meyerc13

The thing that is interesting to me is that the problem seems to occur most frequently with certain colors and certain parts. I have many cracked white cheese slopes, but I've only found two non-white cheese cracked. One was a Dark Bley (just found this one this week), the other is an orange from a Friends set that broke within hours of the set being assembled (by me). Overall white seems to be a problem color, lots of reports of white cracked pieces. This might be because the cracks are easier to see, but even taking that into consideration I still suspect white cracks more often than other colors. Sand green is another color I've seen reported frequently. If this were strictly environmental, why aren't all parts/colors impacted equally? I work in risk management, working with vulnerabilities and threats. Applying that in this case the vulnerability is in the plastic, the environment might be the threat vector that exploits that vulnerability, but if the plastic wasn't vulnerable the bricks wouldn't be cracking. As for proof of purchase, I'd happily send the cracked bricks back to LEGO, but I couldn't produce proof of purchase for most of what I own. The parts should be proof enough, and broken parts are no good to me. One final thought, for those who say they have no cracked bricks, I wonder if they just haven't found them yet. I didn't know I had cracked bricks until I actively started looking for them. Take light color cheese slopes and put them on a black plate, or dark colored and put them on a white plate. When you do that, it's much easier to spot the crack. Mine all seem to crack right in the middle, starting at the bottom and going up the front slope. You can't really see the crack when you hold the piece in your hand, you can sometimes feel it with your fingernail. If you flex the piece it will separate where it shouldn't. It's only really visible though when you put the piece on a stud, sometimes only when the stud is a contrasting color.

I'm in the process of breaking down quite a few sets to use the parts for MOCs. Just last night I ran into more cracked cheese slopes. Also, my son has been interested in Harry Potter recently, so I dug out a set I had bought for parts, assembled once about a year ago, and then disassembled and stored. I was very disappointed to find one of the minifigs with a cracked torso. Luckily I had extra torsos since every set comes with a Harry Potter, but it's sad that a torso would crack without ever being used - only assembled. It's discouraging to hear that LEGO would start asking for receipts, I don't keep them. I have sets that I bought two years ago for parts and haven't even opened yet... I'm afraid I'm going to find a bunch of cracked parts when I do open them with no recourse.

I took my two kids, they had a fun time building it. As a dad, it's great to see my 5 year old daughter building on her own now without help from dad. She got hers done only a few seconds behind her big brother who's had 2 more years experience building with LEGO. The model has a very retro 70's feel to it. I haven't tried this yet, but as I was watching my kids build I thought to myself that it might be better with a 2x4 white plate on top of the trans slopes and below the 'light bar.' It would definitely help with separating those pieces.

This is very odd. Here's how I'm seeing this playing out in my head. LEGO makes the bigger set for TRU, but Wal Mart or Target gets upset because they want a set with a bus, bike shop, and pizza restaurant. LEGO doesn't have time to design a completely new set, so they decide to re-release this set under a new set number instead. Plausible? I feel sorry for grandmothers everywhere... Little Timmy: "I want the set with the bus and the pizza shop." Grandma "Ah, here it is, $60, perfect." Little Timmy, "Grandma, that's not the set I want, I want the bigger set!!!" Oh well, could this mean that we'll someday soon see a re-release of the LEGO Service station? That's one set and feature that my LEGO City is still missing. Or dare I say it, maybe even Town Plan?

Apparently the image was pulled from the image cache when you do the LEGO survey from the back of the instruction manuals. My guess is that this is going to turn out to be a false alarm - probably a mock-up done for the new Town Square set as a placeholder that accidentally found its way onto that site.

I own Whitecap Bay and Earth Defense HQ, and I'd go with Earth Defense HQ. Whitecap Bay isn't bad, I enjoyed the build (although I hate the exploding building play feature...), but Earth Defense HQ is an incredible set. I didn't think I'd like it, waited to find it on clearance, and then wondered what I was thinking.

If you have a Shopko store nearby, you might check it. They had them on clearance recently, so you might still find some.

I picked this up a couple of weeks go. At first, I wasn't very interested, because many of the models are micro-scale, and I build town scale. However, the price is low enough ($20US) that it was worth buying just because it is a LEGO book. After having it a couple of weeks, I'm satisfied with my purchase. The US version includes two posters, one inside the front cover, one inside the back. That plus the beautiful photographs makes this worth buying at that price.

When I got back into LEGO a few years ago, I found some of the 1978 vintage road plates at a small local store, still with the original $5 price. I bought some, but I foolishly didn't buy all of them (money was tight that day), and the next time I stopped back they were gone. I suspect that someone had been keeping an eye on them, and when they saw some of them had been sold they decided to grab the rest. Oh well... That store still had a 1349 Steven Spielberg Moviemaker set the last time I was there, but at the original $180 price so it isn't selling. They have a mix of other older sets, some Bionicle, Jack Stone, Galidor... a few Creator sets, Space Police III, all sorts of old themes. Now I'm itching to take a trip there again to dig through the aisle of LEGO... every time I leave with some small find.

What an awesome idea! It looks like you've based your plane on the Peril in Peru plane. I don't have that set but wish I did because I love that plane. A local company actually takes old DC-3 planes and rebuilds them, outfitting them for a variety of missions, including smoke jumper delivery! Now you've got me wondering if I have the parts to build one of these in fire department colors... Nice work!

What a fabulous improvement! So far my kids are enjoying the LEGO version, and I honestly didn't notice the size discrepancy until I read your review of the original set. However, I plan to build a western town and fort, and with the original model being so huge I was worried about how this set would look in comparison. With this mod that you've so generously shared, now I have an easy way to mod my stagecoach when I need to. Thanks so much and great work!

What a great mod! I've been thinking of doing exactly this using the same sliding method you used. You've saved me a lot of thinking since I now have a design to try. I'm open to other methods as well, I think there are probably some Technic pieces that could be used somehow, but I don't have a lot of Technic pieces so I'm not as familiar with them. The pieces you used I have and have seen used in some sets for a sliding feature, hence my idea to start with them. Thanks again for not only coming up with this but also for sharing! If I find time to dig out the pieces I'm going to give this a try.

The case distribution for this series is the worst yet. The figures I like the most, being a City fan, are the rarest. I had to search through a whole box to find a Sea Captain and Librarian. I don't know what LEGO is thinking here. The mechanic seems to be one of the big losers of this series, 6 in a case and I must have felt at least 10-12 in the case + leftovers that I was searching through. Somehow in my excitement to find a mostly untouched case (the TRU employees warned me that some guy had searched both of their cases for a Mr. Gold), I forgot that I still need a skydiver, so it looks like I'll have to keep searching to find him plus the extra Sea Captain, Librarian, and Grandpa I'd like to find. With those being so rare, I think they are going to be almost as hard to find as Mr. Gold, and to me they are more valuable (although I wouldn't pay $25 for a Mr. Gold, much less the crazy prices he is going for).

Thanks for the excellent review (as usual!). I think that whoever designed this set really had AFOLs in mind. While the Cavalry soldiers come with 'fleshie' heads, the torso doesn't have any 'flesh' showing that I can see, and the hands are even wearing white gloves, so these can be quickly made into old school yellow headed wild west characters. That kind of design doesn't happen by accident, whoever made this set was thinking of western fans.

I think KielDaMan's right, these sets were designed to go together. Both also use tan window/door frames, which is awesome but not very common in LEGO sets recently. It makes you wonder if they were originally designed as one set, or as two sets with the intention of them going together.

This might get a take down notice from LEGO. I seem to recall that last year the instructions briefly went public before sites took them down, this is a bit of a spoiler for those taking the tour in 2013... but thanks for sharing with those of us who don't fall into that group.

I love the roof, I never would have thought of using those pieces, but it works! This bus gives me a 1980's vibe. Reminds me of the bus I would ride occasionally to school (it wasn't a traditional 'school bus' but rather a 'city transit' bus that ran a special route for several local schools) or on trips around town with my mom (who doesn't drive). Found a picture of it online to show you what I'm talking about: Sheboygan 115 1-1980 mb by mbernero, on Flickr

Wow... this is incredible! Definitely the best MOD of this set I've seen yet. I love the centered entrance, more lobby space, separate projection area, better looking theaters... I could go on all day this is such a great MOD!

There was another thread a few years ago about cracked cheese slopes and other bricks. I remember someone at that time mentioning the camper, and when I checked mine it too had some cracked bricks - all white bricks but of several different pieces. I wonder if LEGO went through a bad batch of white plastic around that time... and I wonder how many other sets from that same era have cracked white pieces that people haven't noticed yet. Edit: Found the old thread: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=53790&st=25 Interesting that it was a 1x1 that cracked on my camper as well. I should pull that model out and see how many of the other white pieces have cracks now.

With the arrival of the new Lone Ranger sets, this MOC is perfectly timed. I'm sure many builders are going to be delving into Western for the first time, so great models like this will inspire many people. Some close-up pictures of the hand pump would be great, every western town should definitely have a fire department. Nicely done!

The cheese slopes I've had crack usually crack right on the top. The first ones I noticed were white ones on the last fire station. Then we had an orange one crack from a Friends set. I've wondered if these are the only ones I've noticed due to the light colors showing the cracks more... I'm almost afraid to look too closely, not sure I want to know how many of my bricks are cracked.

Interesting. My set (purchased at a LEGO store) did not come with the extra hat/bandana. It would seem that some sets slipped out the door before the mistake was caught.

What a nice looking truck. I'm not generally a fan of 6 wide SUVs, but since this has a 'hummer' look about it I think it is perfect. Also, I don't know what it is about the Coast Guard Orange/White/Blue color scheme, but I find it irresistable. I've playing around in LDD myself trying to create some more trucks for the Coast Guard... I like yours so much I may have to add it to my fleet, if I can figure out a way around the lack of that windscreen piece.

Yes, at least at some of them. I picked up the spring set at the Mall of America store last month.

As several people pointed out above, you can buy the instructions for a modest fee, then you just need to start collecting the parts: http://www.brickbuilderspro.com/mercy-general-pdf-instructions/