OMG

Every now and then during the course of my LEGO life I have one of those jaw-dropping moments when I can't quite believe what I'm seeing. I had one the first time I saw Set 10030 UCS Imperial Star Destroyer on display, and also when I emerged from my LEGO dark ages and found someone selling a sealed UCS X-Wing Fighter like mine, which had been bought for £50 in the sales and then stuffed in a cupboard unopened for a decade, for $1500 on Bricklink.

Anyway, I had another of those 'moments' yesterday. I decided to get in the car and go down to STEAM to check out the Great Western LEGO Show. I'm pleased to report that it was absolutely packed - LEGO love is clearly alive and well in the UK. I didn't really have an agenda - it was nice to just wander aimlessly around the exhibits, check out what was for sale and chat to some of the model builders. Then I found something that literally stopped me in my tracks....

Just take a look at that thing - it's massive ! Around 7 metres long, and it weighs a quarter of a tonne. Utterly astonishing, and having seen it up close I can confirm that the level of detail is just incredible (click on the image to enlarge). It apparently consists of around 250,000 bricks. That's a quarter of a million bricks. A QUARTER OF A MILLION BRICKS ! I think the guy in the dark blue polo shirt on the far right of the picture is Ed Diment, the creator of this behemoth. Respect ! Credit is also due to some of his collaborators, including Ralph Savelsberg (who I think I spoke with while staring aghast at the model) who designed and built the aircraft on the deck with help from Annie Diment, who I assume is Ed's (presumably extremely long-suffering) wife. You can read more about the background to this model here. As far as I'm aware, Ed doesn't work for the LEGO company, so I guess he had to source all 250,000 bricks himself at his own cost. Phew - that's some serious dedication for you. I really have to bow down to this guy - from a LEGO perspective I am simply not worthy. I did want to go shake him by the hand, but the whole time I was near his model he was surrounded by other star-struck people. So if by any freak occurrence you ever read this, Ed - well done, your model is simply awesome !

There were a number of other stunning creations on show, including a fantastic model of St. Pancras station (picture below) in London, complete with some of the most realistic LEGO trains and vehicles such as buses and coaches that I have ever seen. I would love to give a name check to the talented builder(s) responsible for this - if you know who's responsible then please post a comment below to give him or her due credit. My picture below doesn't even start to give a true picture of how amazing this model is, but hopefully you get the idea......

Other highlights for me included the opportunity to see the newly-announced Harry Potter Diagon Alley set and the newly-launched Tower Bridge set "in the plastic", and also actually meeting a number of people who I've interacted with online but never previously met in the flesh - cheers, guys !

Newly revealed - Set 10217 Diagon Alley

So thanks to Martin and colleagues for organising a great show, well done to all the model builders, and here's to next year !

Co-operation

Given the passion that so many people have for LEGO, it's really no surprise that such a strong and vibrant community has grown up around it. Whatever you're interested in LEGO-wise, there's probably a website to cater for it.

Sites such as Brickset keep the LEGO fan up to date with the latest LEGO-related news and also enable visitors to catalogue their sets and write and/or read reviews of sets by other fans, while Peeron and Bricklink offer complete inventories of sets plus links to online traders, so you can see which pieces you're missing and then replace them. There are also sites focusing on specific themes such as Space, Castle, Trains and Star Wars, while other more general sites such as Eurobricks have discussion forums focusing on a host of different aspects of building and collecting LEGO as well as some of the most comprehensive set reviews on the web. And there are loads of other great sites such as FBTB and The Brick Show offering their own unique view of the LEGO world, as well as blogs like the one you're reading now, of which there are probably millions.....

One of the aspects of the LEGO community which I've personally benefited from, and which I think there's perhaps some scope for expansion of, is in the area of co-operation. Forums, like for instance those on Eurobricks, are an invaluable source of information, but in addition to the sharing of information, we could potentially help each other out in other ways too. For example, there have been a few occasions over the past few years where contacts I've made within the LEGO world have helped me get hold of sets which I had previously struggled to find. Most recently, a reader of this blog sent me one of the exclusive Brickmaster Star Wars sets which has as yet never been available in the UK (thanks, Dan !). It's pretty hit and miss, though - I moaned on this blog about not being able to get the set in the UK and someone offered to help, but there must be easier ways to make contacts. It's a simpler and more systematic way of getting people together for the purposes of such non-profit trading that I think may be currently lacking.

Bricmmaster Shuttle - not available in the UK....

I spent a few minutes thinking of other ways that LEGO fans might be able to help each other out, and a few things immediately came to mind :

1. There have been a ton of 3 for 2 offers recently, at least in the U.K. and U.S.. I could have walked into Argos and bought 3 Clone Turbo Tanks for the price of 2 if I'd wanted, bringing the price down from a painful £99.99 each to a much more reasonable £66.66. But what am I going to do with the 2 extra sets ? Sure, I could resell on eBay immediately, or more profitably hold onto the extra sets until the LEGO company stop making them and then sell, but frankly I don't need the hassle - I'm a builder and a collector, not a trader. An alternative would have been to join together with a couple of fellow LEGO fans and we could all have got a bargain without having to figure out how to dispose of the extra sets, but how do I make contact with these people ?
2. Many of us have really got into the collectable minifigs craze; while the identity of the minifig sealed within the foil packets is supposed to be a surprise, the barcodes on the packets in fact reveal their identities so it's been relatively painless to get hold of all 16 minifigs in each series. I understand that from series 3 onwards, however, the barcodes will no longer identify which figure is in the bag, so we'll have to resort to trial and error. Unless of course the LEGO community gets organised and finds a way to enable swapping of duplicate figures on a large scale.....
3. Be it Brickmaster in the U.S., newspaper giveaways in the UK, or whatever, the LEGO company keeps finding ways of providing exclusive sets to its customers in one region while denying them to customers in another. I'd be very happy to try and source duplicates when such offers come up in the U.K. and swap them for similar offers elsewhere, and I'm sure I'm not alone. But how can people easily set up these arrangements ?

I'm aware that trading of LEGO-related items, including minifigs as above, is facilitated by a couple of sites, but this has somehow never seemed to really reach critical mass. I concede that trust is clearly a big issue in such matters - all we seem to hear about these days is how everybody is looking to rip us off online - but the success of sites such as eBay has demonstrated that the vast majority of people you come across are decent and honest, and I'd wager that when you venture into specific enthusiast communities such as that which surrounds our LEGO hobby, the proportion of villains is even smaller. Certainly my experiences on Bricklink, and with fellow fans I've 'met' online, has been 100% positive. I don't have 'the answer', however. Perhaps 'the answer' is already out there and I just haven't stumbled upon it yet - if you know reputable sites where this kind of thing goes on then please let me know. I do however think there's a 'gap in the market' for a site or resource to bring enthusiasts together for non-profit trading.

Talking of the LEGO community, I'm aware of a couple of LEGO fan events this weekend that look like they're worth checking out if you can get to them. In the U.K. the Brickish Association is putting on the Great Western LEGO Show at STEAM in Swindon. This will feature displays of models, interactive events and LEGO-related shopping opportunities. There's also going to be an awesome new set unveiled there which people will be able to see for the very first time "in the plastic"......pictures of this new set have already started to hit the web this afternoon, and I think it'll be worth getting along to check out the real thing. Meanwhile in the U.S., BrickCon 2010 is now underway in Seattle, featuring hundreds of models built by fans, a Building Zone where you get the chance to make your own models, and numerous opportunities to exchange the contents of your wallet or purse for oodles of LEGO goodness..... These kind of events offer people a great way to actually meet their fellow fans in the flesh and potentially put a face to some of the folks they've encountered on the forums etc.. If anyone reading this blog knows of such events and wants me to plug them please contact me and I'll give them a mention.

Drowning

I've always been a bit of a hoarder. When I was a kid it was stamps, coins and toy cars. As I got older and into my teens and beyond I went through various phases, some of which still haven't ended - LPs (for any youngsters reading this, LPs are those circular vinyl things that go round and round and music comes out), video games, CDs, DVDs..... anything that I could catalogue and collect was fair game.

I did have a fair bit of LEGO as a kid, although I never really collected sets in those days. I generally binned the boxes, built the sets, took the models apart and mixed the pieces up with all the other pieces I had. I never really started collecting sets until about 3 years ago, and that was when my problems really started.....

One unifying characteristic of the things I collected in the past was that they didn't take up much space; you can hoard literally thousands of stamps or coins in a drawer somewhere. LEGO is different, however. LEGO comes in big boxes, and consequently, LEGO sets are literally taking over my house. It's like some sort of Danish invasion by stealth. It's just ridiculous. You can't move for LEGO. And the LEGO company don't help either - when you open the boxes, they contain more air than plastic. There's really no need for the boxes to be so big.

My wife maintains that we recently had to move house because of my LEGO. It's an exaggeration, of course - sure, my study was heaving with sets, and there was a fair bit in the loft, plus some sets above the wardrobes in my bedroom and my son's room, plus a couple of sets on display in the lounge, but that's all.... OK, so I suppose that is a fair bit, but at least there wasn't any LEGO in the kitchen or the bathroom. And anyway, she can talk - her shoes were were taking over the bedroom, but that's another story. There's more space now in the new house, but it's just a temporary respite - with all the recent 3 for 2 offers, plus the the UCS Imperial Shuttle, the upcoming Tower Bridge set and other impending sets such as Winter Bakery and the UCS Jedi Starfighter all the extra space will be used up and I'll be back where I started, drowning in LEGO boxes.

Winter Village Bakery - soon to be appearing in my house....

My dad thinks that I should build a house extension....out of LEGO. Problem is, while I do have hundreds of sets, most of them don't actually contain many 2 x 4 or 2 x 8 bricks, which are unfortunately what you'd need for such an undertaking. I'd really love to see someone try to build an extension out of cheese slopes, minifigures or round 1 x 1 plates which seem to be the most common pieces in the sets I buy these days. Or maybe I should just waterproof the boxes and build an extension out of those ? After all, the box for the UCS Millenium Falcon alone is bigger than some London flats I've visited.....

So, what to do ? Well, stop buying sets I guess - it's the only solution until I'm rich enough to live in a castle with hundreds of rooms, which will of course happen faster if I stop spending my money on LEGO. Either that, or maybe I could start storing my sets in the unused space inside the boxes of other bigger sets. On reflection, however, I think my preferred option is to just keep letting the LEGO mountain grow until I eventually drown in the stuff - while I'm in no hurry to expire, what a way to go !

Monsters

OK, I'll admit to being one of those who regularly calls on the LEGO company to provide me with ever bigger, more detailed sets, be it via online forums or those questionnaires which the company sends out ever so often.

Problem is, sometimes you get what you wish for. Consider for a moment the behemoth that is Set 10179 UCS Millenium Falcon. This is the pinnacle of the LEGO Star Wars theme - the culmination of 10 years of sets. At 5195 pieces it's the second largest set that LEGO have ever produced, and it's gigantic. From the moment I first saw shots of the beast I planned and plotted how I might raise the £350 that it would cost to own it, and when I eventually got it, it took me a full month to build, working on it for 30 minutes here and an hour there. So far so good, but when it was finished, the inevitable question raised its ugly head - where the *@%^ could I display it ?

I captured the picture above (click to enlarge) by setting aside (a lot of) space on the floor, getting hold of a huge black sheet, gingerly lowering the beast onto it, and snapping a few shots. All well and good, but it obviously couldn't stay there - the wife wouldn't have it, and someone would have tripped over it eventually and done themselves and/or the iconic Corellian freighter some serious damage. So I had to find somewhere else for it, and you can see below where it ended up.

Dignified. Not.

It's on a chest of drawers. In my bedroom, behind the door. Hardly a fitting resting place for such a magnificent beast, a few inches above my socks and underwear. And it's also not really on a major thoroughfare - I only get to see it when I wake up in the morning (although it's admittedly not a bad sight on first opening my eyes) and when I crash out at night.

I had similar problems with Set 10030 UCS Imperial Star Destroyer. Another complete monster - 3096 pieces and around a meter long. It's absolutely jaw-dropping once constructed - one of those sets which has even non-LEGO fans shaking their heads in utter astonishment when they see it. It's also incredibly fragile, however - the enormous upper and lower surfaces are held in place by a series of magnets, and woe betide you if you touch it, breathe on it or even look at it - the laws of physics will kick in, gravity will overcome the magnetic forces, and the bottom of the ship will detach. And then you'll spend half an hour cursing and trying to reattach it.

UCS Imperial Star Destroyer - no chance of that fitting on a shelf....

Above you can see my 'staged' photoshoot, but afterwards I had the same problem - where to display it ? Once again my trusty chest of drawers came to the rescue, but once again it's hardly a fitting resting place for the might of the Imperial Fleet. And such was the length of the thing that the front stuck out over the end so I kept banging my head on it when I needed a pair of socks. Not good.

A Google search reveals that others have been a little more creative with their display solutions than I have, with the UCS Millenium Falcon at least. Two solutions which particularly impressed me were wall mounting and building the beast into a glass-walled and topped coffee table, but I have to confess that both of these solutions require somewhat more time and effort than I'm willing to expend. Still, kudos to those resourceful AFOLs.

This problem isn't going away. In a matter of days, the LEGO company will launch the 4th biggest set (in terms of piece count) in their history - Set 10214 Tower Bridge. It looks wonderful, and I want it. And it's a meter long..... Given that the Millenium Falcon continues to occupy the display plinth that is my chest of drawers, I wonder whether the wife will let me put Tower Bridge on top of hers.....?

Modular Magic

I had initially planned to feature one of the LEGO modular buildings in a "Favourite Sets" posting. When I actually sat down and tried to decide which one to feature, however, I realised that it was almost impossible to choose which one to feature as I love them all.....

Cafe Corner

Green Grocer

For the uninitiated, LEGO modular buildings are a series of sets for the more 'mature' builder which are purchased as standalone buildings but which fit together by design due to their uniform footprint and common design ethos. There have I think been five so far, starting with Set 10182 Cafe Corner in 2007 and Set 10185 Green Grocer in 2008, with Set 10197 Fire Brigade and Set 10211 Grand Emporium following in 2009 and 2010 respectively.

Fire Brigade

Grand Emporium

I'm also including a fan-designed model (Set 10190 Market Street) in the list of LEGO modular buildings. This was available at retail from 2007 and largely follows the modular template, although was sadly discontinued sometime last year.

Market Street - actually designed by a LEGO fan....

So what is it about these sets that's so great ? Well, just look them for a start - absolutely beautiful and crammed choc full of superb details. All the sets except Cafe Corner feature detailed interiors containing brick-built furnishings such as a grandfather clock and a fireplace (Green Grocer), a sofa and a table tennis table (Fire Brigade), and escalators and chandeliers (Grand Emporium).

Grand Emporium - first floor haberdashery....

Then there's the educational aspect - the designers of these sets have utilised loads of advanced building techniques which us lesser mortals can then use in our own constructions. A few examples of this include extensive use of SNOT techniques both externally and in the construction of furnishings, the diagonal placement of the Cafe Corner entrance and tower, the curving steps leading up to the Market Street entrance, and the use of mini skis to form an arch over the door of Cafe Corner.

There's also a dazzling array of cool pieces in interesting and rare colours - loads of sand green and some dark green pieces in Green Grocer, medium blue and dark blue pieces in Market Street, and dark red in Cafe Corner and Fire Brigade. The pricing is also pretty reasonable given the piece count, particularly on the older sets - Green Grocer, with it's 2352 pieces, seems like a bit of a steal to me at £99.99 and it's still available direct from LEGO. The sets even contain a selection of minifigs, although none particularly rare or interesting. Lastly, I love that these sets are effectively a gift from the LEGO company to AFOLs, an acknowledgment of their adult fanbase and their wish for some beautiful and interesting sets.

So are there any negatives ? Well, not many to be honest. I suppose you could argue that if you're planning on including them in your own larger LEGO town or set up, they have a tendency to make everything else look decidedly......ordinary, I guess. Certainly everthing else pales into insignificance against the detail and splendour of these sets. There's also the fact that the prices of the modulars are creeping up, and there's a massive disparity in pricing between the U.S. and the UK with respect to the Grand Emporium, with U.K. consumers having to swallow a much higher price. But I have to say that for once, all complaints are churlish in the face of such magnificence ! I just hope and pray that sales of modular buildings to date have been sufficient to induce the LEGO company to produce more of them. While it was LEGO Star Wars that dragged me out of my LEGO Dark Ages, I'd go as far as saying that it's probably the modular buildings which have provided me with my most LEGO-related pleasure since then.

If pushed to pick a favourite, I'd probably have to go for Green Grocer - the first modular building that I bought, and still the one that wows me the most. It's still available at retail, and in my opinion it's an absolute steal at £99.99 U.K. ($149.99 U.S.). If you've not previously discovered the delights of LEGO modular buldings and want to climb on board then you really have to buy this one - truly an essential purchase for the adult LEGO fan.

If you hadn't guessed by now, I just love these sets !!

Sweet Deals are made of this

OK, so there we all were wondering how we could afford to buy all the new LEGO sets we want, and along come 2 UK retailers with great deals to help us out...

First Boots do a 3 for the price of 2 deal which saved me the princely sum of £44.99, and not to be outdone along come Argos a few days later with the same deal but a wider selection, saving me a further £151.97. And before anyone justifiably accuses me of an understandable UK bias, I should mention that Toys R Us in the U.S. are also currently offering a 3 for the price of 2 deal, although while LEGO Star Wars sets seem to be excluded, the brand new LEGO Harry Potter sets and also LEGO Architecture sets are included, which is not the case on any of the current UK deals.

A new addition to my collection, thanks to Argos

Those savings look pretty good, but are they really ? Firstly, the sets in the deal are generally priced at the RRP or above to start with; if I was to buy these sets from, say, Amazon, I'd be getting a discount of between 5 and 10% on the RRP, so I'm actually not saving as much as it appears. Secondly, would I really be buying all these sets ? Really ? In this case I can truthfully answer "probably yes" BUT I might only actually have taken the plunge on a couple of them if I could get a decent discount on the RRP. So again, not necessarily quite as good as it first appears, but if you were going to buy the sets anyway then I still think that these are good deals.

You need to be quick, though. On this occasion I got advance notice of the Argos deal via various online forums. I therefore reserved the sets I wanted the day before the promotion started on Wednesday 22nd September, so that when I went in to pick them up in-store the following day the savings were applied to my order. What was interesting however was that within just a few hours of the promotion being up on the Argos website in the early hours of Wednesday many of the sets were already sold out online. Clearly. many of the LEGO-loving fraternity had also picked up on the impending offer and had gone through the Argos online stock like a horde of locusts and cleared out many of the most desirable sets within a few hours. Many people seem to have bought multiples of the same set, as evidenced by a large number of current MISB sets on Ebay later in the day, although I know of other people who have stockpiled some sets with the intention of selling a few years down the line when LEGO retire those sets and prices skyrocket.

Anyway, the Argos deal runs until 28th September. I'm not sure when the Boots offer finishes, but it's still ongoing as I type this. While lots of stuff is now showing as out of stock online at Argos in particular, there are many sets still available and well worth getting, especially at Boots who still have cool sets like Airport and others in stock right now. It's also worth checking your local bricks and mortar Boots and Argos stores as items showing as out of stock online may still be available in-store. Meanwhile, I understand that in the U.S. the Toys R Us deal runs out on the 25th September

So what are you waiting for ? Go stock up for Christmas, or better still just treat yourself....!

Favourite Set #3 : Ultimate Collector Series Rebel Blockade Runner

Any ship appearing in the opening scene of Star Wars : A New Hope has surely got to be worthy of the LEGO Ultimate Collector Series treatment, and Set 10019 Rebel Blockade Runner doesn't disappoint. Released in 2001 and consisting of 1748 pieces, it comprehensively blows the more recent version (Set 10198 Tantive IV released in 2009 and shown below right) out of the water. In my humble opinion, naturally....

Old vs. New - surely only minifig collectors prefer the new....?

As well as looking great and nicely approximating the Rebel Blockade Runner ship from the Star Wars movies, I just think that the older set has more substance and presence than the slightly anorexic recent version. I mean, compare their engines, for a start.

I took the pictures below when I had finished building my set; click on the images to enlarge them. I generally don't leave models built for more than a few months as I only have limited display space and therefore need to free up space for other models after a while, but this set stayed built and on display for more than a year because it just looks so fantastic.....

In addition to the chunky design, I love the subtle use of standard red and dark red pieces, including the "go faster" stripe which runs the length of the ship, the restrained but effective use of greebles, and the massive engines. According to the excellent "LEGO Star Wars : The Visual Dictionary" by Simon Beecroft, this was one of the first sets ever to include dark red pieces.

The downsides ? Well, the engine section is quite fragile - be careful how you carry it - and heaven help you if you knock one of the engines off because they can be a right pain to reattach. There are also a couple of large stickers which cover multiple pieces, a pet peeve of mine. Finally, it's getting quite pricey these days - expect to pay between £200 and £300 for a used, boxed example in reasonable condition, and more for a MISB one. 

Pricey it may be, but in my opinion it's well worth the money if you can afford it - an interesting build using some cool pieces and colours, and the final result is excellent. Sure, you can certainly save yourself some cash and buy the more recent version, but it's false economy I reckon - this is one instance where I think the remake just doesn't reach the heights of the original.