Partially Obvious

I finally got my hands on the 7636 Combine Harvestor.  Soooo cool.  Its a whole lot of brick for the money.  The only issue I had with it was that some of the tubes weren’t quite long enough and I couldn’t get them to go all the way across.  That was alright though.  they should be threshing cows and terrorizing villagers well enough this way.

Anyways, This has been another week of meetings but good none-the-less.  Jamie Berard was in town and gave some seminars on proper building techniques.  Its fun building sets with that stuff fresh in your mind, it makes you really appreciate the LEGO System and how the pieces work together in harmony (for the most part anyways).   Technic bricks and system snot bricks don’t line up…I never knew that.  I even saw a slide with the proper ways for technic gears to work together…that was the most interesting piece of information I’ll never use.

Mike Crowley came by the office for some official Ambassador meetings today and we’ve been talking about official Ambassador meeting stuff, or just sets we like, which I think works still.

Hope everyone is well

I just built the two mini’s that are currently part of the Target promotion and they rock.  There’s a V-19 and a General Grievous fighter.  nice little compact builds for a couple minutes time spent.  It just makes me miss the old mini’s line.  They were great as impulse items and if you just wanted a mass of a certain part.  I guess the whole idea of the MTT not selling may have turned them off (strange that a huge chunk of brown would sell, but a bite size one wouldn’t…but I don’t claim to know what people think). 

Anyways, I love that they’ve made a come back through BrickMaster and other promotions.  They make me happy

I actually haven’t blogged anything I’ve built for a few weeks so things have stacked up.  a couple of things I’ve built I can’t talk about yet (bwahahaha).  I did get to build the 10195 Republic Dropship and AT-OT.  I actually built the one that was presented at Toyfair and got all those fantastic pictures of it (god I hope the stickers were on there right). 

Itwas a fun build…I think…I was in such a rush to do it I think I cranked it out in 3 1/2 hours.  Some of the people downstairs literally thought I had mixed a potion to make time stop, I think I really blew their minds.  Sadly though, I haven’t leveled my alchemy up to nearly the level of being able to make the time stop potion yet, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up trying.

The set itself is really great.  The neck to the dropship is really complex and fun to build.  I messed it up initially and the cockpit section just would work (lost a goood 10 minutes trying to fix it).  The whole thing looks great though and is really big when its done.  It does begger the question though about things of that scale and whether or not people will be able to buy it in the same way they would a UCS model thats all display piece lookin. 

I think its worth the money.  It’s basically a combo of the AT-TE  and the Republic Gunship ($90 and $120 respectively). For only $40 more you get a more impressive bigger model.  Some people have been complaining about the cost and I think its actually pretty close to being what it should be. 

Anyways, I recommend it if you’re into Star Wars.  I’m a big fan of the Episode II style clones and their equipment so this was a big coolness for me.

So I try not to complain very often about LEGO products because, like I said, I know too many people who design them and would hate to hurt feelings.  This isn’t really a design complaint its just a frustration.  I just bought and built 8183 Track Turbo and its really pretty cool.  Its a big chunky Remote control car chasis with not a lot of pieces but the pieces that are there look great and its a slick little car.  What I like about it the most is that there’s so much cool potential for MOCs with the drive chasis on this thing.

Okay now to the frustration.  the remote takes 3 AAA batteries.  All I have here is a 2 pack.  Why would it be three, thats so frustrating, but that’s really all I have to complain about.  Great set over all with lots of fun potential.

So I’ve been trying to build a bunch lately…cause I think its fun (and its darn good blog fodder).  I’ve built severl things over the last week which I’ll get to soon, but the first one I want to talk about is the 7682 Shanghai Chase.

I’ve always been an ardent Star Wars guy, so for some reason when Indy stuff came out, I was intrigued but didn’t lap it all up like a lot of people did.    I mean it was cool and I built a couple of the sets (the truck chase and the snake temple thingie), but I wasn’t super compelled to purchase the rest of the line. 

Not so with this 2009 stuff.  I’ve already built the first two sets for this year (flying wing and shanghai chase).  My favorite of the two has been the Shanghai Chase.  The Flying Wing was cool, but I just enjoy the cars that much more.  The Tan car in particular was a smart build and looks really good.  The black car in and of itself would not be in my list of favorite, a bit too boxy for me, but the tan one more than makes up for it.  lots of figs too. 

Set has a lot of play value as well because you really can’t beat cars for play value (strangely though I don’t really build racers).  Overall just a neat little set.

FINALLY the pirate ship showed up at the company store the other day.  You may say “Steve, why the impatience, the set only just came out and you got it within the first month of release.”

Okay…yes…I get that, but you have to understand that I’ve known about this set since the early stages of its development (like a year and a half ago) and it couldn’t have come out any quicker and left me happy about it. 

I sat down and started a podcast thats about an hour long and started building, and when the podcast ended I was just finishing.  The set looks really good, and I know I’m a fast builder, but something about finishing a $100 model in under an hour kind of bothered me. 

The building experience was good and they achieved some fun angles and whatnot throughout the set.  The set also has a ton of the new gold color in it for a lot of fun parts. 

I think what got me was the numbered bags again.  I know academically that the numbered bags create smaller projects for a young child to accomplish (target on this was 6-12) but as an adult it just makes the building process easy street. 

I may just dump all the parts into the box next time to extend the build time, which at the end of the day would be just what it was when I was a kid and probably will extend the build time a bit as well.

Overall though I like this set a lot.

Alright, so I built this one today and its a great all around set.  I remember when I started collecting LEGO Star Wars that piecing together the original AAT from bricklink and Peeron was a giant scavanger hunt.  it was very fun, but when I built the set I remember it being kind of thin. 

This new version of the set is anything but thin.  Its a solid build with lots of great parts.  The building experience in and of itself wasn’t the most exciting or interesting one, but the set looks good and I like it. 

I even like the new Yoda who I think has great personality.  Even with the Clone Wars style face I think its a better translation in to minifigure form than the original.

I see it as part of my responsibilty as an employee of the LEGO Group working with passionate fans of LEGO prodcts to actually know as much as I can about that product.  To that extent I try to build as often as I can find a spare moment in order to get a solid grasp on what’s being developed within the walls of the PMD building (its where the designers sit in Billund, DK) and also whether or not I actually like it.

My first entry in the “What’s Steve Building” category will be the 8960 Thunder Driller.  I’d heard about Power miners over a year ago and actually got to see some of it in development on a trip to Billund I took for business.  I remember  being a little concerned about the colors in terms of whether or not AFOLs (including myself) would buy into it.  So when I got to the company store today and found myself saying “heck yeah new Power Miners are in” I was both suprised and relieved that in spite of my initial misgivings I had been able to find some very positive things about the line

The thing that struck me most was how cool the rock monsters were.  The design department has had it’s winners (Harry Potter Troll) and losers (Mars Mission Gummy Bear Aliens) in the non-minifig creature department, but these guys were out of control awesome.  They were still minifig size but something about them was both monsterous and non-threatingly cute at the same time. 

The set though had fascinated me from the first time it showed up in our show-room here in Enfield because the drill function just struck me as so clever.  I think the main reason I wanted it was to figure out how they’d done the two bits rotating in oppisite directions.  The solution of course was very simple and proves again that I am not mechanically minded, but at least I know what it is now.

The set overall is a short build (20-30 minutes at the most for experienced builders), has 235 pieces, 2 minifigs, one rockmonster, and looks good sitting on my desk here at work. 

Everytime I look at it I feel it would fit in very well with late 80’s early 90’s GI Joe vehicles, which gives it an aspect of nostalgia as well for me. 

I’m not going to grade sets in this segment, I’ll talk about the stuff I like (trust me I don’t like it all) so anything I post here will have my recommendation.  I know too many of the designers to start hacking and slashing their work on a public website, plus they’re all way better builders than me and have to work under amazing restrictions when designing a product.  The beauty of their creativity is working circles around the narrow zone they have to stay too while still designing some cool stuff.