Mikael Willberg

English version without link to gallery: http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/news/2011/10/lego_hitler_visits_eastern_finland_2979256.html

Historical Lego re-creation from 1942: Hitler makes a surprise visit to Marshal of Finland 75th birthday. Builder is Ismo Aavaharju and it took two weeks to finish. Mannerheim in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustaf_Emil_Mannerheim Mannerheim's 75th birthday, 4 June 1942, was a major occasion. The government granted him the unique title of Marshal of Finland (Suomen Marsalkka in Finnish, Marskalk av Finland in Swedish). So far he has been the only person to receive the title. A surprise visit by Hitler in honour of Mannerheim's birthday was less pleasing to him and caused some embarrassment. Story in finnish: http://yle.fi/alueet/etela-karjala/2011/10/lego-hitler_vierailee_imatralla_2977509.html Gallery: http://yle.fi/alueet/etela-karjala/2011/10/aavaharjun_legotoita_2977670.html Mig

Well, I'm one that did not know. I only knew Nathan Sawaya. Mig

I checked my photo album and the first photo from year 1973 portraits me (2 years old) and a Lego set 377 I most likely had something before that, but the memories of that time are vague At the same photosession I am also playing with BrioMec. To those who do not know them they are owersized wooden technic beams with nuts and bolts. This image looks more modern set than the one at the picture My firstborn is (hopefully) arriving in february, so let's see what his first set will be. I think dad has no problem of getting some bigger sets to "him" later on Mig

To add a little twist to this country thing: everyone knows Soviet AK-47 assault rifle. But did you know that Finnish Valmet RK-62 assault rifle was based on that AND Israeli based their newer assault rifle "IMI Galil" on the Finnish version ? There is one little tid bit to share also, Israeli fixed one flaw with the Finnish model: people used magazines etc. parts to open bottles and under heavy that affected the loading of ammunition. So Isreali added *drum roll* a bottle-opener to Galil bipod *classic* With the little experience that I have from weapons I liked a lot RK-62. Mig

Cool ! Funny thing is that I find the old school blockyness bad on 10181 Eiffel Tower, but on this one it looks just great. Mig

Those sets have very little appeal to me. The Excavator and Ferrari FXX seem to be the nicest sets for me. Did you notice that we at last get 57518 tracks in black http://toyfair08.asmzine.com/gallery/lego/...s/DSC03749.html Mig

Great to see a older model reviews. I especially like in-progress pictures where you can see functionality in real life, the picture in the instruction manual make the model look different. Mig

(This comment was originally intended for "A sad day in Canada...." thread, but maybe this will generate more thoughts here) The US markets seem to on high demand of Lego. There has been many reports of empty shelves and numerous discounts. In normal markets those should not happen all the time, it looks like the laws of supply and demand are getting discarded there. The annual report of TLC groups so big market areas together that it is less usefull, as the lack of "units sold" values. And that makes analyzing the US market hard. If there is a better source for detailed data, I would like to know it: http://www.lego.com/eng/info/default.asp?page=annualreport In the current light it should not be so far away when the US markets will get smaller for Lego too and propably TLC starts to complain how hard it is to survive *boo hoo* Maybe then it would be the time to get the prices right globally and stop feeding insanely underpriced products semi directly to eBay which is just what TLC in US seems to do. It feels that US prices are separated from rest of the world and eBay has more real market values for products. To me TLC tries to show itself as a "Premium Toy", but I see it more like a sell-by-a-truck-load (US) vs. extreme audiophile products (Europe). I just find it so hard to accept that difference. I have tried to understand US markets for some time, but they seem weird for my understanding. I have managed to create only one reason for US prices: if the consumers stop spending the services sector will get hurt a lot. Because 80% of the economy is depending on it, sales and credit are tried to keep going on as long as possible even with tiny profits, but multiplied by high volume. I cannot see any way of keeping that thing together for much longer: http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b84/bonddad/savings.png Mig

Could someone tell what kind of price cuts there should have been and exactly why. I cannot see CAD being so strong even to USD. Or was there some price changes few months ago or something or did I misintrepret these: http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?...=EUR&amt=1&t=1y http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?...=USD&amt=1&t=1y http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?...=EUR&amt=1&t=1y Mig ps. This was originally a bit longer comment, but I moved most of that to a new thread.

With that kind of proof, it is quite safe to say similar accusation "Do not buy from anyone selling cheap anything sounding guy from INTERNET". If that Alibaba is referring to www.alibaba.com that is the biggest chinese e-commerce site. Last year it's predicted earnings stock ratio was over 300 and Yahoo aquired 40 percent of it for 1 billion (1000000000) USD, if anyone is interested in market details :-) Mig

I just find the 392 much more appealing than the 8157, maybe I'm more of an oldschool guy. Mig

The last poster has one little detail : "Available from s@h and stores in 1.7.". The d2c seems to mean that this creation is created by fans for the fans. Wasn't there a vote which car model would be released ? Just feed the stuff to a babel fish for translation and decode the results: http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr Mig

8294 : Looks nice, but smallish. 8295 : Like a alternative build of 8416. 8297 : That just has quite low functionality for a Technic model, more Ferrari/Racers/Creator feeling on this one. Alas heavy use of Technic parts. I have a feeling that there are more releases coming and these are available on feb/march. Mig

I have never seen so many S@H products discounted for Finland / Europe X-O Too bad the ISD is still too expensive for me, but at least now the price is lower than in eBay. Mig