe we'll see more parts like that (jeans maybe?) that can easily be used anywhere.

I'd go for the two fighters, the T6 wasn't a particularly great model. The Tri-Fighter is fun to swoosh around and also a pretty fun (if quite complex) build too and you can't really go wrong with a JSF.

I don't have the set, but have tried building the relevant bit of the canopy and it looks ok to me. It seems to pass the paper test too, though it's a tricky shape to put paper into without creasing it up a bit anyway. I'm leaning towards that being a bug. As for 44570, that's definitely a brick bug. It seems the underside of the two middle studs (in the 3x4 bit) don't count as valid connection points so you can't place any kind of brick under there, which is clearly a mistake.

Well, in the Sixties being a fashion designer or a beauty salon owner actually was pretty progressive thinking. And there is nothing wrong with girls (or boys) who do want to do those sorts of things. I still think the key fact is that these, unlike older "girly" themes, are proper honest-to-goodness Lego construction sets. They have all the building elements of other Lego sets and that teaches the same skills. That the theme also promotes some non-traditional roles is a plus. Sure TLG could have made them all police officers or firemen, but the girls who like those sorts of things and Lego building have probably already been playing with System sets anyway.

I'll use LDD to mock up bits of idea sometimes, mostly because it's often more convenient than getting all the bricks out. It's not so great for Technic ideas though, but LDraw based tools I find too slow and cumbersome to be practical. Also it's sometimes nicer to just get a few parts in your hands and just fiddle around and see where it takes you.

There's a parts upgrade due soon (to coincide with the removal of DbM Mode), hopefully some of the Friends parts, especially the figs, will find their way in then.

In my local Toys 'R' Us, there were a few near the entrance (where they generally show "new" toys), none just behind that where the Lego display area is (that's largely still Cars stuff) and some in the actual Lego aisle. As far as I could tell there weren't any in the "girls" area, but I may have missed them because I'm not normally looking in that area so I don't know where stuff generally is. That said, they tend to also scatter smaller Lego displays around other areas of the store too, which I'd imagine might be where some Friends sets end up (NinjaGo, Minifigures and the small Creator sets have typically been in these spots in the past year).

Hillarious review of another really nice set. Really glad that you took a "safety first" approach to that frying pan though, there might not be enough Lego firefighters to help out should a blaze break out. Love the Fabuland comic at the end too. The man is some kind of colour savant, we bow in respect.

Generally speaking, when a film contains zombie pirates or a giant sea monster controlled by a man with no heart, historical accuracy is probably not a high factor in the production crews mind.

Well darn. I really thought this was a set I wouldn't like, but your review has defintely swayed me towards the 'want' side of things. I'm still not entirely convinced about the friends figures, but 9 parts (the hair being fig friendly) in a 600+ set is hardly worth worrying about. I'm actually surprised by how few of those 1x6x5 panels are used, I was expecting a set this size to have quite a lot more. And all that interior furniture is to die for. I'm not sure I'll have the cash to actually get this, but I'm certainly tempted and if I ever see it on discount it'll be near impossible to resist.

It was noted elsewhere in the thread that if the rearing posed is fixed, the legs look they're in just the right position that it could also be used as a running horse. I think that's probably more likely than a fully articulated horse, especially if they're using it in combination with the existing horse piece.

All the transparent colours have a tendency to look too light (IMO) in LDD, the Bricklink colour name Trans-Dark Blue is, however, equivalent to the TLG colour Trans-Blue. The Peeron Colour Chart is a good reference for translating between Peeron, Bricklink and Lego colour names.