6625- Speed Trackers

I always remember having this set, so it was likely one of my first 10 and certainly a staple to my town.  It remains one of only two pure Police sets I own, the other also being a 1996 release.

This lovely Town set comes with 2 policemen, a police car, a police motorbike, and a couple accessories.

41050- Ariel's Amazing Treasures

The Little Mermaid was one of my favorite movies when I was a tiny Kane, so my jaw dropped when I saw that Lego was making two Mermaid sets, as well as a handful of other Disney Princess sets.

I would have gotten a Cinderella set or the other Mermaid set, but they seemed to provide too little for the price and drew too much from the early Friends concept of overly colorful and easy build sets.






The set comes with Ariel, fish friend Flounder, a gate construction, a small plant section, and a section with treasure chest and treasures.  A good water themed addition to my Summer Collection.

6517- Water Jet

It's hard for me to believe that this Town set is 18 years old.  I would have been about 7 when I received it to bulk up my town, which is right about when I started getting a lot of sets as gifts.  The water jet set stands the test of time and comes with one minifigure, water vehicle, and two buoy constructions.  A great little addition to my Summer Collection.

41028- Emma's Lifeguard Post

This is my third Friends set with Emma in it.  It's nice to see that they moved the settings of these small sets to the outdoors and it thus provides a nice addition to my Summer Collection.











This set comes with minidoll Emma, a dolphin, a lifeguard tower, a flag post, a sandcastle construction, and several accessories including swimming flippers, binoculars, a bucket, and a first aid case.

6026- King Leo

This is one of the few Castle sets I got as a child although I'm not sure why I received this one as I also have King Leo's Castle, making this set fairly redundant.  This little set is extremely simple featuring King Leo, Richard the Strong, a white horse, a small castle construction, and accessories.

851464- Chewbacca Key Chain

What a wookiee, indeed.  I'm not overly impressed with this Star Wars minifigure, but it does the job.  Like all my other keychains, I soldered off the keychain bit, leaving a small hole on the top of his head.

30113- Stephanie's Bakery Stand

This little polybag came as a surprise to me in January 2014 when I placed an online order containing a Friends set.  It comes with mini doll Stephanie, a small stand, and a handful of Lego food items, two of which are brand new to me.

850451- Lord Vampyre Key Chain

Another person to add the the Halloween/Autumn Party that is my quarterly rotating display table.  This well detailed figure is a member of the Monster Fighters theme, of which I have only one small set.

Lego Key Chain removal- soldering iron method

A while ago, I had a Spider Man Key Chain and wished to remove the keychain bit so that he was a free minifigure.  First, I researched how and came up with some videos showing people doing this with pliers.  I was able to get the keychain down to the tiny nub that holds the main screw into place, but with no amount of twisting and pulling could I get the screw out.

So I invested in a very cheap soldering iron.  I'd never used one before and was uncertain of what the results would be, but I just desperately wanted to win over that bit of metal.







To remove key chains, all I do now is plug the iron in, hook it around not the ring attached to the screw, but the one just above that, and lightly twist and pull until the screw comes out.  I don't hook the iron in the ring attached to the screw because I think the iron is then too close to the figure and it seems easier for the iron to slip and accidentally burn part of the figure.  Also, you would need pliers to get it down to that screw nub and I don't want to bother with that.





Some of the screws have come out easier than others, and thus the end result looks different on different figures.  Using this method, you are using the metal screw to heat up the plastic Lego and make it pliable enough to move.... in other words, you are melting the inside of the figure.  So you need to be careful and do it as quickly as you can.  I've 6 figures now that I liberated using the iron and somehow I, someone who had never done such a thing before, have not messed it up.  Overall, I find the process fun and hope you will consider trying this as well if you are like me and want figures free from chains.  Good Luck!

41041- Turtle's Little Paradise

The Friends subtheme of animals now consists of 12 little habitat sets, with 6 more planned.  Oddly, this is the second time a turtle has been done, the other being set 41019- Turtle's Little Oasis from just last year in 2013.  I'm happy that they have made a second turtle as I'm fond of them, and all can go in my Summer Display.

Unlike the other turtle set and others in early Animal Series', this turtle home has a natural appearance and is a dollar cheaper, which are both welcome changes.


In this set, we get a purple Lego turtle, a habitat with water, tree, and flower elements, and a separate small fruit plant construction.

852841- Princess Leia Key Chain

Another soldered off keychain minifigure for my collection.  This is the 2010 keychain version of Star Wars heroine Princess Leia which I picked up some months ago.  Apparently there is a new 2014 version of her in an outfit that looks like she's at Hoth in an administrative role, sans her iconic hair buns.

4200- Mining 4x4

This vehicle is part of a city mining set, but I pretend it is a construction one to go along with set 4201- Loader and Tipper and put it to work fixing up my City.  Likely with mini set 5610- Builder helping out.

This set comes with one minifig worker, vehicle with construction accessories and crate, and openable boulder with rocks and gold pieces.

9469- Gandalf Arrives

I squeak when I think about this set.  It is simply so heartwarmingly iconic and has the added benefit of some very cute accessories.

This horse-drawn cart set illustrates the first moments Gandalf comes back to the Shire and meets up with Frodo, before any notion of Middle Earth saving adventure is whispered of.

To help us reacquaint the wizard with the hobbit folk of the Lord of the Rings world, we get Gandalf the Grey, Frodo, a well constructed cart, brown horse, barrel of fireworks, satchel with letter, brown book, and a carrot.

70400- Forest Ambush

I have a few Knights Kingdom sets from 2000, but this is my most recent Castle / Kingdom / Knights and Bad Guys filled set.  Until something else catches my eye, this small set serves to flesh out my current collection with some people and small constructions.  

The set comes with two good King's Knight minifigures, two bad'un Dragon soldier minifigures, a dog, a cart with chest filled with treasures, and a small forest hideout construction with lots of tricks.

850487- Halloween Accessory Set

In opposition to what it may say in many ebay ads, this set is not related to the Monster Fighters theme.  It's formally named a Halloween set, but on the lego shop site it is under the Collectible Minigifures theme.  Lego created a few of these "combi-packs" with figures in a related theme (Rock Band, Beach) from different CM series', along with some items and little constructions to bring it all together.









The figures in this set are meant to be a collection of Zombie from Series 1, Witch from Series 2, and a ghost from no series.  We also get a tombstone construction, plants, accessories for each of the figures, and six animals.

850779- Legends of Chima Minifigure Accessory Set

I have to start out by saying that I am in no way a fan of the Legends of Chima.  I don't know any of the character's names (before the research I did for this post) and the Lego sets are too crazy for my mostly organized Lego universe (though I'm softening up to some of the machine sets that look like animals).  I initially bought this set just to get the white winged Eagle Ewar, for an animation I planned to do.  However, the printing on all of these figures is so fantastic that I'm now glad I have them.

This set provides us with 4 figures- black Raven Tribe Razcal, grey Wolf Tribe Winzer, brown Lion Tribe Lennox, and white Eagle Tribe Ewar.  They each come with their own weapons, and a translucent blue crystal on a stick thing.  (my research only gets me so far)

60019- Stunt Plane

I was very happy to see this little City plane up for sale, as the airport planes are a bit pricey for me at the moment.  Aside from the model plane in 31001-Mini Skyflyer, the only other plane I have is from the 1996 set 6331-Patriot Jet, which is something of a stunt plane as well.  See additional images below for back of box.










This set comes with a stickered stunt plane, a tool cart, and 2 minifigures.  See below for picture of sticker sheet.  

4723- Diagon Alley Shops

This set is by far my favorite of the three two-scene sets produced for the first Harry Potter movie.  So many accessories!  The only thing that would make this set better is if I had the cardboard background that first came with it.






Along with lovely Hermione, we get a wizard accessory/potions shop and an animal/wand shop.  Much can be left up to the imagination as to what some of the items in the shops actually are.

4722- Gryffindor House

This is the second of the two-scene 2001 Harry Potter sets, and again while I don't have the cardboard background that originally came with it, it's still a lovely little set.














One of the areas of the Gryffindor House is a small common room and the other is a sleeping quarter.

4721- Hogwarts Classrooms

Lego made three of these two-scene Harry Potter sets in 2001.  Great alternative to having to buy a full castle or larger set, but I can't help but notice that the colour scheme in these sets are very different from the rest.  The colours used seem very similar to the current Friends theme and I wonder (and now presume) if these were targeted towards girls.  The sets also come with a cardboard background of the area in question, which I sadly don't have.

Admiral Ackbar- Loose Minifigure

I was going to get a $25 Star Wars set solely for the Han Solo and Admiral Ackbar figures, but I instead decided to buy Ackbar loose from ebay.  I later got Han in the Microbuilders set 75030 Millennium Falcon.  As of now, aside from that $25 dollar set, the only other set Ackbar appears is in a $110 set.  The Admiral Ackbar key chain stopped selling in 2011, so while I don't like buying loose, incomplete things, ebay was my best way to get the figure without falling into a price trap.

852550- CW Yoda Key Chain

Another little buy to get a great character without getting the set. This Yoda is technically a Star Wars Clone wars version, which you can tell by the large eyes with colour detail.  Overall, he has great head detail, lots of little wrinkles for this 900 year old.  The back of his head has a big mass of white hair which you can see in the picture below.  His ears are nice and pointy and a bit bendy on the ends.

40025- New York Taxi

This polybag seemed pretty adorable, so I decided to buy it as a retired product on Amazon.  Originally though, it was available in Lego Stores in New York  for a limited time and in Toys R Us stores during December 2012.  I really liked the concept of a little yellow taxi, as the one in my Train Station set seemed a bit bulky.  However, what I didn't know is that this car is actually a model, meaning not to Lego figure scale.

40078- Hot Dog Stand

This was a free polybag with qualifying Lego purchases during July 2013 and I'm fairly certain I made sure my virtual cart was full enough to qualify for this set.  Some of the "free with purchase" sets are truly amazing and this is my favorite one so far with two minifigures (male and female), a hot dog cart, and a bicycle.

71001- Minifigures Series 10

Series 10 of the Collectible Minifigures was pretty special because a set number of packets contained the rare Mr. Gold.  Not made out of gold, just a very rare shiny gold coloured man.  I remember seeing him on auction on ebay for upwards of $300.  Fairly crazy, but if you are a collector, then you had little choice but to try and get one of the 5000 produced. I didn't care about getting him (looked a bit dull to me anyway), but instead wound up with 10 figures from series 10.