Svelte

As I said above, I find for standard shipping they usually send the same day regardless of when I order. I usually have an email at about 8am on Sat morning saying the order's been shipped. To save money I think for standard they make shipments to one country as a job lot. Maybe because you ordered on Friday night you missed last week's shipment - that would be my guess. They do say 8-18 business days after all... you may just have to be patient

Ha! So did mine - red and black instead of bley/ white!

Australia is having Midnight Madness - not till a week later on 31 July though The Toys'R'Us website is useless though, as all it lists as special products for the launch are the Rexell Millennium Falcon and X-Wing (!) and when you click through to see what stores are open, it takes you to a link for Gold C3PO competition winners from almost a year ago...

I thought the LAML radio guy was using the received 'Scarlett O'Hara' pronunciation. As in, 'Frank-LEH Hinck-LEH, I don't give a Fabuland!'

What a great little set - much better than the kayak which you can actually buy. Still, it looks like you could build it yourself given exisiting Coast Guard pieces. Thanks CopMike! I probably wouldn't have even known about this little beauty unless your love of polybags prevailed!

I didn't say I expected to see these sets in 09, or ever in a system set. I don't know about Impulse sets inspiring people to buy big ones. They don't seem to have sold well here anyway, but I mainly see parents buying them as cheapgifts to keep their kids quiet. I don't see one recycle truck and a small street sweeper a couple of years ago as representing a massive theme either but there's still an Impulse for street cleaner and garbage guy as well. As for 09... trains we already know and a new hospital theme would be my most likely guess as it will have been three years since the last one, which is a whole new generation of kids who'll be interested.

Hopefully the sets will be better staggered next year, so we don't get all small to mid sized ones in Jan and then a great wallop of expensive ones all at once in the second wave

I was thinking of something like this - nicely Impulse sized. I hope you're right about civilian buildings. The only banks we've seen in recent years are in licensed sets (Spiderman, Gringotts). Duplo still has the best themes - farms, malls, zoos, circuses!

I don't think TLG is going to launch a line of large sets like shopping centre, bank etc - I just don't see it happening, unfortunately. However to test the waters they could modify the Impulse line a bit and make it more interesting. Rather than a fire fighter, police officer, construction worker or repeats of stuff already available in the main lines, we could have an ice cream vendor, market seller with cart, hotdog stand etc. That way they could trial more civilian-themed sets at a small scale without overcommitting to large sets they're not sure would sell.

I'd wait and see if they sell before being too morally outraged. That said, some CW figs are around $US15 at the moment on ebay. I am often amazed at the high value placed on figs, but if that's what people are willing to pay, good on them. Some people are interested only in figs and not the sets - each to their own. I personally don't like the CW figs at all but wouldn't mind multiple RGS or AT-TE - if I can sell figs myself to subsidise the extras or buy the big vehicles themselves at a reduced rate, then that's what I'll do. I don't need multiple Obi-Wans or Anakins or whatever, so why shouldn't I sell them off? Once these are officially released in all of four or five days prices will drop anyway.

From US ebay, 1x7675 AT-TE and 1x7676 Republic Gunship. Even with postage and ebay markup, it is still cheaper than if I ordered from S@H on 26/7, and USPS is a lot faster than S@H standard delivery too! Couldn't resist as I'm also going away next week to a land where Lego is scarce, so if I didn't order now I'd probably have to wait a few weeks to pick it up in store - not that anyone seems to know what the release dates for CW sets in Aus are anyway... Anyway, very excited as I missed the Gunship first time round and I sold my old AT-TE a while ago.

Ask a Brissie store if they can do a stock transfer from NSW then

If you guys are still looking for the Eiffel Tower - I saw 4 or 5 of them at Myer Bondi Junction on Sunday. The sale is still on a few days yet so there's time to grab one Give the store a call and ask them to hold it for you if you're worried.

Despatch takes a few days for standard orders so I wouldn't worry yet. I find I always get a shipping email at about the same time regardless of when I placed the order which suggests they ship all orders for one region or country from the warehouse at the same time. As for the latter, yes, if you only signed up as a new member after you placed an order, the original order won't show up. I wouldn't stress, just sit back and relax and wait for the mail to arrive! As they say, it takes 8-18 business days but I usually find it in the smaller range rather than the larger.

There's only 2 Infernos out of 8 sets which is pretty good. There's way more Agent Chases and Break Jaws. I agree though, next year hopefully we'll have some new figs.

The colours look more like old grey and old dark grey than the newer colours. Some great pieces though, like the angled black roof corner slopes. The design is very good, and its nice to see economical use of instructions too

Even moved, I still think its too big Actually, there's another weird thing with the instructions with this set. When I posted the pics, I thought I'd made a mistake by folding the barbed wire down rather than up - but this is the way it is done right through the instructions. It's only on the box art and all the promo pics that the barbed wire is pictured folded up I think it looks better that way though

Nothing is impossible to mod! Probably the easiest part to change would be the front where the missiles are and the treasure chest slides out - you could make a sizeable compartment there. However the middle section is so narrow and the end fins are just that - fins - that it might be harder to expand without changing the shape of the sub. You'll find out soon when yours arrives! It's not really clear but since all the other mutants are evil (or at least controlled by Dr Inferno), it's probably a safe bet the squid is too. Slime Face's head is different to the Joker bombs - different eyes and teeth (although the smile is similar I guess) and the slime marks are much more apparent in the flesh (or ABS) although they don't photograph that way. Joker bomb face below for contrast:

6210 Sail Barge. Looks sleek, great use of parts (especially the upside down boat pieces), nice selection of figs, sturdy, and an interesting build and great design. I especially like the fact that, unusually for a Star Wars set, it has a voluminous and useful interior, instead of just being a huge ship with a tiny cockpit, or having a large interior that can be difficult to access (like the MTT). It also is a minimally 'technic frame with plates' set and is solid and brick-built. The 7662 MTT would be high up on my list though.

Thanks for the awesome review, metalandi! Your pics are very clear and you go into detail about all the functions of the set. I agree, this is a great set - one of the best of the CG line for sure, way better than the boat set with the tower on the Bionicle baseplate, and cheaper too. I even like the helicopter better than the oversized version. Lots of great parts and a really nice build by the looks of it too. I can't wait for this to be released in Oz!

I agree with Sinner - if you have other colours, yellow becomes 'white' by default. That would be fine if there was an equal mix of multi-coloured heads in production, but 99.9% of non-licensed figs are yellow. Any other fig then becomes a token representative of some other group. Not the message of equality that TLG probably wants to promote.

The Millennium Falcon 4504. By far the worst SW set I ever owned - I sold it as it was so annoying. You only had to look at it and all the plates that flipped down to form the roof would instantly fall off. If the real MF was that delicate we'd still be living in the shadow of Empire. I didn't find the AT-TE too bad, as at least you could reinforce the side plates that swung out, so they weren't too flimsy.

Thanks for the prices, radiant7. Slightly better than I expected. I don't visit SW forums so that's why I missed these - thanks for the heads-up I agree with you about the S@H prices, but Lego said in their annual report last year quite clearly that their "No 1 customer" are the retailers. They still make most of their money from the big stores, not individual consumers, so they can't afford to annoy the retailers by effectively undercutting them. However, I do think they could *subsidise* shipping rates using the extra profit they make by selling directly to far-flung customers, if only to encourage people to use S@H - I would probably buy more regularly if shipping wasn't so much. I mean, you can't impulse buy at S@H as anything decent adds another $35-45 standard shipping. Even looking at the sale prices which dropped yesterday, I couldn't really justify buying anything I wanted as by the time I factored in shipping I might as well pay retail anyway.

Thanks for the great and detailed review! The Magnaguards do look good - almost cute, as if they're kind of trying too hard to be menacing in an endearing kind of way Do they stand up well or do they need the staff to prop them up? The ship I'm not sold on, I like the design but the all-bley look is not so nice, and neither is the price. Thanks again for the review!

S@H sale prices have tumbled again, with 30% off down to 50% or even 70% off for some sets, including some SW, Exo-Force, Ferrari and Bionicle.