Svelte

This has come up more times than is necessary. Do a little digging around the Town forum or actually contact your local Lego Shop @ Home - they are the only ones who have any firm idea how long it will be in the system for. Anything posted here is guesswork which amounts to 'Most Exclusives have a run of at least 2 years so realistically it could go at any time'. Locked and left as an example to others!

Yeah, why not just release this as the Exclusive '10214 Tan Cheese Service Pack'?

Thanks Christian! I'll do some photo-editing to remove the white space and update the first post. EDIT: First post updated, yays!

I agree. If I do pick this up I think I will get red of the sky blue, too-thick cabling and end sections and just display the two towers and central bridge.

No way! Compared to the last three years of 'proper' Castle sets, the Battle of Alamut is brimming with detail. The palace section alone contains a dark red throne, weapons rack, pearl gold scorpion treasure table, hidden Dagger of Time feature and table with gold goblets whereas the last few castles might be lucky to have 2 weapons racks, a barrel with cheese or something in it, and a throne and treasure chest for the king. Not to mention the walls are all properly brick-built rather than use large pieces and have features like sliding panels, removable secret wall section, 2 very moderate-sized catapults and a function for dumping boiling oil on your enemies as they storm through the gates! For 5 sets they did a very reasonable job of spreading around new designs, pieces and prints across the line. I agree that if you don't have Alamut the overall setup probably would feel a bit weak - but that's just more of an argument to get an Alamut! Barnes and Noble had it 40% off with free shipping in the US for the last week using a voucher from fbtb.net, you can't do much better than that!

Thanks for another brilliant and hilarious review! With this series, you've really taken the art of playing with yourself to a whole new level! Wait, that didn't come out right This looks like another parts-perfect must-have. I love all those dark blue pieces, the 2x2 jumpers and the sea-plants. The mini-subs are frankly better than most of the Atlantis sets put together - I wish we had minifig versions of these instead of undersea mining space tractors and whatnot.

The wonderful whung and go-to man grogall bring us detail shots, a high-res pic and even a spinning 360 degree view of the upcoming 10214 Tower Bridge. Yes, it opens! Tan cheese! Click here to see lots more pics and discuss this in our LEGO forums!

Tan cheese It's a dream come true! Still not loving the set, but at least we get tan cheese

Do we have nice pics of all the box art now? Can someone put them all in one post and I'll update the first post! I am really looking forward to this wave now So many great designs, figs and parts. Let's hope we see these in September as suggested!

Let's keep LEGO guns where they belong - on the inside of TRU store exclusives

Saw some Games at K-Mart today but not the Monster one with the cool heads (which is the only one I wanted). They had the Robo Attack, Minotaurus, Ramses Pyramid and Creationary. Also at Bondi Junction they had clearanced Farms ($80), Buzz's ship ($35) and TIE Defenders ($60). Popped into Target and they had both the Cargo Train and Passenger Train at retail, so nice to see these sets out and about. Myer hasn't restocked but still had a Cargo Train and lots of Fire Brigades floating around. Used the buy 2 get 1 free to stock up on Apple Tree Houses Here, here. I've only ever seen them once in the wild at a Target in Chatswood, and that was only because of a tip from pedro. I spent about two hours sifting through a few boxes to get the ones I wanted which basically amounted to a few extras of the cool ones anyway, so I wasn't wildly tipping the stats. I don't think I could live through the drama of the hunt and tedium of the barcode-peering again. More power to people who get them on sale or find them in unexpected places, but I don't have retailers that close to me that it's convenient just to pop in all the time and the transport cost (and time) of going round in circles would quickly outweigh the benefit. That said, if anyone can get me some cheerleaders do so as they were the only ones that had been cherry-picked at the Target I saw

I would send them a cranky note. It worked for me! Clearly they just never bothered sending the vast majority of these out and have been waiting for people to contact them

A little off-topic, but I noticed these collections on Bricklink the other day, listed as 'Chinese Minifig Collections' : Cute how the accessories are stored separately, and there's even a burger in the second pic! http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=S&catString=746

Normal quality, although as far as I know the Archery set hasn't been sighted anywhere yet - it may not have even made it into production (not all promos do). It certainly hasn't appeared on Bricklink at all whereas the 30061 one has been plentiful.

Finding images that way has been around for a while LEGO is much better these days at NOT uploading images to their cache. EB can take credit for that since they've been that way since I posted the pics of the 10188 Death Star way back in 2008. Here's a less widely-circulated tip. If you want lovely high-res images too, use the following format: http://cache.lego.co...000-xx-14-1.jpg

Yeah, nothing at Myer in Sydney either apart from Fire Brigades, Apple Tree Houses and Space Police sets Hopefully they restock with SW or something else interesting before the deal expires. I went to the books section but didn't notice the Brickmaster set - thanks for the tip, hewman! Anyone desperate for the Architecture White House set can buy it for $US57 (inc shipping to Australia) from B&N. With the 40% off voucher I picked up another Alamut or two there for under half the Aussie retail price

It's a very interesting question. (For the purposes of this discussion I will only refer to the European factories for comparison since I don't know much about the Mexican plant.) In the past, we've been told that creating new parts moulds costs up to EUR100,000 I imagine that's one of the reasons why all these specialist parts are being produced in China - it is clearly a LOT cheaper to strike a new mould in China than it is in the European production centre. There might be some new pieces where the mould has probably been produced in 2 places - for example, the hair that appears on Emo Skater, Surfer and the exclusive 'Max' promo fig obviously comes from China - but this hair will also appear in the new Harry Potter sets. So will there be 2 moulds operating or will LEGO just do a run of ginger hair in China and have it shipped to the Czech factory for packing? Until we have the Harry Potter sets in hand it is impossible to tell. The sheer number and quantity of CMS1 parts suggests that it would not be economically practicable to reproduce all these moulds in the more expensive production facilities. Perhaps a small number of moulds might be duplicated - such as for pieces that will see a lot of use, like minifig hair. On the other hand, many of the specialist parts which have been produced in China for regular System sets prior to the production of CMS1 have never appeared anywhere else - such as large trolls, Fantasy dragons, all the Star Wars bits and bobs and it's unlikely that highly specific minifigs or animals will be repeated in other lines. It's clear from the quality of finish on the new pigs - which have the regular shiny plastic and solid plastic compared to the cows or all the PoP animals - that the piggies are produced in Europe. Is it a coincidence that these pigs have appeared in 2 regular sets and look set to appear in more (such as the Harry Potter Burrows set) whereas previously specially-produced animals are usually just a one-off? It seems to me that it is easier to stick an animal part from the European factories into upcoming sets for distribution than it is to sync with China. Until it actually happens and accessories such as pom-poms or syringes appear in regular sets, we won't know for sure. My feeling is that parts that can enter the System en masse (like the Nurse or Skater hair) might be duplicated, but that the vast majority of moulds will sit idle unless specially called on for a repeat run. As for the issue of collectability, it doesn't bother me one bit whether some accessories are reproduced - it is the entire package that is collectible - including the much-more-unlikely to be duplicated torso and leg prints - rather than individual parts.

This is lovely work indeed - very impressive and an amazing way to display the Collectible Minifigs! I can only imagine the store will fill up as more 'costumes' are added to the collection

Thanks for the review, Dunjohn. What a lovely parts pack. Gold 2x2 round tiles a plenty, and a gold dome? It's a DIY Dalek in the making (midi-scale maybe ) For some reason I thought we got one of the accessories sprues in pearl gold too, so I was a bit disappointed to learn it's yellow. A small quibble, however. I only wish it was available here! As ever, it seems that the UK is testing ground for these new games before they get a wider release. Thanks again for the review!

Thanks for the review KimT! I agree Series 2 is generally more satisfying, and it's interesting to see nougaty flesh in minifig parts rather than just bricks. The leg printing issue is not new - the Caveman in Series 1 showed the same problem (large yellow gap) and you can see it in superkalle and Ras74's review of other Series 2 figs like the surfer. Everything else is pretty fantastic though and it's sure to be a highly sought after fig. I actually think replacing all the dodgy minifig legs with yellow Slave Leia printed legs isn't too much of a stretch Either that, or let them go commando

I got my Myer rewards brochure yesterday. They have a 'buy 2, get the third free' voucher for toys which runs from Monday 2 August until Sunday 15 August (instead of the usual weekend word-of-mouth blitz)

Cute, although he does look strapped down. Someone fetch a featherduster! Let the torture commence!

The quality issue is a thorny one, but let's not derail the intention of this thread completely There's a helpful link in CP5670's sig which goes to the thread devoted to quality discussions. One piece of hearsay that I did hear thrown around (probably on EB somewhere, although I don't remember a source for it) was that the colour change may in part have taken place to give the Star Wars licence a bit of a kick - new bley has more of a gunmetal look about it suitable for spaceships and such compared to the 'stoney' yellow-tones of the old grays which is better for Castles. I have to say, I was just coming out of my dark ages when the colour change took place so most of my parts have always been in the newer shades. I do prefer the new bleys to the older grays which do have that 'pre-yellowed' effect to them. I am glad they introduced dark brown to complement red-brown (since it always seemed just a touch light for many models using it as a predominant hue) and old brown sits nicely somewhere in between them.

Yes, it's a shame we only had parts in the new colours two or three years before the awfulness of LEGO mixing its own colours started Every so often I open up an old sealed 2004-2005 Harry Potter set, and whilst there may be some slight variation in the consistency of shades, it's nowhere near as volatile as from 2007 onwards. Some of the best designs and worst parts; that's what the late 2000s will be remembered by (a set like the 10188 is a beautiful design but absolutely craptastic with all its shades of bleys once you start putting it together). The wording of consulting AFOLs about 'core' colour changes is an interesting one, since they have acknowledged changing colours (such as the pearl grays and gold in 2010) without any particular consultation that I'm aware of. It's political speak, like 'core' and 'non-core' promises

In the catalog he comes with flesh hands and printed legs.