Svelte

Boys, form a queue I like that you incorporated the inevitable fraying into the aesthetic of the garment - I agree it will add a Piratey effect I also love that they added a sticker in the label - that's a very Lego thing to do - even if the fig looks like a Ninja rather than a Pirate So I take it you wear the hoodie always down? Otherwise wouldn't the Lego logo be upside down when you wore it? Clever work, Cutlass! Now you're really living up to your user name!

Look new to me! Resizing really doesn't help. It's a Rorschach Lego test!

7. The build - Pony Personalities! We are approaching the end of the build. All that's really left is to add the carousel rides and canvas top! All of the rides are attached by long grey bars to the 2 Technic half-pins on those vital white pieces seen in the previous section. They are all beautifully detailed and colour-coordinated, and felt very 'Classic Lego' to me, even if they used pieces like cheese slopes which have only recently been available: The first ride contains 2 rare 1x1 medium blue clips (horizontal): The second ride is a girly sled in blue, medium blue with pink gems. I the simple curved shape: We have 2 horses in dark bley. Notice the craptastic colour matching with the stickers! The dark area around the eyes makes me think of these as the 'Ninja Ponies' : The white horses have a flirtatious curl of the eyelashes. Trampy Ponies!: And the bley horses have bulging anime eyes that make them looked like a carrot went down the wrong way. Choking ponies!: I really like these brick-built designs and I'm glad we didn't get the massively oversized regular horses. I have enough of those anyway. These have a very elegant and simple design, and I like the raised forelegs which do make them look as if they're galloping along They can be a pain to attach though - you have to hook the hole from the circular tab piece over the bley bars on the tan rotunda and then attach the top of the bars to the white Technic parts. It can be a little fiddly. Because of the reduced clutching power in some bricks like the 1x1 white cylinder used in the first piece, you may find that the heavy rides drop off occasionally Here, a view of the rides added to the turntable: Next up we add the ornate, diamond encrusted, over-the-top detail which goes around the rim of the Carousel. The Jester head assemblages are probably the most repetitious part of the build, as they're kind of complex and you need to do 8 of them. There are 4 different heads - 2 of each. Here's a closeup of one: The rear - the 2 1x2 Technic bricks simply sit on the edge of the rim. From the rear, you can work out some of the SNOT work which holds them together: With a little bit of simple modding, I thought these would make great carts for a 'Love Canal' ride to sit along with the Carousel in the Lego Fairground . Beware, I think this couple has attracted a stalker : The smaller stickered bowl sections are next. Again 8x of these. The front: The rear, to attach to the frame with Technic pins: The full, terrifying assortment. They remind me of unshucked oysters for some reason : In position: And now the full aesthetic of the Grand Carousel starts coming together: The roof section is next. These red stripes clutch on to the centre of the roof: The holes in the bottom of the canvas sit over the spherical-ended Technic pins. The first four are put into place: At the top of the canvas, the half-Technic pin is supposed to go through the hole. This kind of works. They seem to pop out very easily. Again, clutching power is an issue and while putting the final canvas pieces on the Carousel, I lost three of the half-Technic pins down the middle of the apparatus. Let's hope they don't get caught in something and cause a problem with the running of the wheel as they would be near impossible to find without severely disrupting the model Still, once they're in place they seem to hold OK. The final touch is this circular dish and the flag: The finished roof! Doesn't it look splendid? 8. Final Gallery And there we have it! The Grand Carousel! Finally complete, 5 nights and countless hours later! I was going to end this review with a mod or two, maybe with some Castle figs (skele-horses), Star Wars (an Endor themed Carousel with speeder bikes and Ewoks) or even Harry Potter (Hippogriffs and Thestrals!) but I'm too exhausted I do look forward to seeing what the community comes up with Instead, let's finish up with a gallery of images and a short video to boot! I guess the big question is - it looks good, but does it work? It does! Brilliantly! It's really a very impressive effect. To prove it, here's a clip of the Carousel in action - front-on view, no special tricks! Here you can see the ride operator imitate the human user when flicking the on/ off switch: And a bonus crazy art-directed clip, with lots of nauseous swooping and spinning around 9. Extra Pieces The extra pieces, minus 2 1x1 round plates I substituted when I couldn't find a 1x2 plate, and 3 1/2 Technic pins which I used as replacements when they dropped off the sails. That 1x1 extra bley brick is a proper extra! The inventory lists 4 and I definitely had 5 (the rest are used as horsey legs)! So odd - I never believe it when people have proper bricks or plates listed as extras, but clearly it can happen! 10. Conclusion It's very difficult to capture and assess a set of this magnitude and size, as there are so many competing factors at work. Price vs parts! Build vs boredom! Intention vs execution! And so on. Anyway, let's give it a go. How does the 10196 Grand Carousel finally measure up? Parts - 8/10 - This is a great parts pack with a variety of amazing colours. No monotone monolith this! Lots of dark shades and even the parts hidden beneath the frou-frou shell are in rare colours such as dark blue and dark red. That said, apart from the baseplate, tan beards and medium blue 1x1 plates with clips there isn't really anything you couldn't find somehwere else. The sound chip is nice but it sounds tinny and tends to be drowned out by the loud motor. Minifigs - 3/10 - Sorry. They're so boring I fell asleep looking at the box art. It would help if they weren't colour coordinated to match with the set (they're all red, white, blue). As I said, Jamie Berard should have been called to consult to infuse some individual personality and verve! Build - 8/10 - A bit repetitive, but not nearly as much as the Taj Mahal. All the subsections are small and so not time-consuming, and if you feel like a break, there is no harm in skipping forward, doing 4x Jester hat assemblages, and skipping back (unlike the Eiffel Tower which has to be done linearly). Some colour issues in the manual and the Technic frame section could be explained a bit better so if you run into problems (like I did) you would have a better idea of what to check for. However I still give the build a high score as you do learn lots of tricks and it is generally quite enjoyable. You certainly feel as if you're building too a spectacular climax! Playability - 9/10 - It's a working merry-go-round! How much more playable can you get? This is definitely much more fun than either of the monument-style Exclusives. The potential for customisation is great, and I would expect to see various Theme versions in appropriate colour schemes cropping up soon! The wheel concept of the Power Functions is simple and wouldn't be tricky to replicate for other uses (such as a lazy Susan, or even something Lego related!). The potential to expand the Fairground, even with simple ideas such as my Tunnel of Love or Hall of Mirrors, is great too! Final rating - 8/10. There's no doubting that this is an impressive and amazing set! Who could have predicted even 5 years ago that in 2009 Lego would be producing this kind of functional, parts-intensive, aesthetically detailed model? I sincerely admire the technical ingenuity of the designers and the miracles in factory parts sorting which can bring us these kind of 3,000+ piece behemoths. It feels churlish to nitpick such a triumph of design and really, a sign of faith by Lego in the consumer power of its AFOL base. That said, this set isn't perfect and the grinding of the motor over the music of the sound chip would be a major disincentive to non-Lego carousel collectors who might otherwise be interested. The intricate Grand Carousel is undeniably beautiful, and although hugely sized, could successfully be integrated as part of a show-stopping Town or City layout. I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those sets that in 10 years time will fetch zillions of dollars MISB, that many collectors will regret not buying since it didn't personally interest them at the time, and one which will definitely be looked back upon as a sign of Lego's new millennium Golden Age

INDEXED Name: Grand Carousel Set Number: 10196 Theme: Creator Year: 2009 Pieces: 3263 Minifigs: 9 Price: $US249.99, EUR249.99, GBP166.35, AUD$399.99 Resources: Brickset, Bricklink, Shop @ Home 1. Introduction When pics of this set first surfaced in early May, I wasn't initially impressed. My first thought was that it was a 'hot mess' - an over the top blend of colours with generic Stepford-type minifg civilians. I'd heard rumours of a fairground set in the Trains & Town forum, but expected it to be more like 10184 Town Plan - a mix of smaller-scaled rides which would integrate within a standard layout. Instead, the Carousel seemed out of step with the largest modular buildings like 10182 Cafe Corner and 10185 Green Grocer. I had a difficult time imagining who the target market was - 'Lego carnie enthusiasts? Carousel aficionados?' Ouch! Parts-wise, the set also didn't seem that amazing. All the dark blue and dark red pieces could either be found in Star Wars, Indy or Castle (such as the inverse dark red slopes in 7627 or metallic gold bowls and crystals). The hoopla over multiple Jester hats and tan beards also seemed unjustified - why get so excited over a bit of facial hair in a standard (if new) colour when all of the amazing Indy and Agents figs with revolutionary pieces and colours were coming out? Three months later, what changed? Why did I decide to buy this set? Price, largely When this set was initially released on Shop at Home, it was listed at $AUD299.99 (about US$240, GBP146, EUR170) - making it $AUD100 less than the 10195 LAAT/ AT-OT to which it was priced equivalently in other markets. (This deal didn't last long; the day after I placed my order it jumped 33% over its original list price to $AUD399.99.) So now that I have the set in my hands, has my opinion altered? Is the Grand Carousel a baroque joke or (crazy) paving the way for future Exclusives? Read on and find out! 2. The box The large box has the tape-sealed sides, so you can easily flatten and store it without damage. With less parts than 10189 Taj Mahal, it does not have the three sturdy trays provided in that package. My box was slightly squashed, but I think that was more to do with bad shipping rather than the weight of the parts distorting the cardboard. The front of the box. Notice the orange Power Functions artwork - the set includes 1x small motor, 1x battery box, and 1x annoyingly catchy sound brick! (Seriously, by the end of the build, the cheery ditty will have eaten into your brain ). Click here for a closer pic of the PF stuff from the side of the box. The rear of the box: The citizens of Stepford, all 9 of the generic little beings, God bless 'em: The artwork on the back is largely the same as the pics on Shop @ Home, with some background detail such as tree boughs added in: [Detail fans, click here for a larger sized version of this pic] We also get to see an intriguing cross-section of the completed set, showing part of the turning mechanism: And also the measurements - 39cm (15.4") x 33.5cm (13.2") (slightly different to Shop @ Home, which states that the baseplates dimensions are 38.4cm or 15.1"): The side of the box illustrates the recurring Jester motif: As with the other large Creator sets, the parts are listed on the top of the box - they're too hard to see in one 800 wide photograph, so I've linked to the instruction pages inventory below 3. The box contents Is there any purer joy in life than slicing open a freshly sealed Lego box and gently easing the contents onto a flat surface? The crinkle of polybags! The tang of newly minted cardboard! The scent of fresh Billund air! Like any rush, it can all end rather nastily when you disocver the mangled sticker sheet, minus a sticker which has already peeled off (see the top left corner)! You would think Lego would have some method of ensuring stickers in a $US250 set would survive the packing process, but presumably the cost of sending replacement sheets to irate customers is less than the cost of specialist factory machinery to pack these properly. This is a shame as they seem to have managed to seal canvas pieces such as sails and specially moulded/ painted minifig parts in the same way - perhaps those ones are all made in China? There are 2 instruction books - at 64 pages they feel surprisingly short, but there are many steps which are 4x or 8x. (Instructions download:Book 1/ Book 2) Let's take a closer look at the instructions. Amusingly, there's a blooper pretty much on page one. On the left, is this Lego's first official drag king minifig? (If so, I like to think the character next to her is her cranky midget girlfriend.) This gender-bending error is later repeated in Book 2 when positioning the figs on the horses. The instructions do show some colour printing issues. Navy blue looks darker than black, especially in dim light. I don't normally have a problem distinguishing between colours in the manuals, but here Lego has managed to make the same piece look like entirely two different colours in between the end-user picking up the part (the inset box) and placing it in position on the set Next, the parts - there's 25 main bags (not including baggies within bags), as well as the separately sealed Power Functions motors and canvas roof pieces. They're all unnumbered! Prepare to devote the start of your 10196 experience with some good old-fashioned sorting. (For parts fetishits, there's an unresized large pic for closeup, click here.) The full parts list from the instructions is available from the following links (1400 pixel wide pics): Page 1 / Page 2 / Page 3 The first thing you notice about the parts is the sheer variety of them. Compared to other huge 3000+ showstopper sets, which seem to be endless bags of white (Taj), light bley (Death Star), or dark bley (Eiffel), the Grand Carousel spills out as a diverse sea of colour! The four main shades are white, tan, dark red and dark blue, but there are plenty of other accents such as primary red, primary blue, metallic gold, medium blue, lime green, yellow, and so on. Not to mention all the sparkling gems and suchlike. It can be a bit giddy-making! Eg, who'd ever have thought we'd see an individual polybag of 96 dark red inverse slopes It really is an embarrassment of riches. Impressively, despite a large number of Technic pins, axles, and angle connectors, this is far less of a Technic build than I thought it would be and is largely and solidly brick built The 8 Jester hats are bagged inside another bag: The canvas sails also come separately packed: Normally I toss all the parts together, but I'm not a masochist when it comes to these enormous Exclusives Half an hour was spent transferring the contents of sealed polybags into ziplock bags. I would advise you to do the same! Once you 'learn which parts are likely to be in which bag, the build zips along. Due to the large number of colours, there's less confusion than with something like the Taj, where you were constantly checking how long plates were etc. The 48x48 baseplate is very cool (I neglected to take a separate pic of it before commencing the build ) This is the first official set it appears in, although it presumably has been produced for some in-house purpose as it previously has been available to buy via bricklink. Immediately you start thinking of things to plonk onto its vast and soothing green expanse! The large plate looks a lot better than attaching a series of 16x32 or 32x32 plates. It's necessary, too, as the huge weight of the set means that separate baseplates would fall apart if you moved the set. 4. The minifigs If you thought the figs couldn't get more boring than the 8401 City collection, you'd be wrong! The 9 figs included in this set are a real let-down. Don't give me that bull about how expensive minifig parts are to produce blah blah blah economies of scale mean we need 2x of each torso print blah blah. If licensed sets like 7195 Ambush in Cairo can give us *4* new minifigs for under $AUD20 or non-licensed sets like 8970 Robo Attack can give us three of the best City civilian minifigs ever seen, I don't see how hard it can be to throw us a bone in the form of a few different face or torso prints! It must be said - the City line figs overall are in dire need of a revamp - they're outdated and unattractive Let's look at what we get. The first batch: - 2 ginger-bearded men in flannel shirts. If I saw these in real life, I'd think they were a couple from San Francisco. In the 70s! - 2 kids in the same overalls that City mechanics wear. Good to see a realistic depiction of child sweatshop labour from Lego! I admire this young girl's deft hand with lipstick and mascara too - what a role-model! The second batch of figs are as follows: - Dorky teen and his younger, identically dressed dorky brother - An angry girl, probably annoyed she's wearing a hand me down shirt from 1994 - Bland couple - actually these are my favourites. At least they look like they're enjoying themselves! 10185 Green Grocer uses a similarly limited palette of pre-produced parts, but there Jamie Berard managed to cleverly combine existing prints to give us individual characters who felt like they had their own personalities - boy scout, businessman etc. I don't think it helps here that the minifigs are all produced in red, blue and white colours - exactly the same as the set itself! They should have at least mixed it up with a variety of hues in the parts. So, for me, the figs are huge disappointment. If I wasn't building this set accurately for the review, I would have already busted out my Agents civilians, City Camper girl and a few other zingers to make these fun-lovers instantly more appealing. About the only fun that can be had with them is to subvert their boring appearance with a little social mischief... 5. The build - base & motor First up is the tiled base which the spinning carousel will sit atop. Note how all these pieces, which will end up for the most part invisible, still come in rare or popular colours such as dark blue or reddish-brown This is a great bonus, as I hate sets where all the interior structural detail is produced in primary cheap colours (like the infrastructure of the 7778 Midi Falcon or the Taj Mahal. While I thought it was an eyesore from the original pics seen online, the engine section doesn't look so bad in person. As many have pointed out, fairground attractions often juxtapose the ornate detail of the ride with the clunky machinery that drives it. As you push the PF battery box switch, the lever on the control platform moves too, giving the impression that the ride operator has switched it on - a great touch! I even like how the orange battery box switch colour coordinates with the Technic pin handle! Notice how the 1x8 dark blue Technic bricks (recycled from Agents Turbocar Chase) have been used to ensure the whole of that section is colour consistent - lovely attention to detail: Now onto the large turntable itself. The build, while repetitive, is made more palatable as it is made of lots of little sections, rather than large complex ones (Compare with the Taj Mahal, where the incredibly detailed centre section had to be constructed 4x). So, there isn't such a long wait between the start of the build and a reward, which is a spur to efficiency! It also helps that the build isn't linear, so if you like, you can skip ahead and make a few horses or jester decorations, and then jump back whenever you feel like. To start, we build up the rotating base with 8x of these segments: Four become a semi-circle: Eight form the complete circle. Notice the alternating lime and medium blue bricks in the middle - they're not hugely visible in the final product, but this is another example of the designer's attention to detail: The underside - basically the motor drives the large wheel pictured a few steps above, which in turn runs the small wheels pictured here. They run smoothly along the tiled section of the baseplate and will eventually drive the whole carousel. It's a fantastically simple and elegant solution! The rotunda in position: Next up we add some detail, and again these are small repeat builds which aren't too mentally taxing: The completed section, in position. I neglected to take pics, but if you had some snacks or sushi, you could totally use this as a motorised lazy Susan! I've included this vital step from the instructions out of interest as it shows how the motor propels the Carousel. 1 - Push the large wheel in so it is touching the tan rotunda. 2 - The small Technic axle connects the wheel assembly to the piston, to ensure constant pressure of the wheel against the rotunda as it turns. 3 - switch it on! 4 - The assembly rotates in a clockwise direction! 6. The build - central supports & top ring Next up, the inverted sloping centre section of the carousel is built. The first step is to place 24x of the gold decals onto 1x2x5 white bricks. It is a shame such large, expensive sets can't include printed parts, but that's the way Lego is these days. You'd think it would be possible with the aforementioned economies of scale to run off 12x of the top and bottom sections without breaking the bank Probably the parts would look more metallic gold than mirrored, but it is still a painstaking and nervewracking task to delicately apply all the stickers - it's an expensive set and you don't get second chances! Once assembled, the decals do look lovely. They're very elegant and Art Decoish, and could be used in all sorts of architectural MOCs or even as part of an LOTR Elvish Rivendell, for example. Actually the first thing that jumped to my mind was how suitable they could be for a carnival Hall of Mirrors to complement the Grand Carousel. It's my alternative model since Lego sadly no longer provides them! The sloped effect is created using an interesting technique. (**Note that I built one half of this centre section before doing the other, so it doesn't look exactly as it does in the instructions **). Firstly, the decal-clad pieces are placed in position: These are then folded out, and the internal architecture of inverse slopes and arches is built up: The inside architecture with its circular plan and linked arches kind of resembles a Classical Roman stadium. Fight to the death! Mon Mothma adjudicates the first inter-theme Gladiatorial Games, as inspired by the recent 'Star Wars: Invasion' contest That poor cow - it doesn't stand a chance! And we keep on building this Babel baby up... When the internal part is complete, the decalled sections fold back up like a closing lily, and the top modified tile on their tips sit inside the void of the dark red arches, which hold them all sturdily in place. Clever! Time to add some detail and some tiled bricks to the top of the central section: The next stage is to construct a wheeled ring to sit above this tiled section and which will connect with the Technic axle in the middle. Like other stages of this build, this is made of a series of small joined segments. There were so many of them, they kind of reminded me of blocky nanobots! The completed outer ring and centre framework: Now we need to add the wheel sections. Important note! Pay absolute attention when constructing the following small wheel sections. If you place the half Technic pins in the wrong spots on the short white beams, when the motor is later activated, these moving sections will hit and lock against the larger Technic beam superstructure we will see in the next few steps. I say this as a public service to future builders, because I made this error myself and it took me a chunk of frustrated time to work out what I'd done wrong! Kudos to the designers - it isn't too tricky to disassemble any of these parts to work out what you've done wrong The wheely sections go into place. Next we add the Technic frame which holds this wheel array to the solid central structure. You can the sound brick on the right there which is added at this stage: The Technic frame and wheel are now connected: And after this small section is added to the central inverted supports, the wheel section can now be added to the rest of the structure. Modified Technic axles lock the wheel in place by connecting with the long white Technic axles on the turntable: Now let's see our Grand Carousel in operation! You can see the white Technic beams flipping and flopping around - obviously they behave differently once the rides are added. And listen to the soft, subtle purr of that Power Functions motor! I also try and show how the sound chip is operated in this video, but you will have to excuse my horizontal detour - I'm not an expert in videography and I got carried away (Too late to disassemble and reshoot now.) Basically, there's a piece connected to the central Technic axle, so as the wheel rotates, it nudges the sound brick button and activates the music loop. You have to hand it to the designers - the timing is brilliant, as one loop stops, the brick is immediately bumped and that catchy tune starts playing again! Amazing!

Ooh, spooky *shivers* I hope there's some edible interesting wildlife in this here forest.

All this advice to "stop rubbing" reminds me of a Victorian anti-onanism tract If you don't use it improperly, it won't drop off! Even the new metallic gold coloured parts (such as Agents tiles or the Castle crystal pieces) will scratch off to reveal ordinary ABS underneath.

RIP to the RIPs! (Random Inactive People! ) Happy birthday, 5150 Lego, since it's close to the weekend just write off the sucky part of the day and have a weekend long birthday fest!

I see a lot of criticism of these pieces, but I don't mind them. Actually the red panels serve a functional purpose in this set - the hollowed out section allows the leaning backs of the chairs to fit inside the restaurant. If the walls were made of solid bricks, you wouldn't be able to fit 4 chairs in the restaurant

Welcome, Keeper! You do a good job, your walrus seems very well trained I hope you have a nice time on EB, now that you can see exactly what madness awaits. You already seem to have the maniacal laughter down pat. There's a few partners of AFOLs floating around, and even a mother-of-FOL! (Wait, that didn't come out right... ) Somebody post a link to the interview index thread (I'm lazy today! ), that's a good way to browse through and get to know some of the people that your walrus may or may not have mentioned

K-Mart has Pirates & Racers kids tops on sales, for all you parents who want to indroctinate the young 'uns. Size 3-8, now $15.20. The Pirates one looks cool (page 3), I bet the red striping will cause at least 6 threads to open at classic-pirates wondering if this signals a Redcoat flagship for 2010, and at least three of the members will be openly sobbing within the hour because they're too large to squeeze into this garb.

Walrus Keeper is pre-empting her husband's response, YG-49 Does he know you're here? You should stop in at the Welcome thread, I'm sure many members would like to meet Siegfried's better other half...

Welcome to Eurobricks, keeper of the Walrus! I hope your other half starts giving lessons in doe-eyes, I had a stern talking to this morning for taking over the dining table with a half-built 10196 Carousel. 'Pathetic and adorable', eh? Sounds like someone needs a new title I hope one of the other admins notices...

Shop at Home has updated *again*, with new keyrings, T-Shirts (including a SW 10th anniversary one), and the cool Classic Space & Logo Bag. Also a Belville towel, so maybe this theme isn't as dead as many are saying. http://shop.lego.com/WhatsNew/ProductsLaunched2009.aspx?va=1 EDIT: How cute! The Space bag comes with a classic red Space fig!

Oops, forgot that part For calling into question the wisdom of Hinckley creating a rant thread about rodents infesting his MOCs and how he had to handwash poison off everything, and then the next day offloading a whole lot of high-priced MISB sets from said lair on ebay

From 'Legopussy' to 'Auction Cockblock' in just a few days. I seem to be at the genital end of titles at the moment (Incidentally, Legopussy really *was* because my cat has a Lego Club membership, not because of the James Bondesque MOC)

I have absolutely no doubt that the sets Hinckley's selling are immaculate , I just thought it was funny: 'Curse you stinking, crapping, MOC-invading mice!' The next day: 'Hey guys, anyone want to buy a MISB Cloud City direct from my lair?' Seriously, bid with confidence, people!

You're right, there should be separately listed auctions for the poison and rat corpses. I think Hinckley did used to sell Fabuland from his website brickzone.net, but there's nothing at the moment. Unless it's in a bricklink store.

Just a thought, but maybe you shouldn't have posted these auctions so soon after declaring your Lego storage area was infested with rodents!

Congratulations Bonaparte! You will make a fine Ambassador for C-P! I notice the requests have already started pouring in... PAB shakos, blue baseplates, rum bottles, catapult-suppression... Geez, give the guy a break! It hasn't even been 24 hours!

Yays and congratulations, esp to CopMike, the official EB Ambassador! I'm sure you'll all serve your communities well!

natelite, you are the price-matching king! to be honest, it's not something I've really ever tried, though maybe i should. what do they do, call the other store to see what the price is? do they generally do it during sales, ie if Target has 20% off then K-Mart will match it? The new Spongebob magnet set is now available for the odd conversion price of 20.74. http://shop.lego.com/Product/?p=852713

I never thought retailers would price match themselves

That's what I don't get, surely this will annoy people who tried to do the right thing and made a Xmas layby? Can you cancel your $349 layby and re-layby it at $299? Maybe it's good for people who live close to their local K-Mart and drop in regularly, but for those who have to travel a bit, it kind of sucks - who knows what the next spot reduction will be? As it is, the catalogue still lists it at $349. To be honest, I'm not surprised by the price drop so much as that it seems to have happened 2 days after the sale began and while it is still ongoing... Maybe it does help 'swinging' voters decide to buy the set, but unless you're constantly dropping into K-Mart and checking the price of that item, how would you even know about the extra discount?

I very much enjoyed this chapter, although I can't help but think that Wagner is cruelly taunting our hero. First, that weird business with the 'red/ green' office lights Secondly, despite not having much interest in science, Wagner clearly has 2 books with test-tubes printed on them in his office Third, although professing sorrow at the short notice, he doesn't actually seem sorrowful enough to do anything about it - like give the reporter more time Fourth, he sent him to the library to find a science lead? What a cruel, cruel man I look forward to the next chapter.

Yes, thanks for taking the time to do this. The helicopter doesn't look too bad, although I don't really associate 'copters with the Star Wars universe. It wouldn't look too out of place in that Jungle Exo-Force theme from last year Excellent photography as always! I love how Zam looks confused by the position of the lightsaber in the open cockpit shot from the alt-model: 'What the?? How that #$% did that get there?'