natelite

if you ask me dino was doomed to failure for 2 reasons. super <insert that tiresome argument> dinasours. if they had made them out of bricks like the viking or creator series dinasours they may survive. the second reason? the machines are way too large for minifig size. i own the helicopter and there is no way a minifig can board the helicopter on its own. same goes for the jeep. the tank is also a failure as it: 1. doesnt look like a tank. 2. i know open top cars are popular but open top tanks?! what a pity. even j thunder survived for 3 series. and alpha team survived 2 (maybe 3?). viking dragons are fun - you can have the minifigs ride them. they are also much more menacing than the griffon (from harry potter) or the dragons (from dragon knights?). look much better than the whole piece dragons, imo. check out the following viking dragons! dragon riders!!! wohoo... http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=190910

i just noticed this. the first mate has a "wooden" leg too. nice use of the exoforce robot hands/claw. ;-)

it's a really good model. good snot work! i like the varied crew. instead of all perfect skeleton crew, you made unique traits out of each one. peg leg captain, one arm first mate, silhouette cabin boy, a ghoul quartermaster. good work!

alright! 7705 arrived yesterday. going to make the two mechs and one ATV. now to spot a bargain for 7709.

battle at the pass sounds like THE set for castle fans. 5 morcia knights (including the green knight, alric?) and 5 vladek knights. sounds like the perfect army builder. the downside? well, i'm not so sure yellow armor goes well with castle fans. :-P

having more alien mf is costly since lego parts are mold based. more han and leia is only natural. they are trying to squeeze every dime and penny from the molds. i like to see more stormtroopers, snowtroopers or generic rebel soldiers. :-P you shouldn't really complain about more han and leia. you can always sell them as generic lego city folks. if you remove the artic hoods, i'm sure they will fit right in. you even have exotic dancers from the bikini leia from the sail barge set. :-P maybe you can make a lego version of the red light district of a city with XXX and peep shops! :-P

how did you find the instructions? i couldn't find the instructions from the front end of the website.

what? no stormtrooper? we need more stormtrooper for army building. :-P

you missed the part where they say "...with updated parts and colors." aka new KK swords in pearl gold and new bley castle wall! :-P

every kid can relate to a hero. but with lego creating customized characters for you, they are doing the thinking for the kid instead of giving the kid tools to think/create. instead of giving generic men, they give characters, so the minifigs already come with background. but if the chars come with an empty slate, the kid would most likely create his own story and create his favorite char from among the many mfs (eg, a specific head/face or some decorations, eg medals for being heroic, etc). jayko, kentis, alric, vladek all come with background. character sets are kinda like instant meal. you are limited in creativity, 3 mins and you're done. while generic men are like carrots and peas. you have free reign to make any meal you want.

i dont think there is a designer for classic castle anymore. that's why they only come up with legend sets (or modified legend set which is what 10176 is). whether you like it or not, the future (according to lego) is KK3. this is a big letdown to be honest. i feel apart from batman (because we all know who the superhero is) all other themes should be generic. no jayko, no santis. we should have a king, a champion, a group of knights, a group of maidens, some town folks, artisans, etc. same for space/mechs. captains, colonels, sargeants, liutenants, privates. not hikaru. not takeshi. not sensei.

i dont think it will be a lego hit. spiderman doesn't use gadgets unlike batman. for a theme to be a super hit, in my opinion, it has to have machines and gadgets. like star wars - lots of war machines, planes, ships, etc. and batman with his machines (but that's stretching it too - since you only need a car, a boat, a copter/plane and that's about it). we have seen it with spiderman 2 vs dr octopus. nothing is attractive about the sets. lego probably loss money on the license. i don't think they will repeat the mistake with spiderman 3.

??? I have been painting warhammer figs for years and there are a lot of plastic models. their paint definitly doesn't melt anything ! umm, okay. i have little to no experience with metal figurines so you are probably right. i was thinking that most metal paints are oil based and require thinner to remove, and thinner can melt plastics. plastic paints are usually water based. i painted mostly gundam models and some F-1 race cars (tamika models).

i like ghoulrealm's batmobile (except the rim). :-P too bad the gold rim doesn't fit the large tires. do you have instructions to your model? :-) i always thought the official batmobile was too large. yours is just nice. maybe a little too long. but i can remove the shooter and shorten the front. :-)

well, even lego themselves spray paint metallic silver/gold parts too. my silver ig-88 robot from the 6205 slave 1 has the paint chipped off near the joint. if you want to spray paint silver onto your lego parts, you can try using paint for plastic models (tamika models) available from hobby/model shops. don't use the paint meant for metal models (like warhammer figurines) as they may melt plastics. :-P don't use a normal brush (poor finish), use air brush. all that equipment might be too expensive for 1 or 2 parts, so it might be easier to just borrow or commission some hobbyist to spray paint your parts for you. try and use worned parts (eg yellowed whites or grey or parts you would otherwise throw out). it's kinda like recycling. i hate using good lego parts for paints. the feel is different, painted vs original.

to be honest, i'm quite glad i was in my dark ages then. the spacecraft were too colorful, the figures were either too colorful or covered in too many prints like you said. i think exoforce is in the right step by staying with one color code or at most two (both machine and minifigs) and with only torso prints.

well, there are lots of american millionaires created by that tech bubble back in 1990-2000. those who got out early of course. those who hung around for a little too long got burned badly. lots of people pay top dollars for what is essentially a piece of crap. just check out some of the sotheby's auctions. :-P things like antique furniture, smelly old newspaper or comic books, etc. who knows? maybe in 50 years time, classic lego can be consider an art and may sell for more than $10,000? then the buyer would be known as a genious! like MJ and his purchase of beatle's song rights. he bought it for less than $40m, but the copyright is now priced at close to $400m.

wow, sometimes people are so creative that it scares me. if someone uses dark green, green, tan, dark tan parts and make a "promotional" tank, i'm sure the "set" will sell for like 10-20x the cost of printing the custom box and buying the parts from bricklink. of course the return per effort for a simple white van and slapping on some carrier stickers is a lot higher than selling a customized tank. will someone make a pizza parlor and start selling promotional papa john's (or dominos or pizza hut) sets?

a little too colorful. but your design is impressive considering the original mechs from life on mars were not that great to begin with. i prefer mechs to be of uni or duo colors at most. otherwise it will look like it was created from junk parts, like a frankenstein creation from an auto junkyard instead of a newly minted benz or boeing jet from a highly skilled specialized factory. to elaborate - the model has blue, sand blue, red, yellow, pink, and non symmetrical parts (the legs for eg). and too many colorful greeblies bits. greeblies should only be shades of grey imo.

i have gone insane too. my wife is angry over the storage space i am occupying with all the empty boxes and threaten to throw them away. "no honey! boxes contribute 20% of the value! you will be throwing money away!" hehehehe... at first i wanted to stick with just the exoforce lines (and some misc parts for mod/mocs), then i got a pair of super cheap batman sets from ebay. and the star wars sets were also beckoning me (20-25% dc from ebay with the possibility of price appreciation when the set sell out). at first i only got the sets i wanted, but i am now hording a few misb star wars and batman which i got cheaply from ebay, and will probably start selling them when they are discontinued a few years from now. :-) so now i'm invested in 3 lines - batman, star wars and exoforce. :-/ at some point i will probably have to start selling some of the sets i have been accummulating. it's so hard sticking to plan when sets sell for so cheap at ebay.

yeah, i get my smaller containers from the hobby/beads section of the mega marts (Kmart, walmart, target, etc). i also get ziplocks/rubbermaid for the larger parts. i dont like to spend a lot buying storage...but that's just me.

i got a 7705 gate assault from ebay at a huge discount, cool! this weekend i'mma gonna spend some time making that and the two batman sets i got but didn't have time to make. oh, and i got like 5 of the exoforce robot minifigs (3 iron drones and 2 devastators) for under $10 incl shipping. what a steal! now i can start making my robot armies. also buying some parts from bricklink for modding my mechs. :-)

i need to go out for walks more often ;-)

the question is are you lucky enough to have a sister-in-law who is willing for you to use her address (and storage space) to hold $42,000 worth of lego. that's probably a space larger than a 10x10 room. :-) not to mention the difficulty you will have in shipping all that to europe. rent a container? :-P

i'm just going to order from bricklink. they cost less than $0.10 per piece.