meyerc13

This raises an interesting question, are the instructions for the advent calendar documented anywhere officially? They are some great mini-builds, but keeping the boxes around for the instructions takes up a lot of space.

I have both sets, as well as every Friends set released. Creator sets are nice for several reasons. First, it's like getting three sets in one. Often you'll see people say they love the first model so much that they don't want to take it apart to build the others. I think that's definitely true, and if I had unlimited funds I'd never take apart my Creator sets, but I don't so I do. Another thing is that they are great parts packs. I bought some of my first Creator houses to get more doors and windows. I still look at them mostly as parts packs, but the models are so much fun to build it's hard to part them out. You don't usually get a lot of exotic pieces, but if you want plates, bricks, slopes, you'll find them. Friends on the other hand are very different sets. You don't get as many pieces for your dollar (insert local currency here), but the pieces you do get are more unusual and interesting. If you want more pastel colors you'll definitely find them in Friends. Likewise if you want minifig accessories, unusual doors and windows, etc. As you note, they also have very different designs. LEGO Creator tends toward closed back sets, whereas Friends has open sets often with no roof. I have kids as home, so Friends and City sets work better for them than Creator, but you can modify the Creator designs if you want to have them be more open. It's a tough call, both are really great lines, but for very different reasons. Since you got these at a good price, I'd keep them. If you want to try Friends, look for the Cafe, in my opinion the best set so far (but they are all great, so not by much). Last week it could be found for about 33% off, so you might be able to pick it up for about $20USD if you keep an eye out.

This is an interesting discussion. Can most people in Denmark name OKC? Is he as well known as Steve Jobs or Henry Ford would be here in the US?

Awesome looking truck. The only thing I see in common with the Toy Story truck is the color, but obviously both you and LEGO had the same company in mind when choosing that color. This reminds me of the garbage trucks that my home town was using when I grew up (now we have the auto-loading trucks). I think you've captured the look better than LEGO's recent garbage trucks. It looks so real that I had a flashback to the smell, sights (dripping liquids) and other nastiness that followed those trucks around town - and I mean that in a good way. I just had another memory flash into my head, during snow storms they even fitted these with snow plows and used them to supplement their plowing fleet. Thanks for the trip down memory lane - well, at least thanks for the good memories but maybe not for the smell and dripping nasty liquids.

They have shown up at a TRU in Canada, which means they are likely to start trickling in to TRU stores everywhere over the next few weeks, which is fairly typical.

You just pay $1. Target sets aside a copy of the game for every one of these that they've sold. After a week, any that aren't picked up are available to the general public. I suspect that for the first week, this game will be very hard to find at Target if you wen't lucky enough to get one of these pre-order cards. After the first week there should be plenty on the shelves at Target.

That's the one. Not surpising it is hard to make out in the photo, I have the book in my hand and it is tought to make out. It appears to be RK60009.

Over on the Brickset forum, Ma1234 noticed that the new LEGO Club Magazine has what might be a drawing of the elusive set 60009 on page 24 (of the US version at least). On the yellow pickup truck, the license plate has 60009. The drawing also shows a boarded up building, a boat, and a helicopter using the nose piece used for several recent choppers. Looks like it could be an interesting set if that is what it includes.

I think this is a fairly common policy at Children's Museums across the country. No children without adults, and no adults without children.

From what I've read, these monobrand stores are licensed by LEGO with an exclusive right to sell LEGO in a particular country using the design and fixtures that you would find in an official, company-owned store. This seems very similar to a franchise agreement that you would see in fast food, but perhaps with a bit of exclusivity added in so that whoever invests enough to open the first store in a country won't have to worry about LEGO allowing competitors to also open a competing store in the same country. I think of all purposes these are official, although not owned by LEGO but rather their franchisee.

I had the same reaction when I spotted those windows. :-)

Earlier this year someone posted about a LEGO store in Guatemala: http://www.eurobrick...pic=72004 LEGO refers to these as monobrand stores.

One of the recent issues of BrickJournal had instructions to make a vintage Bat Mobile as I recall. I don't have it handy, but I think it was the August/September Super hero issue.

Isn't Pick-a-brick great?!? Be careful, it starts with one cup, and before you know it you've bought dozens and dozens. I'm afraid to count how many small and large cups I have around the house, and since I've used many of them more than once... If I do count I better not do it while my wife is around. It's interesting to see the pieces you selected. Some of those I haven't seen yet (and I've visited 4 different LEGO stores this year, but only get to two regularly). Others are regulars on the wall. As you visit more often, you'll get a sense of which pieces are rare, and when you see them you'll stock up. The Medium Blue and Dark Red bricks you found are great examples. The one time I saw those I bought a whole bunch of each. I've also bought a lot of brown and gray bricks from the wall, since those aren't very common in the brick boxes. I tend to stay way from the common colors (Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, White) because I can always pick up one of the basic brick boxes if I want more of those. It's definitely fun, and I love reading about other people's discoveries here because the closest stores are 2-5 hours away so I only get there every couple of months. LEGO always runs a promo in November-December where you can get a pick-a-brick box with a minimum purchase (I think it's $75). You can't fill the box until after the holidays, but the boxes are a great way to get basic 1x and 2x bricks. You can stack a lot in the box, I seem to recall that the box is 11 studs square. Last time I stocked up on Gray, Orange, and Brown bricks with my box. This year I'm hoping to earn a few boxes.

I believe it is a window from the LEGO train subtheme.

I think that's a pretty good guess. I'll throw another one out there, it looks like the new City Fire Station also has a tool chest, so this might be in that set as well.

I know LEGO reads these threads, so I thought I'd share my thoughts. As others have pointed out, kids love trains which is why Thomas and Chuggington are so incredibly popular. My daughter would really love a LEGO train, but they are just so expensive that we haven't made the leap into LEGO trains yet. At well over $100US, they are in the 'big present' category - and we're talking 1-2 of those per year, per kid. Which puts them in competition with all of the other themes, and while we would love LEGO trains they aren't going to beat out the Friends Riding Camp or the Millenium Falcon with my daughter and son respectively. So the closest we've come to LEGO trains are the Public Transport Station and The Mine. Contrast that with the sub $50 sets, and there are far more opportunities for the kids to get one of those throughout the year. We've got multiples of almost all of the City Great Vehicles, and many of the sub $50 City, Ninjago, Star Wars, Friends, etc. sets. I really wish that LEGO sold individual engines and rolling stock so that we could build our railroad slowly. I know that LEGO may have done this in the past, but I think LEGO is at an all time high in popularity right now, as are trains with kids. Kids have Chuggington, Thomas, Geotrax, and countless other trains to play with, and parents snap them up at the $20 mark. And sales of the smaller items drives sales of the big $100 plus items. I think LEGO could learn something from this model and I suspect sales would be better than predicted. One more thing, more US designs would be greatly appreciated. The Maersk is great, but why not an Amtrak, Chicago El, New York Subway, or one of the commuter lines like the Chicago Metra? My kids would love to see engines sporting familiar logos like the Union Pacific badge.

There sure are a lot of helicopters this year, for a minute I thought you were talking about the big one, but now realized you are talking about the smaller one. Looking at that picture, I don't like it. The bubble cockpit used in recent years is closer in shape to a Bell 47 (MASH helicopter), an MD500 (Civilian version of the Little Bird), or even something like the newer Robinson models that are popular due to their low cost. The thing they all have in common is a rounded front end, not the angles that the new LEGO models seem to have. Does anyone know of a real world helicopter with such sharp angles (outside of a military Apache)?

I think the reason they didn't have a house with a family is that they didn't want to scare the kids. I'll definitely be picking up the two new police sets. The swat team look is awesome, I'm a sucker for the exclusive minifig, and the museum is a good start on one for my LEGO City. As for the fire sets, I'll probably stick with the smaller sets since I already have three LEGO fire stations. I really like the new Fire Cheif's car, it is a great new design. The firebike is also interesting, I may buy that just to have another color of motorcyle in my LEGO City. The stand-alone engine set will be a great parts pack if nothing else. The house on fire is an interesting concept so I'll probably pick it up and tear apart the fire truck for parts. The boat looks great, that's a keeper. The helicopter is a maybe. The station... only if it's on sale for 40-50% off. I like the chief and dalmation, but can't justify buying another fire station just for them.

Actually, I bet a lot of LEGO Fire fans will actually like the new uniforms and new helmets. I've seen some elaborate departments created where certain colored helmets mean a certain thing. Now we have a nice supply of the dark red, and more gold helmets to go with the more recent white and silver helmets, I bet a lot of fans love what you hate.

Nicely done. I like how you've incorporated the Pizza Shop and Bike shop, plus you have so many little details that really add to it such as the refrigerated display case and what I assume is a calzone in the pizza shop, the fridge and freezer in the apartment, even the upstairs hallway on the top floor.

Shopko has terrible LEGO prices, the mark-up is much worse than TRU. Example - Collectible Minifigs for $6. Their sales will bring the price down around MSRP or slightly below at times, but that's about it. With all of that said, I've found some incredible LEGO clearance deals at Shopko. 50%-75% off MSRP are possible, but you need to be diligent. They won't drop it all at once, like Target they make several cuts in price. So it's worth keeping an eye on their LEGO aisle.

Yikes. Hope you're okay. Cars can be fixed, and if you are going to have an expensive toy or model in your backseat during an accident, LEGO is probably the best choice since whatever comes apart can be fixed and actual broken pieces are quite rare. I'll bet that's one test that LEGO doesn't use to test their bricks during QA.

The new version looks great! It's hard to believe a few small changes can make such a difference, but they definitely did.

When you complain, they'll apologize profusely and send you new stickers, but I've had this happen several times now. Sometimes the stickers can be flattened and used, but other times they are badly mangled as in your photo and that isn't going to work. In one case I used the stickers, only to have them start peeling up later in the direction the sheet had been folded. For those of us who know we can complain and get new stickers, this isn't a big deal. But how many parents don't know that and are turned of of LEGO when something like this happens? Seriously LEGO, dip into your record profits and get this problem fixed, at least for all sets that have stickers.