Svelte

Thanks, Keeper. Your Walrus has been sleepy! Those sets have been available for a while I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that you are already trained in the arts of assessing minifig hotness! I agree about the pricing, which is very good for licensed sets. I can only conclude that because Indy doesn't sell so well outside the US, the prices are a bit more enticing. SW seems to sell no matter what the price tag, so Lego probably errs on the high side. Hell, if they can get away with it, why not? I'm sure the RBR will come to a sale in Australia eventually - and you seem to have your Walrus well under control in that regard

Clearly these delusions are spreading. A group hallucination? I think you people must be sprinkling LSD on your cornflakes in the morning

Boo! I feel so left out! I'm going to grab the smallest size for my cat! PS, I love the expression on that Target teddy bear in the first pic, Siegfried

The funny thing about these Evony ads, is that despite the amount of digital boobage on display, the game promises to be 'unnoticeable' so you can play discreetly from your web browser

Looking brilliant, Erds I love the choppy geometry of these wavefronts. It adds a stylised, almost scutptural quality, almost like an ancient mosaic in some ways - playing with simple forms and repetition. Fabulous for Venetian MOCs and so on. Good work!

Simple. Whilst they pay in licence fees, they make up $$$ in saving on development and marketing costs. Back story, concept artworks, characters - all supplied by the license. Multi million dollar promotion budget, paid for by the movie studio - all to Lego's advantage meaning they don't have to try and sell a new and untested house theme to the market. Those clamouring for an Ancient Rome theme should be extremely pleased by the PoP licence, as something like this model is the best chance of a historical theme appearing in future years.

Yes, time for beauty sleep! Where is my fresh cucumber and yoghurt face mask? Ha! This mint raita which I made to go with last week's goat curry will have to do. Where shall we rest our weary heads? Call me crazy, but spending the night locked in with a bunch of yokels and live dynamite doesn't inspire much confidence. Pehaps we should draw up a roster to keep an eye on each other. Using the 92-sided die we can randomly allocate watch shifts to minimise the chance that whoever is awake is a Town Council member. Let's start drawing up Round 1 using the logarithmic root of pi as a base to -- *suddenly drops to the ground where he stands and starts to snore softly*

The sets are a bit lame this year (I don't count MMV as it is not a mass-market set but a S@H exclusive). We've seen some great sets but frankly the novelty of Trolls and the same old Crownies has worn off. This year the only reason to buy the sets has been the exclusive minifigs, but I don't really want a third-generation of painted giant Trolls or more small Trolls with minor facial variations, or more army building Crownie sets. So - an exciting new faction with new colour scheme and new location/ setting/ style to reinvigorate the line in 2010, or let it rest.

Enormous brick buckets with lots of basic bricks are plentiful and even seem to be getting bigger. And if you take a closer look back at a lot of the 80s sets in evergreen themes such as Town, Castle, and Space - you won't find too many 2x4 bricks but you will see many, many specialised parts such as heaps of different angled cockpit pieces, castle walls, specialist Space pieces and so on. Anyway, this is just a nostalgic 'the world is changing' list. I bet in the late 1950s someone wrote a sob-story letter of complaint along the lines of 'Why have we got all these cheap-feeling, mass-produced plastic toys? What has happened to the good old wooden building blocks of old? Boo-hoo!'

Prince of Persia is a big event movie, and will be marketed with that in mind by all its merchandising partners. Even the Indy KOTCS sets were launched with a big fanfare but a shorter shelf-life than most Lego lines enjoy. The licence is probably a one-shot - I wouldn't be expecting wave after wave. Just like Speed Racer, only let's hope more successful. I don't think it would hurt to rest the Indy licence for a year, or cut back down on the number of sets released like Castle (three non-exclusive sets). Even if there was no PoP licence, I don't think Indy is a licence that can go on indefinitely in any case. In both the US & Europe, many of the sets were clearanced on S@H which doesn't shout 'Amazing sales!' to me, especially since they seemed to have been out of stores for a while. The really nice surprise is that these lines do look wonderfully compatible in many ways, which gives you room to (unofficially) expand your Indyverse. Kudos to the designers for their great work.

Thanks for the update, hewman! That's actually about what I was thinking. Obviously it had to be more than the Venator and that's US120. I even thought they might bump it up as high as $299.99 so I'm glad they didn't. Look how brainwashed we are, grateful that a new set is under $300. Sad! With shipping from S@H, this may be one of those sets it is better to get from BL.

Eleanor is like Jessica Fletcher or Miss Marple... people seem prone to dying around her in bizarre and explosive ways. How thoughtful of her to have the foresight to pluck out the only dismembered finger with expensive jewellery on it.... While my nose is pressed against the glass, I would like to see if there are any mysterious lights glinting in the distance. If there is nothing of interest, I would like to discuss the possibility of constructing a liferaft with all this timber, throwing it in the river, and seeing where it takes us. We could be like 'Tom Sawyer II: The Floatening'!

Doesn't Target have a raincheck policy for Lego? They even had a special raincheck booth at the store I went to! I'm sure they'll restock as well as the sale goes on, esp. over the next few days.

Brilliant! I've been anticipating pics of these sets and they far exceed my expectations! Thanks Steve! I don't see an Indy line in 2010 competing with this - too similar. EDIT: Toy Story does little for me. Buzz looks like a 4+ fig, but I was never into that license anyway.

natelite, you're close to a TRU. do they have the 10159 Airport set or anything interesting? EDITED to note: TRU's email pic has changed to an image of the combine harvester... so obviously a glitch and not a mysterious stash come to light!

Interestingly, in Europe and the rest of the world, both Cafe Corner and Green Grocer are currently backordered until 20th August. This usually means that S@H is out of stock and the sets are going into a new production cycle. It may well be that the new batch of sets produced for Cafe Corner is the last lot though.

TRU has 30% off Lego Fri, Sat, Sun. Bizarrely the ad features the Legends rerelease of the Airport set that was previously a Myer exclusive a few years ago!

Explosives eh? It seems like a bit of dam-busting is in order. Wait, is there a dam around here? I suggest the technically skilled member of the teams sort through the tools to see if there is anything useful. I would like to move to the window and pensively press my face and hands against the glass, silently mouthing 'LET US OUT, PEOPLE OF WILLOUGHBY' as cold tears trickle down my bleary and careworn eyes. Then I would like to move on to the mysterious door and see whether it is open.

Eleanor, be careful in that woodpile. There might be snakes living in it! Sadly I'm all out of live mongeese, or I would lend you one

Yes, let's build that 'Stairway to Heaven'! (Quite possibly a literal one for some of us )

Eating carrots helps the Power Miners see in the dark!

I thought the SNOT green had that poisonous emerald taint of algal water and looks perfect as is. Beautiful work; the tree is particularly impressive with its gnarled and ancient roots.

The dark brown Mutt hair for Tegan is perfect! She needs the cranky face from the Carousel set to truly express her inner whininess though. What's the kettle and string reference to? It sounds vaguely familiar, but talk of Lungbarrovian Looms and suchlike is confusing me... And the Turkoon are hilarious!

Great point! I had noticed boxes were getting skinnier. However they still seem to use the old widths when necessary. As has been pointed out, the similarly priced Echo Base set and Tank Droid sets are different widths - probably Hoth is wider to accomodate the width of the Taun Taun package. This can be deceptive for the Creator sets! I think the 4996 Beach House box weight was 50% instruction manuals They generally do pack exclusives in more optimal boxes. Most of the 10xxx series are packed to the gills, in my experience. Probably General Grievous was the emptiest of recent sets. Certainly the Carousel, Taj, Eiffel Tower and the modular houses tend to strain at the seams. The Factory sets are even more crammed as the standard box is considerably smaller than for other lines, eg Market Street.

Weren't you going to do some different versions of your excellent truck for us to copy enjoy, CGH? Thanks for the great review, jansued. You've shown off some different angles of this set. I still don't think it's as good as the other two. The '1932' technique seems extraordinarily fussy and I think the top floor furniture is mediocre. The garage door pieces also look a little narrow compared to the door and windows but I guess that's proportional with the style of building. Any chance of uploading shots of the inventory pages? I'm curious as to the parts allocation in this set, as despite the high parts content, it looks to be mainly bley and lots of dark tan 1x1 plates and so on!