Nothing More Annoying...

Just got a package of 10 lbs of Lego in the mail today... it's not to terrible... paid a little too much for it. About 30% of it was Tente and MegaBlocks. The bricks themselves weren't too dirty or smell too funky -- they're used, so I expected them to be played with. But I was suprised at the number of broken plates... just snapped in half... and some pieces look like they were shot with a BB gun... And it broke my heart seeing that someone took super glue to some of the parts -- very annoying.

The suprising thing was, there were some really old parts in the mix; say early to mid-70's, because the Lego logo on the pips was the old logo and parts from a few homemaker figures.

Happy Easter

Great looking rabbit done by felixisgr8... a.k.a. Felix Greco

That Old Lego Feeling

Reinhard "Ben" Beneke echo my thoughts lately:

I feel a general loss of interest in LEGO: blay and the end of 9V (which I take for guaranteed) have shown me how unimportant we are. Lots of broken promises from LEGO employees over the past 3 years have proven, that LEGO is not differing from other "bad" companies like Mercedes (now having quality trouble as LEGO); Microsoft, GE or Siemens. Old values do not count anything when you can sell them for a few pennies... Fan of LEGO System and SYSTEM colours 1964...2003.

On Saving Lego Castle...

I think Lego was lucky to tap into the Star Wars collector's market... Cheap robots has been another market the Lego Group have been able to tap into... But here's my idea... to "save" casle -- and I say this tongue in cheekly -- there are thousands of people spending hundres of millions of dollars on World of Warcraft minitures armies... some have found that it's cheaper to build armies in Lego. I say release castle minifig packs again, marketed with these people in line... let the product line have Orcs, Goblins, bring back the Harry Potter Ogre, Elves, Dwarfs... not something that fans have pieced together from different sets over time, but themed this way... Give each minifig a 4x4 green plate to stand on (or a 4x6 plate if the minifig is mounted on a horse), different heads, torsos, legs, at least 1 to 2 different weapon for each minifig, a few helmets, shields, armor... Have a baddies pack, base on the same idea... They'll sell.

Update:  TLG has done this to some extent with Battle Pack Knights and Battle Pack Skeletons.  All they need now are battle pack dwarves, orcs, and trolls.  :)

Stupid K-Mart.com

So get this... I get the paper on Sunday & see that K-Mart has a 'buy one get one half off' sale on Lego. Since they closed most of the K-Marts in Columbus, decided that I'd go on-line & see if I can buy a few sets. Now, I was out at TRU's web-site earlier that day, they have the same sale going on... They give you a coupon to enter when you check out to get items on sale... So I go on K-Marts web-site thinking they might have a similar situation. I looked on-line, found a few sets that I wanted to buy, added them to my cart, then started looking for a coupon... hm... I found the circular from my area, but didn't find a coupon.

So I decided to call their customer service number... hit the #2 to connect to K-Mart.com support... and they're closed... and guess what, they don't tell you when their open hours are!

Decided to wait till 9pm EST... Called again & finally got a hold of someone. Well, guess what... the circular only applies to those going into a store, it doesn't apply on-line. STUPID!

"I can apply the sale to your order, if you want to go ahead & place an order on-line...", the CSR said. "Right...", I thought to myself. I just don't want to go through the hassle. Only to have them screw it up & I spend another few hours of my time fighting to get my money back.

It's just stupid, frustrating, & needless to say, K-Mart didn't get my business. It's no wonder they're loosing money, when their technology can't meet the needs of their customers... Or they can't adopt their business to changing technology.