AndyC

I'd definitely put the Monster Dino set into the Technic bracket, it's a very mechanism-focused set made almost entirely from Technic pieces. I see it more as the modern equivalent of the old Universal sets, hence being labelled under the more non-specific Creator brand.

Sounds like a great little project, I had 6080 as a kid (sadly all my childhood Lego was disposed of by my parents) and it's a great set. And yes, the brick-built portcullis is cool. When it comes to finding replacement or substitute parts, the only place you really need look is www.bricklink.com, although it's worth noting that once you start buying bits from Bricklink it can become dangerously addictive. Have fun! Looking forward to see how it goes.

Yep, once you've opened the file just got to View -> New Themes -> LDD Extended in the menus and you'll be able to use the full set of Extended Mode features.

Ironically they do (sort of) do this with the pink brick boxes, it's just that those aren't necessarily the colours you'd want big quantities of.

Glad to see you liked it. The Friends sets are definitely worth getting, they're lovely. I've got a complete set of all 5 girls now, so I just need to come up with another spark of inspiration.

For reasons I cannot even begin to explain, in my house a 1x2 brick was called a "nitter". I'm not sure any explanation of why would ever make sense.

I think LDD only understands the connection between the driving ring part and the ribbed version of the technic axle joiner, part no 6538 in LDD. Although it fits onto the smooth versions I'm not sure if it supposed to be a legal connection or not.

Lego Star Wars II had all six movies, so it's hardly unprecedented. And certainly a lot more likely than seperate games for the two Hobbit films.

I defy anyone to build the UCS Batmobile using only the PDF instructions on Lego's site. And it's not the only set like that, some of the PDF's available are exceptionally low quality. Most of the newer ones are a lot better, but that's by no means a guarantee. If you're planning to sell on a set, you may also find that you can get more for a complete set with instructions which might make the investment in some worthwhile if you've lost/damaged the existing ones.

I just can't believe she was born in '81, even Lego Set Designers are younger than me these days! I'm still unsure whether I like this modular or not. There are definitely some nice bits but somehow it's just not grabbing me in the way the previous ones have. I won't be rushing to get it on day 1, but maybe when a suitable cashflow moment and decent offer line up or something. It would be a shame not to have it with the others, but I'm not sure that's a good reason to fork out quite so much!

My guess would be that it's the as yet unseen Monster Fighters 'zombie' set. Whatever it is though, it looks extremly cool.

I've bought a few from Bricklink in the past too, mostly for when I fancied trying to build a set but the PDF's on Lego's customer service site are too poor to work from. The UCS Batmobile ones spring to mind as the PDF version of those is basically useless, with everything just looking like a big black blob.

Tower Bridge. You just can't go wrong with it's sheer awesomeness. And its two towers are ideal for pair-building too. :-)

It may be sacreligious to comic fans, but Wolverine's mask never made much sense to me. For most comic book heroes, the mask was their to hide their secret identity which makes sense (well Clark Kent did it the other way round, but the principle is the same). The X-Men didn't go in for that whole secret identity thing though, so wearing a mask just seems like some wierd fetish thing. Logically it makes so much more sense without it. Not sure how you'd convey a hairy back in Lego either, especially given that he's wearing a skin tight latex suit.

I'm a big LDD fan, but to be brutally honest it's pretty awful when it comes to Technic building. Aside from lacking a lot of key parts it's often deeply frustrating trying to persuade it to mesh various gear combinations without enormous amounts of tweaking all over the place. I don't think it's quite "Technic Competition" ready just yet.

I'm sure there's a single-pane Star Wars funny in that somewhere, which justifies the existence of the new figs if anything does. "In thirty years, look as good you will not."

There is something very odd going on here. Sometimes you can place it fine, others it just won't fit. I can't for the life of me figure out exactly what is going wrong with it, seems to be that as you move around it gets slightly out of alignment.

There's been a continual push of mass merchandise with the Star Wars brand since 1977, it doesn't seem to have caused the brand much of an issue so far. Star Wars merchandising is pretty much a license to print money and I'm not in the least bit surprised that Lego Star Wars, which in itself has become bigger than simply construction sets, will be continuing. It would take some drastic turn in fortunes for either party to want to walk away from that one.

Nope, that's the Indy ramp and a curved piece, the review on EB mentioned it ages ago.

Me too, I think D2C sets specifically targetting the AFOL market are probably the way to go, rather than trying to compete with the more mainstream products for shelf space in toy stores. It would be great if Trains could get some of the AFOL love that the Modular Buildings line has, with regular releases of high quality models.

The winner would be gutted if someone let them know the price of an equivalent set on Bricklink, where it can be had for less than £1K even if you insist on it coming from the UK.

Another interesting post, Lego and I had parted company during this period so I'd never really seen any of these. They do have that distinct air of a lack of ideas about them. As for that Stronghold set, it's hard to believe anyone thought that was a good idea, it's just a complete mish-mash. Although given that this was the year of Time Cruisers, maybe that was just in vogue in TLG at the time.

Can you use a less messy "substitute" for water (such as blue technic pins) if it helped demonstrate the mechanics without having to be watertight?

Fantastic model, it's always interesting to see models which take on curved shapes done so well, because it's such an unnatural shape for Lego. CUUSOO models aren't released 'as is', they're more of a starting point for a traditional design process. You can see this if you look at the two designs that have already gone into production.

I think he's referring to the 30055 Fence pieces, two of which were included in brown in the Santa Fe Cars set 1.