LEGO, take my money.

So, Ninjago is coming back. Good. I do not care much about Chima. Cannot wait for 2014. I can see all the mech sets about to come.

Slithering Snakes

Here is the preliminary, not confidential, cover image of the 2012 Ninjago Brickmaster book that is coming out on October from Dorling Kindersley (DK).

LEGO Ninjago Fight the Power of the Snakes! Brickmaster

Suitable for LEGO fans, this title lets you join the Ninjas on their quest to defend the four mystic weapons of Spinjitzu and make 12 exclusive LEGO models as you go. It includes two different minifigures, over 100 bricks, and a set of scenarios for the Year of the Snake.

ISBN: 9781409383253

Judging from the last time DK came out with the Ninjago Brickmaster draft cover, I think there will only be minor changes to the cover shown here.

In addition, there are 2 Ninjago activity books with minifgures that are coming on August, but I cannot find the cover images. (You know how LEGO is with their top secret images. *s)

Bricks and Boards

Grab your boards. The city or the the sea? Your pick.

Here are 2 upcoming LEGO Activity Books with Minifigures to add to you purchase list. Releasing on May 2012.

LEGO CITY: Big City Life

LEGO City minifigures attempt to make it to school on time, perform skateboarding tricks and even serve pizza to a werewolf. This title lets you build your very own LEGO City minifigure, read the stories and complete the puzzles.

ISBN: 9781409314103

LEGO CITY: Harbour Activity Book

Lets you join the LEGO City minifigures for some fishy adventures down at the harbour. This book helps you build your very own LEGO City minifigure, read the stories and complete the puzzles.

ISBN: 9781409314110

Golden Bricks

" One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. "


From LEGO.com:

Warner Bros. Consumer Products and The LEGO Group announced today a partnership that awards the world’s leading construction toy brand exclusive rights to develop build-and-play construction sets based on THE LORD OF THE RINGS™ trilogy and the two films based on THE HOBBIT™. The multi-year licensing agreement grants access to the library of characters, settings, and stories for THE LORD OF THE RINGS property, as well as films The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again.

LEGO® THE LORD OF THE RINGS construction sets are slated for a rolling global launch beginning in June 2012 in the United States, with LEGO THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY scheduled for later in the year.

.., and my resolve to stick to basic bricks faces a new, and tremendous, challenge.

Let Them Go

From the toy loving people of the Die-cast Car Collectors of the Philippines:


Fellow collectors,

One of the annual highlights of the 6th Christmas Toy Fair is the donation of toys to the less-fortunate children of our society. The beneficiaries for this year are Kythe Foundation for cancer-stricken children of the National Children's Hospital and ABS-CBN's Larunungan Kalinga Kapamilya Toy Drive for kindergarten students.

Unknown to some, DCPH is a regular contributor to this cause thru some of our kind-hearted members and it will be more special to participate now because we are staging our 1st Philippine Diecast and Custom Car Show during the Toy Fair event. Years ago, on our own, we also gave contributions to BATA Foundation, a charitable institution looking after abandoned street children, and to National Children's Hospital as well.

On behalf of the DCPH Execomm and 1st Philippine Diecast and Custom Car Show organizers, I'd like to ask for your humble contribution to this cause by donating your unused or extra toys to these children. Let's give our share in bringing smiles to these children's faces and make them forget even for a few moments their unfortunate condition. Toys may not necessarily be diecast cars. You may also donate other kinds or cash directly to Kythe Foundation.

For the toy donation, you may bring your items during the swapmeet day, Dec. 18 (Sun) and look for any DCPH Execomm member. The official turnover to them will be in the afternoon.

Thank you in advance for your generous contribution and may it reciprocate happiness to you as well. God bless you all and Merry Christmas, DCPH!

Going hungry..

And they have done it. The one thing to hook a toy VW Kombi and LEGO hobbyist.

This is the yet to be released LEGO VW Van - 10220.

No lunch breaks for me now!

* Picture scanned by Captain Eugene from Flickr.

2012 Is Over.

The cover image for the LEGO: The Official Annual 2012, which is talked about briefly here, has finally surfaced.

" This awesome annual is bursting with brilliant comics, games and activities about all your favourite LEGO® ranges, including LEGO® CITY, LEGO® Kingdoms and the awesome new ninja theme, LEGO® Ninjago! With LEGO® bricks to build and play with too, this is the perfect Christmas gift for LEGO® fans! "

Making A Difference

Andrew Carol has made a working LEGO version of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine. The machine that is made up of about 2000 LEGO parts can evaluate polynomials having the form of Ax^2 + Bx + C for x=0, 1, 2, …

Now, this is a MOC.

Build Me A City

I am having second thoughts about acquiring The LEGO Ideas Book that is set to come out on August. A couple of sample inside pages have hit the net and they are plain "meh" material. For those who are feeling like me, LEGO Certified Professional Sean Kenney's latest might be a better purchase. I passed on both Cool Cars and Trucks and Cool Robots because they required special pieces, and we only have basic bricks, but I am really keen on getting Cool City. The cover alone convinced me (such yummy buildings), I do not need any sample pages.

Available on hardback and having 32 pages, it comes out on October 11, 2011, although most popular online bookshops have it on preorder now. If the description is true, there will be a guide for a mini metropolis. Think Micro Building Set (Dacta 9324). Now, that is cool.

Die Trees, Die!

Just like real Ninjas they have crept up unnoticed. (Or, like me, nobody is paying attention.) The same guys responsible for putting out the LEGO Atlantis and LEGO City series of activity books, Penguin, are at it again. On August two new activity books with minifigures based on the new LEGO Ninjago theme will be released. Also on August, expected to come out are two LEGO City storybooks with minifigures and accessories and the LEGO: The Official Annual 2012. Then another LEGO City activioty book with minifigure comes out on October.

LEGO Ninjago Spinning Power Activity Book with LEGO minifigure
5+; Paperback; 290 x 205 mm; 24pp £5.99; 9781409309369

LEGO Ninjago The Chosen Four Activity Book with LEGO minifigure
5+; Paperback; 290 x 205 mm; 24pp; £5.99; 9781409309352

LEGO City Storybook with LEGO minifigures and accessories
5+; Paperback; 240 x 200 mm; 34pp; £6.99; 9781409309321

LEGO City: Police on Alert! Storybook with LEGO minifigures and accessories
5+; Paperback; 240 x 200 mm; 34pp; £6.99; 9781409309314

LEGO: The Official Annual 2012
5+; Hardback; 285 x 215 mm • 64pp; £7.99; 9781409309345

LEGO City Activity Book with LEGO minifigure 2
5+; Activity Book; 290 x 205 mm; 24pp; £5.99; 9781409310365


Now, I do not know how popular the Ninjago theme is among AFOLs (It sure is a hit with the kids, especially in Australia as this news article would show), but I am getting these activity books when they become available. We have both the Atlantis and two of the City, with the other two expected to get here in a couple of weeks. Bang for your buck, these books are. Definetly worth adding to The LEGO Ideas Book and the Brickmasters. Little P. loves the activities, and it is always good when the minifigure population count grows. All that for a tiny fraction of what you would spend on a Collectible Minifgure.

None of these book are availble for preorder as of now. No cover images too. Keep your eyes peeled.

Book It!

That image of the LEGO Ideas Book that I stumbled upon actually came with images of 2 other upcoming LEGO books from DK Publishing- Brickmaster City and Brickmaster Ninjago. I did not put up the images of those 2 since they were marked "confidential", and I did not want to go against The Lego Group's policy on confidential images.

A couple of days ago I found what might be the final product images, different from the confidential images. Here they are:

The books, which will both have 2 minifigures included, aside from the bricks, will come out on July. SRP is $29.99. I am definitely picking up the City. Am not into Ninjas.

Forget Paris

So, it looks like I really do not have any intention of going to Paris any time soon as I totally forgot that the wifey mentioned it last week. Haha. But, Malaysia is definitely in my travel plans for the next couple of years. I have never been to Malaysia, despite its proximity to Singapore (which a favorite of ours), Little P. too. Big P have been there, I know, but that was ages ago.

Aside from the Legoland which is on schedule to open on 2012. I need some more Malaysia "stuff" to justify to the wifey that a trip is in order. Bags, would definitely be an attraction to her. Of course, there must be something for the little one, but the Legoland already has that covered. (Wink, wink) Pipe in with your recommendations, I would greatly appreciate that. Themeparks are shooins, we love themeparks. Museums, not so much.

Located across Universal Studios Singapore, with just a waterway in between, Legoland Malaysia will offer 40 rides to go along with shows and displays. The display, of course, will feature famous structures in Asia, and require around 30 million bricks to build. Legoland Malayasia will only be the 6th of its kind in the whole world, and will be the 1st in Asia.

(Don't you just love their ties?)

Photos from AFP via The Straits Times.

Get A Brick, We'll Travel

We have never been to Paris, and, even though the wifey would love it, it has never been in my list of places to visit. Serious or otherwise, we have never had any discussions about going there. The closest I have been to the Eiffel Tower, aside from a 3-inch souvenir someone gave the wifey, is at a large-scale display in Hong Kong a couple of Christmases ago. It was quite a surprise coming home to a LEGO "Paris Tower" made by Little P. Colorful, the litlle thing is, just the way I like it. Plus, it doubles as a spaceship, according to my 6-year old who just go introduced to LEGO last December. (Most architects will never think of that!)

(Photo from Tour-Eiffel.com)

LEGO come out with an Eiffel Tower (10181) set in 2007. Built to 1:300 scale and stands 42.5 inches high, the realistic tower retailed for $199.99. Of course, today it goes for 5 times the original price.

I Will Blog For Bricks

It is now official, Guinness World Records recently confirmed that DK Publishing - The LEGO Group have broken the world records for the largest image made with interlocking bricks. The mosaic, which is that of a Star Wars poster to celebrate the LEGO Brickmaster book, required 384,000 Lego bricks and 1500 baseplates, took 3 days to complete (23-25 October, 2010) and measured 97.5 square meters.

That is a lot of money to burn. Good thing this was backed by TLG. Me? I am, for the last couple of months, thinking (dreaming) of ways to raise money for my own mosaic project. I made some calculations, and based on S@H prices I need around 10,000 pesos to create a simple mosaic on a 48x48 baseplate.

While you're contemplating on how much to donate to my mosaic fund, head over to DK Canada for videos and more pictures. Maybe those will inspire you to shell out some dough. I promise, I will not employ children to work on my mosaics.

Brick Brock, LEGO Rocks.

This is why LEGO Collectible Minifigures Series 4 rocks.

Photo from Brickset via Grogall.

From Sand To Concrete

We went out to get Little P's prize from Build City the other day. It ended up being a big Racers set. Not really fit for a little girl. She opened it, looked at the sealed baggies and decided to sell it to her mom for funds to get a City Corner.

(Taken with the LEGO Camera.)

Little P is quite right, you cannot play Sylvanians with Racers.

A Girl and Her Fish

Little P.'s LEGO Mermaid won Build City's Minifigs In Action contest.

Heaven In Technicolor

LEGO shopping in Singapore is like heaven. Not only because of the much better selection but also, and more importantly, because of the cheaper price. It is great to see sets going at prices close to, or even lower (with discounts) than, their US retail prices. Our local price goes from double to almost triple of retail, which is just plain crazy.

Of course, since we are trying to stay away from themed sets, we picked up mostly Bricks & More and a couple of City impulse sets with minifigs to go with them.

If you are hitting Singapore and plan to pick up a few sets, hop on over to A Modular Life for a fantastic shopping guide maintained by a nice AFFOL Erica.

Sticky Little Fingers

We finally picked up a netbook today, ASUS Eee PC 1005HA. The 10 hour battery life got us sold. Went over Gateway Cubao to buy it so that we can join the raffle for Toshiba NB200 (haha).



Popot might have outgrown her Leapfrog Clickstart now, and have been craving for her own real computer. (Though she still will not sell her Clickstart.) She still draws, most of the time, but has been spending more and more time with the Asus, doing online Disney Princess and Barbie online games. She likes Starfall too, which is a good thing. I am going to have her hooked on Funschool one of these days. Another benefit of having "her" own computer is that she does not "bother" us anymore when we are using our computers, or the Nintendo Wii (large scale Internet FTW).

Do Not Touch My Hot Rod

I was looking at some of my diecast cars, the Kombis. It felt like they were unhappy for being neglected. I have not been able to add to this line, my main, for quite some time now. The last piece, a Disney Store exclusive Fillmore, was acquired September of last year. I have actually bought several pieces since then, none of which are Kombis. I have a new "main" line. One that will remain a secret for now. Sorry, no Ferraris here!