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If you are in the Houston, Texas area, you may already know about the new LEGO Store that is opening up. It may have even opened already, but the official Grand Opening Celebration is starting tomorrow and runs from March 26 – 28. It’s located on the 2nd Floor near Border’s

There are some events/special give-aways planned, including:
* Helping a Master Model Builder build an 8 foot tall Star Wars R2-D2. This will take place from Friday (March 26) through Sunday (March 28). If you help with the build, and if the supplies hold out, you’ll get a free LEGO Star Wars Certificate of Achievement.
* On Saturday (March 27), if you are one of the first 300 customers that spends $35 or more, you’ll receive the exclusive, limited-edition LEGO Bull Rider set pictured above.
* On Sunday (March 28), the first 300 customers to spend $35 or more will receive an exclusive, limited-edition LEGO Minifigure/Minfig T-Shirt (only in children’s sizes)
* You can also enter a drawing for a chance to win a $50 LEGO Store Gift Card (no purchase needed)

Store times for this weekend are:
Friday, March 26: 11:00am – 7:00pm
Saturday, March 27: 10:00am – 6:00pm
Sunday, March 28: 11:00am – 6:00pm

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(click on pic for a larger photo at flickr)

LEGO Silver Star Wars Storm Trooper. Say that 10 times really fast!

This popped up this morning on the Toys R Us website – if you purchase a LEGO Star Wars set of $11.99 or more in value, you get this Storm Trooper (or stormtrooper) free. It looks like you can purchase it as well, for $2.99, which seems a little odd. It is listed as sold out, but if they were actually offering these for sale, people would just go in and pay the $2.99 a piece and throw them up on eBay or BrickLink. My guess is that it needed a price to be in the system and it’s probably only being offered through the stores with the purchase of a LEGO Star Wars set. I could be wrong, and I’ll take a look in a few days and see if they have any available near me.

Here’s the statistics from the Toys R Us site:
Item #: 181363
SKU: F7384E2D
UPC/EAN/ISBN: 673419139625
Manufacturer #: 4591726

I’m not sure if “4591726″ is the actual LEGO # for this minifig or not. That’s what is listed in the Toys R Us system.

Product page: ToysRUs.com

Update: This is the same silver/chrome minifig being discussed at Brickset.

Update #2: I got an email (thanks Ruben) that you could buy them online and that they sold out online sometime around 10:30am (CST) and that he was able to purchase yesterday morning before they sold out. No idea yet on if stores have them in stock, since they are not consider a part of the normal inventory.

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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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I had a chance to visit a LEGO store north of Dallas (the The Stonebriar Centre/Frisco LEGO Store) and in addition to the calendar I picked up yesterday that mentioned LEGO Atlantis: The Movie coming out in a few weeks, I took a look around at the sets available as well as spoke with a few people, and made a few notes:

1) The only Indiana Jones sets and Spongebob Squarepants sets I saw were returns and went fast.
2) Quite a few King’s Battle Chariot’s (7078) were available, along with some Troll Battle Packs, but very little else (if anything) from the Castle series. Guess they are making way for LEGO Kingdoms later this year when it replaces Castle.
3) Some good deals to be had on a few Pirate sets – I think I got the last Pirates Battle Pack (for $10.98) and there were quite a few 8396 Soldier’s Arsneal for $2.48 which is a really good deal. Like Castle, it’s pretty clear they are going away for a while. What’s unclear is what’s going to replace them – Pirates of the Caribbean?
4) No matter how hard I try to pack a Pick-A-Brick cup (large), I always leave a few gaps that are glaringly obvious afterward.
5) LEGO Store employees have a thankless task – I saw two kids that were filling their free box, the one you get if you buy $75 or more before Christmas, and they were overfilling them and just having a blast, happily spilling LEGO pieces everywhere from PAB. Just grabbing handfuls of pieces and adding them to the box that was already spilling pieces. A LEGO Store employee had to literally sweep up several dozen pieces just from one girl. No parent in sight of course. I imagine that happens quite a bit.
6) As for the 10199 Winter Toy Shop, none available, which makes three stores I know of that are out.
7) Saw very few older sets – saw plenty of the new sets we and others have already covered. I’m wondering what will be available this Friday in addition to the Imperial Flagship. I’m also seeing this at non-LEGO retail stores such as Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, Target, etc. I’ve seen a lot of steeply discounted sets from Castle, Pirates, Spongebob, and Indiana Jones.

The most important news I think, besides the confirmation of the LEGO Atlantis: The Movie bit, was that the 10210 Imperial Flagship will be in stores and available on January 1st (Friday). Employees were very confident about this.

Update: Now available – 10210 Imperial Flagship

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If LEGO decides to do anymore of these army men sets, then I vote for a pack of airborne troopers like in the first Toy Story. I know they will never make a bucket of 100 LEGO minifig army men, but that would be awesome if they did. Maybe, LEGO can make a LEGO army men bucket to store these guys in. That’s just a suggestion, LEGO. Oh, and then package the bucket with some figs and maybe a green tank, or something.

By the Numbers:
Set: LEGO 7595 Toy Story Army Men on Patrol
Type: Vehicle in Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story Line
# of Pieces: 90
# of Extra pieces: None
# of Minifigs and what kind: 4 X Green Army Men
Stickers: None
Price: $10.99 at the official online LEGO Shop, also available at Amazon.com (price may vary)

(remember – click for larger versions at flickr – full 7595 Gallery)

Box Art:

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After seeing the comparison between the Creator 5867 Super Speedster and 8156 Ferrari, somebody worked out the actual size and asked me if the 5867 is minifig-scale. Luckily I caught the email right before I was about to tear down the speedster and work on the armored car build of it.

The answer is yes, sort of.

Simple answer: If you are willing to remove a tile from the seats, and remove the legs from the minifigs, you can fit them in there (click for larger image):

Shark man from the Atlantis sets doesn’t fit too well, as you can see, thanks to his shark half.

Complex (and proper) answer: If you were to change the seats, as well as change how the roof plate is supported, they would fit comfortably (minus any mini figures with large heads). The speedster is scaled to fit them if you make those changes. Changing it into a convertible might just be the easiest way to deal with the roof, and would allow you to work the seat tile back into the mix, raising the minifig so he can see over the steering wheel, but then you start getting into working on the dashboard…I would build it, look at what doesn’t work, then back up and tear it down to where you can work with them.

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