Destroydacre

In 2012 I found 2 or 3 6497 Twisted Time Trains (1997) in a store called White Elephant (they have a lot of guns/ammo/camping/fishing gear in addition to toys) for $35. Didn't pick any up though as it's a set I already own. Still was very surprising to see.

Here

No it's not. It's another instance of Lego producing bricks of questionable quality, something that seems to be on the rise the past few years. It doesn't bother you, trust me you've made that clear. But it does bother some people. I don't have the set, so I'm not commenting on it directly, but I have received pieces of poor quality in other sets the past few years with much more frequency than I did 5+ years ago. The quality of Lego pieces is still much greater than that of its plastic rivals, but I do believe that quality has decreased from what it used to be. I worry some about where Lego will eventually end up if this quality deterioration continues. Where do we draw the line and say enough is enough? Obviously it will be different for different people. Hopefully this was just a bad batch of medium blue bricks. I realize that when you produce as many bricks as Lego does that you're gonna have some bad ones. But like I said, the uptick in poorer quality bricks the past few years is a bit troubling for me. And I know I'm not the only one who feels that way.

I don't think it's an overreaction at all. Just because you didn't have an issue with the poor quality doesn't mean other people don't. People who are like me would agree that you get what you pay for, and if you purchase a premium building block brand like Lego, that you should get quality pieces, and it's pretty obvious that some of the pieces are severely lacking in quality. Not spending money is how you get change. If Lego's quality dips below an acceptable level people will stop buying and that will hurt TLC's profits. In turn they'll look to rectify the mistake in order to make their product higher quality and get more people to buy. That's how economy works. There's nothing sad about that at all.

For the most part if I buy a set I build it and it stays together. I have some sets that have been built for over 20 years. I've actually had to stop building sets for the time being until I clean out some more room in the basement. Most sets go on bookcases, but I have some shelves with Lego on them too. I don't vulture pieces from sets for MOCs, I buy pieces for that separately (bricklink, tubs from yard sales, etc). MOCs stay put together until I need the pieces but I don't display them like I do with my sets.

I know that's not right because some of the 2007 Star Wars sets had flick fires, though they were the old type that just had a cone on an axle and it would slide right out if you held it vertically. Since it's based on the same design, can these be considered flick fires? They weren't intended to be (at least I don't think they were), but they can still be used as such.

All Lego really needs to do is put some kind of tamper evident seal tape on their products instead of the normal tape that they use now. The kind of security tape that leaves words behind when lifted. It doesn't stick after it's been opened and it's damn near impossible to line it back up again. Something like this would work:

This response is spot on. Playing with the figure will wear the chrome off, but if you don't handle the fig much you'll be fine. I have some chromed greatswords and breastplates, etc from the mid 90's that were used sparingly and still look great.

All of them are like that. The arms are attached to the torso before the chrome is electroplated on so that's where they position the arms during the procedure.

For me in some cases yes, in some cases no. I am a big fan of Star Wars so I buy many of the SW sets, however I didn't like Pirates of the Caribbean so I haven't bought a single POTC set even though I am a big fan of classic pirates. However on the other hand, I like Toy Story and Lord of the Rings, but I only bought the green army men "battle pack" and won't be buying many of the LOTR sets. Lego is expensive and you have to draw the line somewhere.

Does anyone know if it's possible to bypass the limits that Lego puts on some of their sets? I was planning on getting 6 of the Endor battle packs on May 4th which is right around $78 just about perfect to get the promo, but according to S@H you're limited to 5 battle packs. How does it make any sense at all that Lego promotes building your army with battle packs, then limits you to 5 per order? If anyone has any experience with that I'd love to hear about it.

I disagree with that statement. I'm a huge Star Wars fan. I love the OT and while the PT isn't as good and there are a few major drawbacks (ahem JAR JAR) I find the PT films very enjoyable. But I couldn't care less about the CW cartoon. I gave it a chance, but I feel it's just full of too many retcons and ridiculous storylines for it to hold my interest. Despite that however, I would still consider buying the sets if the minifigs weren't ugly(IMO). I realize that some people like them and that's fine I don't have a problem with it. It's just a matter of taste.

I'm in a similar boat when it comes to the CW sets. I've always collected the PT sets so that was never an issue for me, but I did draw the line at CW. And it is because of the figures. There's some CW sets out there that did look very well done. But yeah I just can't get over the figures. There's a few CW sets too that I have bought because they don't have any ridiculous looking figures, like Grievous' starfighter. The Grievous in that set is much better than the PT one released in 2005. And it comes with another mon calamari head and those were done nicely. But overall the CW figs are horrible. I mean just look at Barriss Offee. The PT fig of her in the swamp speeder set is absolutely gorgeous. The CW Barriss, well she has a mustache...

***Spoilers*** I loved the Mass Effect trilogy, but the ending was absolutely awful and if you go back and look at some of the quotes from Bioware before they released ME3 there's plenty that are, to put it bluntly, flat out lies. The ending is riddled with plot holes that make absolutely no sense, while your choices made throughout all three games are completely disregarded. The cohesion of the story is destroyed. Instead of Shepard solving the problem, a brand new character is introduced in the last 5 minutes of the series(the god child) and it solves the reaper issue, not to mention the ending changes the reapers from omnipotent individual nations to tools of the god child who wipes out organics with ridiculous circular logic. It was an extremely disappointing and nonsensical end to what was otherwise a very good video game trilogy.

Love it. Of course I had almost all the aquazone sets when I was a kid so I'm all nostalgic. Keep up the awesome work Legostein!