Brick And Me - A Lego Blog - SetReviews

After completing 8061 Gateway of the Squid, I would say the overall impression is not really that good, the minifigs, which includes the Squid warrior and divers, are quite impressive, especially the very cool Squid warrior, but the squids and the temple are disappointing.

The design of tentacles in one single long piece is not ideal but still acceptable, but the squid body and claw do not appear realistic to me, same for the smaller octopus, I understand it may not be easy to design these two sea creatures, but in such forms I just feel that they look odd, the octopus looks more like a white spider to me.

The color mix of the temple is a strange contrast of gray and tan, which does not look harmonious. The mechanism to open the gates through rubber band is hard to use, wouldn't using technic parts provide a smoother movement?

I think Lego is very smart in providing the colored keys, many would be tempted to buy more Atlantis set to collect all 5 colors, but I feel that there are poor designs in some elements, which would weaken the value of the Atlantis theme despite having some very cool minifigs.

After I have done my review on Lego 4996 Beach House, I decided to see if my 4 years old kid can handle the regular lego and graduated from Duplo, and to my surprise, needing less than 20% of help, she can build all three models mainly by herself, a good test of patience and bricking skill, despite having some challenges along the way.

But the small bricks are really difficult for her, especially on removing them, it was painful even for adults to pull out the closely aligned 1 x 1 tiles!

By the way, many creator sets are great for family fun and provides good value as they provide multiple models, this beach house is excellent in these aspects, all three models are fine, but the primary model obviously is the best. And 4996 is affordable too, good for play and good for parts as well.

Anyway, my kid is not giving up on Duplo yet, and I have no plans to let her touch some of my high value sets, such as those new Starwars sets...

After I shared my review on Lego Ben 10 8409 (Spider Monkey) at a few forums, I got far many responses than I expected, it seems to me that a lot of people were looking forward to this new theme, but most of the feedback were not really favorable to this new Lego theme, to be fair and trying to take a second look, I opened the second box of Ben 10 set I purchased, and that, is 8519 Big Chill.

Among the Lego Ben 10 sets I saw, Spider Monkey and Big Chill look more interesting because the monkey has six limbs, and Big Chill has a pair of wings, the other sets looks simple and feel like containing only a subset of the two I chosen.

The parts inventory of 8519 looks familiar after building 8409

The head is actually made up of two parts, the screw can be removed to re-position the joint.

Honestly these characters looks scary, I don't know them and they can be good guys, but the look scared my young daughter quite a bit. The building process is really simple, so I spent time in playing with it by making a few wierd postures.

High kicks can be as good as Kung Fu masters like Bruce Lee

Kung Fu training postures, the second one is a legendary style called 如來神掌

After playing with Big Chill, I must say again that the flexibility this design provides is really impressive, the joints must be a design work of careful thinking, and if we just treat it as just another Lego product line, and as long as Lego would not "contaminate" other existing theme with this design, can we say that this Ben 10 theme does have some value as a toy? Even if it does not feel that Lego to us? Another question is, with this type of design, aren't there any existing better options than Lego?

And the responses I got from polls in Eurobricks as well as a Greater China forum is also very interesting, that would be very helpful in driving thoughts on this theme from different angles. I am waiting for more responses.

I found Lego Ben 10 sets on display yesterday in local Toysrus, despite that it was the first time I ever noticed such theme, I purchased two sets to find out what this is all about. The first thing that came to my mind was: another Bionicle?

A quick check on the web revealed that it is indeed some sort of successor to the soon-to-be-discontinued Bionicle series, a new theme based on an American Cartoon licensed from a company called Cartoon Network, while I have absolutely no idea on what this Cartoon or Company is all about, I just see some sort of Bionicle feel in it. Another interesting find from the web are some rather negative remarks about this new product line.

The first box I opened is 8409 Spider Monkey, among the 6 sets on display yesterday, this seems to be a more interesting one, I was not surprised by the content, as there were already clues on the box, this is not a typical lego set, it is indeed a new twist, big parts that can be used to build a character probably in less than 5 minutes, quite un-lego in a way to me, even Bionicle sets would contain some smaller parts as well as regular lego bricks, but this one is totally different.

I guess I can understand why Lego makes such move, the traditional market segment, which probably includes you and me, may be kind of saturated, at this times where PSP, Wii and XBOX rule, Lego needs to identify new customer sources, and I think this Cartoon series very likely has a strong loyal supporter base that will sure purchase good related products. But here in Hong Kong, I think this product will meet cold response, for around 10 minutes in that crowded store, no one except me barely care to pick up a box to check, and there is so little discussion about this in local forum (well, I may try to test water with my Chinese review later).

So is the product really that bad for me? Honestly, as far as this 8409 is concerned, it is kind of interesting, the color is nice, and the creature can be played by making different postures with a lot of flexibility, I even would imagine using the parts on future MOCs, I think the parts are Technic compatible just like Bionicle.

The standard posture of Lego 8409 Spider Monkey

I tried turning this into a Spider-like posture and it works!

The torso can actually be further disassembed! The one with multiple connector may be useful in MOC design

The monkey head and tail

Overall, getting one or two good sets from this theme is fine, even it can be a little overpriced, at this price range it is tolerable, but it is definitely not something to feel excited about, at least not for me. In fact, this kind of design concept based on big parts is very unlike the built-from-details design philosophy that I see in Lego, I hope this type of design is limited to this theme and will not spread to other themes.

With so many hot discussions around the new Lego 2010 Harry Potter sets, it reminds me of the few Lego Harry Potter sets I have owned.

Honestly I am not a fan of Harry Potter, I don't even know much about the story and never watched any of the movies, I bought a few Lego Harry Potter sets simply because of the Lego elements in them, and I actually got them only around an year ago, in reasonable pricing luckily (I would not have got them if too expensive), I think such pricing is not possible nowadays any more.

One of the set which I have actually built is 4704 - Room Of The Winged Key, it is a nice small set, the old gray parts and tan color mix well, and I would say the elements (spider and web, flames, keys+wings) all works well together. The architecture is good, nice design integrating the arch, roof, door and having the two plates hinged together nicely, which added a little playability aside from the minifigs and keys.

The minifigs are wonderful too, with wands and capes (star pattern), the all white queen minifig (if you count it) is also interesting, I think the white torso with white hands is not very common and can be quite useful (please correct me if I am wrong), the chrome silver crown is available in very few sets too.

The old sets seems to include quite a few nice extras, in the case of 4704, there are two nice small posters!

There are also a number of other useful parts in it, mainly "winged keys" of course, but I don't think I would break up this set and use the parts else where, I better keep them intact in one set, perhaps only temporarily "borrow" a few items for external deco in an MOC, and will return them to the set afterwards.

Another interesting thing in playing with this set is how to break down the built product into components that can be easily re-assembled, and keep them in the original box, usually this is difficult for most Lego sets, but this one seems to be working well.

Looking forward for the new 2010 Lego Harry Potter sets, not for Harry Potter but for the high quality lego design associated with the theme.

I found out about this DK Lego sticker book from Brickset, and fortunately it is available at a local store at a good price, I did not hesitate to get a copy, and it looks like a good deal to me.

The book is composed of three sections:

- A 31-page booklet, on each page are spaces where you can put stickers on

The booklet pages represents 16 themes (2 page per theme except spongebob)
City
Train
Castle
Pirates
Space
Adventurers
Agent
Exo-force
Underground
Aquaraiders
Batman
Atlantis
Starwars
Harry porter
Indiana jones
Spongebob

The booklet pages are quite simple, but in a way it reflects what the editor feels would be the representative set of a theme, in Starwars, it is 10143 Death Star II. But I think they can actually make the booklet pages even richer.

- 13 Pages of stickers for use with the 31-page booklet, on each page there are around 16 stickers

- 19 pages of "Extra stickers, 4 of them are smaller size ones, aside from having a second set, there are 2 pages which are new (not available in the booklet related set). These extra stickers are supposed for free use beyond the booklet pages. There are 150 small stickers on each page.

In total, there are 512 regular stickers and 600 smaller ones.

The value of this book lies in the stickers, how to use them can imply a lot of possibilities, but would it be attractive to mature brick builders? I guess that would be interesting.

Personally, I have no plan to put these stickers on my stationeries, books, door or anywhere, I'll keep one copy as collection item, and is contemplating a wierd usage on the other one...

By the way, as the news from Brickset mentioned, there seems to be a Lego Star Wars version of DK sticker book coming (Lego Star Wars Ultimate Sticker Collection?), as there are some early information at borders.com.au, if that is true, the Starwars version can probably be a even hotter item!

4996 is a very nice House based set that Lego produced, but it was on sales probably because Lego produced too many of them, but in my opinion, it is a good set that should be hot, and Beach House is a very romantic idea.

It is designed as two pieces so you can remove the top one to add amenities (or residents) to the interior, there are movable windows and doors!

Thinking about houses, I also think of the tragic earthquakes that have been causing loss in both properties and human lives, not many people had personally experienced an earthquake, I did, so I know how terrifying it can be, and poorly constructed houses can kill people. Just wish that none of this will happen again. And using 4996, I try to depict a scene on a rescue of a earthquake victim, those teams that had exerted best effort will always be able to make a difference.

Here it goes ....

The owner of this nice beach house is a pretty young lady

Sometimes she would sit on the stairway, contemplating....

Watching the street from the balcony

Looking out the window....But....

One day ..... suddenly, something strikes! - The ground is shaking terribly

And the house is breaking up!

Ceilings falling down

In seconds, the building collapsed

Rescue team rushing in! Every second counts!

Efforts paid off, this is indeed a wonderful moment!

Although in reality, not everyone can reach safety after all, but what had happened can alert people who live in earthquake zones to prepare themselves on how to get a better chance of survival when the natural calamity strikes. Well, just hoping that 2010 is a good year for all.

By the way, usually people would take photos of their Lego work in sequence when they build it, but this time I am doing it the other way around, and in the process, I found out that tearing down a Lego structure is also something to learn and practice carefully too.

For Lego Starwars collectors, there is no such thing as which one to get when it comes to 8083 (Rebel Trooper Battle Pack) and 8084 (Snowtrooper Battle Pack), we'll sure get both. But if somehow you have to choose only one, well, despite my attachment to the Hoth Rebels, I would say 8084 provides better overall value.

It is not just the Snowtroopers, the new AT-AT Driver and Imperial Officer, these minifigs can be the main reason why people grab them, but the set offers more in the other "equipments" - I especially like the speeder bike, it is very well designed and has very good playability, when you check out the speeder bikes in other sets, such as:

30005: Imperial Speeder Bike
7128: Speeder Bikes
7139: Ewok Attack
4483: AT-AT .... you may agree that this one in 8084 is one of the better designs (if not the best) that Lego provides in a set, especially when it comes with a low cost set that includes 4 minifigs which are all very useful!

The mini outpost is small and looks impoverished, but the missile launcher is quite good as some playability can be provided with a few simple parts.

In terms of future appreciation, I expect this set to do well, so keeping a few additional sets can be a good idea even if you are not a trader.

Using a Hoth Rebel as my avatar, it is a sign that somehow I identify myself with the attributes of this character, whether it is a good choice or not is hard to say, but getting a set of Lego 8083 Rebel Trooper Battle Pack is sure a right thing to do.

I remember that around 2 years ago, it would have cost me USD 7.5 to get a single Hoth Rebel (from one of the older sets such as Lego 4500 and 7666), now this is a great deal for me to have 4, building a hoth scene sure will cost much less now, unless you are trying to build something like Mark Borlase's recreation of Echo base (that is an amazing work and one of the best Lego Hoth creation ever)!

Another thing that they do right this time is to use different heads for the rebels, I am not sure if works like my previous Hoth MOC tells them what Lego players need, it is quite obvious that we should add individual personality to each of these characters. The Pilot face is kind of new to me too, I don't know anything about Zev Senesca but this pilot is a new design and it looks nice.

Correct me if I am wrong, these helmets are new parts?

The vehicle (ice cutter?) that comes with the set is not very attractive to me, it is a little boring actually, it seems to me that the dark side has more fun equipments in 8084. By the way, if you check out an ice-cutter at http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Laser_ice-cutter, you may also feel that this landspeeder can be designed to look better.

After all, 8083 is a must get set for Lego Starwars Fans, it is just a matter of how many.

I guess there are many among us who are not only Lego Players, but someone who invests in Lego. Well, this may not necessarily has to be trading, but the thoughts of owning a set that appreciates, let's say, by 100%, definitely is a pleasant thing. With such mentality, I previously owned three pieces of 32X32 Blue base plate, which was considered rare commodity, as they have been extremely useful in building oceanic MOCs, but were only available from a few old sets, believe it or not, I got my first blue base plate from the 2004 Spiderman set 4856 Doc Ock's Hideout, and that is a very costly set to buy in 2009. The other source, 9286 Large LEGO Baseplates from 1998, was not economical either.

So when Lego announced the 620 Blue Building Plate, it was quite a "surprise", but aside from having some assets depreciating, having a good supply of this blue baseplate may actually allow many to build more MOCs, including myself, and after all, three pieces is no big deal really.

As expected, 620 is exactly the same blue baseplate as released earlier, at first glance I somehow feel that the new one is a little darker in complexion, but I think that could be an misperception only, inspecting closely and I think they are of the same quality. But if anyone notice any quality issues during building process, I hope they will be echoed somehow.

New blue baseplate 620  ------------- Old blue base plate from 9286

The pricing at US ($4.99) is very good, but in HK they sold it at HKD 74.9! Equivalent to USD 9.6! A 192% price difference!! At the US pricing Lego is doing a good job responding to customer needs, but for HK players, despite that we are used to such huge discrepancy in regional pricing,  this near double pricing is not helping customer satisfaction.

Finally, an interesting observation, the package paper of 620 base plate says the item is made in Denmark, Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic, a plate produced in 5 countries? Wonder from which one mine was made.

Just found out more information about this lady jedi that comes with 8091. Lego is truly very smart in manipulating the mix of set content, such as  including a rare minifig with a set of few pieces to justify a higher pricing.

After a quick research, I learnt that Barriss Offee is a Padawan to Jedi Master Luminara Unduli, since Season 2 of the Clone Wars are not yet being aired in Hong Kong, I have yet to see the new episodes to see her debut, but the character looks interesting, I am glad to have this minifig as I was not able to collect a minifig of Master Luminara Unduli yet, which is very hard to get. Personally I think Luminara Unduli is very cool, Barriss Offee appears to be so as well.

On the value of this new minifig, a check on history may help. Luminara Unduli's appearance (only in the Light-Up Lightsaber form) in only one single set 7260 Wookiee Catamaran in 2005 may be a good indicator. Besides, with Barriss Offee in the designed costume you may probably feel that she can be the prettiest jedi of them all.

I look forward to watch Season 2 of the Clone Wars soon in local TV, wonder if there would be an episode where Barriss will confront Ventress, I guess that would be a spectacular combat.

For fun purposes, I also tried to change the outfit a little bit, including a new hairdo, the effect seems not to be so good. But that somehow reminds me of a character named "Red Rose" (黑玫瑰) in a local movie series during the 60s.

So I guess I should buy another set of 8091 as collector item when my new batch of ToysRUS coupons arrive, assuming stocks would still be available locally then.

Reference: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Barriss_Offee

The long awaited lego 2010 sets finally becomes available today (Jan 3, 2010) through the ToysRUS store in TST here in Hong Kong, I am not passionate enough to queue in line much early to be the first 100 buyers in order to have a chance to get a HKD 400 gift pack (for purchases above HKD 800), I only got a poster and a small gift item, but that's ok, and I was lucky to get the assistance of a kind staff in ToysRUS, who got me a 8091 (Republic Swamp Speeder) which were all "seized" by people who bought in large quantities (like a full cart of the same item).

I built this Swamp Speeder tonight, the HKD 299 pricing is quite high for a set of this size (it is quite small), it is not bad, but not superb either, I guess the "limited" edition thing makes this set a hot item, in fact, along with 8092 they were the first sets to be out of stock in this morning's first sales.

The Jedi Commander Barriss Offee minifigure is kind of cool although I am not sure who this Jedi Commander is, the other figures are not that special (sorry, I am not a clone collector). The speeder itself is quite unique, a side-by-side two seater, with a knob at behind that allows turning and manuvering of this speeder like a car, there are wheels below although the movement is not really that smooth. The bar-thing at the middle seems to be decoration item only, I can't see any practical use or playability in it. There are missiles which look nice, but I don't like to play with that anyway.

But the propeller type of thing reminds me of the swamp vehicle in Miami, after all, either on earth or some where in another galaxy, it makes sense to have a vehicle design like this for moving in a swamp.

For me, this set is hot not totally for its qualtiy but for the perceived rareness and unique design, locally it is a ToysRUS exclusive.

The box size is very inproportionate to the content

The main body

The movement mechanism

The wheels

Lego 8091 Republic Swamp Speeder is unique and special, so even if I may not rate it high, it is still a must-get.

Sometimes people tend to think that it must be costly to build Lego MOCs, as evident by the many great creations that we've seen in Flickr and BrickShelf, but in fact, it is possible to have fun with limited number of parts as well. The small set Lego creator products such as 6741 Mini Jet are not really that hot, but I think it contains a good combination of parts that can be useful for building mini Starfighters, so I just give it a try.

First, let me introduce the three officlal models that comes with the set, they are all nice but honestly not extraordinary attractive, when I purchase the set, I was actually after the parts:

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Well, here comes my MOC, I used up all the parts and only parts from 6741:

Would welcome any comments.

Do you think playing a game by picking up parts for Robo building is fun? I don't. But why do I get this Lego 3835 Robo Champ?

Simple, because of the parts, check out the following and you may agree with me:

The 1x1 tile is a costly piece, especially the green ones, believe it or not, someone is selling it at more than USD 2 per piece!

The three Robots are quite cute indeed! So just set them up for some fun photos!

It is worth buying as a souvenir item, the parts themselves are worth the money, plus you can play the game if you have young kids at home.

When I first heard about the games theme from Lego, honestly there were not much excitement, first of all, I am not especially fond of this kind of game (instead I like X-BOX games), and secondly, my impression is that Lego is not a company good at this kind of stuff.

But after coming across 3840 Pirate Code by chance, it somehow caught my attention, and since a local vendor is selling it at HKD 279 (Around 22 Pound sterling), a 1.3X mark-up for a low cost product is truly acceptable, and I think perhaps I can play this with my kid too.

Nice packaging! Why can't all Lego sets boxes be designed this way?

And the result? Well, I would say this set is a jewel, not that it is a great game, but that it is a well-designed model that can be used to play a game in the pirates spirit, and its parts inventory is very interesting!

It is not a set for minifig collector, as there is no real Pirates elements in this set for that sense, the only "minifig" is a skeleton, but the game is about guessing the pirate secret code, and the most cunning pirate will win, the secret code is expressed in a mix of colored gems (6 colors). And guess results and hints can be expressed according to some rules. Honestly, I am really not a fan of these type of games, I would rather play Gears Of War II instead, so I am not going to play it now, and really can't elaborate any further.

The model is very interesting, built out of many high value parts, you got big number of stud plates, panel and other parts that you cannot possibly get in such quantity from a set! An example, for gems alone, you get 72 pieces of them (12 X 6 colors)! Checking out how much each of these will cost in bricklink, you'll know what you have got! By the way, as of now, the parts list are not inventorized at peeron yet, the photo below gives you a good idea on what's in the set.

The building process:

I like the treasure boxes a lot!

The dice! The "thing" beside it is used as a tool to remove the tiles easily

Not many left overs, but ok as the parts inventory is already very rich.

It seems to me that the games theme is available in Europe but not in USA, the price I got it in Hong Kong is still ok, the model is good and the parts can be a good supplement for building MOCs.

With my experiences on this 3840 Pirate Code, I think I need to take a serious look into other sets in the Games theme.

When you ask a Lego Star Wars fan on which vehicle is the symbol of the series, I guess many would say X-Wing, I still remember years back when 6212 was so scarce in the market, many would have been willing to pay 2 times the original price to get one, but in comparison, 7658 Y-Wing Fighter has been on cold shelf and even today, some shops have to sell it as bargain item.

The same fate hits 8037, Anakin's Y-wing Starfighter, so I ask myself, is Y-Wing ugly? Is it lacking the exposure or charisma to be a Star? Personally I think the vehicle is great, the two special big nacelles is a unique design, the many small pieces of bricks peppered over the main body reminds me of a sophisticated vessal sailing the oceans, so what's wrong with it that makes it a poor seller?

Could the answer lies in the minifigs? Comparing 7658 to 6212 in terms of minifigs is definitely a big mismatch, 8037 includes a special version of R2 but all Lego Star Wars fans must have obtained Anakin and Ashoka from other sets long ago.

So let's take a look at the building sequence of 8037:

I think 8037 lacks playability, as you got only a firing missile and one of two not so interesting moving parts, and the chamber for Ahsoka is badly designed, not only it is too small, it lacks maneuverability, the sides are also too hefty, and the use of stickers in this case is very disappointing. As far as the Y-Wing itself is concerned, I think it is a great vehicle to have, but personally I like 7658 much better, though for completeness, I need to have a 8037 too.

Two Y-Wings side by side comparison:

If having one Y-Wing is good enough for you, I would suggest 7658, it is simply elegant!

I was not looking carefully and thought that taking out Celebration Luke minifig from the LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary would cause some sort of damage to the book's look, but the fact is, all I need to do is to cut the tape and the cover can be freely opened and closed, taking the minifig in and out is extremely easy, what a nice design!

Thanks to Huw from Brickset, who had not only pointed out my misunderstanding on the design, and had also done an excellent review on this book!

Finally the long awaited book from DK is available at local store, no need to say, it is a must-get for Lego Star Wars fans, aside from the colorful and high quality illustrations, you get the special edition of Luke Skywalker - Celebration Luke as the author calls it - An exclusive minifig where Luke dressed for the celebration scene at the end of Star Wars Episode IV, A New Hope.

This 95 pages book nicely put together all the major Lego sets and minifigs produced, as a dictionary, it is not as comprehensive as an encyclopedia, but amazingly perfect as a collector item. It also brings attention to some special but less known items, for example, I only learn about the Zam Wesell's Airspeeder after reading this book. Other examples are the Geonosians and wookiees sections. There is also a Community section where great lego fans' work are being highlighted, I am not surprised to see that one of my favorite, Mark Borlase's recreation of Echo base, is there.

One of the most wanted set, the 2006 Slave 1 makes it at front page, it is a sign on how special this craft is!

The new minifigs displayed on content page

An example: A page telling you almost everything you need to know about The imperial army

Since I intend to keep it as a collector item, I am not going to take Luke out yet, so I just keep it there, please note the way it is packed, I think it would take quite some effort to remove it without causing some damage to the book's look.

By the way, the book is not as thick as it appears to be, 50% of it are for containing the minifigs, so you get 95 viewing pages, which is less than 50 physical pages I believe, but since the price is quite reasonable, it is still very much worth the money.

The lego community obviously are all now focusing on the new products coming up, what excites Starwars fans most must easily be the 10198 Tantive IV, while these new sets are truly wonderful, let's recall the same excitement that ignited the lego starwars passion last year.

Lego 7676 Republic Attack Gunship may be forgotton by many now, but it is probably one of the best Starwars vehicle produced by Lego so far, I am not going to repeat the features here as you must already known about them or read about those somewhere many times, I just like to point out a few of my observations:

1. Republic Attack Gunship may be the Starwars clone wars vehicle with the most exposures, and it is really beautiful. The Lego implementation reproduced the movie details to its best:

Opening cabin door, compartment for command station and healing chamber 

Two seats camel style pilot cabin

Compartment can carry combat units and a speeder bike, and there is a backdoor for entry

2. It is a vehicle with much flexibility and playability

Positionable cannons, missiles, flexible wings, combat chamber on wings.

3. The minifigs mix is great, with the passion of Lego Starwar fans, never would be a set be good enough in that aspect. But remember, this is the only set that gives you Ventress.

Commander Cody and Clone Trooper

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Plo Koon

Talking about Ventress, despite being a villain, she is a fascinating character and one of the most fearsome nemesis of the good jedi clan, without her, wouldn't the war be less fun?

Among all the Lego sets, there is a set which holds a very special status among my collections - I have 5 boxes of it!

7657 AT-ST once was a scarce commodity, the highest price I paid for it was HKD 290 (USD 37), today it seems that not many are looking for it any more, but it is (or has been) a very interesting model really.

7657 is not a big set, consists of plain color parts

The structure at a glance, the legs are rather rigid, but the knobs at the back can make the upper compartment rotate

The minifig is cool, the head and helmet are very useful else where too

The minifg looks great on top of the control room

Adding Yoda into the scene, with the master around, even the mighty AT-ST machinery cannot do anything

This is a nice set, but why do I get 5 boxes? I really don't know, just bought them 1 after 1 over a period of over a year, may be it is time to sell one or two of them...

I have recently seen a number of great Lego creations with Oceanic background, and in each of these work, there is a common part that caught my attention, and I also notice that this particular part is also frequently asked in many Greater China forums.

I first notice the blue 32 x 32 Baseplate from my Spiderman set - 4856 Doc Ock's Hideout  - but at such as high price nowadays, that obviously is not a economical way to get the blue baseplate, then I found 9286 - Large LEGO Baseplates - this set is not cheap either, but it is very targetted, you get exactly what you need.

The Old Gray 48X48 baseplate is a classic, I can't even figure out how much it worths today, the two 32X32 green baseplate are very useful too, and with the blue plate (now I have 2), it is a ok price to get them at USD 40.

Now I can start thinking of a new MOC idea, an oceanic one probably... 

While a review for a minifig pack like this can be boring, I tried to add some flavors to it to make it more interesting, I hope this works.

But let me answer a few key questions first:

Q. Can the tiles on the Tic Tac Toe plate be removed?
A. Yes, I did it, but the plate of course is glued seems uneasy to be removed, I have not forced the issue for fear of damaging the box, can someone who owns the older Tic Tac Toe sets share some clue? I think I may have made the wrong conclusion earlier (my fault)

Q. Are they regular minifigs?
A. I believe so, see the anatomy of the selected minifigs below

Someone who leads by being the Sample (for anatomy analysis)

Who should I choose from the pirates side? well, believe me, this is a random choice

Q. Is it fun to play with?
A. if you really play Tic Tac Toe with it, it is. But.....

The full cast in close up:

And the packaging is quite smart, you can fold it this way for easy storage:

How about playing a game first?

So far so good, nothing weird yet...

Oops, someone got hot tempered...

Looks like we have a tie as usual, really boring....

But wait....

Someone cheating!!!

Things are getting out of hand!

It is truly sad that peace cannot prevail...

At the end, nobody wins....

What a mess....

Actually all these can be avoided, the conclusion: DO NOT play Tic Tac Toe.

So how can we use this thing?

How about a dance?

Grab a set of Lego Pirates Tic Tac Toe, and have fun in a way - whatever way you can imagine...

In the previous review of this interesting book, I have only shown the primary model Two Castles, but the book actually contains 6 other models that can be built out of the bricks. After building the remaining models, I feel even more satisfied with the value of this product. So here I share all the 7 models of the Lego BrickMaster Castle:

Two Castles: This model uses all the bricks, the knight has the strongest fighting strength here. But I think the skeleton's assets looks very great too!

Castle Jail: The Knight is having an upper hand here, and this mini jail also has a defensive weapon (the catapult)

Skull Castle: This one is truly inspiring, I am going to build a MOC....

Castle Chariot: The knight is in trouble here! But a mobile jail without cover? I think it looks more like a comfortable transport

Castle Lookout: A simple one, but the skeleton feel is strong! Imagine running into this amidst heavy mist!

Castle Battle: The Knight defense can look grand even with so few bricks! Against a fully equiped Skeleton!

Castle Defense: The Skeleton vehicle looks great from the front, but one question, how does this thing moves?

I need to mention that the book has very good photo background for the models, a seaside background that fits exceptionally well to the storyline! This is a must get set really!

Having a good experience with the BrickMaster Pirates, I expect the same level of satisfaction with the BrickMaster Castle set, and I am not disappointed. From first glance the bricks in the set does not seem to be superb, but the rich variety of models that can be built out of them again makes this simple set of bricks extraordinary.

The high quality printing makes the 45 pages book a collector item, the book is not for illustrating Lego castle information as some people thinks, it is actually an instruction manual for 7 alternatives models that you can build with the included bricks, but it is printed at high quality that no Lego manual had been produced like this before, and there is a compartment used to keep the bag of bricks.

Bricks Contained - Inventorized

But one caveat is that my set has one missing brick, instead of 2 Brown 1x1 tile, there is only one, instead I got one extra 1x1 black brick, so the soldier's small castle will be a little improvished.

Here is one of the model in completed form - Two Castles (you can use the same set of bricks to build 6 others based on the instructions)

The completed Two Castle in completeness - No left over bricks (all used)

Soldier with Two faces

Ratings:
Minifigs: 7/10. Just Ordinary, but good to fit in what the set can offer

Parts: 8/10. Not that there are great parts, but the value lies in the models that the same set of bricks can be used to build

Playability 10/10: With so many alternative models to build, rarely can a set be having such good playability

Price: 10/10. 2 minifigs and 140+ pieces plus a nice printed book is a good deal for HKD 99 (Around USD 12.70), Amazon is pre-selling it at a higher price

Overall: 9/10. This is truly a great value set! I would highly recommend it (subject to the price in your region may be).

Regarding on how I got this? Check out my previous blog entry here.

I think this set+book thing published by DK Publishing (Please check out their site link for the item) provides great value at HKD 99 (around USD 12.70), it contains a lot of good parts, and being able to come up with so many models with the same set of material is simply astonishing. I am not sure if it is related to the BrickMaster program (http://shop.lego.com/Product/?p=KBM27) or is this a new product line to be released in such format (while I believe that the later is more likely).

So here I am sharing one model that we can come up with the bricks, it looks really good, especially good when we think about the price, after all, good pricing will definitely affect customer satisfaction, right?

Completed model - Treasure Island

The Good Guy

The bad guy

Nice Cannon

Left overs (which should be usable in other alternative models)

Parts that worth a second look, I think this set/book is also a good source for some useful parts

You can find out more about this product from here

It is rather strange that no one from Hong Kong has posted a review on this yet (Correct me if I am wrong), are they all planning to keep this as a souvenir? (I do have such a thought) But since I did blog about it and many friends are asking what are the content inside, I decide to sacrifice and open a set!

Well, another reason that prompt me to open this set is the condition of the packaging:

A torned plastic bag, that's why it looks like some content is missing from outside

But nevertheless, at HKD 99 (around USD 12.70), it is a good deal, you got over 140 bricks and 2 minifigs, and a very nicely printed instruction book, which contains ways to use this set to build 6 different models! And there are also quite a number of good parts!

As a book,this is a very nicely printed high quality instruction book (no Lego manual have such printed quality), and in the spirit of BrickMaster, a single set of material can be used to build different models!

Seeing this marked as "to be released on Aug 31,2009" on Amazon, I am not sure if this can be found else where, but here in Hong Kong, they can be hunted down with luck at some MTR station's 7-11 stores, see my previous blog on how I got these, beware though, availability seems to be subject to luck and there is NO guarantee that they can indeed be available at a specific 7-11 store.

Truly unexpected, these two sets of BrickMaster items (are they sets or books?) appear on shelfs of local 7-11 stores, they are NOT widely available but seems to be appearing and disappearing in some 7-11 stores in some MTR Stations, I heard that they have been seen in Kowloon Tong, TST, Central, North Point, Taikoo and Terminal 2 of Hong Kong International Airport.

These items look special, at HKD 99 each, it is around USD 12.70, a little less than the pricing in Amazon (and Amazon says "released on Aug 31st"?) and no need to pay for shipping, I heard that many local Lego fans ran from one 7-11 store to another, and many were disappointed. Personally I am not especially excited about these two sets, but today I got passed a 7-11 store in MTR Central station, and decided to take a look, and found 2 boxes there (they are sold along with books and magazines), so I just bought it, well, the price is kind of ok indeed, nice to have if you don't need to run around in hot weather in order to buy.

In case you would travel to Hong Kong in the next few days and you truly want these two sets, may be you can check casually in the 7-11 stores that you would come across "naturally".

I saw some folks in GCR (Greater China Region) doing a review on 8420 Street Bike recently, that reminded me of this old set which I got quite sometime ago. With a engine, gearing system, and suspension mechanism, plus many parts (such as the two big wheels) which are not available else where, it is a great set with great playability.

Somehow I sense that this item has been quite hot in mainland China, but I do not see many talking about it here in Hong Kong, the price has reached around USD 90 already here, not much more costly than bricklink price.

By the way, I have taken a set of outdoor pictures of this bike model:

This red Lego 8420 Street Bike in my opinion is one of the best set of Bike (or may be one of the best Technic Set) ever made by Lego.

Lego keep coming up with new minifigs and along with them new vehicles, 7753 Pirate Tank gives us 2 new lego minifigs: Hondo Ohnaka and Turk Falso (sorry, I actually get to know them only by now),  Obi-Wan Kenobi is not new, but nice to have if you haven't got him already.

At around USD 50 in Hong Kong, I would still consider this a good buy, with 372 pieces including 3 minifigs (2 new and rare ones), again, the value would be determined by the quality of the vehicle. And for this one, I would give it a thumbs up.

The vehicle is not looking great actually, and honestly I haven't seen it in the Star War movie or TV series before, just did some research on the web and gradually knowing more about these pirate guys and their tank, but I found the design quite interesting, specifically the rising seat, but together with the minifigs the whole thing suddenly makes sense, a guy holding two guns appearing from the vehicle and starting combat action!

The Technic mechanism for the rising seat:

The covering plates for the compartment of the rising seat:

Rising for combat actions:

Besides, the two minifigs are good, at first impression, Hondo may appear to be a bad guy, but after some reading I think the character is a complex one, better watch the episodes before jumping into conclusion, and for now, let me just take a nice shot of this guy:

Hondo Ohnaka:

Turk Falso

Aside from the rising seat, the firing missiles at the back is just a small thing, but the missile firing mechanism at the front seems quite new to me (pushing a plate), the wings at the front are not very stable but the rest are fine, I also enjoy building the wings at back, as they are solid and well designed, and the vehicles happens to have wheels too, well, I almost forgot, it is a tank and not a plane.

Front missiles, can be triggered by pushing the gray plate

Missiles at the back, hand pushed, nothing special

The wheels, well, without seeing this, I almost forgot that I was building a "Tank"

The wings (or are they wings? Correct me if I am wrong), these two pieces are not very stable and can easily get loose

Tail wing Internal, just to show how it is built

Tail wing completed, very solid

Anyway, overall I would strongly recommend getting this set, after all, it is not expensive, why miss it?

Satisfied with final work, so put the stickers on

The fully completed Lego 7753 Pirate Tank!

Based on what I observed from forums and reviews, I suspect that this is another under-rated Lego Star wars set, is it possible that being a lady's starfighter discourages guys from buying it? But my personal experiences with this set is very positive, and as a result, I bought another box for storage.

Ahsoka is a wonderful character adding much vitality to the cast, her interaction with Anakin in the clone wars brings much youthful sensation to the series. The animation did a great job in presenting the young padawan but the lego character does not seem to duplicate the animation character very well, the minifig looks too mature to me.

But aside from Ahsoka and R7, the starfighter is very good, with printed parts (which is getting rare) and a nice dark red based color scheme. The droid fighter is also good, with a design which I think is very similar to 8016 Hyena Droid bomber, it can fold and stand vertically, quite an interesting model.

And despite hating stickers, the stickers in this set is well fit into the model, well, if it can be properly placed, for me it is always challenging to place stickers on the bricks nicely.

The two buzz droids, however, can get loose easily, it is great though for us to have them again without getting the expensive old sets such as 7252 Droid Tri-Fighter.

I have read some reviews complaining about the price and it seems that some could have bought it at a strangely higher price, but I got it here in Hong Kong at around  USD 50, for 2 nice vehicles + 2 buzz droid + 2 minifigs, I see this as reasonable.

I would highly recommend this set!

Here are the pictures of the set:

Base body of Ahsoka's starfighter

The mechanism for triggering the missiles

The landing gears

The wings, very solid

The Buzz droid, good to get them (two of them!) at 7751

Base body of the droid fighter and one of the wing's parts

Completed droid fighter

Completed Starfigher (without stickers yet)

Buzz Droid attacking Ahsoka

Placing the Lego 7751 vehicles along side with the XBOX controller for size reference

Among all Starwars characters, I have a special sentiment toward the Hoth Rebels.

Being small potatoes, the Hoth Rebel is a tragic character, fighting a battle that is destined to fail, sacrificing without causing damages to the enemies, but their fighting spirit and courage are definitely respectable.

I have collected quite a number of Hoth Rebels mainly from 4500 before the release of 7666, although I don't really like the yellow face Brown Hair over Eye minifig head, it is better than the 3 dot face now comes with 7749, just wish it were LtFlesh as I somehow just feel that Yellow faces are wierd. I also feel that the old Aviator Goggles is better.

Another goodie from the 4500 Hoth Rebel is the weaponry:

Anyway, my ideal Hoth Rebel minifig probably has to be custom mix one.....

When I look at the Snowtroopers minifigs, there is one thing which puzzles me, why would the Lego designer responsible for this come up with a helmet with a backpack attached? And that, is a leaking backpack!

I hope it has nothing to do with cost-saving.

After talking about the strange Tuan Tuan in 7749, I think I can write a full review on the set.

Aside from the cutie Tuan Tuan, this set comes with Han Solo, two Hoth Rebels and two Storm troopers, in terms of number of minifigs this set is a good deal, but to rebuild the battle of Hoth? I think this idea has been around for years, but after seeing many of such great work in Flickr, I gave up any attempt to do it, as there seems to be no point in repeating something that many others have done so well, especially when doing so requires a lot of money.

The good guys:

The bad guys:

The Hoth Rebels now share the same white pants with the Storm Troopers, I think it was grey in the movie, not sure why they changed it for the Rebels starting in 7666. And they also get a new pair of Aviator Goggles, seems in line with the latest fashion trend, but somehow looks funny in battle scene though.

Beside the minifigs, the rest are slight variation from the counterparts in 7666, the missile-firing defense turret can house a rebel, but honestly I never appreciate those firing missile mechanism, which I doubt even how many young kids would care to play with. The springboard mechanism is also ridiculous, why would a Hoth rebel do that for?

This set is fair in pricing, but since the new Tuan Tuan is a disappointment, the rest are just copied from 7666 with no new surprise, buying a set is ok, but seeing some local folks buying half a dozen of it, I really can't understand their passion.

I found out that many people are very excited about 7749 Echo Base, personally I am very passionate about the battle at Hoth, but I really feel that there is something wrong with this new 2009 set, something not found in all the predecessors, such as 7130, 4500 or 7666.

The first weird thing is the Taun Taun figure, this lady-eyes animal is more like a disney character than a Star War figure:

Although I should not be expecting a piece like this:

Picture From: http://www.amazon.com/Star-Empire-Strikes-Skywalker-Tauntaun/dp/B000065CLL

However, at least  it should not be so cute and look so much like a baby kangaroo with a few pimples on the head.

And having a big single piece that you attach the horns and forearm is not very good, the Tan color for the horns also looks incompatible.
 

And the crack between the asymmetric half on the box picture is quite obvious, good that the real thing is not so.

Personally I think this Tuan Tuan is very disappointing.

I have been scratching my head on which set to blog about at the launch of my blog, I have quite a few interesting sets, but probably all of them are not interesting at all to others, so I need something that few would have blogged about, or even have played with, and this is what I got for my first set review:

8036 Separatist Shuttle has been mentioned extensively along with other Lego Starwars 2009 Summer sets such as 7749, 8038 and 8039, these are all interesting new additions but 8036 offers 2 new minifigs that caught a lot of attentions. To be honest I am not a minifigs freak (or geek), so even if I buy a set for the minifigs, I would complain loudly if the vehicle stinks, such in the case of 7752.

So how do I rate 8036? Well, I won't complain even slightly, except for the price I paid for in order to get this set at this moment (it is my fault and has nothing to do with Lego), it is truly expensive and I hate to mention it to make me appear like a fool, but because of this, I would complain more than loudly if somehow I am disappointed with the set.

The set is composed of a few relatively small Bags:

The shuttle is quite small, but a shuttle is a shuttle, especially in the world of Lego, if emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader together can only ride on such a small shuttle in 7264 (Imperial Inspection), how can Nute Gunray and Senator Farr expect to have a big shuttle? Here is a picture of the shuttle beside an X-BOX controller so you can feel accurately how small it is.

Actually I can feel how small it is by the size of the box, and when pulling out the bags from the box, but it is ok, coz this shuttle IMHO has been designed well, I am not sure how all the other much experienced builders would say, I am quite impressed by the sleak design.

The knob controlled doors is quite impressive over the common hinged doors, it is not easy to design a container space inside such a small vehicle. Besides, the building process is very smooth, the rear tail wing is very solid and nicely layered, and unlike many of the Star Wars vehicles, the shuttle is extremely solid! It is so solidly designed that it can be solidly separated and packed in chunks inside the original box, which if attempted on other vehicles, such as 7752, would instantly result in a vehicle break down.

There isn't any special parts in this set, but I don't think anyone would buy this set for reusing the parts really, the minifigs are what people mainly look for in this set I think, and the 2 minfigs are truly valuable, you get Nute Gunray and Senator Farr for the first time, and the 2 minifigs are quite good looking (in minifigs standards, which focus on color and pattern instead of being handsome), despite being the villains.

Overall this is must get set for Star War fans, "must get" are truly overused nowadays but I do mean must-get because it does not cost unreasonably if you buy it at regular price, you get 2 rare minifigs in addition to a nice shuttle, even if pay a foolish price I do not regret paying extra to have a first hand experience on it.

By the way, I do not remember exactly where this shuttle appears in the movie or TV series, is there really a cockroach like vehicle in Starwars?