natelite

Oh boy! Is the bridge walker set an exclusive to the US only? Supernova is still not out in europe yet. Guess it's possible. I'll probably go check out the lego store (or TRU) during the memorial day sale (or independence day).

You know as well as I do if TLG ever reproduce a theme, they will come up with 4 unique chars. Just look around: KK. KK2. alpha team. Dino attack. Exo-force. It's always 4 people. Why? That's the million dollar question. And based on the success of KK and exo-force compared to alpha team and dino attack I am going to say that there is 80% chance that the new pirate theme will consist of 4 pirates with crazy flamboyant colored outfit (or hair). Alpha and dino have more black and grey and generic outfit and they don't sell as well. It will appear to TLG's marketing dept that ALL kids will want bright blue, red, green and purple pirates. >:-) >:-) :-| :-X :-P X-D and no female mf. alpha has one and it's a total flop. :-P *disclaimer* the above essay tho littered with packets of fact was meant as a joke.

i dont get the dino joke either. on the other hand there's lots of cool parts in this set. my favorite is penguin's sub. if only the set comes with the batmobile... so for now it will join the "to get during a sale" list. best set in the batman theme except for the batmobile. absolutely love the huge number of minfigs.

um i dont get it. why do you need so many sentries for?

well my collection isn't that large and i skip a few steps. first time i started sorting, i sorted by parts and not colors. usually if i need to mod/moc i am looking for specific parts and not so much the color since i stick to easy colors such as black, grey and white, which are excellent choices! i find old lego parts have weird squeeky noises so now i also sort by new/used. haven't use any rubbermaid or sterilite yet. just some disposable food containers like ziplock. you get like 20 or so boxes for $5 or less. :-P

damnit. i can't see photobucket. can someone put it on brickshelf and link it here? :-P

yeah...the avatar sets look leet enough to buy. my gut feel says the fire nation soldier will ebay for $10 or more.

you can try toybrickbrigade. it has a bricklink shop as well as an ebay shop. it also sells nice skellies (skellies with smilie faces) or evil skellies. if there's not much competition you could get a set of 30 skellies for $0.99. it auction helmets too. you may get lucky as well!

for me, this set is not that impressive. most of the size is made from long sloping pieces and technic bars. i'm not quite sure what the robots at the legs were meant to represent. if it was suppose to be some kind of an apc, i think the robots should be inside the SV. the alternative model is also not impressive since it's not a mech vehicle but looked like a base of some sort. on the other hand the set has a lot of dark green parts which i can use to make mech armors or maybe an apc. and with 6 bronze (full) mechs and 2 mechs without legs (the silver and the gold), there's a lot you can do with them. maybe make 8 power armor robots. for the time being, this set will join gate assault in my list of optional sets (will get them only during a sale). how many decals were there? did you spend most of the time putting the stickers on or was it spent on actual building?

typical. star wars sets are usually the first to clean out. if you want a good deal on star wars you gotta wait till the year end/christmas sale from target, tru or walmart. hope you get some good stuff. unfortunately i'm in the east coast. can't fly there for a shopping spree. *wub*

this is done by machines. you can check out the interactive guide at the lego.com website where they show you how the bricks were made and ended up in the boxes. having humans do this would be utterly chaotic. *sweet* but the sorting and packaging cost has been accounted for in LDD. otherwise it wouldn't have cost more vs sets.

well, i think the pricing arb is not just by lego. i have been to different parts of the world (tokyo and london) on extended periods and i can safely say US prices are usually at a deep discount compared to elsewhere in the world. branded suits, shirts and ties sell for 20-30% cheaper in the US. even those by european designers. i think one of the reason is due to the size of the american market. they expect to sell more volume hence are more keen to give pricing discounts vs other markets. for eg, the US market is almost equivalent to the entire EU. another reason is probably higher setup cost to operate in the EU. for eg, you may need to set up multiple companies or hire more experts to deal with multiple issues such as taxes (ie you only need one tax accountant for US but probably 12 for the EU), sales team, different culture and norms, retailers, etc. in the end, net profit per set is probably equal comparatively between US and the EU. but consumers in the EU pay more due to higher operating cost. eg, a very easy comparison can be seen between the Canada vs the US market. Canada is larger than the US geographically but definitely smaller in population terms (about 1/10). to sell in canada will cost a lot in terms of shipping cost or retailer's kickbacks. for almost the same cost you get to sell to 10 times the number of consumers in the US. obviously pricing will be cheaper in the US. another reason could be FX. TLG probably reports in USD since most of its sales is generated from global markets and not domestically. As a USD functional company other markets' revenue are subject to FX conversion risk (since they will be converted to USD for reporting). so even if CAD appreciated against the USD, TLG may have locked in FX forwards or futures and had to charge more to cover the losses it incurred in the FX market to hedge its currency risk.

the sailbarge is already the number 1 set in the topseller list. that's how popular it is. i like the ISD better but a lot of people don't agree with me since the ISD is at a distant no. 7. :-P

ah, thanks Deinonychus. didn't know that was the riddler. :-P it's kinda funny how TLG is using exo-force hair for the batman series too. :-P

that bolded comment really hit the nail on the head. that's the strength of LDD as i saw it too. However I was thinking more of cannibalizing the designs of other block makers such as C3, megabloks or best-lock. however having thousands of lego fans design sets for them IS a better business model. Agree with you 100%. and as a bonus, the sets ARE BUILT ON DEMAND! there's only profit for TLG in this business model. since sets are not pre-manufactured, there's no inventory and no shelf-life expiry. TLG doesn't need to sell at discount to get rid of old stock since there is no old stock. profit will always be at the highest margin. it will be interesting to see how this pans out. wonder if TLG will spend the effort and money to develop (ie. make more colors, parts and better programming, eg have the parts lock automatically at stud points for easy building) and promote LDD. great idea gylman! *y*

well, i notice the scrubbed area of the tie cockpit looked a little opague vs the unscrubbed area. for best comparison check out the the 4 o'clock vs the 8 o'clock area. but that's only if you looked hard enough. did you scrub in a vertical motion? i think i saw vertical lines on the tie windshield. maybe if you do it in a circular motion the scratches will be harder to notice?

yeah, that's a pretty sweet SNOT design. can you build it on LDD so we can see how much it cost? (and also how many parts it uses). is that a robot or a mech (without or with a pilot)?

well, maybe it's just the UK set that has no legs. :-P somehow UK seems to get gimped every time, like the batmobile rims. the cockpit issue seems easy enough to fix with a u-shaped sunken part. but yeah i totally agree that if the box shows legs they should include the legs. btw, it's monday already. where's the review? i'm interested to know if your review will convince me to change my mind and buy this set. *sweet*

nope. didnt see the riddler. the glider batman was after poison ivy and some kind of a witch. robin is probably in that set too according to the comic.

wow this is interesting. the back of the box showed sentai fortress, hero tank as available sets. okay, you already know that... so what's so interesting about that? you asked. well, this means the highly anticipated white lightning vs bridge walker is probably going to be a special edition again. recall that supernova is a special edition set which does not appear in any of the boxes' art. either that or set 7713 will not be released this year. *wacko*

hehe...i cant say i feel your pain. i enjoy having cheaper price for almost everything lego produces. besides, most shops a few miles from the border price gouges anyway so you end up better off waiting for a sale in Canada. for eg, the TRU at times square, ny prices the CTT at $110, which is $20 above MSRP because they know there are lots of tourists that come to the shop and even at $110 it is still cheaper than some parts of europe. most of europe have decent pricing (ie having a one for one exchange) except for Germany, Luxemberg and Finland. I just checked set 6211 ISD and it's a massive EUR150 for Germany and EUR180 for Lux and Finland. That's more than 2x for Lux and Finland compared to US. holy cow batman! on top of that the US has frequent sales (at least semi-annually) with deep discounts of 25-50%. WOW....no wonder the US is a consumer society. :-P

ah xenologer proved the point. i guess despite what TLG said LDD's markup is even worse than sets. sets retail at 38% mark up. but to suvieD's point the secondary market will still exist just not as profitable as before. yesterday i finally received the t-1 typhoon set. it's only 605 pieces but it took me a long megablocks time to build it. like 3+ hours. building a large set online probably takes more since you need to search for parts, then click-and-drag, assemble, etc. it's not worth the hassle. i would probably spend $50 more than to spend 3+ hours ordering parts online. yuck!

ah, then i guess online shop's numbers are misleading. i guess the only reason why none of the sets are in the top 30 is because you can get them from retail. hmm, but that still doesn't explain the popularity of the star wars and batman sets. there are tons of those in retail stores too. hmm...definitely something to think about. Sure. i think it is daily if not hourly. http://shop.lego.com/Topsellers.asp there's a dropdown box which you can use to pick the countries. also you can try the toysrus.com (or com.au for australia, co.uk for uk, etc). they also have a top 10 selling list. here's the toysrus.com's top 10 list for lego sets. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/brows...2906033-3498426 it's rated hourly. i think toysrus uk and other countries may have similar rating. final edit: actually in the toysrus website, the three human large mechs (grand titan, stealth hunter and super nova) were featured in the top selling list. so i guess it is rather popular still. :)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! hahaha just like that villain in your comic. overall, i would agree with your wife in that it is a set for girls to play house with. for me and my son this theme/line is a waste of time. even though i'm in the US, i still can't understand the attraction of spongebob. do any of you watch the cartoon? can you tell me what's so appealing about spongebob?

haha that's true, can't argue with that. time and effort will not make it rewarding.