4641 Speed Boat

Not a long post today, but one for the sake of completism. At the same time that I bought Uruk-hai Army, I picked up 4641 Speed Boat. Picking up the set felt a lot like buying LEGO did as a kid: I had extra money in my budget, there were sets at the store that I could buy for that price, so I did. In actual fact, I was willing to spend a bit more money than I did... but LEGO is expensive these days and none of the sets that I was actually interested in fell below the budget thresh-hold--at least not without making it impossible to pick up the Uruk-hai Army. Nonetheless, I picked up Speed Boat. Why?

Well, as you can see, Speed Boat is not a particularly large set. One of my brothers got it for Christmas, so I've seen it before, and I knew it was "swooshable" (or whatever the maritime equivalent is... swoopable?) but ultimately forgettable. Even the fig is a relatively generic Octan fig. So why buy it? The answer is that for the price of less than three dollars, it was one sale and I didn't own it. LEGO is producing awesome enough sets these days that picking up sets on sale is less frequent than it once was--thankfully those "halcyon days" of 2003 or so are long gone--and LEGO is also more expensive than it once was. You can't even pick up a Collectible Minifig for less than three dollars most places. And with my own budget tightening, it was not only an opportunity but one I could afford. There was also a certain amount of "collector's instinct" involved. I've never been a LEGO fan who limited himself to primarily one theme: Castle, Pirates, Town, Space, etc. I've always aimed to have at least a little of everything--and more of some--and the fact of the matter is that City is at the back of the line these days. Part of this is because, although City has some new and awesome sets, it's just going over ground that they've covered for years and years: police and firemen and planes and race cars; at the same time, LEGO is putting out some new and wonderful stuff: Lord of the Rings and Monster Hunters and Collectible Minifigs, etc.