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er, sorry about that... I have that stupid tendency of mixing that number with Mt Everst's Height, I don't really know why, seeing that theydon't have much to do whith each other... :-D

I sure could enjoy THAT company :-D I may even try to rebuild that other model once or twice a day... :-P but considering the style of the picture, I don't think she looks the same nowadays... Just a thought... :-P Well, I haven't tried to adapt them on anything yet, but I'm thinking about motorizing my 8848 model (It's that huge black technic car)...

Hi, I thought I'd do a review of an old set : 8475 RC Race Buggy. In fact, I fell upon it completely by chance not long after reading KimT's review of the Outdoor Challenger, and I was considering buying that one when I read that it wasn't actually compatible with standard LEGO... And then I found this littel baby on eBay for barely a third of the reatil price, so I jumped on the occasion. The great thing about it being that the motors and everything can be put to use on anything LEGO (providing there's enough room to put the RC unit, though...) First, the box : It's HUGE, and quite unnnecessarily so, but I guess that's my ecological upbringing cringing at the waste of material... I suppose, since it's a toy, the bigger the box, the happier the kid who recieves it... But still... As you can see, the box could have been cut in half and still contain enough room to store everything... And I'M running out of room to store all those giant boxes... There's also pic of the second model on the bottom of the box, a small F1 type car. The manual : It was clear enough to follow. And it had some funny features, like a comic on the first two pages. That comic was rather weird, actually, because it tells a story about a race between this buggy and another green car which if I remember well has only a 'pull-back' motor. But it's the green car that wins the race! Because the driver of the buggy is two scared to jump over a cleft or something... I'd have thought that TLC would rather want to confort people qho got his in telling them � YES, YOU GOT YOUR HAND ON THE BEST CAR THERE IS! �, instead of saying some kind of � boo, you'll lose! � lol Anyway... The build was clear enough. It was done in two part, the first being the main body of the motors and wheels, to calibrate the thing correctly so that it goes straight, and then the second part consists of putting on the chassis and all the elements to make the car look good. There were some nice little details in it, like the brake disks on the back wheels... They're not actually used, of course (hey, there're no brake to speak of :-P ) but it still nice. The main feature of this set is of course the RC parts. The RC unit has two connectors, one red, the main one, and a secondary grey one, and has the basic shape of the back of an F1 car. This set comes with two motors. The grey little circle where we can put an axle controls the steering. It turns one way or the other with the analog stick on the remote. The second part is the steering mechanism. it connects to the main unit by a small 2 studs long axle between the two. The nice thing here, is that there's a connector on both end of the piece, so if you have more than one, you can put them in a row... To make a 6-wheel car with four of them steering... Finally, there's the remote control. The two trigger on the back controls the feed of the secondary connector on the main unit (the grey one), which is not used here. While the analog sticks controls the main one (the red one).on the red one, the more you push the stick, the faster it goes. The grey one isn't analog. It's just on/off, one way for the right trigger and the other way for the left one... The only missing thing about the manual, is something that actually tells you that. Since the grey connector isn't used, I didn't quite know what the triggers were for or how you used the secondary connector... I had to do a bit of testing to find out on my own... Finally, some pics of the finished monster. It was really fun to build and as always, with RC car, it's always a pleasure to drive it around (all the more so here because of the LEGO part of it :-P). BUT, it's a real pain to pull apart. After I built the main model, I tried to do the other one, and pulling away all those technic pins literally wore my fingers to the bone... I was all bloodied after that... And the other model is just plain boring... There's nothing on it, really, just the main unit, the two motors and the steering mechanism... and a few pieces to hold it togther obviously, but still... It really wasn't worth the effort... and the injuries. Lol here are the pieces needed to buid the other model. All in all, I think it's a great set, and if it isn't as fast as the Outdoor Challenger, the fact that it's compatible with Standard LEGO makes way more than up for it... Now I'm gonna have to find one more to try and make a 4wheel drive... And those four steering wheels I've just thought of earlier... Overall : 8/10 (I'd have put a 9 if that box wasn't so uselessly big :-P)

well, in my UCS Y-Wing, everything was bley ecxept for all the 1x2 grid tiles which were in old grey... But I don't really mind, sice it's supposed to be a battered ship full of different mod made by the alliance, so it adds a bit of "trueness" to the colors of the greeble... X-D but there are other color changes that do annoy me, on the other hand... Like in the CTT, they changed all the 1x2 translucent blue grids with sand blue ones... which is rather useless, considering that in most cases, thoses grids were supposed to represent the light from the engines (on the bark speeder, for instance...)

WHAT??! is the republic cruiser a TRU exclusive, too??! damn! there isn't any TRU in Belgium either... (at least not that I'm aware of...) pfff... well, I guess I'll have to pass on that one as well, then... :'-( Criven! (as a wee red-haired blue guy woud say it more expressively)... *n* *n* *n* *n*

Well, you can't really blame TLC for having so many different types of TIE... ;-) They're not the ones who invented them...

I may be wrong there, since I haven't really played it but I think the Tie crawler is a playable unit in the Empire at War video game as well... But it's still an obscure ship from the EU... I mean, there are a lot more famous one to pick from... But still, it's a nice thing they go EU, that means we'll have some really new ships soon instead of redesigns (but don't get me wrong, redesign is good, too... most of the time... no, I'm not thinking about that third snowspeeder... well, I'm trying anyway...)

what the heck did they do to that snowspeeder???! There was nothing wrong with the previous version!! it was great... even better than that! This one is just one huuuuge giant leap backward... and I even think it fell over the edge doing so... I mean look at those cannons... they're full of gaps everywhere... nothing connects where it shoud! *sing* and all stickers? yuurk :-X look at that : there's a hole between the piston thing and the front of the cannon and it's not even leveled with it either... The only good thing I see is the way the cockpit opens... Even the probe droid doesn't look like much... :'-( pfff... I'm definitely not getting that one... oh well, all the more money I can put in the republic cruiser, then *y*

I know I'm just throwing a little pebble on the stack here, but I just read an interview about the new Clone Wars CG serie and there's a part in it that kind of confirms the idea some of us have about George Lucas and what he thinks of the EU... here's the whole article : LINK

Well, I'm not sure about that... I mean, nowadays, in cinema and things like that we get really accustomed to seeing people die on screen and having a huge freeze of the picture for the event followed by a looong slow motion of the guy falling down intercut by small shots of everyone around him watching in shock and despair etc... and that gives you far too much time to actually realise and accept the fact that the guy is dead before he even touches the ground. And in the end, I think it just kills off any emotion the scene might have had otherwise. Whereas in the way Rowling did it, you can really identify with the people around the dead, not quite believing what they are seeing because it went too fast (after all, if you think about it, in war, a guy takes a bullet, falls on the ground and that's it; he's dead.... The whole thing can't take more than a second). That way, even you doubt what you are reading too and get to feel that emotion of a loss slowly creeping up in your mind. I thought it was cleverly done, whether she intended it that way or not...

Actually, this is my least favourite big model... It's way too flat and looks more like a cockroach than anything else... I only got it because I found it on sale for

You know what? That Dragon is really really impressive, but somhow, everytime I look at that diorama, I can't help thinking "What an amazing TREE he's done!!" I just love that tree... I tried to build one a while ago, but it's just plain c**p... And that huge Dragon is Incredible! But I tend to agree with Mr Mandalorian and think that the tail is a bit too long, though...

Hey I didn't realise this before, but what happened to Greyback? the last we hear of him is when Trelawney throws a crystal balls at him... But I doubt that would have killed him... Actually, I don't think Snape knew he wasn't the master of the Elder Wand, seeing that he didn't know anything about it, he only learned about it from Voldemort who told him that since it was Snape that killed Dumbledore, he must be the master... And considering the way Snape really wanted to leave as quickly as possible, I think he believed it too... For Wormstail's death, I quite agree... But it isn't the only death that comes more like a dispatching of an annoying character for the building of the story... I think about Moody. And Hedwig, too...

SPOILER!!! I still have a problem with the invisibility cloak... Is it a deathly hallow? because they say that the one from the Hallows is supposed to be completely foolproof and protects from every curse or spell... But in book 4, Mad eye moody sees harry with his weird eye and in book 6 Dumbledore paralyses Harry at the top of the tower :-/ ... And I didn't like the end... Too many thongs are left unsaid before she jumps to that nice but rather useless epilogue... I mean, where does Harry live? whet job does he have? is he an auror? because he didn't finish his last year... And who raise Teddy Lupin??? since in the epilogue Harry says he doesn't live with them???! and who is Cousin Victoire... and so on...

While I completely agree with your general point, I HAVE to go up against that particular comparison : Peter Jackson couldn't possibly mess up the consistency of the LotR universe, since it isn't his. When Tolkien wrote that story, it was already a small chapter in his whole History of Middle Earth which he spent decades tweeking up to have one huge saga spanning thousands of years and never contradicting itself (and even with such material, PJ still managed to mess a few things up because he didn't like them in the book, but still...). Whereas Star Wars is from the imagination of Georges Lucas from the start... But I still think he could have had a bit more respect for what he authorised, instead of just ruining a huge part of the EU... but whan you come to think of it, it'll only annoy those of us who actually go into EU material; those who love the films but have only seen that part of SW won't have that much to complain, nothing really conters something else... Like Leia could have been talking about Bail's late wife; when she and Luke made out, they didn't know they were siblings, etc... (by the way, have you noticed how unlucky Christopher Lee is? In both saga, he dies uselessly at the beginning of the third film... :-P )

Well, they come back after the empire as well, since Boba Fett rebuild the clan sometimes between the rise of the new republic and the yuuzhan vong invasion.

Now THAT is really bad luck... I hope you'll be able to post a review soon, though... I can't wait to get my hands on that little baby but since I live in Belgium it may get hard to find one... :'-(

Well definitely not, since they have a whole bunch of deities and gods for everything ... besides, the Force isn't a god. the difference here is that the yasalamari uses the force to create its little bubble. The Yuuzhan Vong are just not in it... It's like they're not there... (hum, yes, I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to SW lore... :-P )

YUUZHAN VONG!!!! They're the best. After all, they're the only living beings that are outside the Force... And on top of that, they actually come from another galaxy... *sweet* And I love this idea of living technology, it leads to so many great things...

Yaaaaay! another Farscape fan!! they're becoming hard to come by, lately... Ben Browder is one of the best actors I can think of... Too bad his performance in Stargate doesn't come anywhere close to what he did in Farscape. It might have raised the level of that serie a little. Though by the time he came on board, I think it already had gone on for waaaaay too long (10 years! come on!). I mean ok, the first seasons were ok, but I definitely lost interest with Anubis (I don't know why, he kind of reminded me of someone... Dark robe with deep hood, who wants to dominate the galaxy by force and uses highly powerful space weapons capable of destroying whole planets... weapons that a small starfighter flying in low can destroy by dropping a bomb in a shaft... Now, where on earth might I have seen that already??? :-P ) Another Sci-Fi Show that I love probably as much as Farscape is Firefly. Unfortunately, it had an even shorter life than Farscape, seeing that it was cancelled after the very first season...

nice find Though none of it appeals to me... :'-( oh well, at least I'll be able to compensate for all the expenses of this year (mmmmh, I just LOVE that MTT... and there's still that republic cruiser to come... :-| ) Did they drop the Batman line?

Well, honestly, I've always thought that doll and poll were pronounced the same way... 8-

Mmmm... nope... I don't like it much... I love the previous version and I think this one is a bit of a step backward design-wise... Well, ok, it walks (though I'm curious how THAT will look...) I'll definitely pass that one.

Well, now I have a friend who lives just downstairs... Unfortunately, summer holidays just started, so I won't see him untill september when school starts again... Oh well, I guess we can't have everything...

If I may... As far as I can remember (which only goes back in the late 80s-early 90s, I admit), they have always used STAMP, the point being that they couldn't make one printed piece for it, since the sticker applies on more than one. Or they would have had to create a new big piece just for that purpose (which then would have ended in the B2P category :-| ). The first model I can recall coming across was a police station with a police sticker applied on the side of two pieces (4865) of the helicopter. And I have foggy memories of some earlier instances but I can't quite put my finger on them so I won't risk making them up... (but don't get me wrong here, I definitely don't like stickers that are applied on a single piece. Once I thoutght that if it lowers the general price, why not, but since it doesn't even do that, it really is completely useless. But STAMP are anavoidable in some circumstances...)