Bill Ward's Brickpile » lego

BayLUG January 2012 Meeting @ Dave Porter’s

Bill — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:42:13 +0000

Every January for the past several years, BayLUG has had a meeting at the lovely home of member Dave Porter who has a huge personal layout on display. People bring their latest creations to show, and stuff to sell, and we have our annual first meeting of the year. This year we had elections for new club officers. Click the image for the full set of photos, or view them as a slideshow

I brought my 14 Friends sets that I had built for the “Fortnight of Friends” series to display, and people of all ages really enjoyed looking at the new parts and colors in the sets. The animals were particularly popular among the kids … in fact one of the little girls who apparently had not yet learned the meaning of private property had wandered off with the bunny, both kittens, and the hedgehog! When I noticed they were missing I started asking around and finally this little girl was answering very cagily that she thought she had seen them somewhere in Dave’s layout upstairs… I left the room along with her parents and a few minutes later she came back, having “found” them. It was all rather cute once I had resolved the mystery. But my stuff had been handled so much I felt no choice but to wash all the parts when I got them home. They’re drying as I write this, and I look forward to finding uses for all the new parts and colors…

By the way I have a huge backlog of parts to sort. Anyone want to come over and help me work through it?

Fortnight of Friends – Day 14: Olivia’s House

Bill — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:23:50 +0000

This is the last of the “Fortnight of Friends” series, and is the biggest set by far in the Friends series, #3315, “Olivia’s House”.

It comes with three minidolls: Olivia and her parents, Peter and Anna. Peter is the only male minidoll in the entire product line, and the only one with traditional LEGO minifig hair instead of the new rubbery hair with a little hole in it. And for the last time I can report on the packaging of the minidoll parts, which I’m sure by now you’re tired of hearing about… The parents’ legs and Anna’s torso are in the easier to open bags, and the other three parts are in the stretchy plastic. I really wish LEGO would just skip those bags altogether, or if they have to package them that way, perhaps to keep the printing from scratching, they should use easier-to-open packaging. In general, all these plastic bags in LEGO sets are awful for the environment… I wish LEGO would switch to a different type of packaging that was “greener” and easier for kids to manage.

First Floor - Living Room and Kitchen

Speaking of bags, there are no fewer than seven bags in this set, and the instructions come in two books. Actually eight, because the large plates (8×16 and 16×16) are packaged in their own bag. We get two 16×16 plates, in tan and white, and six 8×16 plates, three each in pink and bright green. Bag #1 gives you all three minidolls and the parts to build the shell for half of the ground floor of the house, and uses the tan 16×16 plate. It’s a simple shell of a building and the next smallest of the bags.

The smallest is #2, which adds interior furniture to the house, making the room we just built into a living room. The first thing we do is open up the bag of red flowers and bugs, and put three red roses on the three Plate, Round 1 x 1 with Flower Edge (4 Knobs), which is a combination that works exceptionally well. Next we build the big screen TV – my version is switched off, as I don’t want to apply the stickers. Then we build a matching chair and sofa using a whole bunch of light purple curved slopes, which I am eager to find other uses for. The final thing is a coffee table, which strangely uses the flower stem that was created and set aside on page 1 of bag #1. Why they didn’t just include a flower stem in bag #2 perplexes me. But these new flower pieces are awesome and I am eager to find opportunities to decorate my MOCs with them.

Bag #3 uses the white 16×16 plate and builds the other half of the first floor, the kitchen. It includes a bag of light blue utensils – the same ones we saw yesterday in yellow for the café. There’s a lime green cabinet with white drawers, which you are to fill with forks and knives. There’s a delightful little blender. A 2×2 plate with one centered stud with a 2×2 radar dish on top makes a lovely base, a technique I must steal. The rest of the utensils get used to complete the kitchen: a skillet on the stove and a cake pan in the oven; a knife and fork in the sink; and a pink cupcake, an empty cupcake cup, a mixer, and a measuring cup fill the counters. We build a nice little refrigerator with a carton of milk inside, salt and pepper shakers on top, and shelves on the side. A table and chairs with plates, another cupcake, and fruit complete the room. At the end of this bag we connect it to the living room using Technic pegs, and that finishes the first instruction book.

Second Floor - Bedroom and Bathroom

The next thing we build starts book #2 with bag #4 and a pink 8×16 plate, and we build a girls bedroom with a faux balcony with a cute kitten perched on the rail, a vanity (including a white cabinet with one pink drawer) with perfume bottles and hairbrush, a highly impractical nightstand with an oversized book in it, and a bed with a purse on it.

The next build uses bag #5 and another pink 8×16 plate to build a bathroom to go along with Olivia’s bedroom. I’ve seen (and built) a lot of AFOL-designed toilets in MOCs, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in a LEGO set before. And the shower is ingenious – using the roll-up doors, mounted vertically, as a shower curtain or shower door. It also includes another cabinet piece, this time with two pink drawers.

Roof

At this point we have completed the first two floors, and next we tackle bag #6 to build the roof. Presumably Olivia’s parents’ room, and the hallways and stairs needed to get upstairs, are in the half of the house not included in this set… There is a sloped roof piece and a rooftop deck in this build. We start with the deck, featuring a nice trans-dark-pink umbrella, lounge chair, and a lovely plant using the new type flowers on a stem with a three broad leafed plant. This goes over the bathroom, and a sloped roof goes over the bedroom, giving it a vaulted ceiling. I love the way the sloped roof is built – you build a supporting structure using a large white arch for the peak and a couple of 1×16 bricks to support each of the levels of roof slopes.

Front door path and mailbox

Side and front yard

The final bag uses the three 8×16 green plates to build a front yard for the house. First we build a small panel with the walk leading up to the front door, mailbox, a small vegetable garden, and a flower. Second, we build a segment that has a swingset, which minidolls can not properly use. In the instructions, Olivia is shown holding onto the swing with one hand gripping the pole on one side with her other hand free – I tried putting her on with both hands on the poles, and she can grip them but it’s about a millimeter out of line and you can visibly see the poles deflecting inward. I think that LEGO should have made the minidoll arms out of the rubbery material they used for the hair, lipsticks, and some other parts, which would have allowed the minidolls to be a lot more versatile in a lot of ways. After that we construct an elaborate barbecue, and then extend the module with another 8×16 green plate on which we build a table with a sausage (hot dog) on a plate, ketchup dispenser, and a wine glass with an orange thing on top (not quite sure what that’s supposed to be). There’s a very nice sunflower which I’d love to be able to make a large number of.

Sticker sheet for this set

There are a lot of decorations in this set, but they’re all stickers sadly. I was really happy with the first few sets having so many printed parts, but the later sets are almost all stickers if you’ve been following these blog entries. I think the only part in this set with printing was a 1×2 tile printed as an envelope.

Accumulated plastic bags (with submodel to show scale)

As I built each of the parts of this set, I accumulated all the plastic bags inside the bag that the large plates came in, and posed them for a shot (using one of the submodels for scale). I was really discouraged by the amount of extra plastic in this set in particular and LEGO sets in general. I’m not sure what could be done instead – I would definitely combine bags 1 and 2, and would like to avoid having a separate bag for the large plates, and bags for the minidoll parts that I’ve been railing against for the last two weeks seem wasteful to me.

Overall, this is a great model, and a great value for the price. For $70 we get a pretty big house with a lot of wonderful details. I’m tempted to buy one or two more of these sets and try to build out the rest of the house, with the parents’ bedroom and other omitted rooms.

Having built all 14 of these sets, I have a few overall things to say about the line. I’m not a girl, or a parent, so I can’t really speak about the sets from their points of view. But I can speak about them from the point of view of a LEGO fan who builds a lot of city/town models. I’m really excited about some of the new parts in this line, notably:

All the new color bricks, plates, and other parts
New flower and insect parts
New utensils
New animals
Cabinets and drawers and other interior accessories

That’s the end of the Fortnight of Friends. I hope you have enjoyed my reviews of the sets.

Fortnight of Friends – Day 13: Heartlake Vet

Bill — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:55:26 +0000

Today is the penultimate day in the “Fortnight of Friends” series, with the second largest set in the line, #3188, “Heartlake Vet”. This set builds an animal clinic, with both pet and large animal (horse) sides, and features two minidolls, Mia (last seen on Day 6) and the veterinarian Sophie.

The minifigs come in a mix of packaging: one leg piece came in stretchy plastic, but both torsos and the other leg came in the regular LEGO bags which I find much easier to open.

This is another multi-step build, the first with 4 bags. The first step however uses both bags 1 and 2 along with sky blue 8×16 and 16×16 plates, to construct the main building. I love the curved pieces forming an awning attached to 1×4 SNOT (Studs Not On Top) bricks. The main building will be the pet cilnic.

Bag 3 adds the sign to the building and interior details. It includes a bag of flowers and bugs (the same assortment as seen in Olivia’s Tree House in day 10) but this time in light orange (an odd color for roses…). The flowers and bugs are used to build strange mutant plants that produce 3 different types of flowers from one plant – some shaped like bugs! Some of the plants are placed on Plate, Round 1 x 1 with Flower Edge (4 Knobs), which grips stud below it very well (almost too tightly), but doesn’t grip flower stems well at all – they fall off almost as readily as MegaBloks do. I like the fishtank (though since I don’t apply stickers, it wasn’t nearly as effective “empty”) but it seemed to me that the trans-light-blue panels are a little darker than old ones from my collection (It’s also a new mold – they have side reinforcements the old ones lack).

Bag 4 builds the livestock vet annex with a new door piece and new medical utensils (syringe, thermometer, ice bag, etc.). Inside, just over the door, is a clear cylinder whose purpose mystifies me, unless someone is playing a prank and it’s supposed to fall and dump some liquid on whomever is passing through…? The use of 1×2 bricks with grille patterns as hay might seem a little obscure to some kids.

All the decorations are done with stickers, sadly, except for the paw print 2×2 round tile, envelope tile, keyboard tile, and a strange 1×1 round cylinder with paw prints and a heart.

I love all the new animals though. Mia’s puppy is adorable, and the horse and hedgehog that come with this set are precious. However I am surprised LEGO failed to make the horses rideable – the old style horse has a 1 stud wide cutout, which a minifig can stand in, but these have a 2 stud cutout. However a minidoll’s legs are too long even for that to sit in, and they would look strange standing in it. It’s useful because the curved-top 2×2 brick can be used to fill in the opening, but still strangely unrideable. You’d think that the way young girls can obsess about horse riding, they’d have done a better job with this. It’s also disappointing that the horse’s necks aren’t hinged like the old minifig horses (and cows).

This set features a new horse and hedgehog and a return of the cute puppy

The new horse has a 2-stud cutout, but a minidoll still can't fit.

Sticker sheet for this set

Old and new transparent panels. The new one (on the right) has reinforcing sides and looks ever so slightly darker to me.

Tomorrow is the final set in the series, #3315, “Olivia’s House”

Fortnight of Friends – Day 12: City Park Café

Bill — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 05:32:50 +0000

Today’s “Fortnight of Friends” set, the 12th in the series, is #3061, “City Park Café”.

This set comes with two minidolls, Andrea (last seen in Day 3) and a new supporting character, Marie. Both came packed in stretchy plastic. This set reverses the objection I had to yesterday’s set about reinforcing racial streeotypes at least, with Andrea as the customer and blonde Marie as the worker.

There are three bags in this set, but it’s still a two-step build – you open both bags 1 and 2 and use those parts together for the first part, the building. Bag 3 adds interior details and curb appeal. The building sits on two 8×16 and one 16×16 plate in a new sky blue color. I really like the interior details, as someone who’s designed LEGO restaurants before (Sushi Bar most notably). The salt and pepper shakers, ketchup and mustard bottles, and soft serve ice cream machine are really nice. And there’s a great assortment of new minifig accessories – pie, skillet with spatula, forks, knives, plates, and cupcakes. Lots of nice parts and interior details here.

This set has both printed parts and stickers. Mostly it’s stickers, but there is a nice cash register piece that I think is a new pattern (on a 2×2 45° slope) and the $100 green 1×2 tile for the till, as well as a 1×1 brick with printing as an orange juice carton. All the signs are stickers, which I found disappointing, especially since we’ve already seen LEGO is perfectly capable of printing things like the 4×6 tile with studs around the edges. But I got lucky apparently, as my box had two sticker sheets!

Tomorrow we have the penultimate set in our Fortnight of Friends series, #3188, “Heartlake Vet”.

Fortnight of Friends – Day 11: Butterfly Beauty Shop

Bill — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 20:45:37 +0000

Today is day 11 in our LEGO “Fortnight of Friends” series, and we tackle #3187, “Butterfly Beauty Shop”. This is the first LEGO Friends set I’ve done that has more than one minidoll in it… in this case, one of our main characters, Emma, and a new character, Sarah. Sadly, all the sign printing is done with stickers, which I didn’t want to apply, so the picture isn’t quite what is shown on the box…

Like the last few sets, this set comes in two bags. Bag #1 starts with a cute little water fountain and bench, then starts building the main building. It’s built on 8×16 pink plates, which is a new color/part combination that is nice to have. The architecture of this building reminds me of the old Paradisa sets from the 1990′s, which I’ve always liked.

As I mentioned above, this set comes with two minidolls. In bag #1, we get Emma. After a long drought of only getting minidoll parts in the stretchy, hard-to-open bags, Emma’s legs are in nice easy-to-open bags. But her torso, and both parts of Sarah (who comes in bag #2), are sadly in the stretchy plastic. I’ve gotten pretty good at opening the stretchy bags, by forcing the sharper corners of the dolls through the plastic, but I don’t think this packaging is good for kids to have to open. Most multi-part LEGO sets that have multiple minifigs give you all of them in bag #1, so this is a bit of a change.

With the second bag, you build up the top and interior of the shop. The interior features a bunch of new accessories. There’s a bag of light orange hair decorations and styling tools, and two little bags of lipsticks. There are four colors, and the two bags are identical. The lipsticks are in stretchy bags, but unlike the minidoll parts, the lipstick bags have easy-tear weak points and open easily. Why can’t they do this for the minidoll bags? The lipsticks are made of a rubbery material – grey rubber handles molded around colored rubber middles, which is a little weird. I would have expected the grey parts to be hard plastic.

As I mentioned above, almost all of the printed details are shiny metallic stickers (such as for mirrors, etc.), but there is a computer keyboard printed tile at least. I guess LEGO doesn’t have the technology to print shiny parts, at least in a cost-effective manner. I hate applying stickers.

I must say I have some qualms about this set overall though. I know they’re trying to win over girls to LEGO with this theme by putting construction sets into the “pink aisle” at toy stores. But I’m much more of a fan of something like Olivia’s Invention Workshop, which encourages girls to think about science, than the Beauty Shop, which just reinforces traditional stereotypical gender roles. I’m also a little uneasy about the racial message it sends, since it shows a white girl being waited on by a person of color… maybe I’m overthinking things – I dunno. What do you think?

Lipstick on display in the window

Interior of the beauty shop

Sticker sheet

Next up tomorrow is #3061, “City Park Café”.

Fortnight of Friends – Day 10: Olivia’s Tree House

Bill — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:43:27 +0000

The tenth in our LEGO “Fortnight of Friends” series is #3065, “Olivia’s Tree House”.

Olivia makes her second appearance in the series so far with this set. She’s definitely the more tomboyish character in the series, and the one I can relate to the most. We’ll meet her again, and her parents, in the final set in a few days. She came in the stretchy bags, in case you’re keeping track. Besides Olivia, we also get a cute kitten and bird.

Like yesterday’s set and all the ones to come, it comes in the box with the bowed front. And like yesterday, we have a 2-part build. The first build is the cat box and the lower level of the tree – basically everything below the platform of the tree house itself. One curious feature that doesn’t make much sense is the hidden treasure. At the base of the tree you can see in the photo a small square area made of aqua colored 1x1x1 corner panels. Inside that box are two LEGO gems, and it is covered semi-discreetly by a tree branch. Also, oddly there is a bowl with a fish in it, and a carton of milk, just laying there on the lawn. I don’t think this shows a good example for children – fish and milk are both items that require refrigeration! I assume they’re meant as food/drink for the kitten. Anyway, I like this tree design, it shows a good fairly realistic shape, and offers a nice assortment of slope and half-arch parts in brown.

Bag #2 builds the rest of the kit – the treehouse platform, upper parts of the tree, and the birdhouse. It’s not very clear to me what the blue barrel at the top of the tree is for, except maybe just as a lookout that Olivia can climb up to. This bag also contained a bag of accessory elements – flowers and bugs. In one step you are to put all the flowers and bugs on the tree, except that one of the bugs actually should be held back and used later in the birdhouse. The instructions fail to make that clear, as I’ve read other reviewers of this set complain. This is a rather odd tree, horticulturally speaking, in that it grows three different types of flowers. The upper branches have daisy type flowers in the back, and I’m not sure what to call the ones in the front; the lower part of the tree sprouts roses. Very peculiar! The butterflies and ladybugs are really neat though. I look forward to using these flowers (especially the roses) and bugs in my MOCs.

The ladder up to the treehouse is light blue in color which seems silly to me. I don’t think using a black or brown ladder would be off-putting to anybody, and the cost of producing the ladder in this color seems like a waste. I worry that LEGO is going a little overboard with the color/parts pallette again, like they did in the mid-late 1990s. Most of the useful parts in the new colors are great, but this is a poor example.

Tomorrow’s set is #3187, “Butterfly Beauty Shop”.

Fortnight of Friends – Day 9: Heartlake Dog Show

Bill — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:15:56 +0000

The ninth day in our “Fortnight of Friends” series brings us the first “big box” set, #3942, “Heartlake Dog Show”.

Like all the $20 and larger sets, this set comes in a box with a new shape for LEGO. Instead of being a plain rectangular prism shape, the front of the box is curved, bowed outward, and in the front sides there is a bevel that produces this curvature. The clerks at the LEGO store hate this, because you can’t stack the boxes easily. You can see it in the photo of the box below.

Friends box, showing the beveled edge that produces the curved front

This set features a return of Mia, last seen on Day 5 (Mia’s Puppy House), showing her prize pet at the dog show. (Both parts of Mia’s body were in the stretchy plastic bags.) Did you know that you can fit the spray bottle into the torso of a minidoll? Well, you can. I think someone mentioned it on a mailing list I’m on (though I can’t seem to find the email right now to give them credit, sorry), and I tried it out with Mia and sure enough it works! It makes her look kind of like a mermaid. Also, since I noticed that in this set, you’re told to put the spray bottle between two studs of a 1×2 plate, that you can also put the minidoll’s legs the same way. It’s not quite as good of a connection as a regular LEGO stud grip, but it’s not bad.

Alternate ways to connect minidolls to other parts.

Anyway, on to the set. This is the first multi-part build Friends set. With the first bag, we get Mia and the two dogs, the accessories, and parts to build the small models. First up is the holding/grooming pen, which has a trough full of water (1×1 round trans-light-blue plates in an aqua colored rectangle made from short panels) with water spigot, a bowl with two bones, fencing, and a cabinet for storing stuff. Those cabinets, lime with white hinged doors, will be very handy. You also build a hurdle for the dogs to jump over, with a bar that can be knocked down if they don’t jump high enough; a ~~catapult~~ seesaw thingy for the dogs to walk along, which I guess tests their obedience in the face of losing balance (though as a boy, it screams catapult to me, and LEGO included the “don’t shoot into the eye” icon in the instructions that they always use for projectiles); and a prize stand with giant trophy.

Bag #2 is the main part of the build, which is a stage and catwalk for the dogs to show off on. There’s a camera on a stick with a telephoto lens, two spotlights, and flowerpots made from white plain minifig heads. There’s a sign above it all, a printed 2×2 round tile with a paw print, just as we saw earlier in Mia’s last set.

Parts-wise, this is a pretty good set. I like all the lime green and aqua parts. The dogs are adorable, and the trophy is nice – though I’m disappointed that it’s not chromed. We get the same accessories as in Day 5 but this time they are in light purple. I noticed that as I mentioned in Day 3 (Andrea’s Stage), the antenna piece has been changed to have a squared-off tip instead of the rounded tip it’s had for over 30 years.

Tomorrow the series continues with Day 10: #3065, “Olivia’s Tree House”

Fortnight of Friends – Day 8: Stephanie’s Cool Convertible

Bill — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:36:11 +0000

Today we start off the second week of the “Fortnight of Friends” with the first of the larger sets: #3183, “Stephanie’s Cool Convertible”.

This is Stephanie’s third appearance in the series. We last saw her in Day 6, patrolling for pets, and her first appearance was in Day 1, with her outdoor bakery. And now we see why she has holes in the top and side of her hairpiece – to attach these decorative bits. (For those keeping score, both parts of her body were in those stretchy bags.) Like we saw earlier in Day 5 (Mia’s Puppy House), this set comes with a bag of accessory parts that can be attached to the hair or pets. There’s also an extensive assortment of grooming equipment included, but not featured in the set build. As a boy, this puzzles me, but I gather girls like to deviate more from the instructions when building sets… so go for it, girls! Anyway, these parts can be useful in MOCs so I’m happy to see them. She also comes with the same pink iPod-like device we saw yesterday, and a little pink purse/bucket.

This set is a little bigger than the ones I’ve reviewed until now, and lacks the shelf hanger flap on the top of the box. However the box is one of the usual standard LEGO box types, and is designed to be opened by putting your finger through a semicircular thumb hole on the bottom and ripping it open at the side. But I prefer to open this style of box by peeling off the bottom, leaving the rest of the box intact, which you can then dump the parts into for building the set. I’ve been doing this for years, but LEGO seems to use this box type less and less often, preferring the kind where you are supposed to cut the clear tape to open the ends of the box. I hope this is a sign LEGO plans to keep using this box type. You can see a picture below to illustrate what I’m talking about … just be careful not to cut yourself! I got a small paper cut opening this box.

Like all the Friends sets, this one consists of multiple builds, though only two in this instance. First you build a little roadside scene, with a lamppost (hooray for that transparent globe piece!), bench, and dog- or car-washing equipment. I’m happy to see the tap return, and the 2×2 white tile with a stud in the center is a newish part that I’m happy to have another of.

But the main feature of this set is of course, the car. It’s similar to a lot of the City cars we’ve had from LEGO lately, and is a nice design. The color scheme really works well and I’m happy to get so many parts in the new light purple color. I also am happy to get two of the 1×2-2×4 brackets, which are used to attach both front and back ends of the car. The only downside I see is that finally we have encountered stickers. I surmise that LEGO has trouble printing on the curved pieces, as these stickers only go on curved parts: the hood/bonnet, and the curved slopes at the rear. I chose not to apply the stickers, as is my usual practice. I will probably put them up on BrickLink for sale, as I don’t use stickers in my MOCs either. I don’t like to limit the reusability of the parts, and it’s so hard to apply the stickers perfectly straight and centered anyway. But since it’s for curved parts, I don’t really blame LEGO for not giving us printed pieces. Hopefully they’ll work out a way to print on those someday. For now, however, I’m happy to have these parts in plain light purple for future MOC usage.

One feature of this set that I found particularly noteworty is a new part. It’s similar to the 1×2 L-shaped panel piece, but with a center divider. In the car it’s used to hold Stephanie in place as she drives… minidolls lack the stud receptacles that minifigs have, so they needed some way to hold her in position, and I guess this is what they came up with. I can see this being a useful piece for decorative purposes, as well as holding minifigs in place. See the photos below for illustration of how it works on both Stephanie and a generic minifig.

Opened box - just peel back the bottom and you can build in the box, but be careful not to cut yourself!

This new bracket part can grip the minidoll's feet to hold her in place.

The new bracket part can also grip a minifig's feet.

Tomorrow we progress to a still larger set with #3942, “Heartlake Dog Show”.

Fortnight of Friends – Day 7: Emma’s Design Studio

Bill — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:48:28 +0000

Today is day 7 in my “Fortnight of Friends” series. We’re now half way through, and this is the last of the small sets. Today’s set is #3936, “Emma’s Design Studio”.

We previously saw Emma in Day 2, Emma’s Splash Pool. Now we learn that besides liking to splash about in pools, Emma is a fashion designer. The Emma minidoll in this set comes packed in the stretchy hard-to-open bags (both torso and legs). Like yesterday’s Stephanie, today’s Emma is the same face and hair as the earlier version but with different printing on the body. This will allow kids (girls) to mix/match outfits.

The first thing we build is a dresser, or chest of drawers. Each drawer has a different color tile in it, I suppose representing bolts of fabric. I’m really pleased to see so many sets containing the cabinets with drawers in the Friends line. I’ve always been a fan of doing the interior details of my MOCs, and these pieces have been traditionally hard to come by in the boy-focused LEGO sets. The cabinets being in purple, and drawers in pink, may limit their usefulness in many of my MOCs, but I’m sure I’ll find uses for them. Pink 1×3 tiles are new, and a nice treat. The dresser comes with a stool for Emma to climb up in order to reach the top drawer. I was surprised to find that this set came with a mix of old and new style jumper plates … the new ones with the fingernail groove, like tiles, and the old ones that mount flush to the part beneath, like plates. Two of them go on the stepstool and one goes on her work table – I put one of each type on the stepstool to call attention to this packing anomaly.

The next thing we build is some sort of easel or drafting table, with the printed dress design on it. You might have been wondering about printing vs. stickers on the Friends line, but I can assure you that there have not yet been any stickers in any of these sets. The paw print on Mia’s Puppy House, the blackboard on Olivia’s Invention Workshop, the printed tiles on Andrea’s Stage, and the umbrella on Stephanie’s Outdoor Bakery were all printed parts too.

Emma’s table is the next thing to build, which includes a nice little (printed!) ruler on a 1×6 tile, a pink iPod-like device on a pink 1×2 tile, a camera, a dark pink mug, and a flowerpot. The legs are light purple with purple feet, and the table is covered in 1×6 light orange tiles. There’s also a neat little lamp using a skeleton leg as part of the post, which I shall definitely copy in future MOCs.

Finally we get a desk for Emma, in a color scheme matching the table, with a laptop computer (a return of the part last seen in the Agents line) and what I can only assume is some sort of sandwich.

I am happy about all the purple parts and the aqua colored bricks. Like the other Friends sets, there is some pink, but it’s not overwhelmingly pink. The main color is purple. I doubt I’ll have use for the printed piece with the dress design, but the laptop computer is nice to see back.

Tomorrow we start the second week of the Fortnight of Friends with the first of the larger sets: #3183, “Stephanie’s Cool Convertible”.

Fortnight of Friends – Day 6: Stephanie’s Pet Patrol

Bill — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 22:00:22 +0000

The sixth in the “Fortnight of Friends” series is set #3935, “Stephanie’s Pet Patrol”.

Having seen all five of the Friends main characters now, in Day 6 we return to the one we saw first in Day 1, Stephanie. She’s got a different print shirt and skirt, but the same mold as far as I can tell. The shirt has long sleeves, so the color difference between the legs is not as jarring relative to the torso, but still noticeable. Finally, we get a minidoll that’s easy to open both bags! Both torso and legs are packed in the easy-to-open plastic similar to most LEGO bags, not that annoying stretchy plastic.

This set continues yesterday’s pet house theme with a wee wittle bunny howse. Sowwy, this is getting too cute. But really, this rabbit is adorable!! I’m not sure yellow roof goes with tan walls, but wook at the bunny!!!!!!

Ahem. Next we get a vehicle. Stephanie may not be old enough to drive a car, but apparently this little ATV is legal. I guess if the cops ever hassle her, she can just show them her bunny and they’ll let her off the hook. This is a pretty standard LEGO design, just using more pastel colors. The light aqua we first saw in the VW van “Fillmore” in the Cars 2 sets (such as #8487, Flo’s V8 Café) returns, appearing in the fenders and a 1×2 tile with rail. There is a new handlebar piece, similar to one we’ve seen for years for minifigs, but with extended bars that can be gripped by minidolls with their wrists that can’t turn. Stephanie drives the ATV while standing, which doesn’t seem like a very good idea to me… but given the limited usefulness of her hands, I suppose it’s the only option the designers had. Still, I think it sets a bad example for kids.

The final build is a trailer for the ATV. On the box it is shown with white wheel hubs, but they gave us grey ones. The instructions have the color right, though.

Tomorrow brings the first week (1/2 fortnight) of Friends to an end with day 7, #3936, “Emma’s Design Studio”.

Fortnight of Friends – Day 5: Mia’s Puppy House

Bill — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 21:09:42 +0000

The fifth set in the “Fortnight of Friends” series is #3934: Mia’s Puppy House. Of the sets we’ve seen so far, this one is far and away the “pinkest.” All the sets so far have featured one unique minidoll, and there are five main characters in the Friends line, so we now have one of each.

The minidoll for this set, Mia, comes in two bags that are the difficult to open stretchy plastic. I’m surprised at the inconsistent packaging LEGO is using for these various parts.

Mia is the first doll we’ve seen so far that has a hair accessory. All of the minidoll hair pieces have one or more holes in them for attaching bows, tiaras, etc. The puppy in this kit also has the hole in its head for attaching a bow. This kit comes with a whole bag of accessories:

Eight head bows, four with hearts and four without
Two prize ribbons (marked “1″ and “2″) – it seems odd that these are both dark pink, since “1″ should be blue and “2″ should be red, but I guess that would be too expensive to produce, or maybe they just do things differently in Denmark.
Two large oblong rounded brushes
One small round brush
One oval thingy (bar of soap, I guess)
One comb with heart
One spray bottle with heart

All these accessories are in dark pink, and are well suited to this set’s theme, where Mia is washing her dog, who has apparently won both first and second place in the dog show. My understanding from reading other blog entries about the Friends line is that there are other sets we will see with similar “accessory kits” which are apparently treated by LEGO as one part. The bows and ribbons all have small pegs sticking out the back which I believe is the same type of connection used in the past by accessories such as the tiara in Willie Scott’s hair in the LEGO Indiana Jones Shanghai Chase (7682)" class="extlink" target="_blank">Shanghai Chase Indiana Jones set. It’s also the same size peg used to attach flowers to stems. In addition, the ribbons have a stud-sized cutout in the back surrounding the pin, so that they can mount on a (hollow) LEGO stud. The other accessories are all sized so they can be gripped by a minifig/minidoll hand (or any 3mm clip).

The first thing you build after Mia is the doghouse, which is a basic 3×5 stud tan and white house with a dark pink roof. Building odd-numbered-sized models in LEGO can be tricky, because so many parts only come in even-sized parts, but it works pretty well for this model. It uses some basic SNOT (Studs Not On Top) techniques to attach the ribbons and the paw print over the door. A brief aside about the paw print – it’s a 2×2 round tile, which is an unusual part in LEGO because it has more attachment points than any other part its size. There are no fewer than eight points where you can attach a stud to the underside of these tiles, and this model uses one of the unexpected points – centered on the top of the piece.

After the doghouse, you build a simple lime table with yellow legs in only 3 steps on one page. Finally, you put together the tree, which cleverly uses a Technic brick to represent a hole, perhaps dug out by a woodpecker? The rest of the parts are more staged than built – fill the bucket with dog washing tools, put out the dog bowl with bone, etc.

Tomorrow, we revisit Stephanie, who we saw in Day 1, with #3935, “Stephanie’s Pet Patrol”.

Fortnight of Friends – Day 4: Olivia’s Invention Workshop

Bill — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:07:55 +0000

This is the fourth set in the Fortnight of Friends series, #3933: “Olivia’s Invention Workshop”.

Today’s set features Olivia at work in her laboratory. There are four workstations: a blackboard, a lab table with a microscope and Erlenmeyer flask, a shelving unit with jars of mysterious chemicals, and a workbench with tools. She has an adorable little robot that she’s controlling with a remote control.

Due to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) nature of this model, I consulted my dance partner, who is not only a girl but also a high school math teacher. Her first reaction was, “Why is gravity pointing up?” in reaction to the force diagram on the blackboard. I had her build the set – she’s pretty inexperienced with LEGO but has two boys who are LEGO maniacs – and these were some of her impressions:

She likes the jars & bottles, and the cabinet with drawers
The microscope seemed odd, looking at a big gem. You can see it with the naked eye!
She likes the idea of the blackboard, but wishes it had something related to something in the lab (e.g., a chemistry formula). Boys are always referring to things in math/physics class from toys/games (e.g., they know about Dyson spheres and rings from playing Halo)
She doesn’t like that Olivia is wearing open toed shoes in the lab and didn’t have safety goggles
She was confused by the extra parts (I explained that all LEGO sets come with extras of the small parts, but she initially thought she had missed a step… which was compounded by the fact that the pages showing how to make the little robot were sticking together)

In discussing it, we had an idea – LEGO could show variations on the models as you build. Girls are less inclined to slavishly follow instructions as boys, and instead to add their own custom touches as they go. It was like following a recipe, where you might substitute, omit, or add ingredients as you go to taste. There’s no “season to taste” in LEGO.

I’m pleased by all the new color parts in azure and light azure colors. I think the microscope and vise are really clever little bits of SNOT building that will teach valuable skills to anyone who is new to LEGO who builds this set. And I’m really pleased to see a toy for girls that highlights a girl doing science.

Tomorrow’s set is #3934: Mia’s Puppy House.

Gondola Car II

Bill — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:35:23 +0000

When I first saw the new bracket parts found in the LEGO Tipper Truck #4434, I realized I needed to use them to make a train car.

I used parts from 2 of those sets to make this, along with a few parts I had laying about from other sets I’d recently taken apart (mostly the Maersk Train 10219). It was a very simple build – the main part is just two of the tipper parts from the Tipper Truck set with just a few tiles rearranged. The undercarriage is just made of plain grey plates, and the wheel trucks are quite simple.

In 2008, I designed another Gondola car, using 1x2x2 panels with 1×1 bricks between for the sides. This was so much simpler, and arguably more realistic (thinner walls), though the older model has more details on the ends. Instructions for that older model are available, but the new part isn’t in LDraw yet so I can’t make them for this one for a while.

Fortnight of Friends – Day 3: Andrea’s Stage

Bill — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:49:40 +0000

The third LEGO Friends set in my “Fortnight of Friends” series is #3932, “Andrea’s Stage”.

Like the two smaller sets for the past two days, this slightly larger box has a flap on the top that can be used to hang the sets on a display rack. And also like those sets, by pulling on that flap you can open the box rather neatly. I’ve gotten the hang of doing it a bit more neatly now; once you lift up the hanger flap, the whole top of the box opens nicely.

This set features a new minidoll with dark skin named Andrea. This African-American (African-Danish?) character adds some racial diversity to Heartlake City. The legs this time are in the easy to open bag, and the torso in the stretchy plastic. The color matching between the legs (which are printed brown on white plastic) and the arms/neck/face (which are cast in brown plastic) is much better for Andrea than for the previous two minidolls. The hair is curly, which is rare for minifigs.

The first thing you build is a little boombox, with a nice printed red 1×4 tile for the speakers and CD player. Next comes the stage, made from quarter-circle purple plates, with footlights and a microphone. After that, you build the backdrop, with slopes representing red curtains drawn open, and a printed 2×4 tile with “Andrea” above it. I like the light purple half-arch pieces and the pale yellow 1×2 tiles. Finally you build the piano, which is a nice model of a baby grand, using white grille tiles to represent the keys. It comes with a wine glass (tip jar?) and a microphone stand. Although the instructions only show one microphone being used, they supply us with an extra one, which you could put on the piano.

I think LEGO made a big mistake in not having the wrists be articulated in these minidolls. With regular minifigs, you can have the figure hold the microphone up to his/her mouth. But with minidolls’ long arms and fixed hands, the microphone can’t go anywhere near Andrea’s mouth if she holds it in her hand.

I’ve also noticed that the microphone stand is made using a new piece. The traditional antenna piece has a rounded end, and has been around since the days of Classic Space in the late 1970′s. The length is the same, but the tip has been changed. I’ve always thought it would be better if it were squared off, even when I was a kid, and now it finally has been.

Tomorrow we tackle one that I’ve been really keen on, #3933: “Olivia’s Invention Workshop”

Fortnight of Friends – Day 2: Emma’s Splash Pool

Bill — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:05:22 +0000

The second small LEGO Friends set is #3931, Emma’s Splash Pool. This is day two in my Fortnight of Friends series, and the last “impulse item” sized set.

The box is the same size and type as yesterday’s, and the minidoll of Emma is pretty much the same as Olivia, but with dark hair. Yesterday I complained about the packaging of the minidolls, and it looks like they listened: today they’ve given me a torso in a nice easy to open bag similar to the bags that the LEGO parts in. The legs are still in that annoying stretchy plastic though.

Today we get a bit more pink, along with plenty of lime and white. The set consists of multiple models again: a small 4-piece planter, a lounge chair with lots of pink and lime green, and the main model, the pool, which has a pink floor. It’s called a spash pool, but I think it’s more like a hot tub. Though I would have put a blue or better yet, trans-blue bottom on it personally. Using pink makes me think it’s got some very odd pollution in the water. There are no particularly clever building techniques here, but I really like the new color “macaroni” bricks, and the lime green radar dish has some potential.

Next up tomorrow: #3932, “Andrea’s Stage”, moving up to the next bigger size sets.

Fortnight of Friends – Day 1: Stephanie’s Outdoor Bakery

Bill — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:32:28 +0000

As you have probably seen by now, LEGO has a new line of sets targeted at girls, called “Friends.” Today I went to the LEGO store and bought all fourteen of the sets in this line. Over the next fourteen days, I’m planning to review each of the Friends sets, one per day. I’ve organized the sets first by price (lowest to highest) and secondarily by set number. Since there are fourteen of them, I’m calling it the “Fortnight of Friends.” Hope you enjoy. The first set is #3930, Stephanie’s Outdoor Bakery.

The Friends sets come in new style packaging not seen in other LEGO themes. As this is a small set, it comes with a flap on the top that can be used to hang it on a display. But I quickly found that it also facilitates opening – just pull on the flap and the front cover of the box tears open. I’m not sure if that’s intentional – they still have those taped, unglued sides like most LEGO boxes these days – but it is easy to open if you don’t mind destroying the box itself.

Like any LEGO set, the first thing you build is the figures. The sets feature “minidolls” instead of minifigs, which are figures a little taller than minifigs, and thin and curvy rather than blocky. Like a minifig, the minidolls come in sections: legs, torso and arms, head, and hair. The legs and torso come packed separately in small plastic bags that are really quite difficult to rip open. The bag is made of a stretchy plastic and there’s no “tear here” weak point as we’ve seen in some of the other recent similar packaging (e.g. Toy Story figures). I believe these are made in China like some of the other specialty items we’ve seen in recent sets, especially the Disney branded sets. The minidoll is articulated at the shoulders and hips – the arms move independently but the legs are locked together, so you can’t pose them walking the way you can minifigs. The hips have a 90 degree movement, ranging from straight upright to sitting. The connection between the legs and torso is a new shape for LEGO – it’s a single ovoid shape plug on the legs part which goes into a similarly shaped hole in the bottom of the torso. It seems to be slightly asymmetric, making it a little harder (but still possible) to put the torso on facing backward. The hands are similar to minifig hands – they don’t rotate though, so they are limited in what they can grip. The arms and legs are both “flesh” colored (Caucasian, at least in Stephanie’s case) but since the legs are cast in light purple and painted, and the arms are cast in “flesh” they don’t quite match in color. The head is mounted on a post that’s the same diameter as LEGO minifig tools, which would make it easy to impale the head on lots of standard LEGO parts besides just the Friends torso. It’s been reported elsewhere that the hair/hats are interchangeable between minifigs and minidolls, and in fact on the inside of Stephanie’s blonde hair I can even see the outline of a minifig’s shoulders.

Like most of the Friends sets this one is not one model, but a small group of them. I imagine LEGO did some focus groups and found that girls wanted multiple items they could rearrange for maximum playability. This set includes a small round table with an umbrella, a stove/oven range with a cake(?) in the oven and another one on display on the counter, and a sink with what I guess are two bottles, one white and one trans-blue. All of these are quick, easy builds, good for someone getting the feel of LEGO, but are as detailed as any LEGO set. My only objection is that the round cake is a little bigger than the bowl you’re supposed to put it in, so it doesn’t sit level. Other than that, the models are just fine – not too exciting to me, no tricky techniques, but solidly does what it set out to do. One of the big complaints about Bellville was the fact that there wasn’t much assembly required; so far at least, Friends appears to have addressed that issue quite well.

Besides the new minidolls one of the things about Friends that is remarkable is the colors. Pink is back in a big way, but most of the models are mostly whites and pastel colors other than pink. In this set, pink is just an accent color. The sink has two panels in a new shade of light blue, but the rest of the colors (white, lime, tan, pink) are existing LEGO colors. There are two printed pieces, the umbrella and a carton of milk. I’m glad LEGO avoided using stickers for these, as I’ve always found stickers to be frustrating and don’t like to even apply them – I just put them up on BrickLink for sale.

Since I build a lot of Town models for the BayLTC train layout, I’m happy to be getting a lot of the accent colors and pieces from the Friends sets. I’m especially looking forward to all the new female hair pieces which I can use to help even out the gender imbalance in minifigs generally.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the other small set, #3931 “Emma’s Splash Pool”.

Setting up my LEGO studio

Bill — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 06:54:14 +0000

I’m writing this from my new LEGO studio, which is a work in progress that I’m in the process of setting up.

A little backstory: Just under two years ago, my wife Holly and I decided to break up. At first, she stayed in our bedroom, and I moved into the second bedroom. At that time, the second bedroom was a combination office and LEGO room, but to a large extent was really just a storage room. You know how a lot of the time one room in the house becomes the catch-all dumping ground when you need to clean up the rest of the house? That room served that purpose. Anyway, I cleared the junk out of that room, went to IKEA and bought a bed and some other furnishings, and moved into it. In the meantime Holly redecorated what had been our bedroom – I put our queen size bed into storage, and she got a new folding couch/bed and set that room up as her own space. We lived like that for a few months, and then in the spring she had to suddenly move across the country to Pennsylvania to help her mother, who had fallen ill. Although her mother recovered pretty quickly, she stayed there, and rented her own apartment in a nearby town. In the meantime, her room (our old room) was left pretty much as she left it. She flew out to visit once, and stayed in her room, and for a while she was paying me a part of the rent to keep her room available for her.

Eventually it became clear that I should take over the room, but I took a long time to get around to doing it. After living together for 18 years, it was hard for me to make those final steps of moving her out of the house. Finally though, this month, I finished packing up her stuff and putting it into a rented storage unit for her, and in the past few days I’ve been moving my stuff into the room. My LEGO collection had outgrown the two IKEA PAX armoires I was keeping it in, and now having the entire bedroom will allow me to organize things so that everything is easily accessible to me. Moving the LEGO out of my bedroom allowed me to reorganize the room to have a lot more elbow room, and the new LEGO studio is shaping up nicely.

The Advent calendar project, recently finished, was done in the living room until the 22nd day. The last two days were photographed in the studio, and I’ve just finished building my birthday present from Holly – the Battle of Alamut (Set 7573 from the Prince of Persia line). Hopefully with the new studio I will be more active building LEGO. But I have a lot of sorting and organizing to do first…

Advent 2011 Recap

Bill — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 01:12:34 +0000

Thanks for following along for the past 24 days as I’ve opened and built the models for the 2011 City and Star Wars Advent calendars. Now that I’ve opened all 24 days, let’s review what we have got. Click each little image to see a full size picture.

First, let’s review all the calendar items, grouped by days:

Days 1-4

Days 5-8

Days 9-12

Days 13-16

Days 17-20

Days 21-24

Both calendars included a wide variety of minifigs and models. Here you see the models organized by type. There were also a lot of extra parts – LEGO always includes an extra one of each of the smaller parts included in any set, and each of these daily mini-sets always came with extra parts just like any other LEGO set. The combined pile of City and Star Wars extra parts is pretty impressive.

Figs

Vehicles

Things

City Police Station

Extra Parts

Advent 2011 Day 24

Bill — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:49:28 +0000

Day 24 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011. Merry Christmas Eve!

Today is the final day of the Advent calendars. Both calendars give us Santa Claus.

In City we have a traditional Santa Claus, the same way that LEGO has been producing him for years in Advent calendars. He has a sack on his back with presents (two 1×2 tiles) and the same hat and beard that they usually use. The torso is not printed, which I found a little disappointing. But we also get a cute little fireplace along with Santa complete with hot coals. Some might say that was cheap compared to the flames that LEGO usually put into fireplaces, but to be honest coals are probably more accurate anyway.

Star Wars brings us a cute Yoda Claus figure. Or is it Santa Yoda? Anyway, his head is very detailed, but rubbery – not the Yoda I have from older Star Wars sets. The cute printed torso is awesome, and they should have used the same torso in the City calendar if you ask me, just without the green hands.

Advent 2011 Day 23

Bill — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 04:56:33 +0000

Day 23 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011. Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

In the City calendar we get a dog and two bones. Three elements and one of them is extra. LAME. I like that it’s the new style of dog, but still pretty lame in terms of parts count.

On the Star Wars side, we get a cute little Christmas tree made out of green plates. If you look carefully, you may notice the jumper plates are the new style, with the fingernail grooves. I guess they’re jumper tiles now.

Tomorrow’s the last day of the advent calendar, Christmas Eve. I’ll be recapping the whole series, so check in to see what we ended up with!