meyerc13

These are wonderful vehicles. On first glance I did a double-take thinking "that's not right." The angles aren't what you expect to see in a LEGO car. Then I figured out what you were doing, which is really quite brilliant. Now I want to know what this car is like in real bricks. For me, LEGO is all about playing, so the question is, does it hold up to play?

Here's a link that explains the tags: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=33335 Nice MOC by the way... I'm not a huge fan of Clone Wars so I can't say I'm familiar with the inspiration, but it is a very sleek looking speeder.

Too late. That's what started his interest in LEGO Star Wars - his grandfather bought him the book. Then he wanted to watch the movies with me again... and now he has been bitten by the Star Wars bug.

He's only five, and I have no doubt he'd chose the larger set, along with all of the other large toys he wants. We tried to explain to him that mommy and daddy have a budget for our Christmas shopping, so the LEGO Death Star wasn't in our budget, his reply, "That's okay dad. I know you can't afford it but Santa can!" Thanks everyone for the help! I now know the options and have a plan. Hopefully this thread helps someone else down the road.

I just can't believe that many people were buying these for magnets. My son has suddenly shown an interest in Star Wars LEGO. I was at a LEGO store last month and contemplated the magnet sets but paying $15 for three minifigs seemed expensive when I could buy a set like 8092 for $25 and get 5 minifigs and a vehicle! I gave the magnet set a lot of consideration, but the sets they had weren't that intriguing so I decided to buy something else instead Now, had these been three magnets for $15 that weren't usable as minifigs... well I wouldn't have had to give that any thought because there's no way I'm paying $5 for a minifig magnet when real minifigs sell for less than that.

Found some picked over boxes at the TRU in Appleton WI tonight. My wife was very good at spotting the dots on the bag... we decided to buy 10, and she successfully picked 10 different figures. Out of this series I wanted 13 of the minifigs, and all 10 that I bought were on my list. I still need to find the Hula Girl, the Pilot, and the Cyborg. I was amazed that by blindly picking we found the fisherman and the elf in picked through boxes! In the first two series I never saw a Zombie or Spartan, so I'd say production is up if I can find two of the rare and popular figures the first time I spot these. And I'd say the dots do work if you are comparing one package to another, but while opening them we checked the cheat sheet and twice thought we were opening a figure other than what we opened. However, if you compare all 16 packages side by side, I'm sure you can tell that you have 16 unique packages, if you have good eyes. As others have pointed out, a combination of using dots and feeling the package works wonders.

Thanks for the great replies so far! I peruse Brickset daily, but it's hard to tell which sets are current without browsing back and forth over 4+ years because some sets that are still for sale debuted way back in 2006! It would have taken me quite some time to look at all the sets over that 4 year span to figure out which were still current and which minifigs came with which set. I think I may have to get some of the above mentioned magnet sets now to save quite a bit down the road. I feel sorry for parents starting next year whose kids won't have the chance to pick up their favorite characters. It's one thing to include them in a $20-$30 set, quite another to expect a child to be able to acquire a $50-$100 set on their own. I really hope LEGO comes out with more sets like Luke's Landspeeder in the sub $30 range so that kids can actually have the important minifigs they'll need to act out their favorite scenes. For the Clone Wars, I never paid much attention to the Y Wing so it is good to know that it comes with three major characters! I'd love the Death Star, but $400 is much more than we budget for each of our children, and we try to get them a balance of things within that budget. Even a $100 LEGO set is too much unless I can find it on sale like I did this year with the City Police Station which I purchased for 40% off. With a $100+ set, there would be few presents under the tree on Christmas morning.

My son is just getting interested in LEGO Star Wars, and I was considering buying a small set or two for Christmas for him. However, I now see that magnet packs will no longer be an option to acquire minifigs for Star Wars. Since most of these sets are priced so high, I'm curious how much it would cost me (since he can't seem to save his $5/week allowance long enough to buy anything over $20 which most of these sets are) to get him the core characters. So my question is, what combination of sets can I go to a TRU or LEGO store today and buy that will get me the main characters for Ep IV-VI (R2D2, C3PO, Leia, Luke, Obi Wan, Darth, Chewie, Han) in non-environment specific attire (flight suits and Hoth jackets to be avoided). The combination I came up with is the X-Wing, Vader's Tie, and Land speeder for about $105. Is there a better combination that is cheaper? How about for Ep I-III including Clone Wars... not sure who you need beside Obi Wan and Anakin, maybe Ahsoka too? What combination works here? As someone who was just about to take the plunge into LEGO Star Wars, this news about the magnet sets has me reconsidering. My son can afford a $5-7 4" Hasbro Star Wars figure on his allowance, but a $30 LEGO set is not an option. I can't see him keeping an interest until his birthday in September if he doesn't have any of his favorite characters, and unfortunately I already did almost all of the Christmas shopping for him, and his interest in LEGO Star Wars has just popped up in the last month. For now let's keep ebay and bricklink out of the equation, I'd prefer to understand what the price will cost me at retail. Thanks in advance! Hopefully this topic can be used for other parents facing a similar situation in the future.

I haven't bought any LEGO magnet sets yet, but from a parent's perspective, it isn't a matter of buying a magnet set or buying a full set... there are times where I'm looking for a $10-$15 purchase, and times I'm looking for a $30-50 purchase, but those times rarely intersect. I get to the LEGO store about 4-5 times per year when I'm traveling on business. Most of those times I'm looking to spend $10-$15 on LEGO for my children. With usable minifigs, I might consider the LEGO magnets (and did last month on one of these trips, but went for a battlepack instead). With minifigs glued together, magnet sets will not enter into consideration. I think only AFOL would consider spending $30+ on a set just to get a minifig... a parent generally wouldn't, although they may pick one $50 set over another for a birthday or Christmas present due to the included minifigs.

The fire truck is incredible, but what I love even more are all the details. I didn't catch the tire tracks until it was pointed out above, but those are very realistic. The minifig facial expressions, the ice, the reporter, the guy with the stick(?)... this is a great MOC, albeit quite different from most entries in the contest.

In the USA, the only minimum age that is listed for safety reasons is 3 yrs old. Sets will be labeled "not for children under 3 years of age" if there is a choking hazard, but any other minimum age listed has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with developmental milestones and interest levels. So when you see a toy with a '5-8 yrs' or '7-12 yrs' range, it only means that children under the minimum age might not have the physical dexterity or maturity to handle the subject matter, it isn't a saftey issue. The upper ranges aren't unique to LEGO toys, although perhaps LEGO is the only toy with an upper range that is typically collected by adults. As a parent of two children five and under, there are many toys with an upper and lower suggested age for children in this range.

In the US, these are available in TRU stores (but this time of year they sell out almost as fast as they stock them). You can also find them at shop.lego.com and www.toysrus.com

I know you are just coming back to LEGO after some time, so maybe you haven't seen this motorcycle yet: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=7235-2 The body of the bike isn't available in very many colors, only: white, black, orange, and dark purple (very rare and expensive). You might want to take a look at the World Racers Snake Canyon set. For about $10US you can get both this bike and the dirt bike.

This sounds wonderful. I know my kids would love to see this, but unfortunately next weekend doesn't work for us to travel the 600 mile round trip. However, I definitely think our next trip to the Twin Cities will have to be scheduled around one of your open houses!

I noticed on a TRU LEGO coupon I received today that they specifically exclude Series 3 minifigures... so I think these are about to hit at TRU.

Are you referring to Town Plan? You'll see at the link below that it was available in the US until 1 year ago: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=10184-1 I believe it was pretty much exclusive to the LEGO stores, I never saw it anywhere else.

I really wish they made these in greater quantities. I wanted to pick one up for my son, but they were long gone at the LEGO store in Mall of America when I visited there 2 weeks ago and they are also sold out online. They had piles of the City calendars at the LEGO store, and I've seen them at Toys R Us, Target, and local resellers as well. I almost didn't buy the City Calendar this year because it just doesn't impress me all that much, but I got it at such a good deal I couldn't resist. Last year I picked up an older City calendar on ebay, rather than buy the 2009 one which again didn't impress me. And there's the point LEGO misses, by making these in such limited quantities they risk losing a sale if a customer can't find the set or if the customer doesn't like the current calendar. If the quantities were greater, they risk having to warehouse some from year to year, but because the calendar isn't really a calendar (the numbers aren't tied to a day of the week), these can be used year to year and don't 'expire' at the end of the year like a real calendar would.

The NYPD has some 55 foot boats, and is adding new 45 foot boats: I'm not sure what the scale size of this boat is, but I think it's within those lengths. Although I do agree that the LEGO boat looks a bit long in the front.

I too am curious about the plates, are these standard plates or base plates? Probably the two things I like best about this set are the brown bricks and the hinges. The brick buckets come with a lot of red/yellow/blue/white/black/green, but brown bricks aren't as common. I love that the hinges will allow my kids to have easy access to the interior for playing with their minifigs. Comparing this house to the other two listed, I think the Beach House is the winner due to the huge number of windows, and the price at one major US retailer being about the same as the price on this. I was not at all impressed with the Apple Tree House. The smaller plate sizes and the lower quantity of windows for more money than the Beach House was a huge let down. I'd put this set somewhere in the middle, the brown bricks are certainly useful and at least two of the models seem to be readily accessible for play with minifigs.

There is something wrong with this picture, no leaves in the gutters on the house! Great job other than that.

I get to the Mall of America LEGO store about 4-5 times per year. I've only seen grab bags on one of my trips, about a year ago as I recall. At that time the bags seemed to have a lot of pieces from the Winter Toy Shop set.

I'm curious for anyone who has these, if you use a kitchen scale, is there enough weight difference to tell what's in the package? With a sufficiently sensitive scale I would think so, but I've never weighed a package to see if my scale is sensitive enough.

I keep hearing this logic, but kids have parents who browse LEGO forums and blogs and show their kids all of the new stuff that is coming out. So there are plenty of kids excited about the latest wave of minifigs. I'm not an AFOL, I'm a Parent Fan of LEGO (PFOL?). Every LEGO I've bought as an adult is either already in the hands of my kids, or spare parts that will be used to create something for my kids.

A business trip has brought me close to a Lego store this week. I've been contemplating MMV, the Winter Toy Shop, and the Winter Bakery. My children and I have quite a bit of City, because that is what I played with as a child and initially that was what interested my son (the oldest of my two children at 5 years old). Lately my son has shown an interest in the Kingdom sets as well, but only has a few of the knights and no buildings yet. Even as a City collector, MMV has had a certain appeal. The buildings could certainly be in an older section of a Lego Town, and there are lots of great parts like animals and food that City seems to be lacking. Not to mention a Lego City could even have a Renaissance Fair using the entire set. If my son continues to be interested in Kingdom, I think MMV offers as much if not more play value than a Castle for the same price. On the other hand, this is the second year for the Toy Shop, and it could certainly quickly disappear like it did last year. It's a neat little set, and at some level the idea of putting out a small Lego village for the Holidays is more appealing than putting out ceramic buildings like some people do. However, I also have my reservations. As much as I'd like to pull it out only for the Holidays, I can't see a Lego set sitting in a box for 11 months each year. Yet, in my mind it isn't always winter in my Lego City (if it was, I think the surfers and Lifeguards might be a bit chilly in bathing suits). So how much use would these sets get outside of the Holidays? I'm stuck, on the one hand I'd love to buy one or both Winter sets in case this is their last appearance and in case I decide I want a Lego Holiday display... but on the other hand MMV is such a wonderful set that is probably not going to last forever. What would you do? Winter set (or sets), or MMV?

I love it. Your MOCs and MODs are great. In fact, I was first drawn to this site after finding one of your Orange Tow Truck MODs on Brickshelf and then finding out you were active here. I'm curious about something, where do you tend to get most of your pieces? Sometimes I think you've bought a set and are using it for parts, but lately I'm guessing you are ordering from Bricklink or Pick a Brick? The main problem I have is lots of bricks, but not so many plates or the odd bits that always seem to be needed to make an MOC. I've picked up some useful stuff on business trips to a City with a Lego Store (going again next week), but haven't ordered online from either of those yet.