Robianco

Hi all, I've just had my invitation to the VIP event at my local Lego store next weekend. I've not been to one before so I just wanted to see if anyone knew what the usual drill was. Any idea what to expect? Will it be a chance to buy the new sets a week early? They also mention discounts and special offers... is there a usual 10% or something? It's just so I'm prepared for when I go in so I know it will be worth picking up a load of sets rather than picking them up over time. Cheers

Welcome to EB! I'm in a similar situation... I have a 4yr old girl who's very into her Friends now although she asks me to make the sets for her!

Welcome! Nice that you still have all your original sets!

There's an Imperial Officer in black with the Microfighters Star Destroyer isn't there?

I'm glad the people that like the prequels like the sets. I'm certainly not going to comment on them as I'm incredibly biased when it comes to SW and I'm just glad this wave isn't going to cost me a fortune. I'm actually interested to see whether the Imperial Officer in the Microfighters is a new print to go with the Rebel Pilot. Han is just the new Han with blue pants and we'll see if the Tie Fighter Pilot is tweaked at all.

Well it's the DS Battle Pack, A Chewie and a new Artoo with Silver head on BL I think! Cheap round for those of us with only OT and EU love! The only thing for me is the helmet on the DS Gunner looks exactly like my Christo custom... No difference whatsoever. Maybe they thought Christo's design was pretty much spot on. Nice that there's torso and leg printing on him though and good job I've got some spare blasters.

I think they all look great and for someone who was late to the Super Heroes party getting lots of key characters is also a bonus. I think the Batmobile in the Riddler Chase looks great... just replace the windscreen and you're done. The Fur Coat penguin looks the best to me of all the incarnations to I'm very happy about that... 2 Jokers and a pretty cool Riddler. Man Bat I've never been that keen on as a character although I like the look of the Batcopter... depending on the Batman design in there I may just BL the Nightwing and Man Bat. Now just to get a really good look at the steamroller set and the Bats and Robin designs. That Junior Batcave is definitely top of the list though!

Thankfully the TIE I got a few months ago was £26 brand new. Factor in the individual BL cost of the figures and the TIE itself was basically free! I'm hoping they drop them to that price again as I go quite like the idea of having them flank Vader's (if we do indeed get that one). I'm waiting on 5 of the new X-Wing pilot from eBay to rekit my Rebel Pilot fleet... Does this mean I now have to buy 2 more X-Wings for a run on the Death Star?

Being LFCMessi you're not in Liverpool are you?

Ii picked up a 9497 Jedi Striker Class fighter a couple of weeks ago for £7 from a store near me. They normally reduce items randomly and this was the last one they had in the stock room. I arrived about 15 mins after it had been put up. It was reduced from the £10 they had them originally listed for. Also picked up Council of Elrond there for £15.

I'm solely an OT and EU with Lego although I do quite like the Clone Wars as an animated series (never that keen on the figure face designs though). I think the Jedis lost a lot of their mystique in the PT and the portrayal of Anakin almost ruined Vader for me. That said a Jedi temple itself is a cool thing. If not the one on Coruscant there's always the temple on Yavin for the final trilogy sets? Luke as Grand Jedi Master with Mara Jade at his side? Jacen and Jaina Solo as apprentices? Ben Skywalker? Can you hear me, Lucas? Don't try and @!@?! this up from the sidelines!!!

I think the minifigure is one of the greatest pieces of design in modern culture. It's up there with the Mini, the angle poise lamp and the London Underground map. It's simplicity and flexibility is basically perfect. It doesn't need to change or be replaced in any way. The minidoll is it's own entity... Designed for a particular purpose and ideal for that. I for one don't wish to see LOTR or SW sets with minidoll figures. Nothing is broken. Nothing needs fixing.

The thing for me is the target audience on these is girls. There's no getting round that. In the same way that the Megabloks Barbie set is aimed primarily at girls although the Minidolls are much better designed as figures than the Barbie equivalent. If TLG's research pointed them to the design of the Minidoll then that is all they needed to know. TLG has it's target audience but it obviously has huge overspill... hence Eurobricks itself... a Lego site for adults. We're not the target audience for any Lego product but we're still here... talking, debating, liking, disliking, contributing... so the minidoll is simply part of the Lego range... one that's now being expanded with the Disney Princess range. Whether or not they have crossover to City is up to the end user. People were disappointed that the Princess range didn't seem to fit with their current castle themes... that's not the point of the range. People seem to think it's a missed opportunity to put out a product that has cross series usage... I don't. It is what it is and it's aimed at it's audience. I think the Disney Princess stuff will fly off the shelves and my 4 yr old daughter loves her Lego Friends figures... she still has her 'princesses', which seems to be any female minifigure, but she's been concentrating on her Friends figures so they must resonate differently to her... but I'm sure the DP stuff she'll be getting for Christmas (or whenever released) will be an extension of her Friends sets. She'll still want all the female figures I have in my collection to join hers but I'm expecting her interest in actually building sets to grow with her so when/if she gets into building cities/environments I'll see how the minifigures and minidolls work for her. Ultimately I don't think they fight each other... there's no conflict. But the TLG mini figure has been around a very long time and is such an iconic design that you can't expect a new product range of alternative figure types to get equal billing on advertising or in catalogues. Look at the whole range is a Lego store and the minidoll makes up such a small proportion of the range that it's presence in marketing material is probably proportionate. The fact that there may be no minidolls in the Lego Movie may be down to a few things. It's probably been under production for quite a while and the Minidoll is such a new addition to the TLG family that there was essentially no need to introduce it to a movie that is based around the iconic figure... To a wider audience the addition of Minidoll character may have just confused the viewer. Personally I find the character of the figure the most important thing. The personality of a minifigure is what attracts me to it and hold my interest. It's why I don't have any CMFs in my collection. Mine are SW, LOTR and SH characters... and others that I've customed. It's the wider personality that is somehow captured by the figure (and the new detailed design and print helps). Even the 1980s SAS member I created reminds me of being a kid watching the news about the Iranian Embassy siege here in the UK and of the Action Man I had of that figure. Other modern warfare figures don't interest me at all so it's not just down to a theme. As such the Friends figures offer no interest the same as the CMF figures... but the Princesses actually do. Having a 4 yr old means watching a LOT of Disney Princess films and Disney do that very well... Tangled and Brave are two films that we watch over and over again so I actually quite like the minidolls of those figures... it's the personality they capture rather than just their physical design. I'd also like them if they were minifigures but as I said earlier... I'm not the target audience. The older Princesses not so much... I'm not really a fan of Cinders etc but I'm sure my little one will love them.

ROTJ has been well looked after in the last 18 -24 months... Ewok Village, Jabbas Palace & Rancor, Skiffs, Sail Barge, UCS Imperial Shuttle, A-Wing, B-Wing UCS... pretty much the whole thing that wasn't already looked at as the Endor Imperial base was already a pretty good set and there's a ton of smaller Ewok based sets for Endor. For ESB Hoth has been hammered except for maybe a really good AT-AT as discussed previously. The last Slave 1 is a nice set and the UCS version is obviously part of the rumour mill. For ANH The Death Star UCS is still on the shelves (this also covered the ROTJ era too) and we've had X-Wing and Tie sets as well as a pretty good Falcon (7965) and recently the fantastic Red Five. So for me that leaves Tatooine in the ANH era (Sandcrawler, Lars family farm, Mos Eisley) as well as Yavin IV. ESB is screaming out for Dagobah, Cloud City... and definitely a Cloud Car with new pilot. A previous post commented about getting Leia in Bespin dress with the Cloud car to leave Bespin Escape Leia for the main Cloud City set. Lobot has been released and the Fett we have now is pretty much spot on. Hopefully along with the treasure trove of figs such as Lando and a couple of versions of the Bespin Guards and Ugnaughts we'll get a little sack for Chewie to carry C-3PO in parts on his back. I've always wanted to have each of the SW figures I had as a kid replaced with Lego versions. Maybe a Blue Snaggletooth as an exclusive fig?

I think if you want to see it that way then you will... but I have a similar response to digitally created MOCs because at their very nature there's something lacking. An MOC should be about people creating things with Lego bricks... seeing how they fit together... what you can create. It's something organic. Digital feels cold in comparison. You can only get pieces to fit together how the programme allows. An MOC should say 'Look what I built' rather than 'Look at the picture of something I'd like to build'. My feelings on Cuusoo differ from a lot of people I think in that I don't think certain things should be submitted but that's another story... one thing I do think though is that you should submit your Cuusoo project in actual bricks. I just get the feeling of 'Hey... I couldn't be bothered building these out of actual Lego... So I'd like you to.' Rightly or wrongly.

The Lego store in Liverpool actually released some of their January 1st stock around Christmas because they'd cleared the shelves! I know the staff in there a little more now so I'm hoping something similar happens this year.

I'm more of the mind that it's a knock off. People have been clamouring for a purple pants hulk since the tan pants version got released... then it just turns up and apparently they've been available for over a year and nobody knew? If that was official it would have surfaced sooner and they'd have been selling for a lot more on the western eBay sites... That's just my opinion. The printing on the Chinese superhero figures is pretty poor up close... just check out the versions on eBay... nowhere near sharp enough. That said the Black and Gold Iron Man might be worth picking up as an addition to the Hall of Armour if it's still quite cheap.

I like both BL and eBay. I also sell on eBay when I'm able to pick up really cheap sets that are in sales or end of lines and split the figures etc. Any money I make just goes on MY Lego addiction. I've never had any horror stories that spring to mind. eBay has buyer protection so if the item you bought is that bad you can send it back and as Romdam said above... if you're canny and a bit lucky you can have some great scores on eBay. BrickLink is what it is... you order your parts and they're either new or used. If they're used I normally expect anything noticeable to be mentioned in the listing.

I've always loved the Green Lantern... I don't even know why. I think it was because when I was 7 or 8 on holiday with my parents I was given some pocket money and bought a Green Lantern comic and a Spiderman wallet.God know where either of them are now but the wallet was complete rubbish and broke before I went home. Oh well.I've bought several custom GL figures and am even considering approaching a pad printing company to make some for me although that's kind of expensive and I'll have around 50 -100 of each one. Overkill.But... in preparation I've put together the artwork for several of the versions that are available today and a couple of other that I quite like.I've recreated Christo's artwork for his Hal, John and Sinestro figures as well as the original Comic Con figure with double sided head.I've also created a couple of other John Stewart figures (mine don't have goatee beards) and a couple of Kyle Rayner designs.So here they are. Enjoy!

I took the plunge and got a deal on 5 of the new X-Wing pilots. I'll post pics of my newly kitted out rebel fleet when they arrive.

I totally take your post on board... The one thing I'd say with all of the things you've linked to that's different from the line that TLG is putting out is none of them are actually badged under the current Disney Princess line. Disney's Princesses has been used but it tends to use the Disney logo with an apostrophe and it opens up the theme to include other characters. This is branded under the DP logo and as such I don't see the other characters appearing. That goes for books, CDs, toy lines and other collections. That may seem like a very small difference but I'm sure it brings the range of characters down to the 11 currents Princesses. I think the one area that seems to be able to include other characters to any point is in animations or short films but not toys or physical merchandise... Even Minnie has appeared in an animation with them! The 11 Princesses appear in Sofia and even though Sofia is technically a princess she isn't a Disney Princess so I don't see her appearing in the TLG range. I'm only saying this as I'll be buying some of the sets for my daughter... She's 4 and loves Disney Princesses (most Disney toys are actually appalling in terms of the build quality) so I'll be happy for her to have these and she loves Lego and Lego Friends. I actually don't care how the sets fit with Castle themes or whether Merida's hair is quite right... I think it'll hit the target market bang on. I really like the look of some of the sets but they'll completely be my daughter's and not mine. I also know that if they had Tinkerbell as a set she'd love those too (I actually think that the Disney Fairies would be a slightly better theme for Lego sets). I was just voicing an air of caution over hoping that other non-princess characters appear... They very well may do. I probably hope they do for my daughter's sake as I love her playing with Lego and want her to build and enjoy for many years but the presence of the actual Disney Princess logo acts as a very restrictive and focused item on these and I don't see them straying from the current 11 characters at this time. That said 2 characters from Frozen are shortlisted to make the 12th official Disney Princess... I can only see one of them making it if at all. This may all seem very pedantic on my part (and I don't mean it to be) but there are some very knowledgable people on here that can go into minute detail over any number of subjects and I just wanted to make the point that the Disney Princess logo is quite specific.

I agree... I think there's a possibility to opening this up to include all manner of Disney characters whether in the mini doll range like this or as minifigures. I think Alice would be great as I've said earlier. The Disney Fairies line with Tink has huge scope for sets and they could look fantastic... There's already a group of Fairies with different skills in Tink's circle of friends that lend themselves to individual releases and making up the whole Fairy 'town' or 'meadow' or whatever it's called. My point is that the line is called Disney Princesses. Not Disney friends. So no matter how much people think there should be characters in there OTHER than the princesses it goes against Disney's marketing strategy. If after 2 years and 4 waves of releases it's still just Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora, Rapunzel, Belle, Mulan, Tiani, Pocahontas, Jasmine, Ariel and Merida people shouldn't be surprised and say they've buggered this up. The clue is there in the name.

I still think nobody outside of the official Disney Princess list will get a set. Characters relating to the princesses such as the triplets, Prince Eric etc will obviously appear in those sets but there's no reason to shoehorn Tink or Alice into sets as they don't have any reason to be there. I still stand by the comment that other female 'leads' can appear WITH princesses but it would normally be a generic Disney line and not a specific Princess line. I've never seen a single DP release to feature non princesses. If anyone can lead me to a single DP specific product that featured another character outside the official list I'd stand corrected.

I'm with Gryphon on this. The Disney Princess line has a defined 'membership'. In any Disney store anywhere in the world no other character is included under that theme... They even have a ceremony to welcome any new princess. So with that I don't see Tink or Alice or any other 'non-princess' appearing in this line. If any other characters appear with them it'll be under a generic Disney banner... Not princesses. Alice would be a great theme for Lego... Although I hate the story... It's very visual. It's just won't happen under the Disney Princess banner. Having a 4 yr old daughter helps you learn about these things.

I think the whole series looks great. I'm a relative newcomer back into the Lego fold so I'm not as familiar with older lines that these may be reminiscent of but I just don't see any negativity in them. Mostly 2-in-1s for some great vehicles and mechs... some really nice MFs and great new MF parts. I actually want to see the film more now I've seen these sets. From some initial rumours that licensed characters such as Green Lantern would appear in the Move line these sets make me think not. The civilians are the heroes and I don't see a Green Lantern or similar just being tacked into the series. That said there are a couple of obvious characters omitted such as 80s Blue Space Guy so you never know what's in the remaining sets.