New LEGO books and exclusive minifigs

UPDATE on 10 March: Via Brickset, here’s the PDF version of a Dorling Kindersley catalogue that has revealed several other LEGO book releases including jacket designs and some inside pages.  New books include the revised The LEGO Book, a Friends Brickmaster (with exclusive Chloe minifig).  

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Hey, a couple of new books and some surprises, for me at least.   I mean, I really didn’t expect the LEGO Batman: The Visual Dictionary and LEGO Ninjago Character Encyclopedia.  There aren’t that many Batman sets anyway, right?   They should be accompanied by ‘exclusive’ minifigs like the other books in the series I guess…

These below are on DK’s Winter 2012 Catalog, and mostly listed on Amazon so no surprises.  Another ‘exclusive’ minifig is always nice, tho I could do with another Harry Potter character rather than Harry (again! wonder which costume tho).  There is also Cool Castles by Sean Kenney, but to be honest given the regularity at which I see fantastic castle MOCs it’ll take quite a bit for me to be impressed.

Lego: The Calendar 2013

$12.99 / August 15, 2012

9780761166962, 0761166963

LEGO: The Calendar is a lively celebration of the classic toy: London’s Tower Bridge. A forest rangers’ mountain outpost. A medieval castle, host to the jousting match of the century. The astonishingly detailed creations will make you smile with their sheer ingenuity. The photos are accompanied by text filled with historical lore and real-life stories of spectacular constructions from around the world.

LEGO® Minifigures Series 1-7 Ultimate Sticker Collection

$12.99 / May 21, 2012

9780756692513, 0756692512

96 pages

What do a punk rocker, a mummy, and the Statue of Liberty have in common? They are all part of the amazing collection of minifigures that make up LEGO® Minifigures!  As kids and collectors know, each sealed mystery bag contains a random minifigure. Each series has sixteen possible minifigures—and all of them are now available in sticker form!  Kids of all ages can use their imagination to create cool and wacky scenes with more than 1,000 reusable full-color stickers featuring LEGO minifigures inspired by movies, sports, history, or even just everyday life in DK’s LEGO Minifigures Series 1–7 Ultimate Sticker Collection.

LEGO® Harry Potter: The Characters of the Magical World  (with EXCLUSIVE MINIFIG!)

$18.99 / Hardback / June 18, 2012

9780756692575, 0756692571

Meet the magical minifigures of the LEGO® Harry Potter™ world in DK’s latest addition to our new series,LEGO® Harry Potter™: Characters of the Magical World!  From the multiple variations of Harry and Ron to the unique characteristics of Snape and Voldemort, readers can learn about each minifigure and the magical sets they star in while learning fun and interesting LEGO Harry Potter facts! In-depth profiles alongside dynamic photography will help you to increase your LEGO Harry Potter knowledge and perhaps encourage young readers to conjure up a few spells of their own!

Singapore Only: Update on March & April Arrivals

Hey, thanks to Alvin n Rekseah for the heads up. 🙂

March Arrivals

So the sets have already arrived or are arriving in Singapore stores this week depending on the usual delivery schedule, so you can head over to your favourite stores this week for some retail therapy.  Here’s the full list of March arrivals taken off ToyStation’s email:

LEGO City

• 3365 Space Moon Buggy
• 3366 Satellite Launch Pad
• 3367 Space Shuttle
• 3368 Space Center

LEGO Games

• 3852 Sunblock
• 3853 Banana Balance
• 3854 Frog Rush
• 3855 Ramses Return
• 3856 LEGO Ninjago

LEGO DUPLO

• 5945 Winnie The Pooh’s Picnic
• 5946 Tigger’s Expedition
• 5947 Winnie The Pooh’s House

LEGO Pharaoh’s Quest

• 7305 Scarab Attack
• 7306 Golden Staff Guardians
• 7307 Flying Mummy Attack
• 7325 Cursed Cobra Statue
• 7326 Rise Of The Sphinx
• 7327 Scorpion Pyramid

LEGO Technic

• 8070 Supercar

Quick computation n the LEGO Games pricing is fairly reasonable after 20% discount off local price.  SunBlock n Banana Balance is a little pricier, but not worth the trouble of shipping in & risking damaged boxes.  Supercar is still a shocking S$36 more even after 20% discount locally tho…

So far I’ve heard that the sets are already at BricksWorld, ToyStation & Metro (dunno which branch tho). 

And BricksWorld’s member specials for March/April are:

• 3368 Space Center @ $103.90 (20%)
• 5947 Winnie The Pooh’s House @ $55.90 (20%)
• 8099 Midi Scaled Imperial Star Destroyer @ $77.31 (10%)
• 8864 Desert of Destruction @ $187.11 (10%)

Don’t understand the last 2 since members get 10% off anyway, so what’s so special about the pricing??

Ok, and on to….

…

April Arrivals

Some good news and some bad news here.

The good? 10217 Diagon Alley and 8804 Collectible Minifig Series 4 are arriving in April! Yay!  And no price increase in Series 4 figs, so it’s S$3.90 each or $234 for a box of 60.

The bad? The price for DA is shockingly disgustingly bad. So bad that I feel like boycotting getting any sets locally. It’s S$319.90 vs US$149.90.  Before discount, the diff is like S$125!! S$125???! It’s like… WTF… (hey, I assume you are all adult readers and I’ve had a pretty crappy day at work… if you are offended, pls stop reading)

Even after a 20% discount, the price is still a weltering S$255.92, or S$61 more… considering that I need like 2 more… may even work out cheaper shipping in from the USA.

Toy Fair 2011 Updates by FBTB

Quick one:  Ryan & Ace from FBTB have done a marvellous job at the Toy Fair with the best quality pics for the LEGO exhibits that I’ve seen so far, including close-ups of minifigs, set play features, close-ups of sets/interiors. 

Do visit FBTB’s Flickr photostream to see the pics.

And Happy Valentines Day everyone. 🙂

New SW Pics & NY Toy Fair 2011 Pics & Videos

EB’s KimT reports on new SW pics, uncovered by Grogall (hurray).  If you are a Star Wars fan, do head over to this EB thread to see more pics.

I’m expecting more and more pics from the NY toy fair to surface while I’m in bed, so here are some links for your convenience… seeing as we have already seen a fair number of the sets from the German toy fair, I’m just looking out for those we haven’t seen yet…

• The FBTB guys are at the fair so look out for updates on FBTB from the RSS feed on the right, or check FBTB’s flickr account.  The guys estimate that they’ll start uploading pics around 12 noon EST on Sunday February 13.
• KimT also shared this link to Sir Steve’s Guide which already has pics from the toy fair.

Yodanews is posting videos of the LEGO presentation… here is the Millennium Falcon HD one, I’m sure more will be posted so be sure to check their youtube channel for more k?

Unfortunately the Harry Potter one isn’t clear… I’m sure the HD version will be all over the internet by tmr…

UPDATE: Didn’t take too long, here are pics of the HP sets we haven’t seen before, i.e. Forbidden Forest & The Knight Bus, thanks to Matn from EB who also shared the link to the site he found them from The Pop Culture Network folder.  The folder seems to have loads of pics, but I’m too tired to browse thru all. 

Of Lighted Nanoblocks & Pop-Up Books

Went shopping today and the 1st thing in the toy store that caught my eye wasn’t a LEGO set… (ok, not surprising since there were no new LEGO sets in the store right?).  Anyway, thought this Nanoblock Deluxe Edition Schloss Neuschwanstein looks amazing…

So I did more online research and using some google translate from the Diablock site:

Representative of the West German castle “Neuschwanstein Castle”is set to assemble. Number of parts to about 5800, nanoblock representations have been made to reproduce in full-on. The LED light up to the plate and the beautiful villa built in the dark.

– Built-in 3 LED colors, using three plates
· LED plate 3 attached (use of AAA batteries 9) * batteries not included
* Finished Size: H220 × W120 × D400mm (1 / 220 scale)

Original text in japanese:

西洋を代表するドイツの城「ノイシュバンシュタイン城」を組み立てるセットです。約5800個のパーツを使用し、nanoblockで再現できる極限までの表現がなされています。また、プレートにLEDが組み込まれており暗閣で美しく光ります。

• ・3色LED内蔵、プレート3個使用
• ・LEDプレート3枚付属(単4電池9本使用)　＊電池別売り
• ・完成品サイズ:H220×W120×D400mm(１/220スケール)

It’s got LED lights???  So a bit more online sleuthing… ta da…

It’s the 2nd Nanoblock set that I really like (the 1st is the Himeji Castle of course).

Anyway, it’s available at ToyStation in Singapore, or if you are in Japan, from Yodobashi or Amazon Japan.  Nope, I didn’t get it…

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Then I got home and had a lovely surprise…

See, I can’t remember what I ordered from Book Depository… 😛  Anyway a quick tearing of the well-wrapped package and…

Yippee!  I know, I’m kinda overaged for a pop-up book, but I thought it’s nice to have a 3D reference book.   Here’s the nice promo video that poisoned me…

Source of Nanoblock pic: Yodobashi & Nano-Jime

New Pics of Summer 2011 HP, City, Cars & Star Wars Sets

EB member Kris Kelvin shared pics of the summer 2011 sets such as

• Harry Potter Battle of Hogwarts (4867): Click here for more
• City sets Power Boat Transporter (4643) and Marina (4644): Click here for more
• Cars set Mack’s Team Truck (8486): Click here for more (I can’t tell from the pic, but remember that Huw mentioned no stickers? Hope that’s true! I’ll hate for this set to be all stickered…)
• Star Wars Sets Sith Nightspeeder (7957), Millennium Falcon (7965), Ewok Attack (7956): Click here for more

And over in the EB Technic forum, backbone shared pics of the summer 2011 creator and technic sets: Click here

Along with the earlier batch of pics from the German Toy Fair, I think it’s time to start shortlisting the sets you want to get in 2011?  (That’s Ninjago, Aliens Conquest, Heroica (board games), Pharaoh’s Quest, Kingdoms, Atlantis, Collectible Minifig Series 5 & Atlantis pics and/or videos)  I’ll recommend using Brickset to set up a ‘want’ list: 2011 sets  🙂

P.S: I enhanced the original pics so it’s easier to make out the details. 🙂

Update on LEGO Ideas, Harry Potter & Star Wars Character Books

Hey, remember my earlier post about DK’s The LEGO Ideas Book and the subsequent pic found by killyrbf ?  Well, the source has been (re-)found, courtesy of legolijntje from EB Forum. 

Or how about the LEGO® Harry Potter™:Building the Magical World or LEGO® Star Wars™ Character Encyclopedia?  No recollection? Nevermind, I’ve the updated info all below. 🙂

Btw, if you enjoy LEGO related books, do click on the Books category to read my previous posts about LEGO books k?

• LEGO Ideas Book
• Pub. Date: 19 Sep 2011
• Publisher: DK Publishing, Inc.
• Format: Hardcover , 200pp
• US$24.99 / £16.02
• ISBN-13: 9780756686062
• ISBN: 0756686067
• LEGO® inspiration: tips and techniques from expert LEGO builders covering transport, buildings, space, kingdoms, adventure and useful makes. Perfect for LEGO fans who want to make their models cool, fun and imaginative. 

• LEGO® Harry Potter™:Building the Magical World
• Pub. Date: 16 May 2011
• 301 x 252mm 96pp, full colour throughout
• US$21.99/£16.99 hardback 
• ISBN-13: 9780756688875
• ISBN: 9781405366458
• Get the lowdown on your favourite LEGO® Harry Potter™ sets with this exciting companion to the magical world. Includes an exclusive Minifigure.
• The magic of Harry Potter™ and the fun of the LEGO® world, now in one incredible book!
  Since it was first introduced in 2001, LEGO® Harry Potter™ has been one of the LEGO Group’s most popular themes. This incredible guide gives readers an up-close look at the bricks, constructions, and minifigures of the LEGO® Harry Potter universe—from Hogwarts Castle to Hagrid’s hut.
  You won’t want to miss out on the exclusive inter views with the LEGO® Harry Potter™ team, and special sections allowing you to see, first-hand, how the bricks and figures come to be the toys we love today! The book will also feature a timeline that shows the evolution of the LEGO® Harry Potter™ construction sets, video game and board game.

• LEGO® Star Wars™Character Encyclopedia
• Pub. Date: 19 Sep 2011
• 235 x 183mm• 208pp, full colour throughout
• US$18.99/£14.99 hardback
• ISBN-13: 978-0756686970
• ISBN: 9781405373586
• Get to know the LEGO® Star Wars™Minifigures: discover rare variants and lots of cool LEGO Star Wars™facts! With an exclusive LEGO StarWars™ Minifigure.

Source: http://www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk/static/cs/uk/11/search/pdfs/22-DK_Children_Film_and_TV.pdf