Brick Update

In the past few weeks, LEGO has offered some free promo polybags when you spend a certain amount of money. The Star Wars TC-14 minifig was available for a couple days around May 4th. Hulk is available for the latter part of May. I got both, but haven’t opened them yet. A nice promotion from LEGO, especially when they are “exclusive” figs. I’ve heard there are some quality control issues with Hulk. I’ll find out when I open him up…

I stopped by my local LEGO Store to get the Hulk minifig promo and check out some of the newer sets.

A surprise to everyone, the Kingdoms Chess set appeared on the shelves last week. At $50, you get more than 30 minifigs, an incredible deal for a theme we thought was dead.

LEGO Lord of the Rings hits the shelves. They didn’t have the biggest set, but all others were represented. While many adult fans are thrilled with this lineup, I can’t help but fear that they won’t be big sellers. But… with two Hobbit movies in the works, that may be the momentum needed to drive sales with kids.

LEGO Death Star… this set just won’t go away. Not that I am complaining!

R2D2 really grabs your attention:

Technic:

New Ninjago on the shelves:

Monster Fighters on display. I was wondering where they would place this in the store. Between Architecture and City I suppose makes as much sense as anything else:

Modulars and exclusives:

City with the new mining themes sets:

LEGO Friends:

The new Beach House set:

They had the monthly mini-build for sale for about $7. I don’t remember them doing this before.

Fire fighter minifigs:

My trip to Toys R Us today turned up stocked shelves with the new LEGO Lord of the Rings, Monster Fighters, Ninjago, and City sets. A tour:

Exactly a year ago, I posted a photo of my three LEGO Death Stars. Today, I can share a photo of the fourth. How can I justify all of these? Well, according to Wookieepedia, there were at least 4 death stars in existence at one point or another.

So maybe the answer of how many LEGO Death Stars is too many is: one more than I have at the moment.
🙂

I managed to pick up 5 more LEGO Shadow ARF Troopers to add to my collection. I considered grabbing more, but somehow, this seemed a “reasonable” number to buy.

New arrivals: I had placed this order before the Toys R Us deal I bumped into this week. I have an excessive amount of battle packs now!

I finally picked up LEGO Fairytale and Historic Minifigure Set #9349, 20% off at Amazon. Something about this set seems really unique, and at around $2 per minifig, a great deal. I’ll likely keep it boxed for now, so no full review:

I made a quick stop into the Rockefeller Center LEGO Store this week to check to see how their stock of Marvel Avengers sets was faring. Here is what I found:

The main entrance to the store:

The large windows that look out on Rockefeller Center:

Rockefeller Center:

It was very crowded:

Tons of people:

Technic sets:

Lots of Star Wars and Cars:

Still a sliver of Pirates of the Caribbean sets:

I am always amazed that they offer three huge Star Wars sets for sale at once. That Death Star has been around forever, and still very popular:

The new Marvel Super Heroes Avengers sets. Still a bunch in stock:

Ninjago, with plenty of red boxes:

City:

More City, with a lone Alien Conquest set on the bottom right:

“Other” LEGO stuff:

Some interesting pieces on the pick a brick wall, including dark tan tiles:

Very useful dark gray pieces:

Black tiles:

More dark gray:

Trans clear cheese slopes:

Dark gray 1×1 bricks

For most of March, Toys R Us seemed to be running a Buy One, Get One 50% Off sale. I was able to grab a few sets in the brief moments they were actually in stock on Toys R Us’ website.

I added two more Pet Shops to my collection. This is such a useful set – I certainly imagine a row of brownstones in my modular town, and can modify the Pet Shop itself so that it can represent different stores.

I finally got the Volkswagen T1 Camper Van at a good price too. Looking forward to building this set. I had picked up the VW Beetle set a few months back too.

And I only recently took notice of the Shuttle Expedition set 10231. With the space shuttle program now done with, I assume this is the last Shuttle set we will see. I had to add one to my collection when I found it at such a good discount.

Here is a photo of each set:

Here is my haul from Toys R Us this week, where I found good prices on some sets I really wanted. I grabbed two each of the three lowest priced Super Heroes Avengers sets (one is not seen in the photo because I had built it already), plus loaded up on more Star Wars battle packs for army building.

Now, to find the time to open them all!