Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

Saw some new stuff trickling in.  This year looks promising.  I'm not too happy about yet-another-police station, but some of the other items look nifty.  Particularly, there's this throwback item I caught linked at the bottom for this excellent city piece.  You can see a faint 50 number which I believe signifies the designer's 50th anniversary with the company or something.  The cover and set though practically are from the 50's series, with the maker parodying the prototypically stupid kids grazing the cover.  Only this time, the item pictured below is quite nice.  Best pieces are the LONG overdue movie theater and the wedding chapel. I might have to purchase at least three just because my town one day will be flooded with the overabundance of fire stations, gas stations, police stations and similar sets that Lego tends to redundantly re-build every few years!

Apparently, there's going to be a harbor and road construction set along with some delivery type of sets (minus the delivery center).  I really like the fact that Lego has been putting a little more effort on the variety of sets, although they still repeatedly push forth the fire, police and gas station sets every 2-3 years. 

The other notable set is the dwarves theme.  Combining their Harry Potter leftovers, Lego is creating their own branded Lord of the Rings type of theme.  Unfortunately for whatever reason, Lego missed out on the whole marketing potential when Peter Jackson's movie came out.  However, one could argue, by the design of these sets, that Lego could cross promote it with the World of Warcraft theme.  All Lego is missing are the elves and you could play a miniature version of Warcraft.

The next big premier is Indiana Jones.  This was a natural fit considering that the 4th movie (God save us from Spielberg!!) is coming out in the next year or so.  This one they had prepared for long before since they had their own branded Johnny Thunder Adventures series.  Although missing out on LOTR, they definitely are doing a preemptive marketing strike by putting out the Indiana Jones series.  From the looks of it, not much is different from the Adventure series so it seems at least with regards to Indy, Lego had some prescience to preconceive of the sets beforehand.

More Exo-force will be due as well.  I can't say I'm coocoo over the brand, although I have my collection sitting on my shelf.  I'm hoping here from what I've seen that Lego limits the production of these sets to just the robotic skeletons.  Their larger playsets are just far too big for my area and blowing my budget out of proportion.

Now, the whole Lego Creator series, especially the ones focusing on homes and such have been my personal favorites and are commendable additions in the past few years.  A few weeks ago I had purchased the tan colored house (don't have the number off the top of my head) and felt that I should pick up two more (as well as the other house as well).  These are designed so well with the wonderful thought of having three WHOLE models with additional instructions, that they're actually worth buying a few.  I've pretty much been skipping out on Star Wars and the Aqua Raiders sets and focusing more on the house stuff because those sets are what I really am looking for in Lego.

This time around is no exception.  They've got a smaller, yellow house which looks like a great compliment to the other two.  I like the fact that each time, they're varying the colors and models for these.  The thing is that you can easily collect a few of these models without great penalty to your pocket book and still create a visually pleasant and varied scenary.  It's the whole difference in architecture between say Las Vegas and NYC.

The Star Wars items look bleh to me.  They have a few new interesting space ship sets, but they still aren't producing many bases.  Ever since Star Wars came along, Lego has produced almost no space bases, except for the recent Mars Mission one, which tended to be overwhelming and space consumptious.  I truly miss the old style of the Beta-1 Command Base, the Space Supply Station, the Intergalactic Space Station, etc.  Worse yet, episodes 1-3 never truly produced any gorgeous/handsome ships, so there never has been a lot of motivation on my part to run out and grab a ton of those sets (compared to episodes 4-6 where I have some ridiculous number of X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings, and B-Wings.  Not to mention 3 Millenium Falcons, two Imperial Star Destroyers and a plenty of Tie Fighters).  I hope that someday Lego's deal with Lucas ends because I really want to see them move away from regurgitating X-Wings and come up with some innovative space models again.  Mars Mission was interesting but I felt like I was partly playing Command and Conquer 3, not building the next generation of the Exploriens Star ship, etc.

Going back to the police segment, I'm really sick of them making these sets, although it's obvious that the police and fire sets are their bread winners for the town theme.  That said, one day I plan to unite most of my police sets together and formulate the most advanced police station around (okay, I know there are far more crazed collectors than me who have already done something unbelievable; but I'm just talking for myself).  I've got so many of these sets that I'm chomping at the bit where I have my own home, with my own Lego room where i can just concentrate on building something killer.

Anyway, the good items this year look REALLY good.  I'm enthused and really looking forward to wasting a few more dollars on these things.