Brave New Lego World: day CLXII: 60026 Town Square + 3365 Moon Buggy + 40078 Hot Dog Stand GET!

Day 162, 25/07/2013:

The new 2013 60026 Town Square is a perfect fit for my Lego City city and couldn’t wait to get it. However, when it was finally available at the start of the month I was disappointed to find out it was  Big W exclusive. Not that the prices at Big W are expensive; quite the contrary. It’s just Big W doesn’t often do sales with Lego, and the opening price was only 5AUD less than what shop.lego.com was selling it for (124.99AUD vs. 129.99AUD). Considering I would get free shipping from shop.lego.com for an order of 150AUD+ and they have quite a few exclusive items, I figured I’d get the 60026 from lego directly.

As per usual it arrived from Lego in a timely manner and in excellent condition:

Lego City 60026 Town Square

Which is surprising for such a large box. I guess if I was paying Lego’s expensive shipping it’d be worth it 😛 The box is in Lego’s new large size, which is smaller than the previous large sets.

Lego City 60026 Town Square- back

I figured I’d also get the last 2011 Lego City space set on my list, which is the small & cheap 3365 Moon Buggy:

Lego City 3365 Moon Buggy

Ironically, this small box didn’t arrive in excellent condition But it’s not exactly an impressive set so :p

Lego City 3365 Moon Buggy- back

This month’s “freebie” (you do have to spend at least 100AUD…) from shop.lego.com is the cool 40078 Hot Dog Stand! 😀

40078 Hot Dog Stand polybag

The detail in this small set is quite impressive: the cart opens up at one end to (allegedly) take out more hotdogs; there’s both ketchup and mustard dispensers; the cart has handles and has a griller. Plus it comes with a blue coloured bike and two minifigs, so overall I think it’s a pretty cool freebie 🙂 Can easily have him operating at the beach or in the forest area of my city!

40078 Hot Dog Stand polybag- back

Brave New Lego World: day XXIX: 3368 Space Centre + 3367 Space Shuttle + 3661 Bank & Money Transfer GET!

Day 29, 14/03/2013:

I’m a regular at the Whirlpool Lego thread, and one day someone mentioned the reasonable shipping fees from the UK retailer John Lewis. Checking their Lego products I found that they had 3 Lego City sets I really wanted, including a special edition one. Specifically they were the 2011 3368 Space Centre, 3367 Space Shuttle and the 3661 Bank & Money Transfer sets. They were also reasonable priced, if not well priced, eg: 3661 is listed at 28.14GBP, which is roughly 40.95AUD; BrickLink has prices start at about 43AUD).

However the whole purchasing process wasn’t exactly smooth. For starters, it took several order placements and an international call to their customer support line to find out that using an AMEX card requires you to put the address the bills get sent to as the actual billing address, for security reasons (WTF). Then a few days after I place the orders, John Lewis go and drop the prices on 3368 and 3661… And then it took over two weeks for the orders to arrive, even when it took other people on Whirlpool a week. And to top it off, because I sent the packages to my work address, the street name was cut off due to the number of characters in the address field so delivery was delayed a day…

Anyhoo, they finally arrived:

Lego City 3367 Space Shuttle

This set, for some reason, was sent in just a plastic bag, as opposed to placed in the box the other two sets came in. There’s quite a bit of damage evident, though who knows if it was like that before or during shipping :S

Lego City 3367 Space Shuttle- back

And a space shuttle can’t be without a launch pad:

Lego City 3368 Space Centre

And it comes with a poster!!!!1

Lego City 3368 Space Centre

I was actually most happy at getting this, given I like/need more Lego money, it’s a building (that doesn’t take up a huge amount of space) and it’s a special edition (usually rarer/harder to get/more expensive):

Lego City 3661 Bank & Money Transfer

Quite like how the money bags are green. With the variety of minifigs and vehicles it’s a nice well-rounded set.

Lego City 3661 Bank & Money Transfer- back