Bill Ward’s Brickpile

You’ve probably heard by now that the Pirates Advent Calendar is not going to be sold in the US. After last year’s debacle with the Castle Advent Calendar, you’d think LEGO would know better. Well, the good folks at Classic Pirates over on Eurobricks have a petition going, and The Brothers Brick also have a similar post calling for support for the Pirates advent calendar. Post your support now!

I just got the following notice in my email from LEGO:

SAFETY RECALL NOTICE

Dear LEGO Consumer

In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the LEGO Group is voluntarily recalling the 8879 Power Functions IR Speed Remote Control unit, which poses a thermal burn hazard to users when  batteries inside overheat. The remote control unit was sold separately as item #8879 or was included in K8882 Power Functions Kit or the K10194 Emerald Night Collection.

We are writing to you because our records indicate that you purchased one of these items. LEGO Systems has found that some of the remote control units (the kind that was included in your set) are not performing correctly. If your remote is one of the affected you would have noticed that it becomes hot to the touch in the first 5 to 10 minutes of initial operation. If you did not experience this situation when you first loaded batteries into the remote then your remote is not affected. If your remote is affected, we ask that you return it to us in exchange for a new remote control unit.  Simply call 1-800-718-1858 between the hours of Monday-Friday 8am-10pm ET and Saturday-Sunday 10pm-6pm ET (if outside the US/Canada dial +1-860-763-3211) and we will give you instructions on how to return the unit and also answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you for your time and attention to this, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We wish your family many more happy and creative hours of building fun with LEGO brand products.

Yours sincerely

LEGO Consumer Services

LEGO Systems, Inc.

555 Taylor Road

Enfield, CT 06082

Mine seems to be fine – how about yours?

A collection of LEGO ads with some very clever pictures. I recently subscribed to the RSS feed (in Google Reader) for a search for “#lego” on Twitter. This is a great technique to follow “hashtags” that I learned on Amy Gharan’s blog.

Anyway, back to the LEGO ads. I don’t think these are real ads, since some of them seem quite out of character for LEGO’s style (especially the sex/drugs/violence ones). They seem more like what a designer might propose to the LEGO company for use in an ad. But anyway, this one was my favorite:

This showed up in my email today. I filled out the survey, and encourage everyone else to do it too.

The LEGO Group Wants to Hear From You!

As Adult Fans of LEGO, you bring an important perspective to the LEGO Group. We respect your creativity and passion for our brand.

Please take a few moments to complete this short online survey to let us know your opinion on how we are doing.

We promise to listen to you and use your feedback to improve!

You might notice that the link refers to the LEGO Kids Inner Circle; this is because Satmetrix, which hosts that site, is also supporting our efforts to track AFOL opinions. Rest assured that this survey is for AFOL’s only.

Thank you.

Steve Witt
LEGO Community Relations Coordinator

Truthfully I didn’t have a lot to suggest. I think LEGO’s pretty much doing everything right these days. My only beef is the discontinuation of 9V trains but then, I understand why they are doing it. I just hope the new Power Functions trains that are supposedly coming out next year are good enough.

It would seem that BrickArms has garnered international attention. The article “Lego-Style Islamic Terrorist Figurine Sparks Outrage” appears on Fox News and similar articles appear in a number of other sources; see Google News report for the story for more.

The gist of it is that one of the “bad guy” kits that BrickArms sells has pissed off some Islamic organizations in Britain, who’ve raised a stink about it. BrickArms calls the kit “Bandit — Mr. White” without any implication that it’s an Islamic terrorist, but the Ninja-style headwrap it comes with, combined with a substantial arsenal of weapons, does remind some peole at least of a stereotypical Islamic terrorist.

The article quotes a source at LEGO disclaiming any endorsement of BrickArms, saying “The LEGO Group is committed to developing toys which enrich childhood by encouraging imaginative and creative play — and does not endorse products that do not fit with this philosophy.” They’re implying that BrickArms are not encouraging imaginative and creative play which sounds like pretty strong words. While I’m not a fan of the BrickArms and BrickForge products personally, I would not go so far as to say they don’t encourage imaginative and creative play!

It’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out. There’s a saying in Hollywood that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity as long as they spell your name right” and if that’s true, BrickArms is sure to have a big boost in sales. On the other hand, I wonder if LEGO’s lawyers might decide to send them some kind of cease and desist order if enough bad publicity is sent their way…

Via Dr. Miniman on Flickr in the Flickr LEGO group.

Thanks to the Lego Diem blog for pointing out this 1979 Commercial for the best LEGO set ever sold…

The trouble with the LEGO fan community is that it takes all of the fun out of getting a new Shop-At-Home catalog. Not only is there nothing new that I haven’t seen, but I already own several of the things marked “new.” When I was a kid, a new LEGO catalog was a source of great delight…

Ah well, it’s a small price to pay I guess.

BrickCon is going very well so far. There are tons of great models on display, many great deals to be had on LEGO, and some amazing news.

I took a lot of photos yesterday and they’re all up on my Flickr account. The biggest news was the unveiling of a new castle set, the 10193 Medieval Village. I made a video of it and posted it on YouTube (but had to wait until 12 noon today so that BrickJournal.com could have an exclusive 3-hour early announcement). I also created a special photoset for just those pictures so you don’t have to dig through all the images in my BrickCon set to find them.

There’s a very interesting Interview on BoingBoing with Bjarne P. Tveskov, Classic LEGO Space Designer.

I grew up on some of these sets! I started collecting Space LEGO sets in the late 1970’s when I was a little kid, and spent most of my spare time building and rebuilding classic LEGO spaceships and bases.

Well, LEGO has finally made up their mind on the future of trains. Steve Witt has announced that the 9V system will be discontinued, to be replaced by IR-controlled, battery-powered trains.

The only silver lining is that the new system will be based on the new Technic Power Functions system rather than the much-maligned IR trains currently being sold. LEGO is working with AFOLs to design the new system, and I am really hoping they find a way to come up with a battery-powered system that has enough power for the needs of LEGO train clubs.

In the meantime, stocking up on 9V train parts might not be a bad idea….

Technorati Tags: lego, trains, 9v