NEW: Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Sets

It has been known for awhile now that Lego will be putting out Pirates of the Caribbean (PotC) sets. Speculation came when Lego discontinued the new Pirate line and started picking up more Disney themed sets, Prince of Persia, Toy Story. We have seen confidential preliminary images of these which left many not too excited about the line.

Today we got high resolution images of what the final set designs look like and I am impressed!

The first run of the PotC line will include 8 sets. All of which hold some new and exciting parts/ features.

Click on thumbnails for larger images:

Prices and descriptions are taken from 2011 Toy Fair Fact Sheet.

4195 - Queen Anne's Revenge - $119.99

From the captain’s quarters perched high on his magnificent

ship, Blackbeard secretly looks on as Jack Sparrow and the

motley crew attempt mutiny against Angelica and the zombies.

Will our heroes be able to take control of the ship before

Blackbeard reveals himself? Includes Jack Sparrow, Angelica

and Blackbeard figures

4194 - Whitecap Bay - $79.99

At Whitecap Bay, Jack Sparrow and the other pirates

encounter the mermaids. Spot them using the searchlight and

shoot the net from the boathouse cannon. But beware! If the

whale oil tips over, the whole lighthouse is sure to go up in

flames! Includes Jack Sparrow, three mermaids and three

other pirate minifigs, mini-boat with pirates’ victims, crewmates

and a collapsing lighthouse

4193 - The London Escape

4192 - The Fountain of Youth - $19.99

The race is on to see who will make it to the Fountain of Youth

first! Will Jack Sparrow be outsmarted by Blackbeard or

wooed by Angelica, or will he beat his rivals to the coveted

pools of eternal youth? Set includes Jack Sparrow, Barbossa

with peg leg and Blackbeard minifigs, plastic waterfall detail

and two chalices

4191 - The Captain's Cabin - $10.99

Will Jack Sparrow escape the captain’s cabin with a coveted

prize or be captured by Zombies? Includes Jack Sparrow and

two Zombie minifigs, buildable shelf and two ships in a bottle

4183 - The Mill
4182 - The Cannibal Escape
4181 - Isla De La Muerta

As you can see these sets are mostly from the new PotC movie "On Stranger Tides" out this summer. The last three are from the other movies. They also have lower set numbers meaning that they are planning to release more sets from the first three movies.

Here is what I'm excited about:

- All the Minifigs

- Wine Bottles

- Gold bars

- Sword Holders

- Arched windows with shutters

- Queen Anne's Revenge

I think that all these sets are really cool. I would love to have multiples of The Captain's Cabin and The London Escape. These two sets have great new parts which I can see using in many new pirate/ castle builds.

EDIT: Just read Disney's press release for Pirates of the Caribbean toys. And they are saying Lego will release NINE sets this year. We have 8 pictured. Some people are saying the Black Pearl ship will be the ninth. Who knows?

Link to pictures of the actual sets from a Disney Event

Nearly A Year!

Wow! Nearly a year has gone by since my last post. My last post was about the first Bay Area Lego convention, "Bricks by the Bay". And now that convention is coming up again in March! Sadly I won't be attending due to the good news in the next paragraph.

Since my last post my life has changed dramatically. Shortly after posting about BBTB, my wife and I got the great news that we will be expecting our first child in late December! We started planning and preparing for our new addition. We ended up moving to a larger apartment to have more space for our baby at the end of August. We are really happy with our new place and are even more excited for our baby to come.

Our daughter was born a week late and has been the greatest joy in my life since then. I'm glad to say that both my wife and my baby are doing great! Now when she is older I have a great excuse to go to Legoland and hopefully the MMB at the Lego store.

Enough excuses all ready. Back to posting about everyone's favorite hobby, Lego.

I have still been adding to my collection. Albeit more slowly then before (baby stuff is expensive). The two biggest additions to my collection are the most awesome 6295 - Black Seas Barracuda (picked off eBay for little more then MSRP, w/ box) and 10179 - Millennium Falcon UCS (picked up during the clearance on Lego shop online). Both of these sets have been something I've been wanting for a long time now. 6295 - BSB was a set that I drooled over as a child and never got my hands on. I have yet to put together the 10179. I opened the box and was overwhelmed by the size of this thing. It may be something that I put together in the future with my daughter or I just might get the building itch and spend a week or two building it when I get off work.

I haven't been building too much lately. Time has been a precious commodity and even though we moved to a larger place I still don't have an optimal Lego building area. I did however get more storage and re-organized my parts. I have been seeing a lot of great MoC's lately and I have been wanting to get building. Do you think my daughter will mind if I take up part of her room for Lego? I am going try and make it my resolution to build more with Lego and post more about it. There are just a few other hobbies I need to kick out first. I see that at this point in my life I need to focus on a couple things rather then half ass'ing many things.

So hopefully you will be hearing from me more often. Until then, Keep Bricking.

April Store Flyer

Getting back on track to uploading the monthly store flyer. Here's the new one for April 2010.




The Prince of Persia sets are out! You can find them now at LEGO.com so soon they will be showing up in stores. Buy them between April 26th and 30th and get double VIP points. Also shown is the cute Ducky for the MMMB. They are really starting to advertise Lego Universe. The new online game from Lego that is currently in Beta testing.

Got it!!!

It's been a long time since I posted last. Life has been turned up to 11 these past few months. I recently acquired a lot of used LEGO that deserved a post. After my miss on the old pirate sets I got the wheels turning and tried to make a program that would scan craigslist every 10 minutes or so and email me when a new LEGO ad was made. That program died quickly when I discovered a craigslist gadget I could add to my google home page. Largely in thanks to flickr user toomuchdew. He posted his LEGO themed google page and it showed a craigslist gadget so I went to add it to my page. This thing is awesome. I have only had it for a few weeks when it found me a gem of a sale.

Someone had posted an ad for "Huge LEGO Collection". As soon as I had opened that posting I new it was the deal of the month. 18 mid 90's sets complete and in box were priced at $200. Among the sets were 6991, 6339, 6195 and many others. I came across the posting a mere 20 minutes after it was posted and immediately called the number listed. I left a message and waited for 5 hours before I got a call back. I was the first to call and there for was the first to get called back. I drove 30 minutes to the persons house and looked over the lot. It appeared to have everything and most the boxes were still in great shape. Also along the way the seller had come across a few additional sets that they were just going to through in.

I walked out with 25 sets, 21 of which had there box, and a monorail for $200!! There are a few that I am going to keep and the rest will be up for auction soon. My wife and I have been having a blast getting all the sets ready for auction. It was a great find and I will make back $200 and them some. I will post some images when I get them all together.

EDIT: you can see all the sets I put up for auction here on flickr. They all sold, and are in hands of other AFOL's. I was sad to see them go, but I couldn't keep them all.

NXT 2.0 annouced!!

The Lego Mindstorms NXT made a huge buzz in the robot community when it was first released nearly 3 years ago. There have been rumors flying about that Lego was going to be releasing a new version. Well, we have definite proof of a new version. Lego has been showing off the new 2.0 at Toy Fairs around the globe.

VIDEO

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Set to release this August, the 2.0 version comes with a few new features. The light sensor has been replaced with a color sensor. The NXT-G program features a remote to control the robot via computer/ laptop. A mechanism to launch small colored balls is included. Instructions to build a robot alligator, colored ball sorter, a ball launcher, and the new Rex 2.0 are included. Bluetooth is still present for wireless control, and the set contains roughly 620 pieces up from 400 in the current version.

Nothing new about control brick, whether or not it will have more memory or faster processing. With the release date out 6 months, I'm sure we will see some improvements.

Now the price..... £200 which is roughly $300.

Other then the few features I listed I don't see too much difference between the two versions. Hopefully they allow firmware/ software updates for us with the current model. Until more news comes out, I'm happy with my robot.