This info is mainly for the Star Wars fans who are into 3.75-inch “The Vintage Collection” figures!  Take a look at the full online banner advertisement on the OG website for more details, like what will be on offer and what exclusives and attractive prizes to look forward to.

According to the OG staff, this will be a special 2 hours morning sale and the Star Wars toys offered here will be exclusive to OG only.  Well actually I’m not sure if it’s just the Boba Fett figure that will be exclusive, since he’s not for sale but is meant as a special redemption figure for this occasion only.

The main sale will start at 8am and will take place at the ground floor of OG Orchard upon entering through the main doors.  A second section for the Star Wars morning sale will take place at the foot of the escalators that lead up to the next floor.  For regulars customers to this departmental store, they will know where I’m referring to.

Only these 2 specially condoned areas of the entire store will be opened for the sale and the Star Wars customers.  After 10am on that day, the second sale section might be shifted upstairs to the toy department so as to make way for the regular operations of the store, when general customers start to stream in.

Early Bird Specials - If you look at the link to the OG website, they also mention that the first 150 people in the queue will receive a SGD 15.00 voucher to be used on the same day, for minimum purchase of SGD 40.00 worth of participating Hasbro Star Wars items.

Lucky Draw - If you intend to participate in their lucky draw for the top 2 prizes of exclusive FX Lightsabers (worth SGD 249.90 each), your lucky draw entries must be submitted by 10am that day.  Once again, you may refer to their full online banner advertisement on the OG website for more details.  Happy Star Wars toys shopping!

This part 2 blog post on the toy review of LEGO Kingdoms 2010 - King’s Castle set (7946) continues from yesterday’s posting on the same topic.  The following are the rest of the photos about the features and details of this castle set:

Stable – The interior of the front round towers is spacious enough for the king’s horse to fit inside very nicely!  The similar stable space on the other side can be used for the steed of the brave lion knight, who went out to rescue the princess from the dragon knights’ prison tower (7947)!

Portcullis mechanism – There are flat bricks attached to the back of the portcullis.  Pushing in that lever with the red tip will ‘lock’ the portcullis at the desired height.

Portcullis mechanism – There are 3 sets of brown axles along that long horizontal portcullis rod.  The soldiers work very hard to turn the 2 side axles so that the middle axle can ‘catch’ those flat bricks on the back of the portcullis with its ‘teeth’.  This facilitates the up and down movement of the portcullis.

Prison and guard duties – There is a small prison at the back wall.  The photo also shows a catapult defense machine on a front tower.  That lone soldier is in charge of guarding the entire side wall and that door to the treasure room in the rear tower.  If needed, he also has to run to the front tower to man the catapult, and he’s also the one to open and close the portcullis by helping to the turn the side axles (see previous photo).

This castle is very short handed!  The 2 bowmen can’t come down from the tall towers to help, so the 2 soldiers have to do most of the work.  They also have to saddle up the king’s horse, clean his armor, muck out the stables and groom his horse.  Wah, they are terribly overworked!

One of the soldiers tripping over at the drawbridge while rushing out to greet the returning king and to take his horse back to the stable.  That was a very poor design there!  The soldier had to take a day’s MC after that for a twisted ankle.  Can you twist an ankle from tripping!?  I think he’s finding an excuse to rest!!

Armor storage inside the left side wall – Doesn’t this part remind you of the 6041 Armor Shop set from 1986?

The other storage area inside the right side wall – There is a backpack basket containing a few pieces of square 1×1 yellow color smooth top flat bricks.  I wonder if those are meant to be cheese or whatever??

A flight of stairs lead to the upper level of the rear wall.

Rear tower 1 catapult – This bowman keeps watch over the entire rear wall and mans the large catapult too.  The other bowman stands on top of the main front tower where the drawbridge and portcullis are.

Rear tower room 1 – front view.  The door opens to a room with no wall at the back (???)

Oops, a large rat just ran past!  Let’s hope that it’s not a disease carrier!

Rear tower room 1 – back view.  I guess this makes it easier for the owner to play with the minifigs moving about in the rear tower.  I plan to add walls here.

Throne room in rear tower 2 – The king’s throne looks good and when seated here, he looks out towards the back of the castle.  If he’s not careful, he might have a fatal fall all the way down.  I hope he doesn’t have very young children!

Treasure room in rear tower 2 – The security here leaves much to be said!  The bowman on top of rear tower 1 is supposed to watch over this part of the castle and use his crossbow to shoot at thieves and intruders, if any.

Treasure theft at rear tower 2 – Hmmm, enough said about this.  I think this kind of burglary can take place at night.  No wonder the castle is filled with fire torches all over the place!  This castle has the most number of “lights”, except for along the rear wall, LOL!

Prison breakout – A very strong dragon knight removing the entire back section of the prison wall with only ONE hand!  My goodness, what have these dragon knights been eating!?  Or do they have superhuman strength from drinking magic potions given by the green wizard!??

Pointed roof of rear tower 2 – Just in case you wish to know, it’s made of solid bricks inside, hence there’s no attic under the roof.  Wasted space that could have been useful, too bad.

Instructions manual suggestions – As the various wall and tower sections of the castle can be detached, it gives versatility in arranging the castle architecture.  The instructions manual provide some examples to follow.

Spare and unused parts – I didn’t pose the king in his cape because wearing it will hinder him on horseback.  The white bricks are to ‘fill’ the horse’s body when it’s not saddled.

My “building” experience:  This set took me around 2 hours to assemble it.  Overall it‘s not as fun to build as my vintage castles.  Maybe because I was fuming over the missing part, and that I feel more attached to those vintage childhood castles, while I’m already an adult when this set came along.

Overall this is quite a decent castle set to own. It has lots of play areas, though it’s also severely understaffed.  There is 1 king, only 4 lion soldiers, 1 dragon Knight, 2 dragon soldiers, 1 white horse with exclusive royal barding, weapons & accessories, and some new and rare parts (mentioned earlier above).

Minus 1 point for the missing king’s armor. I will restore this point if LEGO replaces it for me FOC.

Updated on 6 Aug 2010 - I received the replacement king’s armor from LEGO Singapore, hence 1 point is restored.

Minus ½ point for too few lion soldiers.  I’ll rather swop the 2 dragon soldiers for 2 more lion soldiers.  The dragon knight can be a prisoner of the castle held for ransom.  A lion knight with the new bucket helmet could have been included, together with another horse (with normal saddle is fine).

Minus ½ point for ‘incomplete’ rear tower walls design.

Minus ½ point for too much red color at the front of the castle, and too little red at the back.  The sticker drawings are very cartoonish, making the set look like Duplo for toddlers…

Minus ½ point for bricks that detach too easily.  It makes the set easy to dismantle but the castle walls break apart too easily when I just want to shift the set around for multi-angled photo shots.  This annoyed me very much!

Score: 7/10. 8/10.

Should you buy it?  Well it depends on when you started collecting LEGO castles.  If your collection started from the Fantasy Era series where the armor and helmets are shiny silver, then a Kingdoms castle fits in well with your collection.

If you are mainly a vintage LEGO castles collector, this overly red color set will look out of place.  If you collect for the minifigs only, then I suggest you buy them loose when the Kingdoms line is more established.

Do I regret buying this set?  Well not really, since I got it at discount.  I tend to feel most excited about toys that I don’t have yet.  After I get them and like them for about a week, the interest dies down and they get stored aside.  Then I find newer toys to covet and start the vicious cycle all over.  Sometimes I wonder what’s the purpose of collecting so many toys to clutter up my home?

Oh well, that’s my life.  Final suggestion for those who plan to get this set, buy it at no lesser than a 20% discount.  And please open up your sets to check the contents if any parts are missing or faulty.  Don’t wait till many years later when LEGO Singapore doesn’t have the parts anymore to replace for you!

Thanks for viewing!

As lately my online hours have been cut down a lot by my faulty regular laptop awaiting replacement parts and my old laptop being ’slow’ in speed, I’ve had time to build up some of my latest LEGO pruchases and review them.  Amongst them are the latest 2010 Kingdoms King’s Castle set (7946) that was just released this month at mass retail in Singapore.

I did the following review for our local LEGO forum before my laptop screen failed and have modified that posting for my blog.  This toy review has over 30 photos and here is part 1 of it:

Box - front view.  As usual for post-year 2000 sets, the box is actually too big to contain all the packaged contents inside.  I also miss those vintage 80’s and 90’s castle boxes which had a flap on the front to let you open and view the minifigs and main castle parts inside the box.  Long gone are those days!

Box - back view.  The oversized box not only takes up more space at home, it also gives a false impression that the set is that big.  The boxes of the vintage castles are way smaller and the castle photos seen on those vintage boxes are actually quite in scale with the actual assembled castles you’d get.

Contents – The packets are numbered and they swirl around freely inside the box together with the instruction manuals when the box is handled.  Packet no. 1 that contains the minifigs is not in the photo because I opened it before taking this photo.

And I wonder why some parts like those 4 octagonal flat pieces are not packaged into the bags like the rest of the bricks?  They could have slipped out and got lost if the sticker seal broke or got cut.

Minifigs – front view.  1 king, 4 lion soldiers, 1 dragon Knight, 2 dragon soldiers, 1 white horse with exclusive royal barding, plus their weapons & accessories.

Note:  My set is missing the King’s armor!  So that is minus 1 point for the set! Fortunately everything else is there.

Updated on 6 Aug 2010 - I received the replacement king’s armor from LEGO Singapore, hence 1 point is restored to the overall score for this set.

Minifigs - back view.  The Kingdoms minifigs tend to have prints on the front and back of their bodies. The dragon knight has the same torso print as the other bucket helmet dragon knights in the smaller sets.

New and interesting parts to note: Octagonal flat bricks, wooden stairs, wooden door and window, castle wall panel and castle corner wall.

Note:  These parts might have appeared in earlier Castle sets etc. but are new to me.  Although I own the King’s Castle Siege (7094) and Medieval Village sets (10193), I haven’t built them yet.  So I can’t confirm if all these pieces are new or not.

Nice portcullis mold.  Back in the 80’s, you had to construct your own portcullis.  Gradually we have readymade ones for fast installation.  This one looks very mean and solid!

There is a break in the gate wall which I didn’t notice during phototaking.  The current LEGO bricks simply detach too easily when I lifted the castle a few cm up to shift about for taking photos.

The little flags to drape over the front tower walls are printed with mirror images of the same design on both sides.  For example, turning the flag at the left horizontally will give you the reversed image of the rearing lion as seen on the flag at the right!

Instruction manuals – 3 books.  Actually they could have consolidated into just 1 manual.  If you could build vintage castles using very keen observation with your eyes to spot the differences in the drawings on the old instruction manuals, building this Kingdoms castle where they spoon feed you all the way by showing you what are the parts needed at each step, is a breeze!

Wall stickers – 1 sheet.  The drawings on the stickers look too “cartoony”.  I doubt they’ll look fantastic on the castle walls.  We shall look into that in the later photos.

Front view – The mixture of grey and red colors, plus some brown and a touch of gold colors look very contrasting on the castle.

Right side view – The enclosed castle courtyard does not have a baseplate.

Back view – The rear towers do not have back walls, making this part of the castle resemble a doll house.  It looks unfinished and disappointing, as if giving a few more bricks to this set will cause a massive cost overrun!  The red color is very under used here too.

Left view - The drawbridge mechanism works like the one in King’s Castle Siege (7094).

Top view – The overall shape of the castle is rectangular.

Castle wall and tower sections detached – The various castle wall and tower sections are connected by technic pins.  There are 8 detachable sections in all.

More detailed photos about this King’s Castle set (7946) review will be continued in part 2 tomorrow.  Be back for more!

Well since my laptop is awaiting the replacement parts which need to be specially ordered, I end up using my older laptop whose internet speed capacity seems almost like “crawling”.  This makes online research for toy news, and even blogging and posting photos a torture for me.  As a result, I cut down my online hours and decided to do one of my other pastimes - clearing piles of accumulated paper clutter from my room!

In less than half an hour, I cleared out one plastic bag full of useless paper materials for the recycling bin.  For the paper clutter that I retained, most are actually the backcards and flattened boxes of my latest toy purchases, but I hadn’t stored them away with the rest of my toy packaging collection yet.  It’s a bit troublesome to access those storage areas in the remote and hard to reach parts of my cupboards, so I procrastinated for the past several weeks.  In the meantime, new toys keep streaming in, together with their packaging, argh!

I usually dislike stacking heaps of things on the floor as it is very unsightly, but my cupboards are full and my toy cullings are not speedy enough to match my toys inputs.  Such is the peril of being in a hobby to do with compulsive and addictive hoarding habits, like toys collecting.  At the end of the day, I sometimes wonder if there are truly other effective ways of appreciating toys without owning them and storing them at home?  I may want to look into my nephew’s suggestion of ‘collecting toys’ by ticking their sightings at the stores on a check list and be done with it!

Well, this has actually to do with my laptop rather than my blog or website.  But in a way it’s also a technical glitch.  My less than a year old lap top has been giving me problems in the past few weeks.  It started off as mild flickering of the screen, and now the glitch has progressed into “jumping” of the screen images. 

So that means I can barely read anything on the screen because the images jump and jerk very violently and too rapidly for me to even aim for and click on the “shut down” button, much less read anything on the screen. 

Hence I’ll need to send it for repairs and my blog posts will have to be held back.  I guess the weekend could mean that the service centre would mostly likely to be more crowded.  That also means having to take my queue number and wait in line with many others. 

Oh how I dread such down moments!  But the repairs need to be done and in the meanwhile, I’ll have to use my old laptop, which is slower in speed, but still usable.  Thank goodness that I still have a back up machine to use!  My blog posts are ready but the photos I need are in my problem laptop, argh!

Update: My laptop screen needs to be replaced and the parts have to be ordered.  Expected waiting time frame is 1-2 weeks, my goodness!

I’d often pondered over this topic on what hobby or pastime would I most likely have today if I didn’t collect toys.  It’s something like an alternate reality of my life.  I guess I would have to trace back to my childhood where I loved to read extensively on books about animals, wildlife conservation, and my top favourite topic - horses! 

Yes in a way, my love for horses got me into collecting My Little Pony, and also LEGO medieval series like the knights and horses sets since my early teens till now.  I might have even considered a career to do with horses, but somehow I didn’t.  So I sort of made up for it by collecting replicas of horses or things related to horses, including their books and toys. 

I also used to collect models of different kinds of wildlife, but all that fizzled out rapidly after I discovered that reading about them is more interesting than collecting their replicas, of which very few in the market are very lifelike enough for my liking.  So in some ways, my toy collecting patterns do reflect my likes and a great deal of my psychic.

If I didn’t collect toys, I’d most probably spend most of my free time pursuing interests related to these major passions in my life.  Perhaps I would be a career or hobby involved with close to the real things.  Maybe I would work in an animal related or wildlife conservation industry, which tend to have rather long hours.  Hence I probably won’t have the time to go shopping or internet surfing for toys.  I’d be too dead tired from all the physical work and intensive research to go anywhere or do anything else. 

What about you?  Let’s say if you collect army toys, do you think you could have done a career or another hobby that is closer to the real thing?  If you have the chance to be closer to the real deal and have to give up your toy hobby for it, will you do it?  Feel free to share your views here!

The Takashimaya toy sale at the atrium of Ngee Ann City is back!  It’s currently on till 1 Aug 2010 (Sun).  I haven’t visited it yet, though I believe some toy collectors would have done so on the first day, LOL!  I think for this round, the leftover movie toys by Hasbro could be available, such as the 2009 Transformers movie figures.  I’ll probably take a look this weekend to verify what’s there.  Meanwhile if you are in the vicinity for the rest of the month, you may want to drop by to take a look at the toys for sale.  Good luck in your toy hunt! 

Human Alliance Jazz with Captain Lennox action figures

The cool photos of this set of new Human Alliance (HA) toys are available online now!  You can take a look at them on Seibertron.com now! 

For me, I’m not sure if I’ll be getting these, after all Jazz died in the first Transformers movie and I don’t take much notice of his character.  The human action figure doesn’t really resemble Captain Lennox that much. 

Nevertheless, I’ll wait to see the toys in person before deciding whether to buy them.  Expected worldwide store release date is in Q3 of 2010.  Happy waiting for them to arrive in Singapore!

Transformers Battle Ops Bumblebee toy - Price to be confirmed.

Transformers Battle Ops Bumblebee video review

This toy is more for the movie Bumblebee fans who don’t mind collecting yet another toy vesion of this character.  For me even if I adore Bumblebee in the movies, I only collect the Legends, Deluxe and Human Alliance (HA) versions of him. 

Nevertheless, this Battle Ops Bumblebee does possess some interesting features.  A child would find them cool, provided that he or she doesn’t break this toy during impatient transforming of Bumblebee, LOL!  

Take a look at the above video to see what this Battle Ops Bumblebee can do.  Happy viewing!

Wave 1 of Transformers Generations Deluxe action figures arrived on our shores last month and stirred up some excitement amongst fans and collectors here.  Now that the dust has settled, let’s take a look at the next wave 2 which contains 2 new figures - Darkmount and Megatron! 

Transformers Generations Deluxe action figures - wave 2 - SGD 27.90 each

(War for Cybertron aka WFC: Optimus Prime, Darkmount, Bumblebee, & Megatron)

Overall I find that the WFC Deluxe figures look like altered versions of the Transformers Animated (TFA)Deluxe ones.  Will there be a cartoon series based on this WFC image?  That would greatly help in raising the profile of this new toyline.  Currently, only fans and collectors are familiar with what this toyline is about.

Are you keen on the WFC toyline too?  Do feel free to share your comments about the WFC toys here!