The dark side of the brick

Well, it's been a while since I posted anything but I've been busy doing enough deconstructions to move all Lego off the floor of my study before I turned the underfloor heating on.  My spreadsheet tells me that I'm 24% of the way through the whole lot so after 5 months, I had better revise my estimate on how long it will take me to get all the way there.  One other thing I need to revise is my estimate on how many boxes and ziplock bags I'm going to need... I bought 50 cardboard shoeboxes (the ones with pull out drawers) but over 30 of them are already full, in addition to the Really Useful and Ikea boxes I already had.  Hmm. Anyway, what's been deconstructed that I've not already blogged about... first off was the majority of the Droid fighters, including: Droid fighter 7111 Vulture droid from 7660 Vulture droid 7751 Vulture droid 75041 Hyena droid bomber 8016 The only one of this ilk still made up is the 2005 vulture droid from 75256.  These aren't my fav...

I'm going to start with an admission and a grumble... because I was away at the weekend playing Lego with my 7-yr old niece for the first time since August last year, I didn't log on to the Lego website until lunchtime on Saturday.  By which time, the Tatooine homestead freebie was already out of stock!  WTF...  OK, so I was slow off the mark but surely Lego should make sure they have enough to last more than 10% of the way through their promotion period.  10%!!!  Anyway, I've got my R2 order in (already despatched) and have reluctantly stumped up for the homestead on Ebay.   Back home now and today's build was the last of the AT-TEs - the 2003 version ( 4482 ).  This was another Ebay purchase but came in pretty good condition and was nearly correct/complete.  It's also full of some pretty interesting bricks - no less than 11 of them go for more than £5 each on Bricklink and the estimated "new" cost of a rebuild is a whopping £742.  A surpris...

Back in 2016, I was buying some of the Lego Star Wars sets but hadn't yet conceived of the ludicrous plan to own them all.  Captain Rex's AT-TE ( 75157 ) one was one of the sets I looked at and liked but couldn't quite bring myself to buy.  What attracted me was that it was clearly Star Wars but it was colourful and quite different from the usual sets.   A while back, I finally managed to get my hands on a brand new version, which was priced cheap because someone had made the mistake of opening it (why do people do this if you have no intention to build it?  It immediately takes 20% off the resale price).  Given it's Easter weekend, I've been taking on slightly bigger sets so this one came off the pile. I have to say that I really enjoyed the build - there were lots of interesting elements and, apart from the side panels, remarkably little repetitive work.   You get a number of unique minifigs too: Imperial Inquisitor Fifth is the most unusual, bu...

I spent most of yesterday afternoon cleaning up two recent ebay purchases, both of which turned up dusty and with a number of yellowed bricks. Today, I built the first of them: the 2nd version of the AT-TE from 2008 ( 7675 ).  I already have the 2013 version (75019) but not the original 2003 (4482), which remains one of the 20 or so sets I still need to source before I complete my Lego Star Wars collection. According to the interweb, the AT-TE is an All-terrain tactical enforcer, used during the clone wars with a heavy duty mass driver cannon on top.  I remember them from Attack of the Clones which isn't my favourite of the Star Wars films, containing as it does the least plausible romance ever to grace a cinema screen and an Anakin which is even more annoying than the one from The Phantom Menace if that's possible.   Well, on to the Lego... this is a medium sized set in terms of number of bricks but works out quite large in volume due to the quite empty interior....