natelite

most people don't want to deal with the hassle of parting and selling the other bricks, so they prefer to just buy the mfs. it may look like a good deal but bear in mind ebay sellers pay ebay listing fees, final purchase fees and paypal payment fees. all that can quickly add up. :-P so if you are a retailer that can buy lego directly from TLC for 38% below MSRP, then yeah...you can part out sets and sell the mfs and make good money. for normal lego fans, you're lucky to break even.

lots of posts already on this subject. just use ordinary soap and hot water. the lego stickers as long as firmly placed on the bricks will not be damaged during washing. bleach will destroy certain bricks, mostly the chromed pieces. best to use mild detergent where possible and leave oxyclean for the heavy stained pieces. make sure you lightly wash the coins and crowns in mild soap. use a paint brush (do not use hard or vinyl brush) to clean tough, hidden spot or you will scratch the surface. if it is just dust, you can also use compressed air to blow it all away. save yourself having to air dry them. :-P

best of 2006, not even close. BW vs WL by a mile! :-P super nova a far second. :-P 2007, close fight between Golden guardian vs aero booster. 2008, storm lasher vs hybrid tank. 2006 - look at the number of sets! *wub* p.s. opinions are always bias...so please...no one find my statement offensive, okay? :-P

my mfs stay with the sets. as for the extras...i have this weird habit. i can't stand chopping up spare mfs and storing as parts. my spare mfs are always complete. and i meticulously go through BL to make sure the spare mfs are constructed exactly as it should be in the original. it drives me nuts when i received a fleebay auction advertized as "100% complete" only to find the heads have been switched. so now i gotta go and buy new heads from BL. some afols love diversity in their "army", as for me, i love original mfs and painstakingly make sure they all have the same heads. :-P sometimes my son would play with the mfs and always switch heads, body parts, accessories around. and when i clean up, i always have to put the original back together again for some reason. :-P maybe it's OCD. :-P

nice! create bricks from plastic pallets. :-P can they mix pallets though to make those found in the two color burps? sounds like a really nice experience in science and toys! what a combo!

i think we are looking for transparent windows not translucent windows. :-P :-D

wow..it's very close to the "original" capcom mf! nice job. i agree, you need the red scarf and blue legs. :-P

nah. like all good employees, my EB time takes away from my working time. :-P my building time takes away my family time but i hardly have time to build tbh. most of my lego time is spent sorting bulk purchases and making sure the used sets are in good condition (no bite marks or heavy discoloration)...it's not as easy as it seems maintaining a BL shop. i'm just going to deal with new misb sets going forward because used bricks take too much effort. new sets have higher premium too and packing requires minimal effort of putting a complete set into a larger box and ship. used, you still need to count and verify vs peeron or BL. you also need to check each brick to make sure they aren't heavily used or damaged. if incomplete you need to go scour BL for replacement parts which again takes time and money. :-/

i was told the zenon (aka unitron) line was quite rare. doesn't look that impressive but maybe you like it?

these two were released in 2006. isn't it too soon to call them classics? i voted SB though. *y* so many unique MFs! just fantastic.

even in the US, the price was raised. it was $50 in target during christmas. it will be $60 in target soon. it was $60 in S@H until it sold out recently. this was confirmed. one of the target near my house had a DM left over after christmas and it rang up as $60.

i think the small sets of 2007 were right on the mark. sales would kinda confirm that. they were small enough that the ball joints work and allow for good poses as well as playability. the click joints work better on the larger $15 sets. i agree the ball joints on the larger were a hinderance because they didn't allow for better movements. they almost reminded me of that t-rex from "meet the robinsons": big head, tiny arms, i'm not sure how well the plan was thought through. :-P seriously...blade titan and the twirling blades...hardly any room to twirl without cutting your own mech. but even then they were still okay hits. as mentioned in the first post the bummers were the larger sets. i think the mobile devastator was especially terrible. the design just wasn't good, so very few buy them for the design. then there's hardly any value as parts pack. who wants large neon green wheels and tons of technic bricks? no offense gylman/dunamis! (sorry, i forgot who's the technic junkie) :-P the only saving grace is the wolverine mecha but $90 for one mech??? sorry buddy...if it was on clearance for $15 maybe. at least sentai fortress still has a pretty cool repair bay and 2 mechs, one of them was silent strike *wub* . this makes the value slightly better at around $40-50 in terms of design/set appeal. on its demise, it's a combination of better other themes/lines and poor designs. if castle wasn't made in 2007, i'm sure the MD would beat the crap out of MM's base. on that note, i think castle cannibalized many of the other themes. most parents would probably buy just one $90-100 set. out of the available choices, AR's base for $70, MM base for $90, MD for $90 or castle siege for $100...which one would you get? As for MM, I think it survived because of the strong mid-sized sets. it has strong $10 set (the trike), a strong $30 set (the robot is rather creative and new), a strong $40 set (the pelican is great), and a strong $80 set (the armadillo). i think even the alien mothership was a bummer...and the $20 set was ugly. with the new and better themes, i.e. indy jones, SW 08 (which has like 50-70% more sets than 07's), castle 08, city 08, creator 08, even more marginal sets/themes will be affected. AR is dead. MM is dying (the 2 08 sets are bad, the summer 08 may hold some surprises, but can it win against the other lego titans???). SBSP may still attracts girls or parents of girls but definitely the choices for boys lie with the other better themes. of the themes in 08, i think the winners (top 3) will be SW, IJ, castle. In that order. The losers (bottom 3) will be EF, MM, racers/batman. p.s. on fragile alternate models: the alternate for the 06 tank is rather fragile. it falls apart very often. same with the stealth hunter alternate. the titan walker though is quite good. the rest are just a rehash of flyers...boring.

did you mean the 1x4 bley plate? what about all that 1x2 single stud plates? surely they have some use in the set. unless of course they repeated the UCS MF mistake and included one extra bag. :-P

i thought you have to pay people to take out the trash and not the other way round. :-P

hey lasse, no harm done. ;-) yes it is quite myopic in that sense but a lot of companies do that. japanese electronic giants release gizmos in japan ahead of the rest of the world because essentially japan is their test market. i'm not surprised lego tested the majority of their products in denmark. although according to the designer's blog, they also tested on UK kids too. :-P why aren't you be sad with the demise?

well, i don't think "westernization" is the problem here. mechwarriors/battletech has the same cult following if not greater than gundam or macross. the problem is TLC has to come up with its own special design or risk intellectual rights lawsuit and unfortunately it tanked. i would attribute the failure to TLC's mech design. it's terrible. it's neither here nor there. they tried coming up with themes and even those suck. i think they need to make the themes coherent. jungle mech warfare is doable but not with those crazy pointy bricks. i mean even SW has a better coherent theme. there's hoth and hoth gears/mechs, there's endor/ewoks for jungle warfare, tatooine for desert, etc. the mechs have to be believable. they have to be designed to work in those settings instead of like a mish-mash of parts. there's actually a lot of possibilities with this line if only they had done it right. there's the desert settings - highly visible, little to no protection cover - which will require the mechs to have better camo, stealth design (not heavier armor), long range capabilities, horizontally designed (rather than big and tall mechs), tunneling (digging) abilities, etc. the jungle theme - low visibility, heavy cover, lots of defense, poor range - which provides better camo but most mechs will be in shades of green, more melee attacks (range is terrible), slicker design (taller and slimmer to blend into the forest), heavier armor, etc. the urban theme (city) - which emphasise on heavier armor, blockier (to look like buildings), sniping attacks, emphasis on speed (for moving from one cover to the next), silent and armor piercing attacks. so far they have done bridge theme, golden city (dunno what's that) and the jungle theme. none of the mechs have a coherent design. the titan is always large and unwieldy. the hunter is always fast and speedy. the hayato mech is always a support mech and the ryo mech is always a medic. i'm hoping they take the lesson learnt and maybe apply better in the agents theme. there's always the possibility of exo suits and mechs for the agents!

great set. great review. too bad about the price though. too many other priorities. :-(

http://sideshowjamie.livejournal.com he's the designer of the 4953 fast flyer and he also worked on cafe corner. Actually I was slightly mistaken, they do test on UK kids as well. :-P it was mentioned in his blog. read the mar 29, 2006 blog. there's more further down...so it really depends on how much patience you have reading other's diaries. there's also more details in the brickjournal magazines. unfortunately those aren't free anymore. :-/

chill dude! it's a fact that TLC uses the target group (boys age 7-14) for any of their sets. just check out some of the designers' blogs. they have to redesign sets if the kids from the focus group couldn't put it together by themselves. designs are made in denmark (read the blog again - even if hired in the US, the designers will move to denmark and are based in denmark). so, unless you want to tell me they fly kids from the US to denmark to test their sets...then I would believe you they are not danish kids. ;-) takeshi is a first name. not a surname. it is a very popular first name though. perhaps you have seen it many times and mistook it as a surname.

hmm, so far TLC has steered away from making dwarves an engineering genius race. the mine defender while looking like an advanced machinery is still pretty crude. How would you feel if TLC decides to up it a little and perhaps start making "steam punkish" contraption for the dwarven race? things like steam powered helicopter (call it the dwarven gyrocopter - like from WoW), or steam tank, or buldozer, etc.? will you warm up to that idea? :-P

i see you found my private collection. :-P no, not really. :-P but i have been spending a lot of time in the basement sorting out some 90s collection: the western, pirates and castle. :-P

holy... moley. those aren't bite marks. those are brick marks! 8-

interestingly, i saw one in target for full retail of $99. must have been left in the stock room for a while. :-D will check back in a few weeks to see if it went on clearance. anyway, saw a blade titan by chance and it rang up as unknown item with unknown price. the cashier let me buy it for $1.98. woot!

i have chucked my fair share of tyco and MB bricks. :-P all from bulk purchases from CL sellers. :-P i never buy MB before...was tempted to get for my son though...the latest CARS offerings look good. there's doc hudson, the king and LM.

It's not hard to see how 8114 is like stick figure. too pointy and nothing like a mecha. My definition of mecha is gundam or mechwarrior. best design is definitely 7712 with the hands. i don't see what's so appealing about 8114 with so many pointy ends. what's that suppose to do anyway?