meyerc13

Mine too... at least via this review I know that he is supposed to have it.

I think that based on the sets that have passed review, that it is very clear that at this time LEGO isn't willing to bet on a Cuusoo set that is as big as the western town. In this case, there was also a licensing issue, but it seems like even if Lone Ranger had never been that they would have found some other reason to pass on this. Maybe someday Cuusoo will have proven itself sufficiently that LEGO will take a bet on something this big, but I think that it won't be any time soon.

Looking at the image we've seen: I would say you nailed it!

Small cup is exactly 1/2 the volume of the large cup. However... due to piece geometry value can sometimes be surprising. Here's a great article on the topic that goes into far more detail than I ever could: http://www.1000steine.com/brickset/miscellaneous/Documents/PABCostComparisonAnalysis.pdf

kdenty has a picture of a large cup. A large cup is approximately $15 while a small cup is approximately $8. Depending on where you are, you are likely to have sales tax on top of that. I've been to LEGO stores in 4 US states, the highest sales tax I encountered was just under 10% in Chicago. There may be states with a higher sales tax though. Just checked Google, and Chicago has one of the highest tax rates in the country. There are a few other cities with similarly high, but 10% is about the maximum sales tax rate you'll find in the US.

Were you buying the game there? If you were and if they had extra, I don't know why they wouldn't. If they didn't have extra, that is understandable, but I'd just try another Gamestop. Those things seem to be everywhere. We have three of them within about 2 square miles.

I just put together this set last night, and one thing that was missing from this review but would have been nice to see is the picture showing the new/rare parts. I was surprised to find the 1x2 white palisade bricks, which haven't been in a set in many years. These will be great for many MOC builders, too bad there are only six in this set. Let's hope this is a sign we'll see them again soon in another set or two. After having seen the movie... I feel an urge to pick up another 2-3 copies of this set to add more executrons, make Cloud Cuckoo land bigger, and get more of those white palisde bricks! I must say, if there was an award for LEGO set you most wish were made out of candy... this is probably the winner hands down. It's hard to look at this set without getting a toothache, but I love it!

To be fair, the two trucks are both made by Oshkosh and the Striker shares much of its drive train as well as its overall look with the military HEMTT.

As a parent, I wish that there were more female minifigs in most lines so that my daughter would have more opportunities to play with her bigger brother. However, I think LEGO's big problem is source material. JRR Tolkien couldn't write a female character to save his life, Peter Jackson added a few more into the films but there just isn't much for LEGO to work with in the source material. Star Wars isn't much different, there were a few female characters with speaking roles in the films, but they were vastly outnumbered by male characters. I think you'll fine that many licensed themes suffer from this problem. Fair enough, what about LEGO's house brands like City? I think again the problem is the source material. My daughter joined her brother's Cub Scout den on a tour of our local police station last night. We met a female Leiutenant and saw a picture of the female officers in the department, but they are a small percentage of the total. That's despite our department being extremely progressive (the first female officer was hired in 1922!). They'd love to hire more women if more women were applying for the jobs. A quick google search reveals that many of the subthemes LEGO pursues in City are extremely male dominated (at least in the US). For example, the percentage of females in the following industries which tend to be a focus of LEGO subthemes: Firefighters - 4% Police Officers - 12% Truck Drivers - 7% Miners - 13% Construction - 9% I know people have done an analysis of overall percentage of female LEGO minifigs, but I think a more interesting study would be comparing LEGO themes and subthemes to source material (for licensed themes) and societal averages (for City).

Check your GameStop. I went in today, hadn't preordered it, and asked if they had any promo for purchasing the game because Wal Mart and Best Buy were giving away a minifig with the game. She said, "Yeah, I have a few extras here." So I bought the game and scored one even without having preordered it. It doesn't hurt to ask... I liked this fig better than the other two so I'm happy.

"Have two extra pieces, bud don't know what to do" - Am I missing something, because I only see one piece in the flying version that I don't see in the original - the large plate. What's the second piece?

I've been looking for shirts for my kids, and they've been really hard to find. Here's the run down: Target - Found three shirts in the boys section, one was almost tye-dyed in appearance, pretty cool. All had exclusively male characters from the film. Toys r Us - Had two different shirts, a blue one with Emmet and a red one with several characters - both very boyish Kohls - Found two different shirts. One was an orange one with several characters including Angry Kitty and Wyldstyle - this was the most gender neutral shirt I found so I picked it up for my daughter. I think the other one was glow in the dark. No sign of the adult shirts anywhere, and even struck out on the kids shirts at several retailers that I thought might have them including Wal Mart, Shopko, and Old Navy. I think retailers are going to kick themselves when they figure out what they missed out on by not having these shirts in stock.

Well done! That table looks to be about the same size as most toy train tables I've seen, and from experience I know how hard it is to build an exciting and interactive layout. You've solved the problem of the oversized police and fire stations quite nicely, I think I may have to do something similar to get them down to a more reasonable size. I hope you post some detailed pictures of your modified sets, I think we'd all like to see more!

I'm a diehard City collector, but other than the Huskies, Polar Bear, and a few interesting parts these Arctic sets do nothing for me. I think since most of us have limited space to display our cities, it's hard enough to integrate things like Airports, Harbors, Forrests, Farms, and Mines into our LEGO City, much less an arctic expidition. I could totally see something like this as a stand-alone line like Pharoah's Quest, but as a City subtheme I just don't get it. Especially because it means that we'll have to wait that much longer for something new and original (like a Zoo) or for a reboot of a subtheme that might fit into our City better (Construction, Farm - but even this one some would debate). I think another disadvantage to this line is that these won't stand out on the shelves because we just had an orange and blue subtheme in Coast Guard. I can see many parents vetoing these because they are too similar to what their kids already have a lot of. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining too much because quite a while ago I realized that as a lover of City the most I typically have to look forward to each year are the great vehicles and hopefully one awesome TRU exclusive set. The 2014 Great Vehicles were among the best yet and hopefully we'll have one giant non-arctic City exclusive still to come. If not, at least there is an interesting Creator set coming this year.

Have you considered scattering the roof slopes like on the new Creator Family house (set # 31012)? I think that would look nice.

I'm not sure I followed this, can you elaborate? MMV was my first big set as an AFOL, and this doesn't look anything like MMV in the sophistication of the build. I'm not sure if I'm agreeing or disagreeing with you.

Actually, DDoS is Distributed Denial of Service. Which means that instead of the attack coming from a single source that can be easily blocked, it is coming from a botnet with many hosts spread out across the globe. From the posts above, it seems that this isn't a distributed attack, but rather the overload is coming from a single IP. If that is the case, it should be extremely easily to rectify. The first step is for the ISP to block the IP at their perimeter, which should free up the server CPU but might still result in the site being unavailable if the attacker has a bigger pipe than the ISP. If that's the case, the attacker can consume all of the bandwidth of the ISP. In that case the ISP needs to start working their way back up the stream to the attacker's ISP. You continue to block the traffic at steps along the path until service is restored. This is extremely simplified, but at a high level that's how you deal with a DoS attack. I happen to work in this field for a company near the top of the Fortune 500, so this is something I know all too much about.

Very disappointed in the City advent calendar. The sleds, remote control cars, and snowball catapult may have been interesting the first time, but now that we've seen them over and over again they are nothing special. Unless I can find one at a decent price, I may just skip this year. I'll make a final decision once I see a parts list just to make sure there aren't any awesome unique parts that I can't live without, but based on these prelim pictures I'm not seeing any.

That's what it looks like to me, but in yellow which is a color it doesn't come in today. I think under it they just have a 1x1 round brick, but I could be wrong.

No, it won't. The garage door that LEGO makes and used in the Fire Brigade is 8 wide, while looking at the rear of this car it is more than that - the window is 6 wide, the fins are each a brick wide, bringing us to 8 wide, and then a plate and tile stick out on each side beyond that. So this is over 9 wide but the door is only 8 wide. I voted for this for the car and minifigs, but I love the building too. However, I don't believe we'll see anything out of Cuusoo beyond the $100 price tag for quite a while. I think this is for two reasons: 1)keeping these sets small reduces the risk for LEGO should one of these totally bomb in sales. 2)I suspect that non-LEGO fans who are often encouraged to vote for these licensed Cuusoo ideas put in ridiculously low and unrealistic prices when they are asked what they would be willing to pay, thus convincing LEGO that fans of Cuusoo want low price points.

Is it just me, or are those french fries at the second restaurant next to the pizza place?

To answer your question - in Duplo, yes, this color has been used more. In System, not so much unless you count the Ninja Turtles. As you mentioned, this set has great parts. I did pick up an extra just for the parts. The two shades of green are so similar that it is hard to tell them apart unless you are using them next to each other. In fact, I forgot that this set uses Bright Green, so when I was building a tow truck a couple of weeks ago I went to get my spare 6 wide green roof, only to find out when I placed it on the 'dark green' tow truck that it isn't the same color. Doh! I still need to find a dark green roof for that truck...

I must say that I have mixed feelings on this set. I love it and will definitely be buying it (quite likely more than once if the price is right), but at the same time I was expecting more after hearing the description and before I saw the pictures. A true modular is 16-32 studs wide and 32 studs deep, so I was hoping for two 16x16 plates for each building. Instead we have two 8x16 plates, and with some of that space given to the sidewalk/gutter area in front and back of the building, the buildings themselves aren't very large. When open, these should fit in well with LEGO City, but when closed they will be a bit small for a modular layout. Based on this photo, I find it hard to believe that this would be a $100 set. Compare it to Pet Shop, and for only 50% more money than that you are getting quite a few more bricks. On the plus side, this set has a nice mix of colors for the bricks and roof, a good number of windows and doors, and even the window frames come in a variety of sizes and colors. This is an awesome parts pack, but somehow I still think it feels like a $70US set.

I'd pay extra for the lights and sounds. I know they don't have a light brick, but maybe this will be the project that will push them to release something. There are some great third party solutions out there (LifeLites comes to mind), that LEGO should license if they don't want to do it themselves.

The real question is this - will it have lights and sounds? Crossing my fingers that it does.