9469 Gandalf's Cart

It's been about two months now since I cashed in my accumulated LEGO VIP points to add a couple Lord of the Rings sets to my collection, but as that happy day took place in the middle of my computer's convalescence, it has taken until now to post about theme--but we'll only cover the smaller one today. Indeed, 9469 Gandalf's Cart is the smallest set in the Lord of the Rings line, barring polybags. It features Gandalf driving a cart full of fireworks and Frodo Baggins. In reference to the Movies, it belongs to the earliest part of The Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf arrives in Hobbiton for Bilbo's 111st party.

Unlike most of the sets in the theme, however, it does not include any "stationary" elements such as landscaping, buildings, walls, or trees, and I kind of like that, since although it does draw on a single scene from the movie, the set does not feel limited to this particular scene. The most limiting elements in the set are the fireworks, but Gandalf is supposed to have a wide reputation for fireworks--though I daresay I don't imagine him going into places like the Necromancer's dungeons with them. Of course, the ever-present problem for me with LEGO's licenced themes are the flesh-toned minifigs. As I've done with previous sets, I've tweaked the minifigs in Gandalf's Cart to be more compatible with my old-school minifig collection.

Gandalf has not only had his flesh-coloured parts removed. He's also had his hat changed to blue and his beard to an old-school Majisto white. The main impetus behind these two changes is to be more faithful to the books. The first description of Gandalf from The Hobbit says:

All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which a white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots.

(J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, "An Unexpected Party") This also brings my new Gandalf more in line with the "traditional" LEGO Gandalf I used to make, as seen in the picture below, though the Iceplanet head I used before has been updated to a "Triton" from the Collectible Minifigs Series 7.

Frodo did not get quite as rigorous a treatment as Gandalf, but the final result is rather nice--I think the face works well as a Pippin. Note, however, that I've switched hairpieces with Merry's from 9472 Attack on Weathertop.

Overall, I am quite happy with Gandalf's Cart. It's not a ground-breaking set, but it is a solid one--though expensive. More so than the other sets I have, the licensing felt noticeable.

Wedding Loot

Despite the fact that my lovely wife vetoed putting LEGO on our Target registry, our wedding day was not without LEGO. The wedding favours have been mentioned before, but as it turned out, they were not the only LEGO involved with that day. Though no LEGO was on our registry, my family knows me well enough to indulge the habit a little. From my brother, the fare was minifigs of a variety I'd never managed to get my hands on:

(By the way, I apologise for the poorer quality of the pictures in this post--in addition to the usual excuses of photographer ineptitude, it was raining yesterday--hence the droplets on our friends.) These magnets were Toys R' Us promotional items, and as I have no car and Boston has no Toys R' Us, I would never have been able to acquire them--even though I'm a Castle fan. In a similar manner, as I've mentioned before, I never got the opportunity to acquire any Series 6 Collectible Minifigs. Knowing this deficiency in my collection, my brother got me these:

The Highlander and the Legionnaire were the two minifigs of Series 6 that I most regretted missing--and my brother knew this. My sister, on the other hand, probably has no idea at all what LEGO I have, lack, want, or need--but she does know I like LEGO and I like writing. So she got my wife and I these:

(The red in this photo is absolutely atrocious...) To my surprise--and glee--these Moleskine notebooks also come with a couple sticker sheets.

The reason for my glee is that I realised right away that although these stickers are (presumably) intended to decorate the pages of the notebooks, they also have minifig customising potential. Granted, this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I think the results are pretty good:

I am embarrassed to show this photo at all, but it gets the idea across. Both torsos and heads of these two minifigs are stickers cut from the sticker sheet. The effect may not be perfect, but it's sharper than most "do it myself" attempts and looks not unlike some of the very early minifigs, which often had torso stickers rather than printing. And as a way to rehabilitate some of the very worn, garage-sale heads that have been sitting useless in my collection, it's not bad. One just has to make sure to use the right head.

New Acquisitions: May, 2012

It's been a long time since I posted about getting any new LEGO, and although my posting frequency has slipped the sad fact is that I haven't acquired much in the past few months. This is due more to financial reasons than anything else, as the simultaneous jobs of "grad student" and "groom to be" are equally wage-deficient. Nonetheless, the two of them in tandem did not fail me completely, for upon the completion of my Master's Degree a couple weeks ago, some of my hippest in-laws-to-be sprung a surprise trip to the LEGO Store on me last weekend and gifted me with 9472 Attack on Weathertop, my first Lord of the Rings LEGO set, and one that I might otherwise have had to wait quite a long time before acquiring, my status as a LEGO and Lord of the Rings fan notwithstanding. However, I will not talk about that amazing set today. It merits its own post, and I shall give it one (hopefully in the next week or so). Meanwhile, let me talk about the other LEGO I acquired this weekend.

The five Collectible Minifigs in the picture all belong to the currently-reigning Series 7, and are the first Collectible Minifigs I've added to my collection since November, when I picked up the last Series 5 minifigs I wanted. Now, I consider it a good thing that I have not been bitten by the collector's bug, with the need to acquire EVERY Collectifig out there, but it is something of a shock to realise that Series 6 has been passed over completely--and there were a few desirable minifigs in there, most notably the Roman Legionnaire and the Scottish Highlander. Even more than monetary stingyness, however, the lack of Series 6 minifigs in my collection no doubt reflects the difficulties of reaching a store where they are sold in my local territory. Even the LEGO Store in Braintree, which reflects an hour and a half, one-way, commute on public transit, didn't have any in stock the two times I visited in January and February. With that in mind, I'm glad to note that I was able to pick out the five Series 7 collectifigs that I most wanted to add to my collection. Not that there is a lot of chance involved, since I am pretty much all/all for correctly identifying the minifigs in the bag by touch (to the amazement of my uncle-in-law-to-be), but it was luck that there was still one of each of them in the box, as that is not always the case. Indeed, I went over every bag, and only found the one bagpiper, and I wouldn't have minded more of him. Of the five minifigs here, my chief disappointment is that LEGO did not give the Viking lady's shield any detailing. After having done it for the male viking in Series 4, and with a decalled shield on two of the other figs I picked up in the same batch, it feels a little plain. That said, I'm not going to protest too much, since I will admit that an unadorned dark brown shield has its uses. On the same day, I also acquired a "collectible minifig" of another sort:

The regular minifigure-sized Hulk has been a promotion of LEGO's the past few weeks at LEGO Stores and online for orders (in the United States) of $50 or more. By happy chance, this meant that my Attack on Weathertop came with a freebie Hulk. I have to admit that, by myself, I would have been unlikely to ever acquire him, since I am not much a comic books person and consequently have not felt the need to expand into LEGO's new offerings in that field--and I'm not knocking comic books or LEGO's new DC and Marvel themes. On the contrary, there are some excellent sets there; I'm just glad that, with all the OTHER awesome LEGO coming out these days (Kingdoms Joust, Lord of the Rings, Monster Hunters, etc, etc) it hasn't become yet another theme I want while having to guard my wallet. That said, The Hulk is a rather attractive collection of minifig parts, not least because he is a little-used colour. Like many "non-regular set" minifigs, he's not the highest quality plastic, but I feel that the difference in my Hulk is less egregious than in some past instances. And, for a freebie, I'm not really entitled to complain.

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.

2011: A Year in Review

Inspired by this post on Gimme LEGO, and by the prevalence of "Year in Review" things in general that crop up at this time of year, I've decided to take a look at some of the things that were the best in my LEGO life of the past year.

LEGO Set of the Year:

There can be little doubt, I think, that the most amazing set I acquired in 2011 was Medieval Market Village. Released in 2008, this set is the almost-uncontested pinnacle of LEGO's Castle design thus far. Some of the Kingdoms sets of the past year went a long way towards incorporating some of the magic of Medieval Market Village into the more everyday sets of the theme, but this enhances rather than detracts from the Market Village's prestige.



So why was the Market Village my set of the year, rather than a 2011 set? Were the 2011 sets that bad? No, not at all; on the contrary, LEGO put out some amazing sets in 2011. The thing is, however, that 2011 was not a year about expanding out into new things in my collection, but of consolidating what I had. In the first few months of the year, I rebuilt a number of sets that hadn't been constructed since the Great Take-apart of 2004. In my trips to the LEGO store, I've focused more on smaller sets, mystery bags, and the pick-a-brick, with an eye towards increasing my liquid parts supply than to broaden my set horizon. Medieval Market Village was the only outstanding set that I got that I can say with a high degree of certainty will not be taken apart. This trend towards consolidation was increased in mid-summer when I had a number of minifigs stolen, and my Bricklink orders which had already been focused on finding parts to rebuild long-dismantled sets became additionally focused on replacing lost figs.

LEGO Theme of the Year:

Hands down, the Collectible Minifigs were my Theme of the Year. This was the second year LEGO had been releasing collections, and 2011 was nowhere near as frenzied as 2010 had been, when shortages of Series 1 and 2 led to mad scrambles by LEGO fans and exorbitant repurchase fees on Bricklink. By contrast, Series 3 through 5 were easy to find and remained present in stores for a generous amount of time. That said, however, I only bought two collectible minifigs in 2010, both off Bricklink, discouraged by the difficulty of finding them. In 2011, however, I caught the bug.



The Elf was the one who started it. When I picked him up in January, I was still in "old me" mode, which told me that I was only going to pick up one or two per release. The problem, if I may call it that, is that I did so well identifying him by feel that I wanted to do it again, and believe it or not that was the trick: I got hooked on the success of grabbing the one I wanted... and I've yet to disappoint myself. And the numbers are telling: a year ago I had 2 Collectible Minifigs and today I have 32.

LEGO Minifig of the Year:

This is the hardest category to pick yet... and turning to the Collectible Minifigs is, the last category notwithstanding, not going to provide the solution. As many Collectible Minifigs as I bought, none of them has definitively stood apart as the Minifig of the Year.



Instead, I'll recognise Lucien and Alex from Aquazone Breakfast News as the Minifigs of the Year, for the simple reason that 2011 was the year that my focus on Minifigs and their accoutrements took a significant step from the realm of game-play to the realm of storytelling. Grandfather's Tale, the year before, had already begun the process, but Aquazone Breakfast News took it a step further. More importantly, AqBN has been an ongoing commitment, and because of its weekly nature (daily, in December) was the most constant element in my LEGO life.

Other Thoughts...

2011 was a major shifting year for me. This blog was a large component of that shift, as the recognition of Lucien and Alex may already suggest. Also too, the new emphasis on consolidation, rather than expansion, has seen an increase in the time I spend on LEGO, rather than a decrease, as might be expected. Filling out the corners of my existing LEGO-verse and LEGO collection has been a more focused, and more attainable, goal than simply keeping up with each year's new round of themes.

2011 was also the year that I realised that my fiancée (girlfriend, at the start of last year) was not going to be a one-time LEGO purchaser, but that she had it in her to be a rather significant LEGO fan herself. I have yet to visit the Braintree LEGO Store without her, and she's spent probably as much money there as I have. So far, she's more of a collector, especially of the cooler licensed sets, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

And that was my LEGO 2011--what was yours?

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.

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.