Rock Raiders II

Rock Raiders Postcards & Stickers
Originally uploaded by mhuffman

So I just read over on Eurobricks that Rock Raiders is making a come-back in 2009, but the new name is "Power Miners." The quote is, "Power Miners features a team of miners that dig into the Earth’s crust and encounter half-rock/half-crystal monsters. The range features collectible vehicles and mini-figures and monsters."

With the new molding process of mixing plastics, the half-rock/half-crystal monsters should look cool. And hopefully new colored power crystals.

Now, I like the Rock Raider line, so this isn't a bad thing. I thought it was a well thought out concept, but it needed to be developed more when it came to producing sets... more rock wall play-sets, maybe new parts to inspire underground cities or lost civilizations, or something that eluded to a rock-monster city -- I really do like the rock monster from the line.

Anyway, this gives me new hope for the return of "Time Twisters", "Time Cruisers" and the return of Timmy!

Pirates...

Get the monkey!
Originally uploaded by DARKspawn

It seems like everyone is excited by the prospect of pirates returning in 2009. But if you can't wait until then, check out the Classic Pirates Flickr group for inspiration.

Campy Batman Vigs

I'm a little surprised that there haven't been more campy Batman vigs. Adam West, the 60's Batman TV show and the wacky situations Batman and Robin were left in -- you'd think there'd be a die hard AFOL out there trying to reproduce some most famous episodes... though a lot of them elude me as I blog this... :)

The new Batman & Harlequin set was at the LIC when I went on Saturday -- I'll have to pick it up later. Ended up picking up a new Agents set with two dark-green alligators. I'm building the Jungle Cruise for GFLTC's display at NMRA/ILTCO convention in Anaheim in July...

#6971 Inter-Galactic Command Base

Just built a used copy of #6971 Inter-Galactic Comand Base tonight. Nice little classic space set. Two creator plates, 3 mini-figs, lots of blue windows, 3 trans-yellow plates, and 4 trans-red shields. It also comes with a little ship, a old style hover craft, and a rocket. The base itself is very open; accessibility, I guess. It was fun to build... but it's not like a pirate set or castle set... a little light on structure and details...

The Evolution of the Lego Marketplace

Back in the day, when the Lego community was a lot smaller, the Lego marketplace consisted of trade-deals (on RTL), selling Lego (also on RTL), e-mail based auctions, and Auczilla. This was in the very early days of eBay... before BrickLink...

I think as a community, we learned quickly about snipe-ing. And the evils of eBay. Even back then, it was hard to get a real good Lego deal on-line unless someone misfiled an item in the wrong category. There were several proposals for Lego auction site that would work against snipers... but I don't think they ever took off with much following.

BrickLink emerged as the defacto standard for buying/selling of Lego. Before that, it was Todd's Auczilla. With Auczilla, you received an e-mail with parts, quantity, color, description and opening bid. You bid by placing an 'X' by the lot you bid on and e-mail a copy back to the server. Scripts would run against all received e-mails and negotiated bid amounts. At the end, you would be e-mailed out the results... at that point, you could up your bid or not.

Thinking back upon it, it was a lot of work. Michael Ulring and myself had licensed similar e-mail auction software from Steve Demlow and ran a highly successful auction... but it really ended up being so much work, that we never had a second one... It was fun... It was exciting... But things got busy and by the time we considered doing another auction, BrickLink (or then named BrickBay) had appeared on the Lego scene...

Out of the Dark Ages

Building on yesterday's post, I emerged from my Lego dark ages back in 1998. Shortly after Christmas, I was walking through a Kohl's with my sister and niece. As we happened through the toy section, I noticed pirate Lego sets on clearance and I thought to myself, "hey... wouldn't that be cool to stick up on my desk at work..."

Looking at the Lego pirate sets, I had realized a few things: Lego was no longer just primary colored bricks... there was green, brown, and shades of gray; Lego was no longer about just bricks... there were minifigs (as I later came to know what they were called), cannons, horses, plants of different shapes and sizes, etc.; and Lego was about themes... castle, pirate, space...

I honestly don't remember what the first Lego set that I bought after coming out of my dark ages... I'm thinking it might have been a #6249 Bandit Ambush, but I could be mistaken. Or it might have been some castle set... I can't quite remember... I took to the internet with my new found love of Lego... found rec.toys.lego (RTL) and eBay... worlds opened up to me... found that I missed the 'golden-years' (in my opinion) of Lego (1980~1988) -- most of the sets I found most interesting came out during the '80s. Found out that people had scanned instructions and posted them on-line for others to build from. Found people were hosting part auctions, like AucZILLA. Found people who posted pictures of their own Lego creations called MOCs. It was a whole new strange, wonderful world filled with people like me -- Adult Fans of Lego (AFOLs).