fred67

A really unnecessary spur, seeing as how SDCC, from what I understand, is typically sold out.

While I did read this when it was posted, I never responded (I think I was on my phone or something, and didn't feel like the hassle of responding that way). So, that 800 brick set looks interesting as filler, at least, but at nearly $50, compared to this actual LEGO set ($30 for 650 parts), it doesn't seem like it's really much of a bargain. If we're talking bulk bricks, generally what people want is like a 1000 pieces of 1x2 in gray (castle building, for example), or a variety of plates (space ship building), etc..

I bought a MB set recently... only the second time I bought non-LEGO, but it was a Call of Duty set with Zombies.... ZOMBIES!!!! And it was half price clearance at Target - the same Target that NEVER does clearance on LEGO.

Like Andy D said, that's very cool of you to make those available. I also am actually moving away from Akro-Mills, and just substantially reorganized my entire collection by color AND parts. I'm using the Stanley "suitcase" style containers so that I can just grab the color I'm interested in and have all the various pieces in that color available. While I'm back on the subject, I was going to take pictures and post what it looks like at present, but it seems nearly impossible to do it efficiently. I mean, what do you do when you have ONE of something? For example, if I have a hundred 1x2 plates in black... but at the moment I only have ONE 1x1. Does it really get it's own bin? That's a ridiculous waste of space! And if I did that, I'd need a half dozen Stanley containers for each major color, two or three for the others. As it is, I generally am trying to sort colors into two containers, one each of the smaller 25 compartment one, and one of the 10 compartment one... although I have been freely mixing and matching the bins, since you can organize them any way you want. I still have a few Akro-Mills left over less common colors, and parts I've decided to keep separate, like vehicle and certain structural parts; things like supports, doors, windows, and I have a whole Akron-Mills just for flora. But if you've made it this far, I'm wondering if anyone else has figured out anything for that problem... when you have a LOT of different color/part combinations, and you only have one or two of some of them... What I've done is crammed them all into the containers with similar elements, keeping them separated by locking baggies. In fact, in my whole reorganization process I'm left over with a couple dozen sterilite shoe-box size and larger containers, and hundreds of locking baggies in 7 different sizes, from minifigure size up to gallon. I have the opposite problem, too... sometimes I have a LOT of a single kind of piece, from buying a k-box or something. I've been using the leftover sterilite boxes for "over flow."

Yes, I'm on steam... but I hardly ever get a chance to play anything, and still just join random Counter Strike Source servers. I'm not a big fan, generally, of online competing, personally, because it's not fun getting schooled by some kid who plays 80 hours a week when I play for a few hours every six months or so.

Since I won't be buying direct from LEGO, double points is meaningless. I suppose at the fixed price of $4 that it doesn't matter where most people buy from, and points are an incentive, but since I can't buy a case from TLG to be sure to get complete sets, I sure as heck am not going to buy 60 of them directly from TLG and pray. My problem is that I believe CMFs to be the highest profit margin items that TLG sells, and they DOUBLED in price in four years... and it's almost all profit. Yes, I believe in capitalism, and hey, it's LEGO, nobody makes us buy it, but that doesn't mean I need to be happy about the price. And honestly... I don't need to hear from Europeans complaining about U.S. prices... you should be complaining your prices are too high, not that ours are too low.

I don't... most 9V users put the motor on the tender. If you're OCD and need the drive to be accurate... well... then it still isn't, quite, using PF motors. Ultimately, I'd be putting PF Train Motors on my trains instead of M or XL anyway.

A detective agency sounds cool, but I think we're missing a whole lot of more generic modulars that a "town" needs before a detective agency. A police department, a hospital... as far as using them for town building, a detective agency would never have even made it to my list.

I pretty much feel the same way... my series 11 (not Simpsons or Movie) figures have been waiting for me to build a display, which I need two series for (if you've seen the CMF display threads, you'll know what I mean). But my interest in CMF at all has wained, and after seeing close up (renderings, anyway), I'm not all that thrilled. I won't go through each one explaining why, but there are very few that I'm interested in for anything besides collecting. I guess it'll be better on my wallet in the long run. And TLG is happy either way... you can buy less, they have to work less for the same profit. Or you can buy more... even better! I think TLG has one of the highest profit margins in the business. I'm glad they're not in financial difficulty anymore, but still... But that's what happened - they got you addicted with $2.00 minifigures, then once you're hooked, like any good crack dealer, they jack up the price!

They were marketed to architects; with all the advances in computer graphics and prefabricated (and/or easy to use) modelling parts for architects, I doubt these will be targeted at them; instead, modulex really caught on in a segment of LEGO enthusiasts; you can go to bricklink right now and find modulex. A lot of LEGO models (I've even seen some modular buildings) were remade by fans in modulex (although not completely accurate, as there is not the variety of pieces). I imagine this new production will actually try to reach as many people as possible. I'm game if the price is right. Like jodawill points out, it's baffling the bricks weren't originally build this way... but I just don't think they foresaw the popularity it would have, or that it would last so long, and it all needed to be compatible. In some ways the current brick ratios are just genius... in some ways, not so much.

It's ironic that you revived this thread, mjp, because I ordered my first set of these only yesterday. Now I'm worried about complaints of part counts... I wasn't going to build a huge coaster, anyway, but the video on the website doesn't look like it has such tight spacing... I think the key to curves is proper banking, which might be very difficult to figure out how much track you need. Anyway: The Roller Coaster Factor page is here.

If you're getting peanuts from me, believe me - it's because I'm recycling them. Feel free to do the same. I have a garbage bag full of them from orders I've received from other people.

I don't know, but if you just do shop.lego.com you should get to the right page, no US or en-US necessary (it should redirect you there automatically). Anyway, glad things are working for you again, even if you don't know what the problem was.

I will jump on the suggestion to use a wanted list, but expand it much further... for example, I have stuff I have in mind that I know I will not get too soon; I stuff I need to "balance" out my parts (for example, if I have one or more of one side of a hinge, or I have a "left" wedge plate and not a "right" wedge plate, I will put that on my "balance" wanted list - a large list of non-urgent wants. So then you build a wanted list for the project you're currently working on - that would be the "urgent" list you're really trying to fill. Then you search by shop on that urgent , and when you find a suitable store, then you can click on the "all the items this store has on my wanted list" link and often get even more. Of course you may want to try one of the programs out there that helps minimize cost, like brickficiency. In your non-urgent lists you should include bricks you generally find useful... I build castle, so I have LBG 1x1 and 1x2, as well as others, as those are my preferred bricks for that. Also a lot of plants for those epic landscapes I will eventually build... So make use of multiple wanted lists... when you click on "by store," you can select your urgent list to narrow it down, and then possibly bulk up those orders with other things you want, just not urgently. EDIT: to answer the other questions, I typically order around $20 or so; I have ordered less than $10, and my highest was around $140.

I disagree... I think so many new users offsets both the increase in vote requirements and time limit (since most projects would more or less be dead within a year anyway, buried by new projects). I think it would be cool if, when submitting the millionth Dr. Who Tardis, the site would inform the user "you know, there's already a million Dr. Who Tardis', maybe you should support one of those instead." Aren't submissions moderated now anyway?

I personally prefer traffic circles (as they're known here) in theory, but in practice I think people are too dumb.

With variants (including Halloween specials), they could do at least another two series without any "clunkers."

Only if you don't value your time. You could pack a box of 2x4s into 4 cups (if I'm not mistaken on the packing "record"), but how long do you need to stand there and put nearly 700 bricks together? All the while I'm being nagged by employees "can I help you?" and obnoxious kids running around, taking out handfuls of parts and just dropping them or putting them back into the wrong bins... I guess $70 to $100 is a huge enough increase that packing cups is more worth it now... that's disappointing. I may get like an hour at the store at any given time... and that's maybe once a month. That's just not enough.

Oh yes... I really like them, actually, in theory... it's just when nobody is on the same page as anybody else, it's just scary.

Really? I have a Brick Owl account and while it looks a lot better than Bricklink, I find it really difficult and awkward to use. After I had my first few BL orders, I realized the way to go was to have an up to date wanted list with less immediate needs on it; that way when I had immediate needs, I could bulk up smaller orders with things on my wanted list, and in general, I could limit my searches to North America. I don't always exclusively buy from N.A., but generally have a lot of smaller orders where shipping will kill you otherwise. You can't limit your searches on BO to a region or country... I even asked in the forum and was completely ignored - not even a "you can't do that." I can't search for all wanted lists at the same time. (EDIT: I guess you can... it just didn't seem obvious to me how to do it... but now that I know, I agree it's better than BL, which limits you to searching for all or one of your wishlists, while BO let's you select which ones) Even building my wanted lists seems awkward. (EDIT: yes and no... I discovered some things are easier than BL, like adding a number of the same item in different colors) I admit (as I often have stated) that BL not only looks like it's from 1996, but operates like it, too... you look at your orders page and there's a bunch of icons next to your order that you don't know what the hell it is until you hover over it... but the fact is that most of the features you want are there. BO looks pretty, but seems more awkward to use, for me. I guess, ultimately, I look around and don't buy much because my wanted lists are so strange (even BL has a hard time giving me good options); few stores on BO have more than a couple of things that would only result in like a $0.50 order. I guess I wish there was something that was like a half BO, half BL. I had hopes for BL, but the new owners wasted no time in doing stuff nobody asked for instead of actually making the site more usable.

W3ird_N3rd's objections not-withstanding, I think this is a great idea. Of course, the technique to do this should be widely known by now, but not many people are great with cutting a splicing, and ending up with a nice, neat cable at the end. The 9V battery offers a lot of flexibility... I would imagine if you're running an RC car or train motor, or operating a crane arm or something, it's probably not for you - but there's a ton of lightweight applications that would make this 10 times better than battery box.

... and Skipper's link apparently no longer works...

Very cool... I've been into hobby train modelling for around 15 years or so (not counting the HO stuff I had as a kid). Trains are the only thing in LEGO I actually "play" with, and as such it was never really important to me that a train be modelled after some specific, actually existing one (unless I was making a layout based on a real place). I love using LEGO to make something completely outside of the ordinary. I can see how this would work great with the Arctic theme set, and I think it looks great.

"but some people...." The key word being "some," but I don't want to discuss it here, it belongs in the "open letter" thread.

Yes... LEGO is expensive, and given the size of minifigures, using a "one stud = <some measurement>" guideline makes making a "real" home very difficult. We see this modulars... the inside of the Grand Emporium would, in real life, be one of the smallest stores you'd probably visit. What's going on here, and in just about every theme, is that to keep sets a reasonable size, TLG and most MOCers use "minifigure illusion scale." That is, you home would look plausibly big enough, perhaps, for you figure... but it would be nowhere near the "right" size. Let's face it, a honest minifigure scale castle, for example, could fill an entire room... and yet they somehow squeeze it into maybe 15x15 inches or so. Even the cars... you want to seat three across, like even a compact car can do in the backseat? Your LEGO car would have to be enormous to do that. I have, but concluded I could make an approximation, but not something accurately scaled with all the rooms.