Svelte

My suspicion is there are two different teams working on pricing, as they are rarely consistent from the Jan wave to summer wave, especially for higher end stuff. Either that or the retailers have more say than is good for them in influencing pricing for exclusives. If there's a reasonable price now, don't worry, there will be a shocker along the way. Look at Endor last year at $US99.99 and $AUD199.99, and Home One for $US109.99 and $AUD179.99. This year, the AT-AT is $US109.99 and is cheaper than either of these at $AUD169.99. If this really is a TRU exclusive they will probably mark it up to $199.99 and then mark it back down again anyway. Incidentally, iqtoys is now listing the 8129 AT-AT at 'in stock' with $AUD169.99 price tag for those that can't wait. They also have the MF ISD (not yet at S@H for Aus) for a jaw-dropping $AUD79.99. The rest of their prices are at retail, and the US price is $39.99 so this wouldn't surprise me if it is the official price. Personally what I'm sick of is that the US and Euro pricepoints have stayed stable for some years but it seems that LEGO decides to chuck an extra $10 or $20 on the price for us just because they can - not just for licenses. Hello new Castle, Public Transport and Portal of Atlantis! Even I've stopped buying from S@H and just wait for stuff to come in store now At least the upcoming Harry Potter sets are very attractively priced - and will be even better during sales

Voted! Some odd choices, but if we manage to get a dark green Cypress tree out of it then it will have been worth it I wonder how these parts will be distributed? PAB exclusive?

I'm not saying anything else. You'll all have to be patient now

What about the helmet?

Brilliant! I knew I'd seen one somewhere. Now get rid of the 10194 stickers, stick the 5972 Hogwarts radar dish on the front, add a sweets trolley and a Dementor and you're sorted!

Oky Wan is wise The topic is merged.

I don't know much more than the rest of you. Taunting is just my specialty! All I know is a price (which is more than the US price for the new Hogwarts) and a name. I haven't seen any pics or set description. That's all I will say I really don't understand all this talk of an Emerald Night Hogwarts, to be honest. Something that detailed was never going to be released in a regular set, especially not with all the new minifigs and moulds (the Emerald Night as it is only has 3 generic City figs). Add figs and license charge and the Hogwarts set would easily double in price. All those people that want an Emerald Night Hogwarts - why not just Bricklink the red pieces which come in dark green in the Emerald Night and swap them over for the engine and tender? If you have the old Hogwarts you can even use the red train windows for the passenger car, and it's not like red is an uncommon colour for everything else. It doesn't seem a particularly tricky mod - has anyone tried this?

Some of you are right, and some of are you wrong I can safely assure you it's not a UCS Harry I also have no idea if it means there will be more sets, but I doubt it's an indication of anything as it has obviously been in the works for some time and I imagine whether they proceed with a wave 2 will depend on sales of wave 1 in the lead up to Xmas.

There's a review by dunjohn right here in this forum: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=44223 It's not yet available in Australia from S@H but I just ordered a copy from Barnes & Noble in the US - they have ridiculously cheap international shipping, and even with that included, the price is under what we will probably pay for it in Australian dollars anyway.

Enough complaining about the Police theme! For adults 2-3 years is nothing, but in kid's toys terms that's a whole generation of consumers that have grown old enough to engage with and want sets from the theme. Kids love Police and Fire sets and for LEGO they are always big sellers. By 2011 it will have been three years since the last new Police theme - you can't expect LEGO to keep selling the same sets forever. Useful new parts come into being, and more significantly, old parts that may have been commonly produced in colours in 2008 are by 2011 not as widely available to do another production run of the same old set. At some point it becomes more economical to produce a new design which is consistent with the current parts palette rather than have two palettes running simultaneously. City has for almost the last decade been on a three year cycle with alternating rounds of City and Fire sets in the January slot with the less popular subthemes on a somewhat longer rotation cycle (Coastguard 2003 & 2008, Construction 2005 & 2009, Hospital 2006, Trains 2003, 2006 and 2010, and so on).

Most of the last few years' in-house themes seemed design to last 2 years (Power Miners, Space Police, Agents). Greek temples! I am glad we're getting an expansion of the Atlantean city beyond the Portal set.

I've heard a whisper that we will get something super exciting at the start of 2011... even bigger than the new Hogwarts, if you can believe that Sssssh! Don't breathe a word!

Klaus-Dieter brings us sneak-preview news of January 2011 releases, from Series 3 Minifigs to a revival of the Town Space Theme! Check out our forums to see what K-D has to say: 2011 City - click here 2011 Star Wars - click here Series 3 Minifigs - click here NinjaGO - click here 2011 Atlantis sets - click here

Maybe Town, but Historic Themes is restricted to pre-1900 thenes and creations... so far Thanks for the fine review, dr_spock! It's amazing it's been so long without one. This set looks very fun and playable

It's gone, and this time it only applied to things marked 'Toys and Games' (which Architecture sets were not.) There's currently a 10% off one (but I deleted the email) but every other week there seems to be a 20% off or sometimes a 30% off. Thanks to hewman, I now solely visit fbtb just because they always post the best discount codes

Nice work - it has more of a solid body than the original The grill pieces add to the horizontal effect. (I love the original set, it's only small but it's one of my faves from 2010 - there's just something about it.)

The thing is that the scale of the movie Hogwarts is massive - ludicrously so - but how much of all those huge towers and echoing cloisters do we actually see in the films? Surprisingly little. Yes, there's the dining hall, some classrooms, house rooms but this is still only a teensy fraction of the volume that the facade must hide from all the panning and fly-by CGI shots we get of the exterior. So a UCS Hogwarts with minifig scale would be impossible, IMO - too big and there would be nothing to put in it. This was raised before, but the 4842 Hogwarts seems to be in some ways a compromise between a minifig-scale interior and a different-scale exterior - compare the height of the dining hall in the new model with the original 2001 version. However it's interior footprint is a lot more expansive and stable now they've moved on from trying to make the main model fit on variations of 8x8 and 8x16 footprints.

That scorpion video is hilarious. Pounce! Thanks for sharing

A playable UCS Hogwarts would be brilliant... but I'm not holding my breath. Besides, wasn't that idea at the heart of the original concept back in 2001? You can stick as many of the individual Hogwarts sets together as you like and still keep on expanding. The same is true today! Of course, it's not to scale height and depth wise but seriously who has that much room? Even the super-expensive Taj Mahal is on a 48x48 footprint and still unsatisfying in terms of detail. As a little weekend project I've been studying the flickr pics of the new castle and trying to build it from scratch from parts (obviously some things are missing like 2x2 red-brown windows or tan corner walls which don't yet exist) but from what I've seen the 4842 is the most brick-intensive and solid Hogwarts yet. Buy 4 of these on sale and you'll be able to make your own UCS model, no question

The appropriately named dr_spock brings us the first review of the 10213 Shuttle Adventure! Click here to view this review and discuss it in our LEGO Sci-Fi Forum.

Before anyone asks, these came from Bricklink. No, I haven't seen them in stores and I'm not sending you any You can see detail shots of all the individual figures in my flickr photostream. Now post your own fun caption pics of Series 2 or even Series 1!

Yes. Actually they do so incredibly cheaply for Australians.

I noticed this on the wrestler dude too - and apart from the overlap, his side leg printing is worse than on the front, a much paler yellow. I think it's probably a limitation of the machine and it's more noticeable with different colours. The skirt printing doesn't bother me so much. I guess I've gone through the 'denial/ anger' stage about reduced quality and passed through to 'acceptance' One thing I am concerned about is durability of the metallic paint coat on the helmets. It seems only a light spray on the surface (as seen from the tan underside of the helmet) so it will be interesting to watch how these wear over time.

Let's hope it's printed!

I'm sure this is technically very impressive - apart from the colour-matching, which is fairly garish - but the biggest question remains 'Why?' I'm sure it took a lot of work to coordinate, plan, order and build, but I really don't see the point on replicating 1:1 a famous painting in another medium like LEGO. Is there a catalogue description to go with it which explains the art? At least with something like Jame's May's House there was a tension between the functionalism of the LEGO system with the process of translation into domestic habitation and objects (working shower, plastic cat) but this just seems like plastic pixellation sans purpose.