Grrr

We lack shot up buildings .

Those who were talking about reducing the number of distinct pieces in a set are completely right. This is also taken to a higher level with some sets, particularly Creator, Technic and 1xxxx sets. You will notice when you pull out the little baggies that there are often many bags that contain the exact same set of parts. It's cheaper to have the bagging machines make two bags of the same parts for one set, then two distinct bags. This gives set designers a good reason to put even numbers of parts into certain sets.

Interesting. Toy World in Hamilton doens't have 2010 stock either, but Toy World in Sylvia Park emailed me to say that they do. Something weird is going on with the supply chain.

In that case, buy a 6990 or 6991. They go for about half the price of 6399. I bought my 6990 for about US$50 a year ago.

Haven't seen it in any of the Hamilton outlets.

I have two that come to mind quickly. The first is relatively new. 10190-1. Market Street. It doens't fit in with the other Modular Buildings in my mind. It looks too 'haunted house'. The second is 6392-1. The vehicles and runway are fine, but the airport itself is a bit of a house. Though, it's still better than a few of the modern airports.

10% isn't that much in the grand scheme of things anyway.

I think the previous posters are right when they suggested bath damage (soup, chlorine etc). I'd suggest dismantling one of the hulls to see if the effect is on the inside too, or not. If it is, then it's definately been damaged with water, but it provides you with a large surface to test things on withou a permanent visible effect once re-assembled. Did the detergent you soaked it in make any difference? Poor parts

Picked up 3177, 3179 and 3180 at Farmers today, and definately recieved the 10% discount. Interestingly, retailers other than KMart and Farmers still don't have 2010 sets.

I'm still waiting on my city sets though

I definately prefer the old brick built track. In particular, I like it for places where there are no sleepers in real life, such as this wharf.

I think whether you include official sets in your layouts is often a matter of the style of your layout than anything else. For example, I strive for my layouts to be '80's classic town eske. What that means is that for a rubbish truck, I use 6693, or a slightly modified 6693, or a heavily modified 7991. The reason being of course that 7991 is out of scale. I could build my own rubbish truck from scratch, and in due course probably will, but prefer to have a complete town in the meantime. So, basically, I start of with a collection of official sets, and tweak them as time goes on to be scale appropriate and more moc-ish. While I like the scale and style of layouts like Brickboro beach mentioned in an earlier post, at this time that is not feasible for me. As for the creativity of building a layout with standard sets, I regard this a little like a DJ creating a song from existing samples. There is still talent involved in the implementation. For Castle/Pirate layouts, I tend to moc more. I also often build a theme of original sets to 'celebrate' and have these on the bookshelf in my foyer. At the moment I have all the Blacktron2 sets on that shelf. It acts as a great conversation starter with visitors and allows me to build some of the sets on a regular basis. I probably chnage the display every month or two.

Someone will make a bit of money on those. They are the ones I mentioned will be $18 on special at KMart later this week.

I thought that might be the case on the creator house. Thanks for the offer of sending Lego down. I tend to be up in Auckland every 2-3 weeks anyway though. Particularly because AirNZ doens't fly to AU out of Hamilton anymore .

I'd happily drive another 500km to get a Lego set I'm after.

Not today , tommorrow! I've already driven 500km today.

Much better. I tfeels complete now.

Sorry to have got your hopes up; but it was only those sets that were on sale, not a discount on everything. Kmart at Bayfair (Mount Mauanganui) had the same two star wars battle packs and the Toy Story sets. You mean they had the Creator Apple Tree House 5891? I'm so tempted to drive to Albany to get it. I didn't check. As I said, the sale starts on the 14th, and presumably goes for a week.

I forgot to mention. The KMart mailer also had toy story sets. It's just that I want the new non-fire town sets. Though the new fire station is tempting.

Kmart has a few as of this evening: 620, 7206, 7208, 8083. 8083, which is the only set of interest to most of you is $22. I asked at the service desk to see if they had any other new sets out back, and she said she didn't know, but they will definately have a few more buy next week. She showed me the mailer which has specials starting for the 14th, and 8083 and 8084 are both marked down that week to $18. Am hoping to find the other town sets I'm after in the next few days. It was disappointing to see sets that I'm not after, and not one that I am. I'd have settled even for just 3177 or 7567. Knowing my luck though, 7567 won't be hear for another year. It took bloody ages for 8398 to appear in the Southern Hemisphere.

It looks good, though I can't help but think it needs somehting on there. Maybe a small generator and a few 1x2 dark gray plates.

The Warehouse at the Base doens't have them yet. Asked a staffer who turned out to be the store person. He went out back for a few minutes and came out with Lego cartons... containing even more 2009 stock! I wonder how well Lego did over Christmas given the amount of 2009 stock in stores at the moment.

I am the antithesis of an Apple fan. They are anticompetitive, and they (well, their manufacturers) have been known to break chinese slave labour laws. All that doesn't bother me half as much as the fact that people seem to be caught up in the apple-hype, and believe things which simply aren't true. Their products, while good, are have nowhere near the god-like qualities that people paint them to have, and many argue that apple is better when they simply do not know the other products on the market. A classic example are the people who complained about the lack of driver compatibility with, for example, Windows Vista when it was released, but Apple is much worse at supporting old hardware/software (eg change to USB with original iMac, change to OSX and change from PowerPC to Intel architecture).

Based on this page, it'd be going for around US$160, which gives a bit of scope: http://www.kiddiwinks.co.za/LEGOShop/index...ath=550_552_814 I wonder if there were pictures loaded on that page at any point.

It's the same at Kmart, Toyworld and all three Warehouses in Hamilton. Lots of freshly brought in 2009 stock (including unopened cartoons of 2009 sets), but no 2010 stuff yet :(. My wife says I have the patience of a seven year old .