meyerc13

I don't have either set, but I've passed on Winter Toy Shop and wish I'd picked up the Farm when it was available. For that reason I'd say Farm. First, it is discontinued (in the US at least, and most likely soon to follow elsewhere). With the farm you get some nice animals which are fairly rare. The Winter Toy Shop is a nice looking set, but as a 'Winter' set, would you want to display it year round? That's why I passed on it. I like it, and I'd like to display it at Christmas, but I don't think it would fit in my LEGO City during the rest of the year and it seems a shame to pack up such a nice set for 10 months out of the year.

You will not find sets that old at a LEGO company store. They heavily discount the sets after they are discontinued. At this point, you might still find some sets that were discontinued in December if you visit a slow LEGO store, but at a busy store like the Mall of America they were all gone by mid January.

I've been waiting for a review, thanks! This set looks very nice. Not quite as good as Medieval Market Village, but definitely a set I'll be picking up (although I might wait for a sale). The animals are must have for me, my kids can use them with their City farm or this set in the Kingdom layout. The civilian minifigs are also very nice.

My collection is still very much in its infancy, but I can share a few things that have worked for me. First and foremost, I've found that using Lego Digital Designer is a great way to build when you don't have the pieces to bring your creation to life. However, you need to be careful, because sometimes what looks good on screen won't quite work in real life, and sometimes it is the other way around too. I like to build vehicles, and sometimes a vehicle will look great, but then I find out that a minifig won't fit because the roof is too low. To avoid problems like that it is useful to have the parts to do a proof of concept, even if they are the wrong colors. To build my collection, first I started off with a few of the large brick boxes just to get a good selection of basic bricks in standard colors. Then, whenever I've been near a LEGO store (the closest are 5+ hours away), I use the pick-a-brick wall to get parts that could be useful. Examples are wheels, tires, windshields, cabinets. When I find a great vehicle in the City line, I'll generally pick up 2-3 extras of the set just for parts. For example, if you want to build fire trucks pick up extras of the fire trucks to use for extra parts. If you want to build police cars, pick up extras of the police sets. Sometimes sets aren't even obvious... I saw the white/lime camper turned into an ambulance, so look beyond the assembled set to consider how the parts could be used. Early on I tried picking up some used lots on ebay, but the quality was hit or miss. I've found it to be too much work to clean used LEGO, so I try to stick with new whenever possible. One problem I always have is a lack of plates. Again, the pick-a-brick is one source I've used, as well as Creator sets and clearanced sets in themes I don't collect. For example, I've picked up some Toy Story sets strictly for the parts. You'll find that it takes practice to look beyond the assembled photo on the cover of the box to see the parts that are used in the assembled model. Bricklink also helps if you want to check the detailed inventory. When my kids got into Kingdoms, I wanted to do some MOCs for Kingdoms but didn't have many gray and brown bricks. The Pick-a-brick wall was useful for this, especially using the free box I received for spending $75 prior to Christmas. A square box is perfect for picking up basic bricks. Some sets in other lines like PotC, Harry Potter, and Toy Story also have a good selection of bricks in these colors. Hopefully this helps give you some ideas, but you can build a collection slowly over time like I'm doing by using some or all of these methods. I'm now at the point where I probably need to order some parts off of Bricklink, mostly because I don't have the right colors and to get the colors of the parts I'd want would require purchasing expensive sets to get just a few parts.

After picking up the Toy Story Dump Truck on clearance last weekend, I began playing around in LDD trying to design a new truck for that bed. I too used the 3221 front end, so it is interesting seeing this built in bricks (I haven't picked up 3221 yet because I picked up the Toys R Us version). In LDD at least, I think the truck might look better if you raise the bed a bit. I designed mine with technic bricks under the bed. One thing I like better about your truck is the fuel tank with step, my fuel tank was very basic in design, so I might steal your design on that.

I'd like to add one more point about this set - my 3 year old daughter loves it! We were at Toys R Us last night looking for a LEGO set for her to spend her Easter money on, and when she saw this set she had to have it. It's great fun watching her role play with just this set. One sample exchange (minifigs talking to each other): "Help Daddy! The shark is going to eat me." "I throw you tube to save you!" Until LEGO gives us a new theme for girls, sets like this and the Creator Log Cabin will have to fill the gap, and I think they'll do just that. I just wish they had more sets at the sub $20 price range. For boys you can find so many sets in that price range, but for girls it is harder... they like animals and civilian mini-figs, and those are both all too rare.

I love this set! Ever since I bought my son the Coast Guard ship two years ago, I've been wanting something for the Coast Guard to rescue. This is a nice inexpensive boat that I'll be adding to our harbor very soon, quite possibly in multiples. I know a lot of people complain that this was named a fishing boat, but in the City where I grew up this is what we would call a fishing boat or a fishing charter. Take a look at the boats on these sites from my hometown and you'll see that it is quite representative, it just needs a few more fishing rods: http://www.sheboygancharterfishing.com/ http://www.fishsheboygan.com/ http://www.dumperdan.com/

They look like 1x2 to me. If you look at the right side of the interior picture, you can see that the wall is 1 wide and it covers half of the part in question.

Reminds me of some trucks that are built just down the road from me. I used to do IT support for a municipality, and have been inside their Haz Mat truck. Inside you'll usually find some desks with computers and communications gear. You'll also find a lot of weather gear, they want to know wind direction, temperature, humidity, etc. So you may want to add some antennas and bits to represent weather equipment. Then they have their equipment. In addition to the suits they have decontamination equipment and equipment and supplies to contain and clean up hazardous spills. They probably have a lot of other stuff, but I was only involved in the electronics side, and only have cursory knowledge of the other stuff they carry. Good job so far!

Just checked my camper, and one large crack already (in the 1x1 brick by the rear passenger window), with a few more cracks starting (you can see a line and feel a bump if you run your fingernail over it, but the crack isn't all the way through). We do have a whole house humidifier, but the air is obviously drier in the winter when the heat is running and outside temps are well below freezing, because if you have the humidity too high you get condensation on the insides of the windows. The question is, why are certain sets and parts susceptible, but not others. I've looked at other sets and I'm not finding problems (yet), but it sounds like an epidemic for the camper and white cheese slopes. I've probably spent thousands of dollars the last 2 years on LEGO, and I hope this trend of pieces cracking within months of purchase doesn't continue. I'd like to think my kids will get years of enjoyment out of these bricks. I know LEGO will probably replace them, but I can't see spending the time filling out the form every time I find another defective piece. And if I just swap out the pieces for spares, I'll forget where they came from if the numbers continue to grow.

I was just fixing a disassembled section of my kids 7208 Fire Station and found two white cheese slopes with cracks. The cracks are almost impossible to see when the cheese slopes are removed, but when they were on the station they were quite visible. This leads me to believe that the stud is putting pressure on the cheese slope causing the split. The two that were split were on different types of pieces. One was on a White Window 1 x 2 x 3 Flat Front. The other was on a 1x6 Red brick. To the original poster, thanks for making this thread. Now I'm going to look through other sets we have to see if I have more examples. So far for me it is only the white cheese slopes, but I'm wondering if that is because the cracks are easier to see on the white cheese?

I think the speculation is that this is going to be an exclusive for a major US retailer, perhaps Wal Mart. As such, it may not show up until Wal Mart does their fall toy aisle reset (usually in early August).

I actually like the log cabin - just for all of that brown. Our family's LEGO collection started with some brick boxes, which have lots of the white/red/blue/yellow/green bricks, but brown? Not much. Since we are just getting into Kingdoms in addition to City, I'll take any brown or gray I can find. I also like that they include a generic mini-fig in the log cabin set, because it adds some variety to our LEGO City. I think the reason parents were asking for this is because 1)Girls like Creator houses, and 2)Boys like them. Given the choice, I think the boy will take a police station or fire station over a Creator house, but even boys know that it isn't fun having a fire department if there aren't any houses for them to protect. So we have a lot of Creator houses in our collection so that we can build LEGO houses for our City. I agree that the beach house is great, the 3 story open backed model is perfect for a LEGO City. I wish I had bought 1-2 more so I could build a few to represent an apartment complex... or maybe make the interior larger. Oh well, I probably have the yellow bricks, it's the windows and doors that will be hard to accumulate. Oh... and I have to agree with Vexorian... bulk plate packs would be awesome. I'm to the point where I'm ready to put together an order of plates just to beef up our collection. I never have enough of any size, from 1x1 to 16x6.

It looks like he needs to take it to the paint shop to get his 'police' logo added. However, maybe with the new higher light pole he doesn't need the logo. Even without it you can tell exactly what it is. Lovely bike, and I think I'm going to modify the two in my LEGO City to incorporate some of your design features.

I love both of these, and due to the inclusion of the minifigs I can see why they fit as much in the City thread as the Creator thread. I'm definitely going to be buying both of these.

That is a very nice looking car, with a lot of SNOT. How fragile is it? On the third picture down it looks like the car is about to split in half. For me that wouldn't work because I like things to look nice and be solidly built, but if that isn't a requirement for you I'd say you've done an awesome job on the look of the car.

Don't worry, White nun, I agree with you. Those little Creator and Racers sets are awesome. While the MSRP might be $6US, they can often be found for $5US at major retailers, which puts them in the $.10/piece range which is fine. That also puts them in the range on an impulse purchase for me, so I'll often add one to my cart when I'm at the store for something else. While the big buckets might have more bricks/$, they are generally basic bricks whereas the Creator sets are filled with interesting and useful pieces. I don't have and haven't really taken a close look at the set below, but now that you've posted a picture I see a few reasons why I'd buy that set: 1x2 Blue jumper plates 1x1 Plates with clip lights 1x6 Bar with studs All of those are great pieces I saw just in your picture. Looking at the inventory for the set on Bricklink (http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=5864-1) I see other useful parts as well. It looks like a great little set and worth not only picking up one but probably a few. Glad you found them, and good luck finding others. I found 5761 Mini Digger to have some great parts and one build technique that was really interesting.

Assuming that you are serious, one possibility is that the other companies use a release agent on their die cast molds that is causing you this problem. I haven't experienced this with LEGO, and don't buy clone brands, but I have seen action figures made in China that were greasy/oily straight out of the package. When the manufacturer was questioned, their explanation was that the release agent used wasn't properly rinsed off before the products were packaged and shipped. Some people are sensitive to certain chemicals, so it is a possibility that they are using a chemical that you are sensitive too. This is probably more likely than the plastic being the cause, because as others have pointed out the plastic is generally of the same type from one brick manufacturer to another. While there might be slight differences in the plastic, I would think that if you were sensitive to the plastic that you'd also have problems with LEGO. Of course, I'm not a chemist or a doctor, just someone who has learned a bit about diecasting from the three generations in my family who have done it.

Found a picked through box of these at TRU today. Grabbed four random packages, double checking the bump codes to make sure I didn't have any doubles. Ended up with the Gnome, Ice Skater, Rocker, and Surfer Girl. Two of those were ones I really wanted to find for the kids (rocker, surfer), so I'm happy so far. I'm in no rush to snap them all up this time, haven't had problems finding the last two series. In fact, TRU had a couple of boxes of Series 3 too. I'm starting to enjoy picking up a few packages at a time randomly to see what I get. Too bad the first two series weren't as enjoyable in that regard.

I'm sure quality was always a high priority, but I doubt it was ever the top priority. If quality was your top priority, you could spend hours testing every brick to make sure it is perfect. That would eliminate defects but the cost would be prohibitive. I think the key is balance. Quality needs to be a priority, but keeping costs under control has to be a priority as well and double and triple checks in all likelihood would add to the cost while rarely adding to quality. I've seen the comparisons between Chinese parts and other LEGO parts, and clearly there are differences in some cases, but even lower quality Chinese LEGO bricks are higher quality than most other Chinese manufactured brick brands I've encountered. Couple that with LEGO's no questions asked approach to fix customer problems, and I think LEGO comes out well on top in both quality and customer satisfaction.

http://ipab.brickbuildr.com/

I think the colors on this one work better. When I first saw it I chuckled, but I love the idea of Castlepunk. It also made me think of the Elven Steeds in Mercedes Lackey's books that take the form of a motorcycle (although not a motorcycle that looks like a horse). I think the combination of horse/bike triggered that even though this isn't what I imagine they look like in those books.

This past weekend I took my family on a vacation to Minnesota and it turned into a whole weekend of LEGO fun. I'd highly recommend that any LEGO fans with young kids in or around Minnesota plan a similar trip around the second Saturday of the month in April through September. Our first destination was the Mall of America. The LEGO store is my favorite stop every time I'm there. This was the first chance my kids had to see LEGO store since they remodeled. Their first sight of the store was from the third floor food court overlooking the store and the incredible models. Actually, 'overlooking' isn't exactly right, since the giant robot model is looking down at you since it reaches up to the fourth floor. Later in the afternoon we spent a few hours in the LEGO store. My son and I filled pick-a-brick cups, and both my son and daughter had fun in the LEGO play area. On Saturday we visited the Brickmania Toyworks open house. I had heard about this, and we purposely planned our trip to be in the area on the second Saturday when the open house is held. This is definitely a case of "don't judge a book by its cover." Looking at the building, you have to build up some courage to go inside, but follow the signs and you'll be just fine (definitely print off a copy of the hand drawn map from here). The Greater Midwest LEGO Train Club display is incredible, the windows showing 'underground' scenes are brilliant and my kids and even my wife enjoyed them. The display from the Twin Cities Lego Train Club is also wonderful. The highlights of that display were the smoke coming from the burning building and the working water fountain. After that we took the kids to the Minnesota Children's Museum to check out the LEGO Castle Adventure exhibit. The kids had fun putting on costumes and playing in the LEGO style castle. I had fun looking at the LEGO models in displays they had. Definitely worth checking out if you are a LEGO fan with kids. It was a great way to celebrate my birthday, and I had as much fun as my kids did. Even though we also did Nickelodeon Universe and the Sea Life Aquarium, the LEGO adventure we had was as much if not more.

I'll second this recommendation. Although to be fair it's the only LEGO store I've visited, so I don't have much to compare it to. Besides, if you are coming to MN, you have to visit the Mall of America just for the experience of it. I just spent an entire day from open to close there with my family and we only visited about 1/12th of the Mall (mostly the 1st floor South East corner, only stopping in a few stores in that section)... most of our day was spent in the Nick Universe indoor amusement park and the Sea Life Aquarium. Other than those, it was the Disney Store, LEGO store, and a few other stores. You would need days to explore the entire Mall. The only negative is the sales tax on LEGO, I think in MN it is 7.5% sales tax except for clothing (which isn't taxed).

True, but so is a Toys R Us store and look at the LEGO version of that. Plus, these aren't usually in close proximity to buildings, although I know of a few companies that have put windmills up on their property for extra power generation. I just think that having to fit it on our small LEGO table, towering over the undersized City buildings, it wouldn't fit in.