LEGO!

[Tom Foolery]

This will be a meandering tale, but stick with it. It’s in the Lego topic for a reason.
So, my wife and I work at the same place, and on our drive home every night, we drive by the local Hooters. On one particular drive by, I commented that the ‘O’s in the Hooters logo are bewbs(this is a straight up truth, but I had never made that connection before. My brain always thought they were owl eyes or something). My wife responded with an incredulous ‘shut the fuck up!’ as in she couldn’t believe I had NEVER made that obvious connection before.
So now every time we’d drive by the Hooters, one of us would comment that the ‘o’s look like bewbs as an inside joke. This escalated into her threatening to take me to Hooters on a date. She had never been in a Hooters before. The last time I was in a Hooters was at SDCC back in like 2010. I even joked about taking her there for our one year anniversary back in Sept.(I didn’t. We went to a nice sushi place). Anyway, fast forward to this weekend. My wife says she wants to go on a date, and she got me a gift because she didn’t want to wait until Christmas. She hands me a little gift wrapped box. I shake it and it doesn’t make a noise, so I have no idea what it is. But we go on our date and she takes me to Hooters. Hahah, the food is bland and overpriced, as I imagined it would be. We get back home and I open my gift.
It’s four little Lego figures. Neat! i’m always down for more Lego folks for my town. But I’m not aware of the significance of these four particular figures until she brings out the OTHER box…

[Tom Foolery]

At first, my brain isn’t registering what I’m looking at. At first, I was like ‘how did you get the new Modular set early?’
Then I realized what I was looking at…
I said “oh my god.” like thirty times. And not like ‘ohmigodohmigodohmigod’ but like emphasizing each word because I realized what she had got and HOW MUCH it was. (I still haven’t asked her how much she spent, but I know it was…whew…).
Anyway, that’s what I did this weekend. Put together my new(old) Modular set. Now I’m only missing the first two sets. The Cafe Corner and the Market Street.

[vynsane]

WOW that's awesome. i don't have any such actual dream to backfill my collection of modulars. earliest one i have is Pet Shop, i don't have Town Hall which was the one following that one up, and i'm now three behind (need Jazz Club, Boutique Hotel, and Natural History Museum). i never intended to collect any of them at first, but when i got 10243 Parisian Restaurant to review, well...

[anarky]

Daaaaaaaaaamn.

As an aside, my wife used to suggest Hooters whenever we were near one (maybe once every couple of months). She likes Buffalo wings, and didn't care about it being kinda sexist (she may now, I dunno). We haven't gone in years, because, like pretty much every other chain restaurant, it got bought out by a venture capital company that prioritizes profits over actual decent food and service. I honestly think that more than half the current big chain restaurants will be gone in ten years, with the Angry Orange's likely deregulation and deportation policies hastening their inevitable demise. Millennials aren't killing the restaurant industry. Shitty overpriced food is. I'll stick with local places as much as I can; they have no name recognition to draw in customers and have to rely on, y'know, good food.

[Ran]

We haven't gone in years, because, like pretty much every other chain restaurant, it got bought out by a venture capital company that prioritizes profits over actual decent food and service.

Hold on, when did Hooters ever have decent food? When I lived in Colorado (96-99) I ate at Hooters twice and got sick both times. I've been to Hooters only once since then.

I can appreciate those large modular sets, but never had any desire to get them. If my wife wanted to start getting the Lego Christmas Village sets, I'd be on board with that. Right now she's into Animal Crossing and the Botanical series. My kids are 23 and 19, so I'm close to getting my own room. I'll probably use that space to display Star Wars and sports memorabilia (McFarlanes/Starting Lineup/etc).

[Tom Foolery]

Daaaaaaaaaamn.

I forgot to add the other part of the story! While building the set we watched Transformers One.

I hereby anoint it….pretty good. I didn’t want to stop every frame and look at every background character. I got about half the Easter egg references I think. My daughter got the ‘touch/power’ reference. So I raised her right.

[Ran]

I just used the Lego pick a brick for the first time. Earlier this year, I bought the Lego Architecture Studio from Goodwill pretty cheap. It was missing some pieces, but it goes for around $500 online. I managed to fill in some from a box of Legos we had in the garage, plus a trip to the flea market. There were about 50 total pieces. All but 1 was a "bestseller". It is a clear 1x2 plate. I noticed it was ringing up separately from the others, which caused an additional $7 charge on a $0.05 piece. I'll just have to find that one piece somewhere else. The set has 50, so I don't think it is super critical.

[vynsane]

yeah, the "bestsellers" are kept in stock in America. everything else comes from Billund.

[vynsane]

so, just used the bulk of my points on the NASA Space Shuttle Discovery since it's on sale for $160 and I had $172 worth of points. it's incredibly satisfying to place an order for $0.00!

[vynsane]

next modular building officially announced: Tudor Corner. looks fantastic!

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[Tom Foolery]

That’s my birthday present every year. She told me she feels bad because I know what I’m getting every year.
I told her not to feel bad.

[vynsane]

as a follow-up to the Blacktron Cruiser (Invader) promo, they just unveiled an Icons remake of the Blacktron Renegade. coming out Jan. 4. that'll likely be a day-1 purchase!

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[Tom Foolery]

My poor bank account.


I had ‘grown out’ of Legos by the time the original Blacktron stuff came out back in the late 80s. But when I started looking for old sets on ebay back in the mid 2000s, I found the original Blacktron command base set for pretty cheap. This was back right before it became a side hustle/cottage industry to resell old Lego sets, so if you knew what to look for, the auction would say “My kids’ old legos, I don’t know…random pieces…” with a photo of a bunch of bricks dumped on their table, and you could clearly tell it was a rare htf set. So you’d be…”$30?” and they’d be “yeah, okay. Sold.”

[Ran]

62 containers of Legos were washed off a cargo ship 27 years ago and are now washing up on shore. Coincidentally, many of them were nautical sets.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rqlejlxg4o