meyerc13

Here is a wikipedia article outlining the modulars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Modular_Houses They are fairly recent, but a few have been retired already.

I have a problem much like the Modular Meltdown thread, but my problem was created by a busy two year old and not by a shelf failure. My son and I had setup an approximately 4x3 base plate (32 stud) city. My daughter got into it and I now have several storage tubs filled with bricks and pieces of assembled sets. I'm really overwhelmed and don't know where to begin on sorting out and rebuilding this mess. Anyone have any suggestions or experience on how you'd tackle something like that? To give you an idea of what I'm facing, some of the sets are: -7739 Coast Guard Patrol Boat and Tower -7641 City Corner -4996 Beach house -7208 Fire Station -7686 Helicopter Transport -7743 Police Command Center Plus lots of vehicles like the Camper, Dump truck, Front End Loader, Police Cars, Tow Trucks, Fire Trucks, Ambulance, Recycle Truck. Not to mention lots of bricks and plates that were part of various MOC vehicles and buildings. I know there are threads on how to organize and store your bricks, but when you have 10,000+ bricks from ~50 sets intermingled in various degrees, how do you begin to put it all back together? By the way... I know full well that LEGO isn't appropriate for <3 Years old, but my daughter is almost 3 and doesn't put things in her mouth. In contrast, her brother was still putting things in his mouth when he was >4 years old, and from a safety perspective we have had to supervise him around LEGO more than we have had to supervise her, but you'd be amazed how quickly a 2 year old can destroy a LEGO city.

Found these last night at Toys R Us in Appleton WI. The box only had 5 left, but they were all unique bar codes so I grabbed all five. Ended up getting: Lifeguard, Skier, Weight Lifter, Karate Master, and Ringmaster. Out of those, four were among the eight I really wanted. The two I wanted most were the Karate Master (because my son is taking Karate lessons) and the Lifeguard (can never have too many female Lego minifigs). I'd still like to get the Surfer, Popstar, Adventurer, Motorcycle Cop, and maybe the Mariachi and Mime. After the first series, I learned my lesson. You see Lego minifigs you buy them, don't wait because you may never see them again.

I was in MN this week for business, and on Monday, my first night in town, I went to the Mall of America for dinner and a trip to the LEGO store. As I sat down to enjoy my dinner in the food court overlooking the LEGO store, I was shocked to see that the fixtures and merchandise were gone! Only the large displays were still present. Needless to say I was not enjoying my meal, so I hurried down to the first floor hoping to find a sign indicating where the LEGO store had gone. After not finding a sign, I tracked down the Mall Information booth, and was directed to a store at the West entrance to Nickelodeon Universe. Whew... my trip to MN was saved, the pick-a-brick wall was still there. I spoke with an employee who asked if I need help finding anything (answer: "The store, but now I'm good."), and apparently they will be in this temporary location for two months while they undergo a complete remodel. They'll be back bigger and better than ever well before the Christmas shopping season begins. I had the misfortune of showing up the day after they moved, and at the time there was no signage directing shoppers to the new location. For anyone who has been to Mall of America, the odds of stumbling across the new store without direction are slim (it's across an indoor amusement park from the old location). Hopefully they put some signs up since. Mall of America LEGO store, I'll miss you. But I can't wait to see what you look like in two months! If my work doesn't bring me back, I may have to make a personal trip before the holidays.

Update: I should have bought a lottery ticket tonight because it is obviously my lucky day. A few days ago I found a deal on some old GI Joe toys on Craigslist. Tonight I traveled to a nearby City to pick them up, and while there I decided to try a nearby store that I know to stock LEGO, not really expecting to find minifigs but what did I have to lose besides a bit of time and a gallon of gasoline? Unbelievably, they still had LEGO minifigs in stock! And for $2.49! I didn't have my cheat sheet along, so I grabbed six with different bar codes and purchased them (no purchase limits either!). Got out to the car and opened them and found: -Skater -Ninja -Caveman -Magician -Nurse (my favorite!) -Wrestler (the one my son wanted!!) I called my wife and she described the Clown bar code to me, and I went in and found the one that seemed to match and I was able to buy the Clown for my daughter. Thanks to all who offered to give/sell/trade a Clown/Wrestler, but patience paid out. I still think these were too hard to find in the US (in 2 months of searching nearly daily, I have seen these in stock twice, and both times were 30 miles from the large City where I live). I think getting rid of the barcodes will be a huge mistake (if I hadn't used the bar codes, I'd have bought a whole box, instead of the 7 figures I bought tonight). That may be good for LEGO in the short term, but it would mean many parents wouldn't find a single one of these figures and might give up on future waves. I still think LEGO should make another production run of the first wave. I would bet that would make more people happy than it would upset.

As I said earlier, my 4 year old son and 2.5 year old daughter had very specific figures they wanted. I bought each of them a package the one time I saw them and my daughter got the Woodsman and my son got the cowboy. Each of them studied the sheet with the 16 figs and decided on their own the ones they wanted next. For my daughter it was the clown, and for my son the wrestler. My son asked me the other day after again not finding them on a circuit of all the local stores, "Dad, does this mean I won't be getting the wrestler?" My daughter asks me every time "Clown daddy? You get clown?" I posted a message a few days ago on Facebook, and an old classmate posted that her kids have been searching for these too. Other people responded to that with tales of sad kids as well. If you have any question about the number of kids who love LEGO in the USA, think back to November-December where you could barely find a single LEGO set in many of the stores. It was mid to late January before the retailers around here started getting their LEGO inventory back up. In addition to the ones my kids want, it would have been nice to find a nurse and cheerleader for my kids because there are so few female LEGO minifigs and my daughter loves LEGO as much as my son. For me, as an adult, I have no use for minfigs other than playing with them with my kids. I only surf these boards for ideas for things to build for my kids' LEGO City. I'm not even sure if that makes me an AFOL or not, I had LEGO when I was a kid and only got back into it now that my son is old enough to have LEGO City. It rekindled something I loved as a kid, and I've bought some sets for parts to use to build things so that I don't have to take apart my kids' sets for parts. That's about the extent of my interest in LEGO. I thought these minifigs would be great because so often when I take my kids to the store I'll reward them for good behavior by getting them something small for $1-2. For my son, there is always a Matchbox car, but there aren't good toys for a girl for that price range. These at $2 would have been perfect, but that would only be if they always had some in stock. And as TRU and Borders jacked up the price to $3, suddenly these aren't as much of an impulse purchase (to me the price ranges for kids toys break down like this: $1-2, $3-5, $6-10).

How is it that you are the only person in the USA to report seeing these in a Target or Wal Mart? I work about a block away from a Target and a Wal Mart, and have been checking them almost daily, especially on the days I know they get toy shipments, since I first saw a partial case at a nearby Toys R Us in May. I've checked the toy aisle, the collectible card area, and the checkout stands. Nothing. I've asked employees at these stores who I've come to know from collecting GI Joe figures over the past few years, and nothing - never heard of Collectible Lego Mini-figs and certainly never stocked them. There is no place on the shelves for them, and no price tags out. I live with a few miles of two more Wal Marts and one more Target. Nothing at any of these stores. The *ONLY* store within 50 miles of me that has gotten them in has been Toys R Us, and they don't last more than a few hours. Since I can't get there until after work, they are always sold out by the time I get there (my wife used to work there so I know the staff and managers and knew when they were getting shipments, but every time they sold out by 5pm). As I said, back in 2007-2008 I was collecting 25th Anniversary GI Joe figures, and those were hard to find but there were almost always less desirable figures on the shelves and *always* empty peg hooks or shelf space when they sold out. For these, nothing. No sign they ever existed except empty shelf space at Toys R Us and the one time I saw them at a different Toys R Us 25 miles away. Had I known that was my only chance to get a few, I would have bought more than the 5 I did. Now I have two kids who want a wrestler and clown, with no chance of ever getting them one for a reasonable price. If LEGO doesn't make a second production run on Series 1 and 2 they are going to have a lot of parents who might just reconsider putting LEGO under the tree come December. These were marketed to kids too, but with no chance of a kid ever seeing them in the USA there are a lot of kids who are upset. I posted something on my FaceBook Wall and heard from other parents who have never found these. Why market them like trading cards but then not produce enough for a kid to even find a double to trade?

Great work! The level of detail you add is amazing, I'm positive I see a drive shaft running under the frame in one of the pictures. Little things like that while unnecessary certainly add to the realism.

Anywhere besides Toys R Us and Borders carrying these in the US? I've read back over the past few pages, but didn't see any others listed. We don't have a Borders anywhere near us and of the two Toys R Us stores, one had them once, but at the one closest to me I've never seen them. Interesting debate on whether using barcodes is cheating. When I first saw these, I picked up five blindly. Two were for my nephew's birthday, one for each of my kids, and one for me. Got the dummy (for me - my least favorite of the 16, of course), the magician (nephew), the skater (nephew), the woodsman (daughter), and the cowboy (son). I'd love to keep buying them blindly until I complete a set, but to do that I'd actually need to see them more than once. If I ever see them again, you can bet I'm using a cheat sheet because I'm not going to buy 100 (I'd like to give the next guy a chance to get some, and frankly can't afford it) and since I don't know if I'll see them a third time I want to pick up a few that my kids really want (son: wrestler, nurse; daughter: clown, cheerleader). It's a shame the distribution on these is so poor. For my ~5 year old son I can always pick up a Hot Wheels car for $1 when we are at a store, but for my 2.5 year old daughter there isn't a similar $1-2 toy. The great thing about these is both my kids love mini-figs. Shame I can't pick one up on each trip to Target/Wal Mart/Toys R Us because they aren't there to buy. Also an interesting fact, I can go to these same stores and pick up one of the dozens of pig farmers, so clearly these were either produced in much lower quantities or they are a much bigger hit... maybe both. By the way, yes I know these are 3+ year toys due to choking hazards, but my 2.5 year old daughter has never put things in her mouth (unlike her brother who is twice her age and who still puts things in his mouth constantly). So while I do buy them for my daughter who I know well, I would not universally recommend them for children under 3 years old.

My situation is much like yours. I loved LEGO as a child, and now that I am a parent I've started buying LEGO to enjoy with my son (4 yrs) and some day with my daughter (2 yrs). In our playroom, we have a small train table much like yours. I've found that I can fit about 12 LEGO plates on the table, with a small amount of space uncovered. This gets the LEGO off the floor where my 3 dogs would demolish it, but doesn't lend itself to large elaborate layouts. You can fit quite a few buildings onto a table like this, but I suspect large vehicles like trains would be difficult. We even have problems with some of the recent large semi-trucks (7686 Helicopter Transporter and 7743 Police Command Center), which I believe are built on a train base. If you put something that large on such a small table, it blocks the roads and doesn't allow any other vehicles to be driven around. I think the key to using a small space like this is being selective as to which sets you try to add to the layout. My son's main Christmas gift last year was the Police Command Center which he wanted more than any other LEGO set, but it doesn't fit well on the table. I find the new yellow LEGO delivery truck to be very interesting, but I fear we don't have the room for it. I suspect what we will end up doing at some point is moving the LEGO to his bedroom. I haven't thought this through or created any plans yet, but what I envision is running an 18 inch deep shelf around 2-3 walls in the room and having a long rather than deep layout. I've seen train layouts like that, perhaps it would be easier to find space for something like that than to use a traditional table.

I added something similar in my response because I've heard the same thing from local retailers. One carries LEGO, but when I've asked if they can order things that the big box retailers don't carry, like Road Plates, they told me they aren't allowed to order those by LEGO. Last year another set I couldn't buy anywhere was the 7239 Fire Truck. Only Toys R Us carried it, and they were always out of stock (now both Wal Mart and Target have also started to carry it, and between the three they seem to be meeting demand and it can now be found on the shelves). Another store doesn't even carry LEGO, and when I asked the explanation was, as you stated: 1.) Minimum order quantities are too high and there are restrictions (i.e. you can order Set 'A', but you must also order Set 'B'). 2.) The wholesale price is too high to allow them to make any money while still competing with big box retailer prices. 3.) Limitations on what they are allowed to carry. Clearly this wasn't always the case, because a third small toy store near my hometown carried LEGO road plates when I was a child, and in fact I found some vintage road plates there as recently as last year (this store is really out of the way), but now they can't even order the new road plates. The closest LEGO stores are 4-5 hours away from me, which means either I can't buy some of the LEGO sets or I need to order them online and pay shipping (on top of the already high LEGO prices). It's ridiculous that LEGO wouldn't do more to encourage these small retailers, because right now their competition is (all three carry a large selection of Play Mobil now, and only 2 out of 3 carry LEGO, and in those two the LEGO section used to outshine the Play Mobil, but now LEGO has been relegated to a tiny section while Play Mobil takes up a large percentage of the stores' floor space).

Thanks for the great review. I like this truck, and I'll definitely be picking it up. One of the best trends that seems to be showing up quite a bit this year - doors! However, I do have one complaint - I don't really like the boom. Most of the utility bucket trucks I've seen have a boom similar to the fire truck from the station that was just retired. I wish this set was more like that but smaller, with the swivel at the rear of the truck, and two equal length boom sections. This has the same number of joints, but the unequal length of the two sections of the boom just looks odd to me. I wonder if they really make booms like this in real life? Answered my own question, because this looks like it might be the inspiration: It's a Versalift Eurotel.

Thanks for the review. What was LEGO thinking? My son and daughter got some of these in their Happy Meals, and I've never bought any of the LEGO Racers Tiny Turbos because I thought they were all in 3 pieces like this. To be honest, until I read a review of one of the new 2010 sets tonight here on Eurobricks, I didn't reliaze that the LEGO Racers were a source for usable LEGO parts (my son collects LEGO City). In my case, at least, LEGO lost a customer by giving out these sets, whereas if they had included actual LEGO pieces in the Happy Meals I would have probably bought quite a few of these sets already.

Does anyone besides me wonder if the TRU truck might actually be a Toys R Us Semi truck done in LEGO? It seems redundant to say TRU Truck (TRU Exclusive). Why not say "Truck (TRU Exclusive)"? Unless of course it is actually a TRU truck, *and* exclusive to TRU.

It looks like the Taxi is pictured on the box on the left side of the picture, toward the back. Not sure what else that is in the set.

I found this set at a Wal Mart in Oshkosh WI this weekend for $12.99. So it appears to be a case of TRU pricing at higher than MSRP.

That looks great, much improved!

I really like that last one. In the picture on the left, it may just be the camera flash but above the third axle the white is really standing out. Perhaps extend the grey back a bit more? Other than that I'm really liking this version.

I love this creation. I live a few miles from the Pierce factory where they produce their fire trucks, and I actually thought your van looked like one of their heavy duty walk-in Rescue trucks, moreso than a van. Either way, great job and I think every LEGO fire department should have one.

I happen to know that my 4 year old son is getting a second tow truck for Christmas. My plan was to convert one into a flatbed, so I'm excited to see your version because I found your other mod of this set a few weeks ago while I was searching for ideas and really loved it. I like the method you've used to make the bed slide down. I too wonder if a flat plate might work better than the ramps. When the bed is at an incline, the angle of the ramps is too steep and the gap between the towed car's wheels and the bed is larger than I think it would be with a plate. Also, is there any way to lower the ramp on the chasis? Most of the real life flatbeds I've seen have fenders in the front, but not in the back. (Similar to the flatbed that comes with the 7898 Cargo Train). If you remove the rear fenders, would that free up room to drop the bed a bit? Overall I really like your version, and can't wait for my son to get his second tow truck next week so that I can take a shot at modifying one into a flatbed.

I saw this post last night and liked the looks of this set, so I had to sign up here today to tell you that I saw this set at a Toys R Us store tonight here in Wisconsin. I was very excited to find it. They also had another small set like this, sorry, didn't get the number, but it had pieces to put together one car, a building facade w/ door and window, and two min-figs (man and a woman). These two new little sets seem like a much better value than the fire truck set from last year, which was a great little set, but these are better! I'm sure my 4 year old will love these sets when he gets them next month in his stocking.