fred67

Nice... thank you. I rarely get to set up my train layout, so it would be some time before testing, so I appreciate your test (although I suspected the track would work great anyway).

I haven't seen it on the website, but my local LEGO Store had them. I picked up the King's Carriage and the Mill; not too interested in the prison escape (just having the facade seems so cheap).

It is... I picked up this set, I thought it was pretty neat, personally. I wasn't even going to give a second look at this theme until I saw the command center review (or whatever it's called), and it struck me that this theme has elements of a lot of great classic movies - War of the Worlds, Alien(s, ^3), Independence Day, and Mars Attacks, all in one theme. I don't think I'll be picking up any more because I really can't afford a new theme, but it had enough classic "camp" to make me one to get at least one for fun. I added an extra character in the pod so that I could have the guy with the alien on his head outside on display.

If you're referring to mine, yes, it's one cup... I normally don't have the patience for that much, especially since I get there right after the store opens when I go on Saturdays... and it's nice and quiet for about 20 to 30 minutes, then it's a zoo. I'm very patient with my kids, but when it's a bunch of unrestrained monkeys with no discipline I get annoyed (no, I'm not implying all kids but mine are like that, but enough to drive me nuts).

Yeah... no need to complicate it. The BBCode links back to your flickr stream, too, which is nice.... just cut and paste into your post.

PAB 2011-05-07 by FredJH, on Flickr 32 brick red 2x4 bricks 16 white hinge assembly 195 medium blue 1x2 bricks 4 technic turntables 15 black scorpions 95 dbg clips 105 white lamp holders 35 plants ----------------------- 497 items total The most remarkable pick-a-brick item I've ever seen: technic turntables! LEGO Education sells these 2 for $12!

See my latest post.

Moreover, although I ordered Tantive IV backordered and will ship May 22... I just got a shipping email.

Agree... haven't commented in the other thread about it; I didn't think it was so bad. Now I think it's beautiful.

I got notice that my ARF was shipped even though I ordered a backordered item. Glad I caught a rep on a good day.

I sounded to me like he was asking about displaying, not storage and sorting.... although it seems like there should be another perma-thread about displaying.

01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00101100 0101000 01000011 01100001 01110000 011101000 00101110 I have no life.

Nice review... I will probably get this, but until I do I know I'll be making one of those grills... I love the review's focus on it, it's one of those really cool "Easter Egg" type things when you look at it. EDIT: BTW, the dial would probably be a thermometer... my grill has one.

˙ƃuıuǝddɐɥ pǝʇɹɐʇs sıɥʇ puɐ 'uʍop ǝpısdn pɹɐoqʎǝʞ ʎɯ pǝuɹnʇ ı :ʇıpǝ

Some of it looked at first glance like it could be LEGO track system.... but beyond that first glance, no, not LEGO at all.

Well, to make a long post short, the "dirty little secret" about TLG (it's not really a secret, and it's not really dirty, actually), is that they have a target profit margin. In fact, while we're belittling "big oil" for their profits, their profit margins are, based on my simple analysis and things I've read about TLG profits, less than half of what TLG's profit margins are. That doesn't mean I don't like TLG... I love TLG! But I don't see them doing me any favors by making it cheaper and easier for me to obtain large volumes of bricks that I'd be spending a lot more on otherwise. I would also throw out there that their strategy of limited production with high profit margins (as opposed to saturating the market with bulk bricks and making up profits from lower margins by higher volume) has helped them sail through a global recession pretty much unscathed. In their approach, if sales slow, they are still making good profits. With lower margins and high volume, if sales slow, they could lose a lot of money. I don't belittle them their strategy, but I acknowledge it sucks for us. It's one of those things where, if they sold it, I'd buy it - I'd sign a petition for it, I'd prepay for it... I just don't see it happening in any significant kind of way. They also rely on the fact that AFOLs and bricklink stores are buying complete sets just for a few pieces. If they haven't enumerated this as one of their income streams yet, they are just turning a blind eye and pretending it's not happening so they can take the high road when claiming their market is not AFOLs. I don't think they'd want to damage that revenue stream by making it easier for us to buy just what we want (same reason they won't stop selling CMFs blind).

"It is a mixed lot and has been sorted and is Lego not Megablocks." Someone should tell him, then, it's NOT all LEGO (assuming he's honest and didn't already know, which seems more and more doubtful on Ebay).

I haven't tested it out yet; I opened one pack (of doubles); the fit is indeed quite tight, which is good, I think. I realized right off I'd be supplying my own plates, and had already ordered a few (but not enough... brown is hard to come by in quantity at good prices). The only downside is those adhesive strips... I'm hoping the trains function well without them. If I ever do get a permanent layout then it's not a problem, but as of now I have not done my own conductivity test. I'll almost certainly be buying more of these... a lot more... in the future.

Long story short... I ordered a backordered Tantive IV and so wasn't given the option to get an ARF. An email whine later and they are sending me one (although not a poster). Very nice of them.

Well... TLG is a capitalistic, profit driven company. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it does mean that they are going to do what they believe is most profitable. So would your way be more profitable to TLG? As it is right now, you have no choice if you want LEGO... sure, there are compatible clone bricks, but they really aren't comparable, so TLG has an effective monopoly. Even if you disagree, there are no clone brands offering what you want (AFAIK), so TLG has no incentive. I would point out two interesting things about this suggestion: 1. They used to sell items this way... see this category on BL as an example; you could buy boxes of specific colors. 1996 was the last year I see they released packs of single color bricks... This is when the company was on the downhill slide, so they may be gun-shy about sets like these. If you sort by year/descending, you will see it's been a long time. More recently you've been able to get other building elements... roof tiles (I've NEVER, to date, actually seen these available, though), and building plates in single colors (another BL link). I managed to get a couple of light and dark gray ones around six years ago. I didn't even know they released a set of black ones in 2009... I'll have to check it out. However, the are not selling the interesting building colors, and they are not selling bricks this way. 2. No other companies do this, AFAIK. Even if it's MB... they had an interesting castle/stone brick.... I'd be all over that if I could buy it in bulk, but even they didn't offer that in bulk (again, AFAIK). In other words, even if there's competition, there's no competition to make TLG want to sell bricks that way again, least of all in the interesting colors. But to add to your "wish," granting that this is just more of a "wish list" (although I don't want this to get off topic), I would love for LEGO to produce such bricks, from 1x1 to 2x4... but then they'd be the ones copying MB!!! So this will, sadly, never happen even if they knew it to be a good idea.

Nice one, hoeij, it looks quite good to me.

Very nicely done... the cars are excellent, and it's very interesting work on the bogeys, there... ditto for the choice of wheels for the tender.

Ooohhhhh...... Already had a couple of old images of those.... yes, I got gray; the only thing I couldn't bring myself to do was the gray roof tiles, which were like $1.50/each in quantity (and you need 32 for each car... now $2.50/each in North America as I write this). I've built three of these so far, so I have two left. I probably have the pieces to do one entirely, but I'm still slowly collecting clear macaronis for the observation car... every so often a shop I'm buying from will have one. I did have an alternate roof in gray: It was one tile higher. It looked OK, but I saw the black roof pieces for cheap, and it looks good enough for me... these are the kinds of concessions when you just want a nice discontinued set, but the price is just out of whack.

I ordered it when the status was "backordered," so I can ask but I'm not expecting anything. However, if you ordered when it was available then you have a valid complaint if they don't send it.

It's packed away right now (obivously... built them last October for Christmas, and now packed away), but I'll take them out and see if I can't upload some pictures. The only really notable differences are the presents (mine are better, I think). We're talking about 10173, right? Released on 2006? All black trucks/wheels, according to BL; I used the inventory on BL to create a wanted list and then removed everything I already had, piece by piece... there's very little gray. I don't worry about printed instructions when you can get PDFs right from LEGO.com (10016 is there... so is 10173). It doesn't matter to me there's not set of instructions in my big box full of instructions that I've saved... they're saved on my computer.