Building a brighter tomorrow with LEGO® bricks
We just had another planning meeting today to go over the various things that need to be done for Bricks by the Bay 2012. Things are coming together, but there’s a lot more work to do.
Registration is nearly sold out – as of this writing there are only 14 no badges left! Get ’em while they last! There is a waiting list, and you can always come to the public day.
Whether you’re married, single, dating, engaged, or anything in between, have a happy Valentine’s Day.
If you’ve found love, celebrate it. If you’re looking for love, may you find it.
(Click the photos to see more views of those models.)
Preliminary pictures of the minifigs from the new LEGO Hobbit / Lord of the Rings sets are out (thanks to Total Film)…
What do these figs have in common? They’re all men! They should have included Galadriel (Female wood elf leader), Éowyn (niece of Théoden-King of horse riders), and most importantly Arwen (high elf princess), at least. Maybe the female characters will eventually turn up in sets, but given LEGO’s enthusiastic support for girls with the new Friends sets, you’d think they’d at least be somewhat sensitive to this issue!
A few months ago I was sent a review copy of the book “The Cult of LEGO
I’ve known Joe for years; he’s a regular at many of the major fan conventions on the east coast, and the editor of BrickJournal. He also ran the 2006 BrickFest in Washington, D.C., and when I was starting up the Bricks by the Bay planning process for our first convention in 2010, he provided a lot of great advice. I don’t know the other author, however.
This is a great coffee table book covering pretty comprehensively all aspects of the LEGO adult hobby. It’s not a single narrative though, from cover to cover, but rather each page pretty well stands on its own (in some cases the story might span 2-3 pages). This is perfect for picking it up, opening it to a random page, reading a page or two, then putting it back down again, but if you do try to read it continuously it comes off a bit jarring. I suppose as a coffee table book this is ideal, but it’s not how I like to read. The chapters or stories in the book seem like blog posts more than anything else, which is understandable as John Baichtal is a prominent blogger.
Most of No Starch Press’s LEGO books are squarely aimed at the LEGO hobbyist, but this one is not. It’s for the person who finds LEGO interesting, but isn’t a builder themselves, or maybe someone new to LEGO as a hobby. It’s perfect for someone who loves to come to the public day of a LEGO convention but would never attend the whole weekend.
The book is full of great pictures featuring a wide variety of creations and events from all over the world, spanning the last ten years and more. I like the fact that they don’t just highlight the latest and greatest, but creations that were featured on LUGNET 10 years ago are given equal billing with something from last year, showing the timelessness of LEGO as a medium. If you have a friend or family member who doesn’t understand your fascination with LEGO, sharing this book with them would go a long way toward redressing that disconnect. Combining Meno’s encyclopedic knowledge of the LEGO hobby and AFOL scene with Baichtal’s outsider point of view was a master stroke by the publishers, as it ensures accuracy and comprehensiveness while keeping it accessible and understandable by a non-AFOL.
It was out of date almost immediately after publication though, with the closure of DesignByMe and LEGO Universe and consequent changes to LDD, and the introduction of the new LEGO Friends line (and its attendant controversies in the media) being topics that were completely missed by the authors. In a rapidly evolving scene such as ours, that’s pretty much inevitable, however.
On a personal note, two of my photos were used (thanks to the Creative Commons license I use in all my Flickr photos) and both BayLUG and Bricks by the Bay got a mention. None of my models were featured though.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
That’s the end of the Fortnight of Friends. I hope you have enjoyed my reviews of the sets.
Today is the penultimate day in the “Fortnight of Friends” series, with the second largest set in the line, #3188, “Heartlake Vet”
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
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).
Tomorrow is the final set in the series, #3315, “Olivia’s House”
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”
Today is day 11 in our LEGO “Fortnight of Friends” series, and we tackle #3187, “Butterfly Beauty Shop”
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?
Next up tomorrow is #3061, “City Park Café”
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”