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This is going to be very similar to the LEGO 30002 City Police Boat Review. It’s nearly identical in the number of pieces, and has the same price. You can view a comparison between the 30001 City Police Boat and 30002 Fire Chief (that is a flickr gallery) if you are curious.

What you are looking at is the 30001 City Fire Chief, a small 33 piece impulse set that comes with a Fire Chief minifig. It’s basically a 4-wheeler/All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV).

Again, no idea on the availability outside of Target stores or the US in general (or outside the US for that matter). I will say up front that if I had to choose between the two, I would pick this one. If you are picking for a small child, definitely buy this one in my opinion.

By the Numbers:
Set: 30001 City Fire Chief
Year of Release: 2010
Type: City / Impulse
# of Pieces: 33 (including 2 extra)
# of Extra pieces: (2 extra, see photo below)
# of Minifigs and what kind: 1 – Fire Chief / Firefighter
Stickers? No
Price: $2.99 at Target (US)
Ages: 5-10
Time to Complete: Less than 10 minutes

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This review is for one of the impulse sets available at Target (in the US) for some kind of Easter promotion. There is also a 30001 (Fire Chief) set as well as two Star Wars sets – 30050 Republic Attack Shuttle and 30051 – X-Wing. Both of the Star Wars sets are micro-scale and while the non-licensed Police Boat and Fire Chief are $2.99, the licensed Star Wars sets are $3.49. The Star Wars sets do come with more pieces. I’ll be posting reviews of the other three sets tonight and tomorrow.

Update:
* LEGO 30001 City Fire Chief Review
* Comparison between 30001 City Police Boat and 30002 Fire Chief (flickr)

As for whether these sets will continue to be produced beyond this run, or will be available elsewhere, I have no idea. They are actually cool little sets and I think good values for the price. They are not located in the toy section in the Targets I’ve seen them – I’ve only seen and read about them being in the Easter sections. They have popped up on Amazon.com and eBay, but you’re paying more.

By the Numbers:
Set: 30002 City – Police Boat
Year of Release: 2010
Type: City / Impulse Buy
# of Pieces: 32 (including 2 extra pieces)
# of Extra pieces: 2 (see photo below)
# of Minifigs and what kind: 1 – Police Officer
Stickers? No
Price: $2.99 at Target
Ages: 5-12
Time to Complete: Less than 10 minutes

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Last weekend, Kris Abel from CTV News visited the Canadian Toy & Hobby Fair and got a good look at upcoming LEGO sets from the LEGO Canada display. He posted a lot of pictures (would have loved more from some of the Atlantis sets) and a lot of them I was surprised at. They were some of the first good photos I’ve seen of some of the unreleased sets scheduled for later in the year.

A few highlights:

8077 Atlantis Exploration HQ

8078 Portal Of Atlantis

My observation on the Atlantis sets:
* The 8077 Atlantis Exploration HQ looks to be shaping up well. The first blurry shots I saw a while back made it look closer to the 7775 Aqua Raiders Aquabase Invasion. It looks to be a square-ish/self-contained structure which makes sense. I’m assuming the vehicles will dock on top.
* The 8078 Portal of Atlantis (the infamous Shark Temple or Shark Castle) is bigger than I thought and looks to have a lot of really cool and unique parts. It’s hard to get a sense of the minifigs since they were mixed together with other sets. There looks to be some parts in colors that we haven’t seen before. The box shows 898 pieces but that’s obviously subject to change since it’s a prototype. I’m not sure on new minifigs – there is a skeleton with some diving gear on that has a trident symbol on their head. You can barely make out what looks to be the “turtle warrior” on top of the Portal, that’s been discussed in the past.
* Kris mentioned when discussing the Space Police sets that Atlantis was the focus this year, hence the lack of a lot of new Space Police sets.

As Kris notes, a lot of the upcoming sets are prototypes/mock-ups and details are not yet finalized. Nothing from Harry Potter and nothing new from the Toy Story line that’s not already out. I’m not quite as interested in the World Racers line or the Hero Factory line, but it looks like both could give us some new parts or older parts in new colors. Looking at the boxes for the World Racers, I think they’ll probably sell very well to the target audience.

Some of the other sets shown (besides 8077/8078) include quite a few sets that are currently available and some that are limited right now or unavailable (depending on area), such as:
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Update: It’s available now (March 1, 2010) online at the official LEGO Shop.

We thought that LEGO’s 10211 Grand Emporium would be showing up in March as did everybody else. Turns out that we may get it at the beginning of March. Huw over at Brickset mentions that it looks to be shipping to North American and Europe a month from now.

The LEGO Shop has it listed in the LEGO Exclusives section and they are showing a ship date of March 3, 2010.

This is the description for it:

Welcome to the grand opening of the Grand Emporium!

“The LEGO Modular Buildings series continues with this spectacularly detailed 3-story department store, designed in a realistic scale with lots of special building techniques and rare pieces. On the street outside, citizens carry shopping bags, send letters at the mailbox, admire the window mannequins, then cool off at the ice cream stand while a busy window washer works above. Enter through the revolving doors to discover a ground-floor clothing department, complete with a cash register, fitting room, hats, jewelry, perfume, and even a selection of spare trousers. A brick-built escalator carries customers to the second floor housewares department with glassware and golden plates for special occasions, and then it’s up to the top floor for the toy department (complete with toy house and push-scooter) with an impressive chandelier above the open atrium. Up on the roof are a billboard and skylight!

Highlights:
* Measures 15″” (38 cm) high and 10 in (25 cm) wide
* 7 minifigures
* 2182 Pieces
* Designed for a corner location (similar to Cafe Corner)
* Prices: €.149,99, GBA 97.85 (UK), $149.99 (US)

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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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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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Having heard that quite a few new 2010 LEGO sets are popping up at Toys R Us and LEGOlands, I paid a visit to the Toys R Us in South Austin earlier today to have a look, and it was surprising.

We bought and are going to review in the next few days:
7592 Construct-a-Buzz (Toy Story)
7594 Woody’s Roundup (Toy Story)
8057 Wreck Raider (Atlantis)
8072 Sea Jet (Atlantis)
8073 Manta Warrior (Atlantis)
8083 Rebel Trooper Battle Pack (Star Wars)
8084 Snowtrooper Battle Pack (Star Wars)

First impressions: The Star Wars battle packs seem a bit high for the price, but the minifigs are awesome. The 8072 and 8073 were impulse kits priced at under $4. The Sea Jet in particular is great. The Wreck Raider is very neat for being under $12 – it comes with a Sharkman minifig and is the cheapest way to get one at this point. The Toy Story sets are also pretty nice, we were not after sets to review, but sets we wanted to keep around.

We also saw:
3187 Seaplane (City)
5891 Apple Tree House (Creator)
5898 Cars Building Set (Bricks and More)
5899 House Building Set (Bricks and More)
7206 Fire Helicopter (City)
7567 Traveler (City)
7595 Army Men on Patrol (Toy Story)
8059 Seabed Scavenger
8061 Gateway of the Squid (Atlantis)
8075 Neptune Carrier (Atlantis)
8085 Freeco Speeder (Star Wars)
8086 Droid Tri-Fighter (Star Wars)
8087 Tie Defender (Star Wars)
8088 Arc 170 Starfighter (Star Wars)
8519 Big Chill (Ben 10 from Cartoon Network)

There were probably Racers and some other sets we missed, but it was an impressive amount of new sets coming out all at once. It makes a lot more sense about Toys R Us trying to clear the shelves with a lot of good sales recently (Buy 1/Get 1 50% off, etc.).