Month: November 2009

Review: LEGO Power Miners 8189 Magma Mech (2010 Set)

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I walked into my local TRU Thanksgiving Eve. My mission: to find an interesting LEGO set that I hadn’t thought of grabbing before. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do a Power Miners set again, or get something from the Atlantis line. As I strolled up and down the LEGO aisle, I grabbed the Power Miners Thunder Driller, but that wasn’t enough. I felt I had to buy another LEGO set to quench me of my pending holiday boredom when I decided to snatch one the one particular PM set that was smack-dab right in front of me. The set? The new 2010 Magma Mech with Firax, an updated version of Firox from the Power Miners 8960 Thunder Driller (they switched the “o” with the “a”.) Sure, I really wanted to get the Crystal Sweeper, but that was not in the budget unless I wanted to put the mech and the Thunder Driller back on the shelf. It also dawned on me that you readers would want to read a review and see a pic or two of the newer set.

By the Numbers:
Set: LEGO Power Miners 8189-1 Magma Mech
Type: Vehicle in 2010 Power Miners Series (Core of the Underworld)
# of Pieces: 183
# of Extra pieces: A few
# of Minifigs and what kind: 1 X human Power Miner, 1 X Firax Rock Monster (New 2010 Version)
Stickers? One sheet of 9 stickers
Price: $19.99 at the Official LEGO Shop, Also at Amazon.com (Price may vary)

2010 LEGO Power Miners 8189 Magma Mech - Completed

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Quick Preview of LEGO Creator 5865

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This is a quick preview of the 60-piece LEGO Creator 5865 set from the new 2010 sets. It’s $5.99 and it’s a decent amount of standard pieces you’ll be able to use in your own MOCs. The most important pieces of the newer 2010 Creator sets: I’m just kidding, although … Read more

LEGO Shop @ Home – Deals for Nov 27 – 30

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LEGO’s Shop @ Home website is going to be offering quite a few deals above and beyond “Black Friday” here in the US, extending them until November 30, 2009. There are three special offers that include free shipping: * $10 off $100 * $20 off $200 * $30 off $300 … Read more

Black Friday Sales on LEGO Sets

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There are going to be quite a few “Black Friday” LEGO-related sales in the US. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving (today) and usually features huge discounts from quite a few retailers. I’m not going to cover the LEGO-related games for the X-Box, Wii, PS3, etc. in this post, … Read more

LEGO Atlantis: Where is the Shark Castle or Where is Atlantis

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lego-8060-atlantis-minifigAfter having looked through the officially released materials, we are definitely missing a couple of sets from the LEGO Atlantis theme. I’m not talking about the sets where we’ve seen box art already and just need a name and release date, I’m talking about sets we haven’t heard of. Keep in mind that the three sets we reviewed, the 8056, 8058, and 8060, made it into a fairly wide-scale release here in the US through Toys R Us in a short amount of time around a month and a half earlier than expected with few, if any leaks and no official notice. Jason heard from a Toys R Us employee that it was official and was some kind of exclusive/promo release. Even without having an employee tell us that, it was clearly not an accidental stocking of shelves across the US. LEGO can keep things secret – those are just recent examples.

First, let me say that I’m ignoring rumors and wishful thinking and only focusing on published, official Atlantis-related materials and how the other in-house/non-licensed sets are being handled. In an earlier post, I mentioned a LEGO-related ARG (Alternate Reality Game). As ILikePi pointed out, it’s probably related to LEGO Universe, the upcoming MMORPG or MMO or whatever you want to call it. That was a bad lead on my part and I apologize. It should have been obvious that it wasn’t Atlantis related. That’s an example of what I want to stay away from.

I mainly want to figure out where they’ll fit in and how many large/premium sets we’ll have. For the sake of discussion, I’m calling anything that’s around $60 (or 500+ pieces) and on up “premium”. Before anybody says “you can’t expect a large/premium set of out Atlantis just yet, give it a year” or “you can’t put Atlantis on the level of Pirates or Castle just yet”, let me point out at that the very name of the theme is a location – Atlantis. There is a theme running through out the manuals that there are locations to visit and explore. The teaser website is all about exploring areas – the Doctor’s journal is about finding Atlantis. All we’ve got so far that we know of as far as actual locations is one set: 8061 – Gateway of the Squid, and it’s really not a premium set in my view. It’s also called “Gateway”. That alone sets off warning bells that it will be a gateway to something bigger.

A lot of this may have been collected elsewhere and even better explained, and if so, by all means leave a comment with a link. I’m putting this down for myself to see what the clues are when everything “official” is laid out.

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