natelite

i don't think female pirates make sense. female captives maybe. and maybe woman figureheads (mermaid perhaps?). if you want female mfs for roleplaying, maybe you can use the figureheads or a city mf's head on a pirates torso. :-$

agreed. i am particularly thrilled with the white lightning and bridge walker set. that's definitely in my list along with hero tank. will have to read a review on striking venom to see if it is worth it. to me SV doesn't look impressive at all. and i hated the price tag for sentai fortress considering there's lots of useless parts such as the gate, turrets, barriers which no doubt added a lot to the cost. it's 4 humans MFs. blue, green, red and purple hair. same colors as the KK knights.

they could very well be shooting themselves in the foot. recall that they said that eventually all template will be available through LDD. corporations rarely see every aspect of a business. otherwise no one would ever hire consultants. to your point about mass minifigs, i'm sure it's something that can be easily avoided by imposing a maximum limit per customer much like what they are doing now with the "exclusive" sets like the death star. i do however agree with you on the point where the average parents won't know about LDD. but once the kids become interested i am sure they will eventually find out. i also agree with the point you made about the box. a well designed box is definitely a keeper.

no doubt. totally agree with you. but whether they continue with the line or not depends ultimately on how well they sell. the 2004 alpha team had a great concept: transforming vehicles. but why did it discontinued? consumers were not buying it. i still see quite a few sets of the ogel's HQ on heavy DC in a kbtoys store. there's so much more a mech line can do than just humanoid mechs. for eg, an APC full of mini exo-suits (ie power armors, those suits that are smaller than uplink), and it opens up to reveal a smaller recon tank/scout. just the other day i was browsing brickshelf.com and saw a most excellent model of a quad ped mech with a smaller exact replica of itself. the large mech has a hatch at the back which opens to reveal 4 power armored minifigs and the smaller recon mech. if you were wondering what i am talking about, i'm referring to something like the clone turbo tank but mechanized. and with lots of aerial suits or power armored ground suits. i don't think lego designers are going to be as creative as a brickshelf moc'er. i don't mean any disrespect but i think creativity is best unbridled. if you are paid to be creative, the work is always going to be less than perfect. so far for the exo-force line i can see TLG is going for the same concept as KK. 4 main chars (boring!). i wish they go back-to-basics with generic minifigs and give us super cool mechs and vehicles instead. what i like to see is something like the vikings. lots of generic vikings and maybe one captain (for those who like to role play the leader or the champion, etc).

i dunno. those large <insert that tiresome argument> dinosaurs look awfully specialized to me. without those dinos i am sure the vehicles are a lot more cheaper than the current cost.

unfortunately you lack the frame/joints of the larger mechs. if you use the skeletal frame (or maybe rip from your KK figurines) from a fire vulture you can definitely create a beefed up super sentry.

i dunno. it dropped out of the hot list from every country listed in lego.com. so far police, batman and star wars are going strong. exo-force, dino, harry potter are very weak. for me, after the initial rush, i'm now lukewarm on exo-force. i'm on a star wars diet atm.

i think you misread. i did not present a situation where sets were bought for parts. the scenario is like such: if instructions are readily available from the web, and you can order any parts from LDD. what is preventing you from downloading the instructions for free, and ordering the parts from LDD? bear in mind the final goal is FULL SET from LDD, and instructions downloaded for free from the web. reason why i said this will kill off the secondary market is, for all the "no-longer-in-production" (unabbreviated for the benefit of an unspecified member) sets you need not order for ridiculous overpriced sum from bricklink or ebay (for eg, set 4504 the millenium falcon) if you can just order from LDD. bear in mind what you ordered is still a SET. what you said is not invalid but it doesn't refute my point (so many negatives...but hope you get the point). i know what i am going to order if SW templates ever made it to the LDD >:-) >:-) can you say clone army?

i never really noticed it but now that you brought it up, it DOES look weird. *wacko*

it's not something i want to argue with you about. if 2am is your issue, that's your timing and not abbreviation that is at fault. this is hardly a english literature forum so having abbreviations is not a crime. it's not like i deliberately made it hard for the "average" joe to read. suggestion: don't read a leisure forum at 2am. it's not like it's an exam paper you have to hand in tomorrow at 8am. the fact that MSRP was used in the label suggested that it was a universal accronym and not confined to car retailing as per your wording. yes it was used by retailers to sell lego. we are discussing lego here. it's not something i invented. no need to be rude to me about it.

MSRP = manufacturer's suggested retail price. my guess is you never bought a car before. invoice price is what a distributor or a retailer is charged by the manufacturer. sometimes the cost is even lower than invoice due to kickbacks and other sale promotion which gives retailer's credits for achieving certain sales targets. popular abbreviations aren't really that difficult to find out. Even dc. google and wikipedia sure made a lot of things simple for the average joe like myself.

holy cow. did anyone else look at the fine print? i noticed on each of the tags that the invoice price vs msrp is 38%. that's quite a huge margin. i guess that's why most TRU sales offered 20-25% dc.

Er, Batman, Spongebob, Avatar? That's just this year... batman...hmm, you could have a point there. but i doubt there was much competition on spongebob or avatar.

yeah i agree. the pointed nose visor is the best knight's visor ever made. a close second is the grilled helm.

hmm, didn't most pirate ships have maiden figures for figureheads? usually a naked mermaid. i think it would be wrong for lego to do that though. *sad* the sets are still meant for 7-14. *sweet*

If they get everything loaded to LDD, then the secondary market will die off. Will there ever be a need for sets anymore then? I mean using the part listing, which is freely available from peeron or from lego.com (from downloadable instructions) and ordering the parts from Lego factory what need is there for sets? This will be a very interesting development. LDD may just very well cannibalize Lego's own sets. On the other hand it will also cannibalize other block makers. I'm thinking using the instructions of sets for Best-Lock or Mega Bloks and making the sets using Lego blocks. This will be extremely interesting. Woohoo! customized military theme lego! Available from a download near you!

seeing the box getting ripped up like that brought tears to my eyes. :'-( :'-( :'-(

License bidding is a very competitive process. Lego is known to be expensive. With their high cost structure it is unlikely for Lego to win any bidding war. Star wars was an exception because Lucas was a big fan of Lego. He practically give it to them. Lego has not won any license in a long, long time. A pirate theme can sell well mainly because of the many colonies that settled in the Caribbean. But Lego doesn't want to promote racial or other form of discrimination so they have to overcome their own philosophical barrier before the theme can become popular. Just think about it. You can make the Dutch, Spanish, British armada as well as the local mercenary ships and create a rich history/story line. But then having such well-defined nationality (Dutch, Spanish, British) may just be too controversial for Lego to handle. there's also a wide variety of builds possible. so far all we have seen are ships. what about forts and garrisons guarding the ports?

cool. definitely not something i would get. i like everything to be minifig size. it's the only reason to get lego models in my opinion. *wub*

i would think they prefer large bulk orders than small size orders. to set up the machines take more resources and bulk orders can spread the fixed costs over more bricks and hence cheaper. looking forward to them adding more customizable minifigs. no need to get sets for minifigs! hurrah.

i have some questions. do you buy new sets for parts or source parts from used inventory (ebay or bricklink)? well, i recently bought some parts from ebay, and after washing them i find they don't fit quite as well as new parts. and new parts have that nice clickety sound while used parts have a squeekity sound, especially the 1x1 technic/system pieces. i think i would prefer buying new sets but they are kinda expensive and don't always have the part i need. what do you do with the parts that you don't need? do you sell it? is there anyone on ebay or bricklink that does that, ie buy sets for parts then sell the unneeded parts as new parts? if so do you have names i can look up? i recently visited a lego store. the shop seemed to have a few sets on sale, like the 8877 KK castle for $80. anyway, i was wondering if anyone knows when they have an annual or semi-annual sale, sale where almost everything in the shop is on discount? is there any announcement like maybe on lego.com or elsewhere?

i think it was just one individual who kept posting pictures and didn't say much. i am not going to name names but i think we all know who that individual is. ;-) maybe it would be more constructive to pm this individual and say "i like that you are posting reviews. here are the steps you can improve on them..." then proceed to list down the needed items. just my thoughts.

Good question. As much as I like the line, I think it will not last past two years. Making mechs after a while becomes repetitive. The only thing that varies is the armor. Having said that, it's always possible to expand to non-humanoid versions. Even if that fail, if it has popular followings like bionicles, lego will still maintain the line. Eg, like the police and fireman lines, they have been in existance for as long as lego has created them because people continue to buy them (just how many police station do you need?! *wacko* ). So really the question boils down to just how popular will exoforce be in the market. Can it achieve the status of police, fire, star wars or even bionicle? TLG seems to be focusing a lot of their advertisement money on exoforce. So I think they may want to make exoforce the next bionicle... probably. And I totally agree with you on the hair. I do like the minifigs though, just not the hair while they are piloting the mechs. So, when they are in the cockpit I make them wear helmet with the same color as their hair, eg hikaru (the white mech) wears a blue jayko helmet with a smoke (trans-black) visor. I think it is neat. if you have the KK castle of morcia, you have a full set! blue, red, green, purple.

hey kimt. is the promotional robot walker out too? we haven't seen any of those yet.

thanks guys, particularly gylman. that's really good tips. good to know.