fyrmedhatt

2. L-Space - 1 point 5. Caparica - 1 point 10. LegoJalex - 1 point 16. Sid Sidious - 1 point 24. Bernd - 1 point

The five entries I chose were all examples of what I love in modular buildings: great color combinations, facades that show a variety of building techniques and textures and that they fit in well with Legos own modular buildings. 1. castor-troy - 1 point 2. cimddwc - 1 point 21. domino39 - 1 point 27. Myko - 1 point 29. Kristel - 1 point

This set looks really, really good, it's easily one of the better UCS models. Unlike most ships, this one doesn't have any "dead" areas where all you see is undersides of plates, instead it could be displayed from pretty much any angle. The functionality is great, the wings move smoothly, as does the cockpit. It's a shame it's $200 when its more like a $150 model size-wise, but this model is good enough to where it could be excused.

The spare pieces are actually duplicates of some of the smallest, lightest parts in the set. This is supposedly done because these tiny pieces are so light that the scales used to check inventories will miss them when the sets are being packaged, so Lego plans for extras of some of those parts to make sure they are included in every set.

This ear has a lot of must-buy sets, I think it's be hard to list them all, and I'm also poorly educated on lines like Ninjago and Spongebob, so I won't even mention those sets. But here we go: Sopwith Camel - Absolutely brilliant large-scale plane, it's so nicely detailed, and has an incredible color palette of dark green, sand green, dark tan and the metallic silver. Town Hall - It's the biggest modular of all time, and looks amazing. While it's not necessarily the nicest of the modulars, any modular building would be worth mentioning on a list like this unless it was absolute garbage. Haunted House - What can I say? It's gorgeous both inside and outside and is unique among Lego's afol-targeted sets, who knows if we'll ever get another large-scale haunted house? Store opening exclusive Lego Store - Very rare set that is also a decent build and it is the first time Lego has ever made a set of a store. Jabba's Palace - Eight years after the previous rendition we get a set that is orders of magnitude better and very true to the movie original in external looks. Add to that fantastic minifigures that represent an almost complete cast of Jabba's Palace characters and this set is a winner. One might think it's a bit too expensive, but I can only imagine what it will be a few years after it's discontinued. Desert Skiff - A no-brainer, with essentially four all-new minifigures including an intricately printed Boba Fett and an amazing Lando Calrissian, on a Desert Skiff that's the best design ever. TC-14 - Maybe not a set, but who would miss getting a chrome protocol droid? UCS R2-D2 - In my eyes the best UCS character build ever. City Garage - The first one since 1988, and who knows when the next one will come out. The design is good, but not great, but that is far outweighed by the once in a quarter century rarity of what is an essential building in any City layout. A huge bonus for the minifigure scale VW bus as well! Quinjet - This vehicle looks big and imposing, true to the source material and certainly seems worth the $70. I'm not very into the Super Heroes line but this is one of the sets I know i'll regret missing. The Dynamic Duo Funhouse Escape - An OK model, but with a great cast of Batman characters this set is already hard to find even if it's still in production. Olivia's Treehouse - My wife is the Friends builder in my house, but i have to say of all the Friends models she has, this one stands out. It's a treehouse (!) with great parts including purple elements, as well as useful brown slopes and lots of vegetation. Rock Crawler - As a kid I was fascinated by the Lego RC cars of the late 90's, but in hindsight they don't seem very impressive. If the Rock Crawler was available back in those days it would've been on top of my wishlist, I find it amazing that such a capable vehicle can be made with only standard Technic parts. The Battle of Hems Deep - A big, well-designed castle with lots of LotR characters, even if it doesn't stand out particularly from the rest of the wave (the whole LotR line is really amazing). This set is great with it's modularity and is the best at showing the "epicness" of the LotR trilogy. If Lego does a 10000-series LotR set next year it'll be on my 2013 don't miss list for sure. Team GB minfigures - Every figure is very well-designed, and these are pretty hard to find. I've been debating whether to get these, but I just know I'll regret it if I don't. I'm sure I've forgotten many great sets, but these are some of my personal favorites. I'm also fairly certain that some sets we have not seen yet would also make my list (looking at you UCS B-wing and Winter Village set).

I love Lord of the Rings, I think the books and the movies are both fantastic and I am excited about all the sets. That being said, I don't think Lego has planned for more than about four waves, two LotR and two Hobbit ones to go with the movies unless they are a humongous success. Basically the comparison with Indiana Jones or Harry Potter is great in that we will likely see sets while the IPs are being advertised, but not when there is no new movies being released. When it comes to Friends it seems Lego is thinking very long term, they are marketing the sets intensely to become as dominant in the female construction toy market as they are in the male one. They are likely to keep trying with Friends even if their first wave is not successful (which it must be, most stores never have the sets in stock), just look at the old Belville sets that were around for 17(!) years, and those were hardly marketed in North America thus sales were presumably lower than for Friends. I really see Lego Friends as a new mainstay like City, Castle or Space, where there are usually some form of sets available in the theme. I also think it is only a matter of time before we see Lego branching out with Friends-style Disney princesses and fairy-Friends.

I agree with everyone that this is the second golden age of lego, with the first one being from 1978-1995, with the start of the modern minifigure until Lego started simplifying and juniorizing their designs in the mid to late 90's. Set design then was largely simplistic, but beautiful in it's simplicity, and part quality was at an all-time high. Today is easily some of the best times for lego, and I agree with those saying it started with the turnaround from 2005-2007, with sets being better designed today than ever before. The modular houses, Star Wars UCS models, even the average licensed/ action/ town/ castle theme model today is generally well designed with great functionality and looks, even if most things are a little larger than they were in the 80's. As for those complaining about piece quality and cost in 2012, and somehow arguing that the end of the golden age was a couple of years ago all I can say is that the piece quality issue traces back to 2004 when Lego decided to stop using Bayer-supplied ABS and the Chinese plastic issue came about from around 2008, so they are not that recent. As for cost, when one takes into consideration the size of the sets in the 80's and 90's as well as inflation, today's sets are cheap, with them only being cheaper from 2004-2008 when Lego had to dump prices in order to recover from their great crisis.

Good thought! The guest designer at Brick Fiesta is Jamie Berard, and as he is not usually associated with Star Wars builds, the unveiling could easily be of some other set. Maybe the next Cuusoo set (Western modular?), the next winter village (though it's a little too early) or something new and awesomely fantastic.... All I know is that I will be there to enjoy the unveiling.

That is Bricklink's metallic gold color (here are the items appearing in that color). I'm not sure exactly what process is used to create the color, but I think it must be some sort of dye in the ABS plastic. I have to say that the quality of Metallic gold is infinitely better than the Pearl Gold color which is really prone to marbling, so it's a shame Lego doesn't use the color more.

That makes a lot of sense! Lego has been doing modular expansions of several sets lately, just look at Hogwarts Castle and Hogwarts, not to mention Battle of Helms Deep and the Uruk-Hai Army set. A rancor pit has been on so many wish lists these past 13 years that I'm sure it would be a welcome addition. One question though, would it be easy to modify the trap door so that the minifigures can fall straight into the pit?

Great job on this cityscape, it actually looks like a city, with a commercial and an industrial area, as well as roads and other infrastructure. Also kudos for incorporating Lego architecture sets, the really do work at the scale you've used. Am I the only one getting major Sim City vibes from this? I think that is actually Lego 21011 Brandenburger Tor or closely inspired by it.

I'm all for a Roman/Greek theme, it would have the right mixture of cool historical figures and architecture, with a rich mythology full of monsters and other fantasy creatures. Now there will supposedly be a second Percy Jackson movie despite how terrible the first one was, so I guess if the movies catch on we might see that being taken on as a license. Either way it would be a new take on the typical castle themes.

You never know what will catch on. I heard of someone on Bricklink selling 31 dark blue arches for 17 cents each a little over a year ago, each of those now sell for $17 each due to the popularity of people building their own Cafe Corners and Market Street, which no one really did before a few people started posting about it on these forums. The same with minifigures, I think Lego Star Wars minifigures were much less interesting before the variety of Clone Wars figures made it more interesting to collect, which has resulted in Lego producing many more interesting figs in the past few years. With more collectors the few previous figures with great design such as CC Boba Fett and Greedo exploded in popularity. A few months ago a few of the sellers on Bricklink started posting about the unicolored minifigures they made with their parts collection, resulting in lots of people doing the same and so minifigure parts in rare colors and the figures they are part of exploded in price. Which is why the poorly designed original Watto fig with medium blue hands exploded in price even if a far superior figure was released last summer. I guess my point is that it is pretty hard to predict which sets, figures or parts are going to explode in price as it really depends on the crowd mentality of what peope want to collect and build. I guess someone could manipulate the market by generating their own trends, but one would never know if it catches on.

The issue is fairly common in buying from major retailers, as several posters here have attested. I would think that AFOLs are far more aware of this problem and would be more likely to pass on a compromised box than a parent or grandparent. The damage to Lego as a brand is probably quite significant when a kid opens a set thats missing the minifigures on christmas morning, even if they get great customer service after the fact. The cost of changing the seals would be very insignificant, it might not even be a difference if all they need to do is change the type of glue to one that fuses to the box and cannot be removed without damaging the print on the box.

You washing them should not change the properties of the bricks, unless you washed them in very warm water (although that would most likely make them fit looser rather than tighter). Most likely the bricks are older, in the early 90's for instance there were some batches with much greater clutch power if I remember correctly. If you stick together any pair of plates greater than 2 studs wide they are very hard to pry apart as well.

Haha, that's a way to look at it in a positive light... It's pretty much impossible to open one of those without damaging the box. I love keeping my boxes nice, so I have tried by using a box cutter and there's always something that tears. The thumb tabs are horrendous for box collectors, but worth it if it means the box is tamper-proof.

For my wedding anniversary I decided to surprise my wife by giving her the Seaside House with a necklace hidden inside the box. In order to do so I had to remove the sealing stickers, then I sealed up the set again and it's virtually indistinguishable from a factory sealed set. The only signs of the seals being off is a slightly matt look to the stickers as they are no longer as transparent as they were, but it's really hard to tell. I was also able to seal up the box flaps as tight as they came originally, the only sign that I have opened the set are that the tapes have loose tips where I originally started peeling them off. I'm now of the firm belief that lego either needs to change the glue in their tape so that it "fuses" with the box and cannot be peeled off without removing the print, or abandon the set-sealing tapes entirely and only use the glued thumb tabs. Today's solution is entirely unsatisfactory, and I will have a very hard time trusting that the boxes on the shelves at Target, Wal-Mart and Toys R'US have not been tampered with.

Early fall is a good guess, we might start to see some pictures leaked from retailer catalogues. At the same time an exclusive set list also sometimes leaks from Lego, giving us the names of the AfoL-focused sets of the next year, including the Star Wars UCS sets.

I love this set, it's not too impressive as a build, but it accurately portrays the scene. What is far more exciting is getting all these cool Jedi that have previously been the domain of the Clone Wars sets, for someone who doesn't collect those sets this is absolute gold. Most likely this scene will never be seen again in Lego form, so I'll be sure to get it as soon as possible.

New molds and prints are not cheap, hence the high price-per-piece ratios in these sets. Personally I'm ecstatic to get all these new figures in Jabba's Palace, Gungan Sub, Sith Fury and (hopefully) Palpatine's Arrest, instead of the re-use of rebel pilot torsos, Luke, Han, Chewie and C3PO that we have seen the last five-six years. It's kind of an either-or proposition, low prices or great figures, and in my eyes they have made the right choice with this summer wave which is the most exciting in years.

I hate these people that do this, but I do think the retailers do carry some of the responsibility for restocking the shelves with returned merchandise. I believe Lego has a policy against this, and I would think they have a program to replace the returned merchandise from stores. I have currently been on a Lego building hiatus so I have a large number of sealed sets to be built. I really do hope these sets have not been pilfered, although most of the sets have been bought online or at the Lego store so they should be safe. I wouldn't be surprised if Lego returned to the more tamper-proof glue-sealed boxes either, as something needs to be done. Today's method of splitting the minifigures into separate bags is not obviously working, and with the surge in popularity of licensed minifigures with correspondingly sky-high Ebay prices this is likely to become a much bigger problem. Lego's reputation is tarnished each time a little kid opens their sets only to find the minifigures missing, and the parents are much less likely to buy another Lego product given the hassle of dealing with customer service, not to mention dealing with their kids' disappointment.

In the last few years the Star Wars sets haven't reached the US until the end of July or early August, while Europe and Australia has been getting the sets in late spring/early summer, so yes we are last to get them. Let's see if there is any substance in the rumors about an imminent US released, but I am not holding my breath.

Absolutely beautiful model! It's very accurate to its source, and I really like that it's minifigure scale. I have added my support on Cuusoo, this would be a worthy model for them to produce.

That is exactly the kind of house I associate with Sweden! It really reminds me of the Emil i Lönneberga tv series, which is a big part of the image I had of Sweden when I was a kid. The model itself is beautiful in its simplicity, where you have effectively shown the wood siding, as well as the dark orange roof shows the typical roof tile color. I also like how you built the wood columns holding up the awning over the front door.

They might be legitimate, as the Robie House has been available at very low prices from the get-go, with Amazon currently selling it at $160, the price you cite is only $12 less when you factor in shipping costs. Is it worth it to take the risk? I personally don't think so, buying cheap in-production Lego from any third party source these days is a game of chance as the dropshipping scam has increased in popularity. Feedback really doesn't matter as most people never notice that the item they bought had a different billing address and price, so they'll leave great feedback based on getting the item cheap. I recommend you use a large retailer for your purchase, even if it's $12 more, at least you'll know that you are not supporting organized crime.