AndyC

Actually I believe it was rejected on the grounds that you can't trademark something which is a functional requirement of a product. Since the basic design of the 2x4 brick is essentially functional, it can't be used on it's own as a trademark. The aim of this is to prevent somebody from using, e.g. a wheel, in there trademark and then suing anyone who makes wheels and to avoid companies from using trademark protection to try and get around requirements for patents (which to some extent is exactly what TLG were trying to do).

Yep the 8886 cable will allow you to connect PF parts to older 9V equipment. As far as the motor goes, whilst the old one isn't great it should suffice for pulling a small train like 7745. The one issue you might encounter is that you'd need another 8886 cable and on some train designs you can run into issues with the cable getting caught on the train baseplate when connected to an 8866 motor (since it's slightly taller than an old style 9V plug) - maybe someone else with 7745 can advise better on that one.

The B-Wing has been rumoured in the Star Wars forum for some time, so another source for that one suggests a very good possibility that these are correct.

I've attached a simple sample that demonstrates the issue. Having tried it with real bricks, it's a pretty close call. However I think it is putting the elements under stress (part 32069 seems to extend up beyond the start of the curved section of the motor), so I suspect it's an illegal technique. Are there any official sets which have this particular arrangement? mikey.lxf

I think it will be useful, it's quite handy to know if the piece you're missing is less likely to be available, because it might encourage a little MOCing of a design. Right now, however, it's misleading as pieces like the spider (30238) in black show up as rare when they really aren't. It might be worth temporarily removing it and adding it back when the set database is more complete. It'll probably be a lot easier to determine a good heuristic for when something is "rare" then too, rather than tweaking it now in ways that might be less helpful in future.

I'm not convinced that taking the track or PF away would lower the price. Remember TLG designers are given a cost price and then design the set to fit that. Removing track would probably therefore lead to more detailed builds (as seen with EN and the Maersk), but it'd be much harder to sell them to kids. I think the current arrangement with AFOL trains coming track and power-less and more kid friendly starter sets containing all the bits is probably the best strategy overall.

Nope. Global economics just doesn't work that way. Different countries have different taxes, different wage levels, different associated costs (like shipping) and differing levels of demand creating different economies of scale.

1) The AA battery box is a bit bulkier, so a little harder to hide and being mainly for Technic creations it doesn't feature any studs unlike the AAA one. That said it'll certainly do the job, so you could always pick one up and use that. 2) No soldering required, you just need to put a PF extension cable between the IR reciever and the battery box, since it includes the necessary adapter to connect to older 9V connections. 3) Your best bet is to ring LEGO customer services and ask, they're super helpful with things like this. Alternatively you might be able to pick one up on Bricklink, though I don't know how comparable that is pricewise.

On Windows 7 you can also use the Snipping Tool, which lets you select a window and get a screen grab of that (or alternatively a user-defined portion of the screen). I think it might have been in Vista too, as well as one of the XP Tablet edition add-on packs.

If it's any consolation it was the whole Alien Conquest vibe I was thinking of when I first suggested cavemen and dinosaurs. I still think you could do a fun theme like that as long as it's tounge-in-cheek enough. And to be honest, I think I'd rather see children playing with something like that than another gun filled theme of humans vs dinosaurs.

Well the pieces in the first picture are these, although both are broken as you suspect. No idea about the other two though.

According to the appearances list on Wookiepedia, one did appear in the Special Edition DVD of A New Hope. I don't remember ever seeing one, but then I never watched the original SE versions and there were changes made between those and the later DVD releases.

Perhaps, although from TLG's point of view it may be better to do Sebulba's pod simply because it allows them to get more value out of the Sebulba mold, which they can't really use for anything else.

Looks nice, though I have to agree that the 'remote' needs to be on a longer piece of tubing. As it stands it's hard to tell if it's really motorised or just being pushed by hand.

It's a very nice site and could end up being really useful. There are a few issues with part rendering at the moment (particularly the slope pieces) and occasionally it suggests very odd sets. For example, suggesting a police motorcycle could be built out of the modular buildings because I'd only be missing the motorbike itself! It probably just needs some tweaking to work better with very small sets like that.

Judging by the videos on lego.com, that's pretty much exactly it.

As does last years Technic flagship, the 8043 motorised excavator. I guess it's the kind of thing that can be easily overlooked when checking the model for design problems. I wonder if TLG might eventually move over to using a version of LDD internally for verifying things like this, it would certainly be an interesting use of the software.

Pretty much every part there can be trivially identified by just casual browsing of the appropriate section of the Bricklink catalog, it's probably just as easy for you to do it yourself than for others to do it for you. The 2x2x2 support piece is unusual in that Bricklink doesn't seem to recognize any variations of the part. Are any part numbers visible on it at all?

Hate to break it to you, but yes you are. If you look at a real 3M peg, there's a little 'bump' in the middle of the 2M section which holds the peg in place when it is correctly snapped into place. When used the way you're describing that 'bump' is in the middle of the liftarm, so it isn't able to snap into place correctly. This is what causes the peg to stay in compression and makes the technique considered 'illegal'. Note that if you swapped out the liftarm and replaced it with two half-width liftarms, LDD will allow the connection. This is because there will then be an indent in the middle and the peg can correctly snap into place.

Actually there is. It's an "illegal" connection, since the peg isn't able to snap into place. That leaves the peg in a permanent state of compression, which can ultimately cause damage to both the peg and the liftarm it's passing through.

Yes, that's very annoying and it's not just the colour tool as all the floating palettes suffer similarly. The minifig head decoration tool is one of the worst offenders, it doesn't entirely fit onto the display on my widescreen 15" laptop (1366x768) which is hardly a small or uncommon screen size.

In fairness I can totally understand that, as those are aspects I've never really found much appeal in myself. Even in themes I do love, like Pirates, I don't really have any interest in the official 'storyline'. As a kid I prefered my own ideas anyway, so perhaps that's where that comes from. Well you should encourage her to 'gift' you some fine Architecture sets and some of the great models like Tower Bridge or Taj Mahal. Then dismantle them and MOC them into Ninja temples. My parents thought it a bit odd, then saw sets like 10030 and had to admit it wasn't quite the LEGO they remembered. Once I showed my mom the Emerald Night (and convinced her it honestly was LEGO!) and the Taj Mahal, she definitely understood. She's even started suggesting a family trip to Legoland Windsor the next time I'm over that way.

I'm not really sure I understand the 'driving up the piece count' argument, contrary to the way some AFOLs suggest it isn't as if set price is based on the number of elements included, but rather on the cost of producing them. I find it hard to believe that such small elements add significantly to the underlying cost. To me the cheese slope, much like the 1x1 plate, 1x1 round plate and the little 'tooth' plate represent the very opposite of 'juniorization'. Highly unspecialized pieces that can offer a remarkable number of uses, so they're always welcome. I would definitely opt for more cheese and less BURPs every time.

It's not actually that strange, it avoids a score being heavily skewed when it hasn't recieved many reviews. The more reviews something recieves, the less the 2.5 factors into it.

That doesn't really make sense, if only the removed brick was coloured red you'd never see them (since opening it would remove those bricks). I've definitely found errors in the past by seeing where the red parts are, so there must be more to it than that.