2018: A Year in Review

Once upon a time (like... six years ago), I did year-in-review posts for the state of my LEGO collection here. It's getting to be a while since 2018 ended, but not quite so long that I don't want to put one up, having just stumbled on the old ones.

LEGO Set of the Year:

The last time I did one of these, 9472 Attack on Weathertop was brand new and my selection for this honour. A lot of water has swept under the bridge since then. I never did get the big sets in The Lord of the Rings theme.

2018 was not much of a sets-prominent year for me, and most of the sets I bought were somewhat swiftly parted. The most striking set was one that I didn't buy for myself and probably wouldn't have bought for myself: 75952 Newt's Case of Magical Creatures, a Christmas gift from my in-laws.

I'm a Harry Potter fan, but not to the extent I'm a Tolkien fan, and even as a Harry Potter fan, I've never been into Harry Potter LEGO, so Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them as a source of LEGO sets has never been something I've definitely needed. This set is really well-built, however: a dense collection of parts (for its size, the box it came in is one of the heaviest I remember) in an attractive form. Building a playset that folds into an actual case is clever, and I like the animals. Despite having NO prior need to have a Potterverse set built in my collection, this one is actually staying.

LEGO Theme of the Year:

This is a hard category to nominate. In terms of sets purchased, Star Wars and Nexo Knights were far and away the numerical leaders, but Star Wars was mostly battle-packs riding a wave of nostalgia more appropriately alloted to 2017 (when I first, belatedly, watched The Clone Wars and then Rebels), and Nexo Knights is misleading, since it's mostly deeply discounted accessory sets.

Outside of buying new sets, I didn't do much MOCing, excepting temporary things for various webcomics. Even here, Android Files took place largely in the wild, with no clear leader for intervening themes between Adventurers, Wild West, Arctic, and Alpha Team. My other comics and pictures on Flickr reveal no dominant interests.

So, what was new in 2018? Filtering my purchases on my master spreadsheet (because, yeah, I keep track of a LOT of things...), City was the only theme other than Star Wars that I bought multiple 2018 releases in. And these were a bit more substantial than battlepacks.

It's a victor by default, though.

LEGO Minifig of the Year:

It's also hard to name a Minifig of the Year. Though my LEGO time was somewhat sporadic and largely webcomic focusing, there's always some fig-fiddling going on, but if we look at what cropped up on my irregular Flickr account, we don't see a predominant theme or a prominent fig taking centre stage.

If someone must be named, then we'll look at the gentleman on the left: one of many Evil Peachies, his ever-changing nature as torsos, arms, hands, and more get cycled in and out of as new figs are added to the collection has made this former Naboo Royal Guard (he hails from the more recent Flash Speeder set) a much built-and-rebuilt fig over the past year, which was the main way that a fig could hope to achieve attention.

Minifigure Profiles: 7131 and 7141

It's been a looong time since anything was posted on this old blog--about four years. That's not to suggest I've been away from LEGO that long: Android Files, whose first season was announced in that last post four years ago, has updated averaging a season a year, and will see its fourth season debut this coming Sunday.

In addition to Android Files, which has been my primary comic, I've also seen sporadic updates on Grandfather's Tale, Crossed Bricks, and Aquazone Breakfast News, all of which used to exist here on this blog and now have their own comic sites on Comicfury. I also contributed, for one year, to a joint comic with my younger brothers: Crossover Championship. This is the most esotericly in-jokey, pandering almost more to our joint knowledge than existing as something really intended for a public audience (however, more is coming starting this Advent, so maybe I should plug it more heartily than that!).

I've also been posting pictures of minifigs on Flickr for better than a year and a half--not quite as daily as the plan might have been, and certainly nothing special in the realm of either photography or LEGO building, but it speaks to my ultimate love of LEGO as the realm of the minifig and has been a good "tablescrap" of LEGO involvement for the long months of adult monotony between doing anything with my collection--"doing anything" these days being primarily focused on comic making.

What has been lacking, though, across these platforms, is the long-form writing about LEGO in any form that used to exist here, and I have missed it. Authorial comments on the comics or Flickr lacks the longer form depth that I sometimes miss, so here we are--years later--with a new post!

L-R: Pitdroid, Rey, Elf-warrior, R2-D2, altar boy, battledroid 1, battledroid 2

The subject of this particular post is a look at two sets that I got for Christmas in 1999. That was a significant end-of-the-year for my LEGO collection, because not only was it the first gift-giving season for a 12-year-old Star Wars fan, but it was hard on the heels of my first viewing of ANY Star Wars movie--friends had introduced my brother and I to the Original Trilogy in one unforgetable movie marathon and we got our parents to take us to The Phantom Menace, which was still playing in the cheap theatre, 5 months after its release.

By Christmas, my meagre cash reserves (expended earlier in the year on sets like Mystic Mountain Time Lab and Pharaoh's Forbidden Ruins) had only resulted in two Star Wars sets in my collection: the iconic 7101 Lightsaber Duel and 7110 Landspeeder: two absolutely iconic sets, some of the best value for your money of any set I've ever owned [warning: nostalgia factor is approaching critical levels].

For Christmas, I got two more sets: 7131 Anakin's Podracer and 7141 Naboo Fighter. Neither of these sets goes down as all-time favourites, but they--or, rather, their minifigs--might actually be a bit more interesting to look at because of it.

Anakin's Podracer has the dubious distinction of being identical to one-third of a much larger set, the massive 7171 Mos Espa Podrace. I never had that set, nor 2001's 7186 Watto's Junkyard, which meant that I never had (and still do not have) any other LEGO podracers for Anakin to compete with. The Attack of the Clones eventually came out, so even if I didn't already prefer Darth Vader as a minifig over Anakin Skywalker, I had "better" Anakin options to keep built in my collection, and with a collection built (especially in those days) more for play than for display, that meant both the young Anakins of these two sets were doomed to be parted.

One of these Anakins, the minifig on the far left, would ultimately end up back in my Star Wars fold after the release of The Force Awakens. Nearly a decade after LEGO's decision to shift licenced themes to flesh-toned minifigs, the heroine of the new saga did not come as a yellow-toned minifig, but my Star Wars collection has stubbornly refused to update--indeed, I have deliberately modified new human Star Wars characters to be yellow-figs rather than flesh-tones. Young Anakin's face has proven, if not perfect at least the best option I've found yet for Rey's face.

However, as my collection only needs one Rey, the other Young Anakin has ended up with a career as a Town fig, having been paired with a classic Ron Weasley hair and a plain white outfit to serve as an altar boy in my ever-unfinished parish church MOC.

Unlike Young Anakin, who reappeared in several sets over the years--and many, many more in his older forms as both Anakin and Darth Vader (in a couple of sets, twice over!), Padmé Naberrie would go many years before being released again, and is still a somewhat uncommon minifig--and, in my collection, this would continue to be the ONLY Padmé/Amidala fig down to the present day!

Despite that--and despite the fact that I do have a Padmé in my standing collection--this original Padmé has long since been sent elsewhere. Although I think it's a good head, I don't think it really looks at all like Natalie Portman, and in the intervening years, it has become long associated with an elf-warrior from my own fantasy legendarium.

The four other minifigs in the two sets are all droids, and are all currently extant in my collection, though the pit droid owes his recent re-existence to a Clone Wars-driven Star Wars mood coupled with a bit of nostalgia for some of my earliest Star Wars memories, in those days before Attack of the Clones. It's quite a faithful build, except for its scale, and made out of generic '90s pieces. I'd like to see what a 2018 set would use for a pit droid, because they would surely make it smaller, but I don't if it would be so general in build.

On the other hand, I know exactly what the droids from the Naboo Fighter would look like today, because the moulds haven't changed! LEGO perfected astromech droids in 1999 and have only ever tweaked the printing. I do use a 2016 R2-D2 as my primary R2-D2, but all my older models continue to be perfectly functional astromechs in my collection and this, the first, remains an R2-D2 by virtue of a self-entertaining loophole.

The battledroids haven't seen even a printing update, because they don't have printing! A sharp-eyed viewer will notice that I've upgraded their right arms to the newer, straight-arm options. Thanks to LEGO's propensity for including extra pieces of smaller parts, I have more than a few from newer sets. The original, side-ways-handed arms actually look better, on their own, again indicating the perfection of the original battledroid, but most guns looked ridiculous in their hands and I'm glad they eventually made the switch. These two battledroids are part of a larger army now, completely undistinguished--the only two minifigs out of these seven to fulfill exactly the same role in my collection as upon their arrival.

2012: A Year in Review

Last January, I made a year-in-review post and today I'm going to do that again. So here was my 2012:

LEGO Set of the Year:

In 2011 the top set that I acquired was unequivocally Medieval Market Village, and in 2012 I acquired its immediate successor, 10223 Kingdoms Joust, which is an equally impressive set, and taken set-by-set was probably the most impressive or iconic set that I acquired in 2012--but I don't think it was the Set of the Year for my collection. That distinction belongs to 9472 Attack on Weathertop.

As I blogged about when I first got it, Attack on Weathertop was my first Lord of the Rings LEGO set, and I was deeply impressed with it--more impressed than I expected to be before I opened it. It's well-designed, has excellent minifigs, a great parts selection, and best of all (from a Tolkien fan standpoint) it's set in Middle-earth. Although if you told me to pick one set only, I would probably take Kingdoms Joust simply because it is so much larger, it would not be without a longing backwards glance at Attack on Weathertop, and within the context of 2012 being the year the Lord of the Rings LEGO was first released, it is a worthy Set of the Year.  

LEGO Theme of the Year:

Last year the Collectible Minifigs were my Theme of the Year and on the basis of simple volume, they would make a compelling case again this year. The Dino and Monster Fighters themes that came out in 2012 were both excellent original themes on LEGO's part, though I have but a single set, with a single minifig, between them. NinjaGo continued to be a major presence in the LEGO world as well, but was barely a blip on my radar. All that I bought this year in any sort of quantity were Collectible Minifigs and Lord of the Rings LEGO. Part of this was due to financial considerations. What with the expenses of getting married and then waiting unemployed to get my green card, I did not have the disposable income for most of the year to spend on LEGO. A Collectible fig here or there, and a few VIP points-fuelled Lord of the Rings sets were all I could afford. (The Kingdoms Joust, referenced above, was a very early purchase indeed--all the way back in last January.) And with that in mind, the clear champion theme this year was the Lord of the Rings.

When LEGO announced that it had acquired the license and was developing sets, I feared the worst, which is to say sets as forgettable as the entire Pirates of the Caribbean line. What I got--and yes, this may have something to do with my status as a Tolkien fan--was another Star Wars line, and I daresay I said enough good things above when talking about Attack on Weathertop to explain my decision for naming the Lord of the Rings my Theme of the Year.

LEGO Minifig of the Year:

 Last year I declined to name a Collectible Minifig as my Fig of the Year, and I'm going to again this year, but it's worth noting that there was no real stand-out minifig addition to my LEGO-verse this year. It did not change drastically this past year due largely to the fact that "REAL LIFE" things kept a focus on the story side of LEGO to a largely background position. Among those that did get some sort of attention was the Black Falcon knight (redux), who comes with Kingdoms Joust.

MOC of the Year:

This is a new category, and one that I think I may not have included last year due (among other things) to the fact that I haven't made a lot of MOCs over the past few years--and certainly haven't posted many online. But I make a few this year, and even managed to post a couple. The one that says "2012!" more than any other was not a complex MOC; indeed it was quite simple... but I made 75 copies of each half.

Other Thoughts...

In general, 2012 was dominated by becoming an adult. I graduated with my Masters degree, I got married, and my wife and I went through the wranglings of getting my Green Card. All of this kept LEGO to the sidelines--but the sidelines are where LEGO has been in my life for years, and it's a comfortable place. LEGO had a chance to be centre-stage as favours. at my wedding and was there as part of solace during the long wait for my work permit. In general it was a Castle/Lord of the Rings sort of year. I've always been a Castle fan first, but this year there was little room for anything else, and the fantasy angle had the opportunity for a lot of attention with the new Middle-earth lines, attention that I foresee persisting into the next year as more Hobbit sets come out and find their way into my collection. That was my 2012 in LEGO... what was yours?

An Old Prince

One of my habits when buying things from Bricklink is to browse through all the minifig parts a store I'm shopping has in its catalogue. This isn't my only such habit; I usually also take a look at whatever old grey pieces are in stock and whatever trans-yellow pieces might be there. As a result, although I've never really set out with a goal of collecting old minifigs, I've built up a number of classic Castle figs over the years, figs from prior to the 1984 debut of Legoland Castle. On the parts to these figs that I acquired was a torso to the prince (or lord or king or what-have-you) who comes with 383/6083 Knight's Tournament, LEGO's very first jousting tournament set. According to Bricklink, this torso only ever came with this set. Unfortunately, in the condition I got it, the torso was a little bit worn; in fact, all the gold was worn off completely. In and of itself, this isn't such a surprise--there are probably more examples missing the gold printing on Bricklink than have it, and gold printing has vanished off many early torsos, such as the Classic Space torso and Lion (Legoland Castle) torsos. I added the torso to my cart without really knowing what I was going to do with it. Should I convert it into a soldier's torso? Rebuild the prince and ignore his missing printing? As you can see, I decided to "customize" him back to his original appearance with the use of a little gold-star sticker:

As you can no doubt also see, I decided to upgrade the prince a little bit so that he could hang out with the other royal minifigs in my Castle realms. I decided against giving him a crown--I kind of like the fact that this guy doesn't have the ubiquitous crown-helm that all the later kings have--but I did give him a sceptre (stolen from the KK2 in the Knights' Kingdom Chess Set.

I also gave him a cape, in the style of the Dragon Master and Royal Knight cloth capes of the mid-1990s, though of course this is actually a paper cape. It should be noted that, in addition to the tri-colour shield emblem of his torso, the prince's cape also sports the crown off the emblem of the main faction of knights in 375/6075 Castle. In my LEGO world, all the pre-Legoland Castle factions are united under the Knights' Tournament Prince, thus making him the titular "crown" of those original Crown Knights. Presumably the Tri-Colour family acquired the throne or married into the original Crown family at some point.

Favourite Minifigs: Black Falcon 2.0

With a hefty balance of VIP points accumulated, and a healthy number of giftcard LEGO Store dollars in Christmas presents, I headed out to the LEGO Store a couple weeks ago, and I came back with 10223 Kingdoms Joust, which was very exciting. This post will not go into that excellent, excellent set, but will only look at one of the minifigs--a minifig that caused immense excitement on Classic-Castle, because of his shield.



Yes, my friends, that is a Black Falcon.

The Black Falcons were, with the original Lion Knights, one of the two original factions of Legoland Castle (1984-1992). As such, they are more than qualified to be considered "Classic" Castle, the Yellow Castle notwithstanding. Unlike the Lions, which saw their heraldic reincarnated at least three times thereafter (four, if you're willing to count the Morcia lion), the Black Falcons never really returned (again, unless you count Morcia--but no one *I* know counts Jayko's Talonjay as a Black Falcon province). What is more, while most redone Lions featured new colour-schemes and completely revisited shield designs (for example, the red-blue-white Royal Knight lion head has little in common with the classic lion, beyond having a lion), the Black Falcon shield here is very obviously a take-away from the original black falcon shield.

The reverse-image falcon in black/white (silver, in heraldic terms) has been retooled slightly, but the family image is unmistakable, and for simple nostalgic reasons, its bearer is currently one of my favourite figs. He's been very slightly modified, with his original dark green plume replaced with a white one. In the set, the dark green plume helps make the knight match his dark green and black tent, which I assume is that colour to make it compatible with the current Lion Knights' rivals, the dark green-flavoured Dragon Knights. Indeed, my Dragon Knight from 7187 Escape from Dragon's Prison has already moved in and taken over the tent. This freed me up to give the Black Falcon a white plume. I considered giving him a dark blue plume, in honour of the blueness of the classic Black Falcons, but white seemed more appropriate.

It's also worth nothing that while the barding of the Black Falcon knight here lacks any specific Falcon heraldry, it is still the first "Black Falcon barding" the LEGO Company has made, and the lack of definite heraldry only makes it more generically useful.

Minifigs: Fleshie Pirate Fixes

I've commented in the past about my general distaste for flesh-toned figs. They're one the more divisive issues in AFOL-dom, though both the gripers and fans have pretty much given up arguing about them, half a dozen years in. To only go by the very informal empirical example of comments I've read regarding the upcoming Lord of the Rings license, I think the fleshie-doubtful are of greater numbers than the fleshie-fans. Irrespective of numbers, however, I am one of the fleshie-doubtful crowd.

So what do I do, then, when I get a set with fleshies anyway? This will undoubtedly come up once the Lord of the Rings sets start coming out, since as Tolkien fan and a LEGO fan I will be practically required to buy them. It has also been an issue in the past, because while I've been able to give some themes a complete pass, such as Speed Racer, there have been some themes where this has not been the case. Pirates of the Caribbean is one such example.



When I first got 4192 Fountain of Youth, I wasn't particularly sold on Blackbeard. I bought the set largely because I couldn't pass over the Barbarossa-as-Admiral minifig, wanting his incredible hat and torso for future classic-Pirate endeavours. As a general rule, this is the main reason for getting Pirates of the Caribbean sets for me, because the chief use of my fleshies is as an alternate Science-fiction faction.

The problem is, however, that Blackbeard's hat and beard looked to be pretty much useless, too specific to use with any other fig.

Then I realised that Blackbeard's head existed almost identically in yellow: the dwarf from the "Evil Dwarf" from the Series 5 Collectible minifigs. While this somewhat sadly means that my "Nikabrik" is no longer quite so evil as he once was, I now have a perfect yellow-toned Blackbeard who has gone from being a castaway extra minifigure in my collection to a favourite.



Barbarossa from 4181 Isla de Muerta was "solved" in a somewhat different way: instead of converting him to a yellow fig, I've converted him to a white fig, using the Barbarossa-skeleton head from the same set. I'm less sold on him as I am on Blackbeard, but a white-Pirate ghost/skeleton has more place in my regular Pirates world than a fleshie fig.

Meanwhile, my Barbarossa has taken on a business suit... but that's a post for another day.

Favourite Minifigs: Sir Edmond of Orimault

He's a Lion knight. No... not those new Lion Knights. This fellow belongs to the oldest Lion Knights in the LEGO Castle genre: the 1984-1992 Legoland Castle "Lion Knights."



Of course, as you can see, this guy isn't straight out of a contemporary set, but a customized fig. He's made an appearance on the Internet before, as the rather minor character of Sir Edmond of Orimault, one of Princess Anne's suitors in the early chapters. His sword, helm, and breastplate comes from the now-defunct Little Armory, one of the earliest commercial LEGO customizers.



However, as you can see, the customization on Sir Edmond is not limited to what the Little Armory products I gave him. The pennant on his lance, his shield, and his torso all bear customized arms--based on the gold-rimmed classic Lion shield seen on this torso, and it is by limiting myself to these two colours (with the addition of greys and blacks) that we get this distinctly non-traditional Legoland Castle Lion Knight--a faction that defined itself by wearing red in opposition to its opponents, the Black Falcons.

Although I created the actual stickers seen on Sir Edmond, the templates were based on those created by Anthony Sava on Classic-Castle, and would likely not have appeared without them.


Also, in other news, look forward to daily updates from Aquazone Breakfast News over the next twenty-four days. Starting tomorrow, they present the 2011 City Advent Calendar!

Minifig: Witch

I probably should have posted this on Monday to have been mostly timely, but it has been a crazy week for schoolwork (not overwhelmingly crazy, but definitely distractingly crazy).



The witch is not particularly novel in terms of part use. Lightsabre/gem combination "magic staffs" have been around for years, and the torso/dress come from LEGO's first witch (1997's Willa the Witch, from the Fright Knight line). Nonetheless, I am extremely pleased with this little witch, as a minifigure where all the elements have come together just right.

The black "queen" headdress in place of the standard wizard/witch's hat is probably my favourite element, and the extra blackness of the dress with the hat is offset by the substitution of the torso's original black arms with red ones. The black and red combination, which extends to the trans-red of the staff, is found right in the head-choice, with its black eyepatch and red lipstick. The head was an accidental, late addition to the witch (I was stealing her previous head for something else and this was handy), but I think it works well. She looks a lot more badass than Willa, and the colours tie together well.

Custom Clerics

Although I am not a gung-ho customizer of LEGO pieces, and have my purist moments, I'm not *really* a purist, and have been known to do a little bit of it here and there. For the most part, I tend to limit myself to some torso decals (well... torso stickers... let's not overstate what they are). The figs below, however, go slightly beyond stickers, and represent what are probably the most advanced customized figs I've made



From left to right, we have three members of the Catholic clergy: a priest wearing an alb and stole (who could easily be a Lutheran minister... or all sorts of Protestant ministers), a priest wearing a chasuble over his alb and stole, and a deacon wearing an alb and stole.

All three figs belonged to one of my earlier post-Great Take-Apart MOCs, St. Adrian's parish (which can be seen in an earlier stage in this Brickshelf folder). I'm a Catholic myself, and spent four years in seminary training to become a Catholic priest before I realised that what made seminary awesome for me was the academic end of things--at which point I shifted to academic and moved to Boston for grad school. The church goes back to before I even entered seminary, and these figs go back to my last year or so of seminary--about a year and a half ago.



Having established that baseline of what they're wearing on the bottom, this second picture goes whole-hog. On the left is a priest again, now wearing a cope (which is used when presiding at liturgical events OTHER than Mass). In the centre is a bishop--actually a metropolitan archbishop, as denoted by the pallium he is wearing over his chasuble (which one will note is more ornate than the first). He actually has a crozier (staff) with a crook somewhere, but it's not the handsomest piece, so I didn't worry about digging it up for this picture. Finally, the deacon is still there on the right, now wearing his dalmatic over his stole and alb.



This is a view from behind of the previous picture. Both the cope and the chasuble look their best from behind, and I've removed the archbishop's pallium so that the detailing on his chasuble is visible.

Minifigs: Harry Cane

Just a short post today--most of my "blogging time" has been spent taking pictures to use this week (and for the next batch of Aquazone Breakfast News), and I have a few non-blog projects on the go.

However, while this post may be minor, this minifig isn't--at least not in my LEGO-verses.



Harry Cane was one of the Adventurer gang released originally in 1998 in Egypt, and he stuck around for their second year, 1999, in the Amazon. As his pilot hat with goggles and bomber jacket indicate, he was the team pilot, and each set he came with in the original two Adventurer lines included an aircraft for him to fly. My Harry Cane came with the balloon in 5988 Pharaoh's Forbidden Ruins, and his inclusion was a *big* part of why I wanted that set. I already had the three other "good guy" adventurers, both of their "bad guy" rivals, and the even-badder Pharaoh in my first Adventurer set, 5978 Sphinx Secret Surprise.

To judge by his abbreviated backstory--Harry had none in the 1999 issue of the Mania Magazine, although the other returning Adventurers did--and by the fact that he was not back with the three others in 2000 when they discovered the Dinosaurs. In fact, his slot on the Adventurer team seems to have been taken by Mike (who because was not a popular character in my LEGO-verse, I assure you), the "token cool kid" character. Nor did Harry reappear in 2003 when Johnny Thunder, Dr. Lightning, and Gail Storm were rebooted (albeit the latter two had different names) in the Orient Expedition line.

Still, Harry Cane was never a secondary character in my LEGO games. Admittedly, he was the co-star and Johnny was the star of the Adventurer games, but Harry was no second fiddle. The fact that he was the Adventurers' pilot somehow morphed into him being among my most proficient pilots of... well... anything. Stick him in an X-wing, and he'd fly as well as my Luke Skywalker; stick him in a race car and he'd take first; stick him in a seaplane and he could take off and land on the desert sands.

Nor were these heroic feats the limit of his awesomeness. In many respects, Harry became the "voice of reason" character among the Adventurers, while Johnny was the rash optimist, Gail Storm the dour pessimist, and Dr. Lightning the timid worrier (we'll not speak of Mike).

As a final note regarding Harry's "awesomeness," it certainly didn't hurt that while I have 5 Johnnys (see this post), 5 Gails, and 3 Dr. Lightnings, I only ever had one Harry Cane. I did eventually acquire a second head on Bricklink, but he serves in my Unitron fleet away with my Space and that was long after the Great Take-Apart.

Collecting Figs: Collectible Figs

Although my limited LEGO fund has been chiefly occupied of late with the Bricklink quest to restore my stolen figs, I have taken the opportunity to acquire a few more collectible minifigs.



All three of these historically-minded figs are from the most recent series, the fourth. I was initially looking for a Musketeer (my personal favourite from the fourth wave), and I felt my way through almost every bag in the store (Chapters, in Red Deer) before I found one. In the process, however, I recognised both the Viking and the Geisha, and decided that I ought to have one of each.

The Viking is little more than a rehash of the minifigs that came with the 2006-7 theme, but his prints are new, his pearl-gold horns are new, and his exquisite shield is completely new. I doubt he'll retain his three-studs long shaft to his axe for very long, but it will be nice to have all the same.

The Geisha is also very well done--indeed, of the Series 4 figs, she is the one I am most impressed with in terms of detailing.

Which leaves the Musketeer, who is actually the most under-whelming of the three, for all that he is the one that I was looking for. It's not that there's anything BAD about him; he is, in fact, a rather excellent fig, but he's not extra-special. It's just the simple fact that he's a musketeer that makes him awesome.

Also, I'm not a fan of the ball-point rapier. Part of me suspects that they're planning on coming up with a fencer in a later series, hence the reusable mold, but in the meantime it takes the edge off the Musketeer's coolitude--though I have to admit that it's growing on me. The more I play with it, the more adorable it appears.

Rebuilding

As I mentioned in this post, my van got broken into in Boston, and the handful of figs that I was planning to take back to Canada were stolen (together with a bunch of other non-crucial, but annoying-to-lose items). So far, I've made 7 Bricklink orders, which seems like a lot, and certainly I'm spending a lot more money rebuilding than the thieves are likely to get for them--assuming they didn't just dump their takings somewhere. However, it's not that my Bricklink orders have been terribly expensive so much as I'm having to order from a plethora of sellers, in order to reconstruct the unique constituency of figs that I lost.

The picture below shows the completed minifigs that have arrived thus far. One will note that my Brickster no longer has Elf hair (at least until I get back to Boston):



It's also worth noting that when I start scripting and photographing new Aquazone Breakfast News (this week completes the backlog I had going), these figs are on a shorter-than-usual list of figs likely to be featured.

Minifigs: Roboforce

Roboforce was a relatively small Space theme that came out in 1997. It was the last "human" Space faction before the Dark Ages of Space history (between Insectoids in 1998 and Mars Mission in 2007), and consisted of a total of four sets. Coming on the heels of the rather larger Exploriens theme in 1996, the Roboforce were something of a "one schtick" theme: robots. Despite that, and the corresponding poor press that they seem to have had, the Roboforce had some excellent minifigs, and although I've never managed to get my hands on any of the sets, I do have two figs, one of each main variety: red/orange and yellow/neon green.



The yellow fig was something I decided to get because of an assortment of pieces that I got used for Christmas around 2004 (I'm not positive of the exact year), together with a bunch of pieces that seem to have come with one of the yellow Roboforce sets. The red fig was also a Bricklink build, though he came piecemeal over the course of a year or two, instead of as a single unit. Consequently, he does not have a "standard" Roboforce head, as the yellow ones does.

LEGO Store Acquistions, April 2011

As mentioned before, yesterday was the second 2011 trip to the LEGO Store in Braintree (of all the LEGO Stores, it is the only one remotely accessible to Boston's public transportation system). Naturally, this meant I acquired more LEGO. However, since the whole point of the LEGO Store (in my humble opinion) is to get things you can't get anywhere else, only one item was an actual set...



2258 Ninja Ambush is my second Ninjago set, after the one I acquired at the LEGO Store in January. I continue to avoid the rather expensive spinner sets in favour of traditional boxed sets, and Ninja Ambush is great little addition to my LEGO collection--at least in terms of raw parts. The red ninja minifig is a nice addition to my LEGO ninja army, though red is sadly among the more common colours of ninja. The skeleton is more original, since he's my first Ninjago skeleton, but I don't think I really like him. The new arms are dreadfully non-poseable and their static position is worse than earlier skeleton incarnations. The face is also one of the worse skeleton prints, but I can forgive that since it's a new print. I'm also really not sold on the square-block legs.

Also rather conventionally, I picked up a small Pick-a-Brick cup.



Which looks like this, spilled out:



The main selling point for the Pick-a-Brick were the horses. For some reason, I still don't have enough of them, and while white horses without saddles are low of the totem pole of horse-needs, it was impossible to pass them up. The other most notable addition were the 2x2 dark tan tiles. The rest was fairly conventional, I thought (on the basis of 4 LEGO Store visits in my lifetime).

I also picked up a couple of keychains because they were on sale. Like most keychains I've acquired before, these will probably be de-chained and used as regular figs. The rockmonster wasn't something I would normally have bought, but he was 98 cents. The Classic Space fig is one I ogled before, and at $1.98, I was almost tempted to get two.



The LEGO Store already had Series 4 Collectible minifigs, but I'm less interested generally in the fourth series than the third, and previously I only had the one Elf that I managed to get back in January. Now I have a second Elf, a fisherman, and an alien. I selected them by touch, but I was only certain about the Elf (his shield and bow are a dead giveaway).



It seems that I cannot go to the LEGO Store without using their build-a-minifig section. This time, the lure had to do with the Series 1 Collectible Minifig parts there. I only IDed the Forestman and the Magician parts, but I think there were more. In hindsight, I'm mildy surprised I didn't just make myself three Forestmen...



Finally, there were several bags of assorted bricks... I'm not sure what to call them exactly, so here's a picture:



Opened and sorted through, I discovered a *lot* of 2x1x2 yellow bricks and trans-neon green 1x1 cones. There was also a complete minifig... with several extra heads.



To recap the whole episode, here's a picture of all the minifigs [EDIT: Except for the three build-a-figs]. They're quite the bizarre looking crowd, but after some reorganisation in the collection, they will be fully respectable members, I can assure you. Indeed, I might well do a post on in the near future.



All told, I feel like it was an excellent trip, and I even spent less money than I ever have at the LEGO Store. It helps that my girlfriend got Diagon Alley, so the Pick-a-Brick cup ended up being free (purchases of over $75 let you get a free small PaB cup), and that the keychains were on sale.

Minifigs: Bandit

Today's post is brief because I'm a bit tired out from our adventure to the LEGO Store--about which one should expect a post in the next day or two--and this picture was already taken.

One of my favourite themes, in terms of minifig characters, was the 1999 theme of the Rockraiders. It was somewhat abysmally juniorized, in terms of set construction, but it had some excellent minifigures. Today's post is about my personal favourite, Bandit, although it's possible that he's favoured more because of the personality my brother and I gave him than because he's an excellent minifigure. In the picture below, he's only been slightly modified from his original state: fresh from the set, Bandit had standard blue pants.



The change isn't drastic, giving Bandit dark green pants instead of blue, but the effect, I think, is striking. It's also interesting to consider that Bandit's torso, which came out in 1999, completely predates dark green as a colour of LEGO pieces, but matches the pants completely.

It's also worth mentioning that I didn't come up with the combination myself, but having seen one of my brothers do it, I felt compelled to do it myself. It gives him an excellent set of overalls.

Minifigs: Johnny Thunder

I don't know about your LEGO collection, but mine is one is which Johnny Thunder looms large. The "Indiana Jones" of LEGO's Adventurer themes, Johnny came into my LEGO collection thirteen years ago, and has had a commanding presence there since. Part of this is due to the fact that he's the perfect adventuring hero to take on adventures into any theme. Many was the game where Johnny Thunder--sometimes with the other Adventurers, sometimes alone--found himself in the Castle realms, or the Pirate seas, or maybe in Ninja lands, or even beamed away to outer space.

Of course, Johnny also looms large as physical presence in many collections, because he was one of the earlier examples of LEGO releasing "character figs" in mass quantities throughout a line. The original version of Johnny, shown immediately below, was present in great numbers throughout the 1998, 1999, and 2000 Adventurer releases, as well as a couple 2001 LEGO Studios sets. A slightly modified Johnny-head would come in 2003 with the Orient Expedition sets, and that later Johnny would also have different choices of shirts, unlike the original Johnny.



All things considered, I got lucky; my collection only has five sets with Johnny Thunder, and two of those were acquired as the "Great Take Apart" was beginning. However, I also have the KK2 Chess Set, which gives all eight pawns on the Shadow Knight side of the board classic Johnny heads... so they're rather pervasive in my collection.

As a result, Johnny Thunder has become one of those "problem figs" that have to be accommodated to every major LEGO collection. One of the earliest problem figs was Majisto--how many bearded old wizards wearing blue does your Castle realm need?--and wizards have continued to be problem figs in most Castle collections, I daresay. Harry Potter was THE example of a problem fig in the years 2001-2004ish, if you were a Castle fan. After all, you wanted those useful building parts, and there were a lot of nifty pieces... but what were you going to do with a platoon of Harry Potters?

This post isn't going to look at where all 8 of those Chess Set heads ended up (perhaps another post will), but it *will* examine where the True-Johnny Five have ended up.



Having already mentioned that Johnny Thunder, as a character, looms large in my collection, I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I have an actual Johnny Thunder, built to be a Johnny Thunder, present in my collection. I consider the original Johnny head to be more "Johnny" than the Orient Expedition re-cast, and after five years as "Johnny," I wasn't about to make the fig I acquired in 1998 as a part of Sphinx Secret Surprise be disrobed of his title. However, I was quite happy in 2003 to give him a more colourful shirt--or perhaps it's a vest, since the arms are a different colour?--and a couple years later I decided to give him some dark blue "jeans." The result is a slightly more colourful, but still completely recognisable Johnny.

(As a sidenote, it may be interesting for me to point out that although both Sphinx Secret Surprise and Pharaoh's Forbidden Ruins are among my top 5 all time sets in my collection, I have not rebuilt either of them in the course my "great rebuild" over the past few years. I think the adventuring nature of the Adventurers--able to adventure into any theme--has a lot to do with this anomaly.)

Since none of my Adventurer sets are built, the four remaining Johnnies do not have to be Johnnies at all. Here is a picture of the "True-Johnny Five" reunited:



One will recognize the regarbed Johnny Thunder himself at the centre of the photo, and may wonder why there's another apparently unmodified Johnny standing to his left. It should be noted that this Johnny (who hails from Passage of the Jun-Chi) carries a musket, not a rifle, and has an Orient Expedition head. Actually, he *is* Johnny Thunder, meaning that I do have two legitimately Johnny Thundered Johnnies in my collection. He belongs to an "alternate reality/history" where instead of being a 20th century explorer/archaeologist, Johnny was an explorer/hunter who fought with a band of stalwart rebels in an Alamo-like situation in the late 18th/early 19th century.

Directly connected to this alternate-reality Johnny is Johnny #3, at the viewer's left, wearing the brown tricorne, and also holding a black musket. His stickered torso is his own, and he is part of "tan" regiment that is besieging the "Alamo". He is an actor by trade, coming from LEGO Studios set Temple of Gloom, so perhaps it is appropriate that he (and his torso) "play another part."

Johnny #4, who is between Actor-Johnny(#3) and the "real" Johnny, is a member of my Wild West "blackcoat" regiment, which (as you can see) wears Lord Sinister torsos from the Orient Expedition sets. Johnny #4 comes from Pharaoh's Forbidden Ruins.

And that only leaves Johnny #5, who is a Royal Knight with shiny new "Castle 2007" era silver armour, and a handsome Little Armory axe. He is the original owner of the green shirt that the "real" Johnny wears, and comes from Jungle River.

So... that's my collection of Johnny Thunders, and it is far more manageable than some. What about you? What do you do with these problem figs?

Favourite Minifigs: 6086 White Knight

Keeping with the theme of my last post about the Ones That Got Away, today's offering of a favourite minifig is a Black Knight--even though I've titled this post "white knight." He's one of the four knights who come with 6086 Dungeon Master's Castle, and I've called him the "white" knight, because he has a white pennant and dragon plumes. Possessed of a barding and a full set of "euro armour," he's a fine, full-armoured knight. The picture below shows him as he came in Dungeon Master's Castle:



As the elusive white-tinged Black Knight, I've long considered this fellow to be the king of the Black Knights, and in his role as such in my collection, he's been slightly modified to fit this new role, as seen below.

Minifigs: The Elf

When the Elf minifig was discovered to be included in the 3rd series of collectible minifigs, Castle LEGO fans rejoiced. It probably comes as no surprise, given my previous posts about The Lord of the Rings that I, too, was excited about the Elf's appearance. However, ever when I acquired him (as documented in this post), my inner Tolkien fan would not allow him to enter my collection unchanged. This post examines where his disparate parts ended up.

The problem with the Elf was his hairpiece. If I were to cast him as an Elf from Tolkien's canon, I would say from his possession of armour, long-bow, and colour-scheme that he is a probably a Sindarin Elf (Grey-elf), Nandorin Elf (Green-elf), or Sylvan Elf (Wood-elf). However, all those aforementioned Elves are members of the broader category of Telerin Elves... and as a general rule, Teleri have dark hair or silver hair. Golden hair is generally an indication of having Vanyarin blood... and the High Elves of the Vanyar never came back to Middle-earth and mingled with the Sindarin Elves et al (though some mixed Vanya-Noldorin Elves did bring back the golden-haired gene, and the King of the Elves of Mirkwood in The Hobbit is proof that gold hair is not exclusive to the Vanyar). In any case, movie-Legolas aside, my Elf wasn't likely to be permitted blond hair in my collection.

Besides, I subscribe to the "normal ears" party in the "what do Elven ears look like?" debate, and the Elf minifig has highly-prominent ears.

So what became of the Elf?



Well, if we consider a minifig's head to "be" the minifig (and the rest of the minifig to be his/her accoutrements), then my Elf became the warrior in the picture above. In so doing, he replaced a Han Solo lookalike as my golden-armoured Elf-prince. As you can see, he also acquired the steed from the Prince of Persia set I acquired the same time as the Elf.

Not that his armour went unused in my Elven army. Indeed, most of the Elf turned up as a part of my Elven fighting force.



This picture shows the three Elves who acquired pieces of "the Elf." You will recognise the already-portrayed Elf Prince, and notice that the armour and shield were inherited by the warrior with the Little Armory sword to his right, while his longbow (and Bricklink-bought quiver) arm the soldier to his left. One will note my prevalent preference for dragon-helms in equipping Elves.

Meanwhile, what happened to that blond-hairpiece-with-elf-ears, you ask? Did it end up in the minifig parts pile, never to be used with those extra top hats, blue caps, and Islander horns? Not so!



The hairpiece actually ended up on this custom version of the Brickster by chance. I wasn't intending him to be "finished" as such. I was actually planning on reconstructing him using his black tuque ("beanie" to non-Canadians), grey pants, and single blue glove. The spare Jayko pants and jestingly-grabbed elf-hair were mere placeholders, but I have become quite fond of the combination, and think that the elf-ears complement the impish facial expressions. How exactly a Puck of a Brickster ended up in my LEGO universe, I'm not sure yet... but he's definitely there.

Minifigs: Exploriens

I've mentioned before that my first two Space sets, tied for the title of eldest in that theme, were the Blizzard Baron and Saucer Scout. My third set, however, has not been mentioned. That was 6815 Hovertron, and with the exception of a few, small, alien sets (UFO and Insectoid), it was the last Space set I would get until Mars Mission came out in 2007, ten years later.



Consequently, Captain Reginald Explorn, as the above fig was named, has a rather special place in my heart, as does the Explorien theme. Together with Space Police (ii), of which I did not acquire a set until much later, it was one of "my" Space factions (in a household where all the leadership of all the factions was divided between the siblings), and I still think they're pretty cool. Their colour scheme is strongly reminiscent of the Futuron sets, and thus of some of the later classic Space sets, and would be seen again in the Space Police (iii) sets of the 3rd Millennium.

The fig I call Captain Explorn (original name, I know), is one of three different Explorien figs, as pictured below. Note: the face on the fig at the right should be the same as the centre fig, and--yes--I know the Exploriens also had an android (named Ann Droid, proving that LEGO was little better at original names in the 1990s than I was).



The decision to make the fig on the right a command-rank fig is mostly due to the fact that he's the only one I had back in an era when I *had* to have the ruling fig in the faction, but I think it's a decision that still works; because Captain Explorn only sports a large logo, he lacks the mechanical extra bits the two other Exploriens sport, and thus--to my mind--has the more prestigious uniform. In any case, the long-term results of Space gameplay in my family was that the uniform on the right belonged to command-rank figs (naval ranks Commander through Admiral), while the one in the middle belonged to junior-rank officers (naval ranks Ensign through Lieutenant-Commander), and the one on the right to non-commissioned officers. One assumes that LEGO people can tell the differences within these categories, such as between an Ensign and a Lieutenant, but this distinction eludes the human eye.

This pic is a group shot of my entire Explorien population today (note the 400% growth since 2005). It will be noted that Captain Explorn has since seen a promotion to Vice-Admiral, and that none of the other torsos features a head that would match it in an official set. This indicates, as it does in many instances in my collection, that the figs are assembled from Bricklink parts (or extras acquired other ways). Not, mind you, that Vice-Admiral Explorn's torso actually matches his head in any official Explorien set, because it's a custom design.



As you can see, it's a fairly simple custom. All I did was copy a blue version of the Explorien logo from this piece and use it to replace the grey-and-silver version (on a non-Space torso, I would like to mention), and then add some white epaulettes to round things off. For the most part, I've been moving away from using customised torsos in the last couple years, not because I have a purist position on the issue, but because my quality standards are higher than I'm normally capable of making them, but in this case I think it works really well.

KK2 in Hindsight

Yesterday I posted about LEGO of the last decade, and in one of my longer digressions, I wrote about Knight's Kingdom (2), or KK2 as it's more often known, and how it is among the most vilified Castle themes out there.

Certainly, when it came out, I was not a fan. I'm still not, really, although it's fair to note that I never managed to get my hands on any of the third year (2006), and I certainly acknowledge that the theme improved, and that it suffered unfairly from being the first new Castle theme in new grey--a double handicap if you consider the importance that grey brick has to a Castle builder.

One of the biggest complaints about KK2 is that it featured the most ridiculously coloured knights: solid red, solid green--and the archetypal evils of solid purple and solid baby blue.

However, I was looking at some figs standing on my bookcase today, and I was reminded of what an awesome colour light blue LEGO is--and reminded also that in the right context, any LEGO piece is useful. Perhaps KK2 wasn't the right context for Jayko and his troopers, but I feel like I've put some of his chess set to good purpose by making them conquistadors. They'd look just fine next to my Imperial Armada figs, don't you think?