30080 "Flying Ninja"

Well, it was pretty much inevitable that after getting back to Boston it would only be a matter of time before I went to the LEGO Store, and this weekend was that weekend. Instead of putting it all together in one mass "New Acquisitions" post, I'm going to break it down by set. This is partly so that I can deal with each new piece at greater length, but also because I can use the material. The LEGO I brought back from Canada is with me, but the overwhelming balance of my collection is still at my future father-in-law's place in the country, and will be there until we can find an excuse to start driving "all my stuff" back in.

Anyway, the first set that I picked up yesterday was not actually at the LEGO Store, but at the Target in the same mall. My fiancée and I were putting together part of our wedding registry there (I was not allowed to scan LEGO sets, alas), and the reward for me was that we got to go to the LEGO Store. However, as we were exiting Target, I caught sight of a polybag on the rack.

A polybag! From a look at the contents, there is no difference between a "polybag" and an "impulse set," but nostalgia speaks somewhat differently for me. While polybags, or "bag sets," as we called them, were hardly the pinnacle of LEGO sets growing up, but they were an integral part of that period--not least because, as a kid, they were often all that could be afforded at a given moment. Indeed, there were a couple themes that owed their entire collection in my possession to a polybag. So, after a several year drought, whenever I see a polybag now, I tend to snap it up for the nostalgia.

Hence how 30080 ended up in my collection. Lugnet calls it "Flying Ninja," which is accurate enough, but the bag itself has no name that I could find.



Anyway, I must apologise for the terrible photo. The apartment is a basement and has NO natural lighting and my improvised light box was... not as light as it could have been.

"Flying Ninja" is not a remarkable set, though I think it's one of the cuter ninja polybags out there. It's certainly more aesthetically pleasing to my mind than 3019 "Grey Ninja", which is the other "single ninja-glider polybag" in my possession. Since my purchase of NinjaGo has thus far been limited to a couple of the smaller boxes, and since I've never managed to get one of the legendary "ninja princesses," it was nice to be able to get my hands on a white ninja.

And, of course, the golden "troll swords" are nice--I didn't have any of them in gold (or any of the ExoForce "robot arms" in gold), and this set comes with a nice complement. Perhaps the nicest thing about them, though, is how surprisingly effective they are--and somewhat poseable too.

All things considered, I was pleasantly surprised to find a NinjaGo polybag, and feel like LEGO did a marvellous job with this one.

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.