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The group pool at flickr for Brickvention 2010 is now active and being updated.

Brickvention is a LEGO-oriented convention and exhibition held every year in Australia. This year’s event took place January 23rd and January 24th in Melbourne. There were hundreds of models/sets/MOCs from all around Australia, along with demonstrations and games.

Brickvention pool at flickr

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Update: February 14, 2010: Photos of the 2010 LEGO Harry Potter sets are available.

Huw over at Brickset attended the London Toy Fair today to look at LEGO’s upcoming offerings. No photography was allowed unfortunately. Huw made plenty of observations on the displayed sets.

A few notes on Huw’s observations:
* The Harry Potter launches towards the end of this year will be well-received, and The Burrows sounds like it’s what a lot of us were hoping for. I’m surprised at the number of new minifigs – two dozen or so.
* City Trains sounds very promising
* The Prince of Persia theme sounds awesome as well
* Hero Factory will probably be a suitable replacement for Bionicle
* Technic’s launches in August sound solid
* Also the collectible minifigs sound as good as they look. I’m not too happy that some will be rarer than others.

What I’m most excited about is this:

The three summer Atlantis sets look interesting: there’s another creature, a lobster I think, an underwater base and the ‘portal of Atlantis’. The pictures shown elsewhere of these are only a small part of them.

Full article Brickset

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Huw at Brickset has posted some high resolution images of the upcoming 8683 Collectable Minifigures / Minifigs.

For a larger version of the above, see this Flickr photo and for a peek at the packaging, see this Flickr photo.

There are 16 in all. These are due to be rolled out in June of 2010, with another wave of 16 following a few months later. From everything that’s been published so far, you won’t know what figures you are getting if you buy the packages individually. We came up with a list of the minifigs back in December and it still looks to be accurate:

1 Caveman
2 Female Cheerleader
3 Clown
4 Cowboy/Adventurer
5 Crash test dummy
6 SCUBA diver
7 Female American Indian
8 Magician
9 Ninja
10 Female Nurse
11 Robin Hood/Archer type
12 Robot
13 Kid (with skateboard)
14 Astronaut
15 Lucha libre wrestler
16 Zombie businessman

It’s going to be a neat set of minifigs.

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If you missed LEGO Atlantis: The Movie (our review of it), you can watch it through the Cartoon Network’s video site – here’s a direct link to part 1 – there are 5 parts. If for some reason that link expires, just check the video site site and browse around for Atlantis.

I do not know how long it will be available online or what, if any, countries it is restricted to.

Still no word on future airings on Cartoon Network, or availability on DVD. It would be cool if they included it on the LEGO Adventures of Clutch Powers DVD, which is LEGO’s first full-length movie. As far as I know, that is not being broadcast anywhere, and will only be available through purchase or rental.

Amazon has the Clutch Powers DVD pre-order for $14.99 and Amazon.com Video on Demand has it for $3.99 for a 24 hour rental or $14.99 for purchase. It’ll be available towards the end of February 2010.

The animation in the Atlantis Movie looks very similar to that of the Clutch Powers movie.

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Update: That didn’t take long, they sold out and removed the listing from LEGO Shop @ Home

If you or someone you know are looking to get into some of the more advanced Technic models, thanks to all of the clearance deals going on right now, you can get the 1100-piece 8063 Technic Tractor with Trailer for $49.98 at LEGO Shop @ Home. I’m not sure if it applies to other countries.

Features:
* 1100 pieces
* Tractor: Opening hood, turn gears, moving pistons
* Trailer: Turn gear tipping function
* Tractor measures 11″ x 7″ x 7.5″ (27cm x 17cm x 19cm)
* Trailer measures 15.5 inches long (39cm)

I’m considering picking one up – it’s a good color scheme in my opinion, and for $49.98, it’s a good selection of parts – good wheels, etc. (1100 parts!)

If that’s not something that interests you, if you are in the US, I’ve seen the 7632 Crawler Crane (from the City/Construction theme) for as low as $45. I picked up a 6243 Pirates Brickbeard’s Bounty for $49 + tax at a Target which is half off, and apparently they are also half-off at Walmart as well. I’ve also seen the 7686 Helicopter Transport for $20. I picked up a couple of 8402 Sports Car from the City/Traffic theme for under $5 at Target. It’s hit or miss what you’ll find, but right now is a good time to pick up some of these sets.

The Indiana Jones, Pirates, and Castle themes are all being discontinued/suspended for now (as well as older models from other themes) and some retailers are clearing them out right now to make way for the Atlantis theme, some of the new Space Police set, the Toy Story theme, and the upcoming Prince of Persia theme. If you are just looking to add to your spare parts, some of these deals are getting the price-per-piece down to around $0.04 or so.

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A quick note: I was mistaken yesterday, LEGO did do some promotion of the movie on the Atlantis.LEGO.com site, but I still believe more should have been done on LEGO.com as well as the Cartoon Network website. That’s just me.

If you’ve been following the Atlantis Theme, nothing in the movie should be a surprise. I’m going to post a short review, then some notes from the movie, and then a full synopsis of the movie (all in this post). If you don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading after the short review in the paragraph after this.

My overall impression is that it was very well done. The animation was good, the voice talent was good. As an AFOL, I wasn’t cringing at anything (and they even referrenced AFOLs at the end of the movie), it was enjoyable, and I could see kids really liking it. It showcased every single one of the existing LEGO Atlantis sets except for the 8079 Shadow Snapper. It also showed or hinted at a few large sets that we know about, but that aren’t yet available for purchase (later this year). It also showed something that… I don’t want to spoil the movie, so I’ll post it at the bottom, but let’s just say that it could either turn into a huge theme on its own, or be a sub-theme of Atlantis. It used almost all of the content from the Atlantis.LEGO.com website with the exception of the backstory around Dr. Artimus Rhodes and his great-granddaughter Professor Samantha Artesia Rhodes. This was probably due to the time constraints of a half-hour movie. It will be interesting to see if the LEGO Brickmaster Atlantis book fills in any gaps. It used all of the minifigs we’ve seen in the Atlantis sets, and everything but the Neptune Carrier was scaled appropriately.

STOP READING HERE IF YOU DON’T WANT TO HAVE THE MOVIE SPOILED!!

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In honor of the LEGO Atlantis: The Movie, coming on in a few minutes, it’s actually on now, I’m posting a MOC I made out of two 8057 Atlantis Wreck Raider sets. I’m calling it a Wreck Raider Quad, but really it was an Exercise in Frustration. The goal was to see what you could do with a couple of the cheaper sets in the LEGO Atlantis theme. The 8057 comes with just over 60 pieces.

I only used parts from two 8057 Wreck Raider sets ($10 a set), along with a 1×3 brick and some transparent pieces from other sets. It seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect, I wished I had used an 8057 and the $15 8059 Seabed Scavenger.

One thing I want in the Atlantis line is a cargo platform/submersible, which is kind of what I got out of this. Right now the vehicle sets are about moving from point A to point B. They aren’t going to be hauling anything on these vehicles. I’m hoping that with the possible Atlantis Exploration HQ 8077, we see such a vehicle. These are supposed to be researchers after all, and so far they are unable to really haul anything, outside of mini-vehicles (see the 8075 Atlantis Neptune Carrier).

If I delved into my other sets and pieces and used about 15-20 extra pieces from other sets or spare parts (perhaps the 5866 Creator Rotor Rescue or one of the Power Miners sets), I could easily make a much better cargo platform/carrier using what I made as the foundation, and I plan on doing that in the future. I could easily get what I need on BrickLink, but I’m thinking in terms of what you might have easy access to. As I said in my review of the 8057, it’s a good value given the two minifigs (the Shark Warrior especially). I’m far from being a LEGO expert, not even close, but I think with around 100 parts, LEGO could crank something out like what I was aiming for. As I mentioned, the 8057 has around 65 pieces, and between the two of them plus the extra parts I used, minus the parts I didn’t use, my count was around 120-130. You could easily knock this down by 15-20 pieces if you used more appropriate pieces from other sets, rather than limiting it to the 8057 sets. I think the Wreck Raider + Seabed Scavenger would make for a more interesting vehicle.

I plan on revisiting this MOC in a few weeks, and cleaning it up with better/more appropriate parts. My biggest limitation was mounting the motors such that they could fully rotate without hitting anything, be it diver or seabed, and the lack of larger plates.

The lack of larger plates is really what did me in, and my “upgrade” of this MOC will have larger plates making for a true cargo vehicle/research platform. With larger plates, I could have achieved a cargo/passenger area of around 6×10 studs rather than the mish-mash 5×5 that I came up with. With a 6×10 area (or perhaps 8×10 if I extended the length of the vehicle), I could probably mount some kind of small crane somewhere on the platform, plus have a dedicated crew area and a dedicated cargo area. I could even make a movable mount for the grappling hook(s).

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