the vynsane asylum

I had a $100 Lego Gift Card from Christmas. And $35 in VIP points.
Lego sent me an email today for Free Shipping because it's May 4th (which is apparently some kind of Star Wars Holiday now?)
Also if you spend $75 on SW related Lego swag, you get a free TC-14 Lego fig and some cheapo R2 poster.

So I ordered the Modular Pet Shop. 149.99 - 100 - 35 + free shipping =
1 Pet Shop for $14.99. Boom.
And the TC-14 and poster automatically show up on the invoice, even though I bought nothing remotely SW related. If I end up not getting them, no big whup.

I see the Battleship KreO's are so pathetic that they don't even warrant snickers and giggles from you Lego snobs.

KreO is ass.
But I did score a bunch of the little TF figures for cheap. They're adorable.

I'm not a Lego snob. I actually have a whole load of Megabloks bricks to use as interior structure where it won't get seen. And there are some nice pieces to be found in non Lego sets. It's the quality of the molding process and the plastic used that actually sucks. But seeing as Lego's own standards are slipping it's a moot point because sooner or later the only difference will be the Lego logo on the brick studs.

The KreeO transformers stuff was on SUPER blowout up here, like the big Optimus for about 1/3 the original sticker price. We just wound up never getting it. Does it work well? Does it mix with lego at all?

Finally saw the first few Marvel sets as well, though it looks like they're all going to sell through pretty quickly at least off the hop. The newish DC stuff is collecting dust.

Only one I've got is the Comic-Con Optimus mini. The minis are sweet.

I never bought the sets, I only aquired the mini figs.
The only set I got was Jazz which I bought for the boy. IMO it was rubbish.

If I had gotten the Optimus set, I probably would've just kept him in semi mode and used him as another truck.

I took advantage of the free shipping as well to add to the count of LEGO's that I've gotta build when I get back. I bought the new UCS R2 set. I have over 1,000 VIP points so I got $50 off with those plus the free shipping. Now my count is over 12,000 pieces of glory waiting on me.

niiice, i want that one so bad. DAMMIT, i wish i had, like, any money...

I used to try and buy every Star Wars LEGO set that came out but now that they've started making random (and stupid in my book) sets I've started concentrating on just the large sets. My ultimate goal is to still try and get the Millenium Falcon but I can't bring myself to spend $1,000 on it.

wow, Huw really caused a stink over there, huh? i have to agree with most that the 'wannabe AFOLs' remark was a bit below the belt even if it was misinterpreted at first - but it was easy to misinterpret, anyway.

I have no idea what CUuSoO is (other than the Inspector from the Pink Panther films)

My Pet Shop arrived today.

CUUSOO is a beta project that LEGO is testing, basically for crowd-sourcing new set/theme ideas. it's still trying to find its true purpose, so there's been a lot of kerfuffle over two major license-based ideas (The Winchester from Shaun of the Dead and Serenity from Firefly) reaching 10,000 supporters (the threshold whereby LEGO will take the idea into serious consideration) and being subsequently rejected due to questionable themes in the respective source materials (though some believe the Firefly deny was also due to a non-disclosed and purely conjectural non-competition clause in the Star Wars license agreement - something about no competing licensed space-related theme or such).

it also doesn't help that most people believe the third project approved (and first approved internationally - the alpha version of CUUSOO was a Japanese-only affair) Minecraft will be a major flop, being based on a niche videogame, fans of which overwhelmingly came out in support of the project. it remains to be seen if they will overwhelmingly come out in purchase of the project.

I looked around that CUUSOO site a bit. There is a Space Marine theme. Its okay, but if they were going to do another space theme, I'd rather see Vyn's ships. Or combine them both with the Space Police theme.

Huw is a pompous idiot. He's one of my older Brother's friends in the real world and is quite full of himself. I agree with him up to a point though. there is an awful lot of ridiculous projects on CUUSOO that need to be nipped in the bud and Lego really need to step in and tell people from the get go whether their project is worth developing or dropping. Why let people put in time and effort for nothing.

The Space Marines project has been getting a lot of abuse in the comments. Snarky keyboard warriors taking advantage of the fact that there's no moderation. And it's a damn shame because Space marines is probably the only full blown theme idea on CUUSOO that has legs. Most other stuff is just fanwank bollocks or retarded ideas put forward by people with zero creative ability.
Ultimately I think the only real use for CUUSOO is for Lego as a company to find talented new designers to mentor. People like Tyler Clites (Legohaulic). Who is a fucking genius where design and bricks are concerned.
All these piddling little novelty set ideas are not worth bothering with. It needs to be about the big ideas and the cream of the crop.