Bad news if you are trying to order direct from Lego.

They have suspended shipments to the UK until the issues at the ports are resolved.

Probably not their decision but forced on them by their logistics providers.

Actually, sod that, reviews aren’t great

I think a lot of the reviewers were disappointed at the cost compared to the number of parts, however for £50 I think it would be reviewed very highly!

Also I thought the Rough Terrain Crane was cheap the other day for £130 but £100 is a bargain.

@bikesandboats true, great present for a kid at that price (they are going for £70-80 on eBay so could’ve just moved it on anyway, thought I’d let someone else get the bargain though!) but aside from the motor, as an actual Technic set it looks pretty basic.

There are some real bargains at Argos right now

The Technic Car Transporter is reduced to £60! Thats a lot of Lego for the money

But:

MUST NOT BUY MORE LEGO

Argos seem to have a habit of putting very cheap deals on their website that are only actually available to click & collect at one store nationally, with no delivery option. The £100 crane and £60 car transporter are in this category. I guess it’s their equivalent of clickbait.

1 box into the Bugatti Chiron build. 5 more to go, it might take a while.

I’m always amazed by the integrity and attention to detail of Lego, but this thing is incredible.

@creakingdoor Not this time, it was a genuine stock clearance due to store closures. You just had to get in early (and be lucky to be near a store with stock!) Plus the discounts weren’t even promoted anywhere by Argos AFAIK (you had to go through to the checkout for them to actually show up)

Has anyone used vonado.com for lego light kits?

Not tried them, but they look identical to the lightmybricks stuff but quite a lot cheaper (at least for the DIY parts). Not sure if it’s a legit rebranding thing or a knock-off. Given where it’s shipping from, I’d suspect the latter, but I doubt you can go far wrong.

I’ve just finished doing some fully custom lighting for a model as none of the off-the-shelf stuff did exactly what I wanted. Good fun if hand soldering SMD LEDs is your idea of fun! The components involved are all very cheap (e.g. 10 LEDs for £1 delivered), but hard to replicate the convenience of a plug that’s small enough to pass through a “bar holder” sized hole.

I got the 42112 cement truck for christmas, first decent sized technic I’ve done for ages… So satisfying.

Is it just me, or is there a bit of showmanship in the instructions? It seems like quite often I’m building random looking assemblies with no idea what’s going on and then fitting them to the model and still thinking, not sure that’s right, then you rotate it through 90 degrees and push in a couple of pins and suddenly OH! That’s what it is. I’m pretty sure some of it could have been easier to build, but less interesting.

I think there probably is. The building experience is a big part of it, so I’m sure quite a lot of thought goes into it.

For Christmas presents for our kids, I made instructions for technics Lego sets, one from my own design, and one based on someone else’s MOC, and it was a very interesting (and fabulously time consuming) experience. It certainly helps you understand some aspects of the instructions for the official sets better.

Three days in and we’re still building them. It’s been great fun, and very rewarding, and only a handful of small mistakes in the instructions.

Not seen this before. Not a Lego fan but I quite like the look of it.

https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/international-space-station-21321

Yup, it’s a great looking set, build possibly a bit tedious which is why I haven’t done it yet although do own it 😀 The Saturn V and Lunar Lander are also amazing sets, amongst my favourite ever!

Is it just me, or is there a bit of showmanship in the instructions?

Yeah, I’ve noticed this in both of the last two sets I built, the aforementioned Apollo Saturn V and the mini gingerbread house which I sneaked in under the guise of “a new Christmas Decoration” last week. Lots of the internal structural stuff is almost over-engineered or uses really random coloured bricks. It took a little while for me to twig, the internal structural components of the Saturn V are actually the real internals, all the fuel tanks and what have you. That doesn’t need to be there, you’d never see it, but it’s so typical of Lego’s attention to detail.

Slightly more cynically perhaps, if the only way you can obtain a particular brick in a specific colour is by buying the one set that it’s unique to, that’s the collectors’ market suckered in too.

Lots of the internal structural stuff is almost over-engineered or uses really random coloured bricks. It took a little while for me to twig, the internal structural components of the Saturn V are actually the real internals, all the fuel tanks and what have you. That doesn’t need to be there, you’d never see it, but it’s so typical of Lego’s attention to detail.

this is why I just roll my eyes when people moan about the price of Lego. They literally just don’t get it. All the time/money that must be spent tweaking the designs until they’re perfect (and it is very, very rare for anything to make it to release with a sub-standard design). And why people who think buying rip-off/copy sets is ok are ****.

I’ve just finished the massive JP T-Rex. One of the first steps is putting a tiny frog inside the model, which is then bricked up never to be seen again. Like you say, it’s the attention to detail! (It’s also one of the best designed sets I’ve ever built, blending Technic & normal Lego to make something which just shouldn’t work, but is actually incredibly sturdy & well balanced despite being fully articulated!)

Interesting article on Lego

this is why I just roll my eyes when people moan about the price of Lego.

Plus it’s all manufactured to incredibly high tolerances. Ever had a Lego brick that didn’t quite fit? Me neither. One with a bit of sprue or some other moulding defect? I don’t remember seeing that since the 70s, and I think they were old-hand-me-down bricks from god knows when even then.

We’ve said this before on this thread too but the notion that Lego is expensive “these days” is a fallacy; most Lego sets are a fairly similar cost-per-brick price and if you adjust for inflation it’s the same price as they were when I was a kid.

And that’s when your Lunar Module models looked more like this:

https://brickset.com/sets/565-1/Moon-Landing

When I was a kid we actually had to use our imagination to build things out of Lego 🙂

Thinking back it was an imagination similar to a Minecraft world 🤔

All the time/money that must be spent tweaking the designs until they’re perfect (and it is very, very rare for anything to make it to release with a sub-standard design).

Indeed. All 1,969 pieces of the Saturn V 👍

Sometimes the random internal colours are to easily differentiate slightly different pieces or orientation when built, further examples of attention to detail. My only gripe is they do sometimes use 2 pieces when ones would do, feels like an artificial way to get the count up.

Ever had a Lego brick that didn’t quite fit?

Yes but that may have been because I dried a load using a hot air paint stripping gun, my drying technique has since improved. I now use one hand to keep the pieces moving, I find my hand burns before the bricks distort. Also don’t put them in the dishwasher, they don’t do well in there, come out rather bleached.

When I was a kid we actually had to use our imagination to build things out of Lego 🙂

When you were a kid, Lego sets came with instructions just like they do now. And they all interoperated, just like they do now.

And for the luddite who whines about models not being big boxes of largely uniform bricks every time Lego is mentioned (is this you, I can’t remember?), Lego do a range just for you. It’s called Classic.

https://www.lego.com/en-gb/themes/classic

So there you go, fill your boots (I wouldn’t put them on though) and let everyone else enjoy things.

My only gripe is they do sometimes use 2 pieces when ones would do, feels like an artificial way to get the count up.

Yeah, I thought that when building the gingerbread house. Loads of 1×2 pieces when a 1×8 would’ve sufficed. That’s what you get for it saying “expert” on the box I guess. I suppose you could argue that the separate bricks look a bit more like, uh, separate bricks.

Indeed. All 1,969 pieces of the Saturn V 👍

Yeah, that makes me very happy. I read somewhere that initially it was a happy accident that they got almost 1969 pieces, like three or four bricks away, then someone at Lego went “ooh!” so they redesigned the support towers slightly to fiddle the brick count.

The support towers, incidentally, are very similar to the ones used under a real rocket at Kennedy Space Center. Attention to detail, see.

Looking at sales, This seems to good to be true?? Anyone bought of this lot? I can see s physical address, but could still be fishy?

https://www.willowbooks.co.uk/lego-harry-potter-hogwarts-castle-advanced-building-set-model-with-harry-potter-minifigures-71043.html

Yes, I would describe it as “fishy” 🤔

Christmas builds.

Genuine Lego:

The Boba Fett is beautifully engineered and features a lot of interior trickery.

Chinese copies:

and I’m doing battle with a Ferrari Enzo, but the instructions (or lack of them) are causing some frustration.

When you were a kid, Lego sets came with instructions just like they do now. And they all interoperated, just like they do now.

Nope just boxes of blocks when I was a kid and had p/n x469b motor but don’t remember instructions but I was ony 7 years old. And if you’re going to accuse someone of being a Luddite get the right person, so reel ya neck in.

Another Attention to Detail thing: I was given the Star Wars Lukes speeder set for Christmas. The centre motor folds back and there’s a ‘boot’ for luggage. Inside there’s a random loose part. I guess this has some Star Wars significance but buggered if I can remember. Anyone know?

Looking at sales, This seems to good to be true?? Anyone bought of this lot? I can see s physical address, but could still be fishy?

Cougar’s Law of Internet Shopping: If you find yourself asking “is this a scam?” then the answer is yes, it’s a scam.

Domain registered a couple of months ago for one single year.
Your “physical address” is a mid-terraced house.
Contact email address is an entirely different domain registered in the Czech Republic. There doesn’t seem to be anything at that address currently but it could be where they lifted the storefront from.
No phone numbers (increasingly common on legitimate sites but the presence of a valid number would add credibility).
Block text is written either by a moron or, as I rather suspect, someone with English not as a first language (and before the professionally offended show up, not copy-reading your web pages is often a shibboleth for a scam site).

And of course, the biggest red flag of all: Popular products at half the price you can find them anywhere else on the planet? Sheah right, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.

40mpg – the random part is a pair of binoculars 😁

Inside there’s a random loose part

There was one with the Snow Speeder too. No idea what it is.

Nope just boxes of blocks when I was a kid and had p/n x469b motor but don’t remember instructions but I was ony 7 years old.

Your 7-year old’s memory is incomplete. You could buy boxes of bricks sure, but that wasn’t instead of actual models, it was alongside them. They introduced set models in the 1950s.

I remember them introducing that motor, I had a couple of them in yellow. They came in sets which had multiple builds rather than one single ‘main’ model and they absolutely came with instructions for at least some of them. The LM I linked to further up this page is of a similar mid-70s vintage.

And if you’re going to accuse someone of being a Luddite get the right person, so reel ya neck in.

I wasn’t accusing you of anything, I was asking if it was you. If it wasn’t then I apologise. I don’t pay too much attention to usernames.

… it seems there were precursors to that motor too, it goes back to the mid-60s. Sold on its own or inside trains. I wasn’t aware of that, before my time.

http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/x469b

Inside there’s a random loose part

That looks like the binoculars Luke uses when searching for Tuscan raiders.

Cougar’s Law of Internet Shopping: If you find yourself asking “is this a scam?” then the answer is yes, it’s a scam.

Cougar, wow amazing detail thanks, I know who to ask in future. 🙂

After dipping into this thread too many times, the wife bought me my first Technics in a good 28+ years. I was lucky enough to get the Porsche 42096 for Christmas.

Wow, I don’t remember the sets being quite so involving, really enjoying the build though.

Just got to keep it away from the kids!

Cougar, wow amazing detail thanks, I know who to ask in future. 🙂

Did you ignore the rest of the post where I explained why in detail?

Cougar, wow amazing detail thanks, I know who to ask in future. 🙂

That’s ok he’s a weapon but a nice enough weapon. There’s a few on here but he’s one of the good ones.

Kuco
Free Member

When I was a kid we actually had to use our imagination to build things out of Lego

The only people daft enough to only follow the instructions and then never make anything else are adults.

The only people daft enough to only follow the instructions and then never make anything else are adults.

I resemble this comment.