AndyC

I think it quite often depends on which direction you're travelling in. If you think about the logistics of turning a steam train around it's often much easier to simply detach the engine, turn it, then relocate it at the other end and can be done while passengers of disembarking/boarding the train.

It's been a while since I did one of these, so I thought I'd start again with another small contribution. Here's a sneaky preview: Hope my PC can keep up!

There may also be a fair few people who, having received the service pack, are now selling off the unneeded LAs that originally shipped. They're still perfectly good for most other uses, after all.

The intellectual property and the brand name are worth far too much, someone would certainly swoop in and buy it up. Either one of the big name toy producers, like Hasbro, or one of it's construction toy rivals. Of course, there's no guarantee that Lego would remain the quality product we all love if that happened, so I'd rather hope it never does.

Cool. Have to admit I thought the same thing upon seeing it and bought one with the intention of MOCing something. Haven't got round too it yet, but your design is certainly iinspiring.

My BSB has a similar issue with the mast base. Figured it was just a one off, but maybe not. Bought it secoond hand, so no idea how original the pieces were, though the set was in an original box.

I hope not, that's not a particularly interesting ship. I'd much rather it was a midi scale Nebulon-B and just hope that 'republic' is a misnaming.

I'd get the new one, I can't say the old one is sufficiently better enough to justify that sort of price difference. Yes it is in slightly nicer colours, but the new minifigures and parts make the redesign a lot more appealing overall.

It is indeed 60594, fitted with 60603 'Glass for Window 1x4x3 - Opening'

I'm not sure it can be more unique, something is either unique or it isn't. When it comes down to it, my disappointment in the use of squidman's head is that I don't think it's representative of what people think of as "an alien". Of course that's just my opinion, there are always going to be a few figs that don't appeal and others that are "must have".

Yes, got mine the other day, haven't got round to trying it yet though.

Got to be honest, Harry Potter lego hasn't ever really interested me that much. The books and films were good, but I could happily leave the Lego on the shelf. But this is gorgeous. It's not cheap, but it's still unbelievably tempting. Think I'll probably end up caving in and desperately trying to find some more free space to display this one.

Yes, mine all had 36X0, although since it doesn't seem consistent across previous LAs, it could well just be some sort of batch marking and we're only seeing consistency because the first batch has been used for the service packs. I'm not entirely sure I'd want to trust it as a definitive identifier.

As is often the case, there are a million shades of grey here and where you find yourself will depend on what you're doing. The laws covering this include trademarks, copyright, passing off, counterfeiting and patent infringement. In some cases, like customising a minifig to look like a licensed character, the argument is about design copyright and passing off, as it could be argued that you have reproduce someone else's design (to some extent, naturally a minifig is going to look a bit different) or that you are trying to make someone think they are buying a legitimate Lego figure. To some extent what's likely to happen to you largely depends on whether anyone thinks there is enough money involved to justify the lawyers. Reproducing trademarks, like the Star Wars or Lego logos for example, is a whole different kettle of fish. In many countries failing to protect a trademark can result in losing it, so companies are far more likely to send in the lawyers. There is also the possibility that you could find yourself selling what are, in the eyes of the law, counterfeits and that's somewhere you really don't want to be. Caution is definitely advised and if you're serious about going down this road, consult a lawyer rather than getting advice from the internet.

In my experience it tells you how many points you will recieve when you place the order, but they just aren't credited to you account until after the order has fully completed. So I'd expect any order actually placed in October to recieve double points, regardless of when the payment actually goes through (since that's dependent upon when they ship anyway).

For me I think it's because that doesn't seem to "fit" with what the collectable figs have been all about. If you pick just about any other fig, regardless of whether it's a particularly exciting one, and show it to someone with no interest in Lego at all they can instantly tell you what it is supposed to be. That makes them interesting as a collectable in it's own right, even if you don't have a particular interest in any given sub-theme. Even the most mundane figure, like the diver, at least has this appeal. Once you start down the road of having to explain, "Oh he's a Blacktron figure, they were big if you were into space lego in the 90s" the interest in them disappears quite quickly. You might as well go back to collecting Star Wars figs, as at least they're more widely recognisable.

Did I see different pics to everyone else? I was really looking forward to the cyborg till I saw the image and it just looks like a bad mix of various generic minifig bits without any of the character of previous minifigs. Hopefully it will improve by the final version. Most of the others are ok, though not quite as must-have as series 1/2. Can't help but wonder if they're already running short of good ideas or whether they've decided the figs have been so popular that they can sell a whole series on the strength of a couple of highly desirable figures and pad the rest out with rather bland and generic figs.

What version of IE do you have installled? The Windows version of LDD uses the webbrowser control from IE (in mshtml.dll) to render the HTML pages. If you have an older version (IE6 or 7) it might be worth updating to see if that fixes the problem. I haven't seen any issues with IE8 or 9beta1 installed.

I'd guess that feedback has suggested kids would be more likely to enjoy the houses if they came with a figure to play in it. The existing Creator houses have all been minifig sized anyway, so it's hardly a major change. But yeah, that truck looks interesting too.

Several in the UK. Including little toy shops and big names like Toys 'R' Us. Granted the UK is a little on the periphery on the EU, but we're still in it nonetheless. Clone brands never seem to have anything like the same amount of shelf space though, nor the level of in-store advertising. And, in my limited experience at least, customers in stores rarely seem to pay much attention to the non-Lego sets. I think the name still carries far more weight amongst consumers than anything else.

I'm hoping that the introduction of Midi scale sets means that some of the capitol ships will get some much needed love. I'd love to have UCS versions of a Venator, a Nebulon-B frigate, Home One and the Executor etc, but it's unlikely (and probably ridiculously expensive.) Midi scale versions should be a lot more do-able and still work well as display pieces.

City and Castle advent calendars are already on sale in one of my local toy stores. If there was going to be a Star Wars one I'd have expected to see it at the same time, it wouldn't seem to make much sense to start selling some of the advent calendars before the others.

If it helps, it's been a lot harder to find them in the UK this time, wheras with Series 1 you could get them quite easily and there were still some on sale as recently as last week. I suspect TLG have just balanced the distribution a bit better for Series 2 and will hopefully ramp up production for Series 3 so that they're a lot easier to get hold of no matter where you are.

Yep, you can piggyback the power functions plugs to add more lights. Getting power to the end of the train is just a matter of a suitable length power functions extension cable (or cables).

Yep, I have them as in the first post photo too. In fact, it's probably the one bit of Lego that I get all OCD over, it bothers me when the hands aren't 'right', even when I can't think of a reason for it. Thankfully the minifigs don't seem to mind this.