Things that make you go ooooooh.

Post #1... another LEGO® blog, I hear you cry? Well, yup. I decided to put my 'money' where my mouth is recently, after complaining for years that it's not easy finding out about the new elements LEGO release or what sets I'll find them in. I use BrickLink and more recently Brickset's interesting parts database to find out about them, but it involves wading through lists and various cross-referencing to find out all I want to know.

Baby + umbrella + dog = vet bills. 3121 Summer Day Out

Things like; is this the first set to contain that element or have I just not been paying attention? Is that a new colour or a resurrection from a long-forgotten and slightly spooky girls' theme... and if it is the latter, what other pieces might I find to build with? Does it come in bley yet?

So I'll still be wading and cross-referencing as always - but hey, let me do it for you! I'll be showing you elements that you can expect to be getting your hands on soon, and when I get my pet and smoke-free hands on them I'll be showing you what I come up with. I'll also take the occasional diversion and maybe talk about things like long-forgotten parts or interesting facts about element production.

Way out, man - London Tube DUPLO®.
Element 4620518 from 5828 Big Bentley

I'll be unlikely to include new minifig elements in my listings - love 'em, but only to populate a model with. Minifig accessories with a wider use in MOCing will definitely be considered though. Generally I will stick to System parts - other systems like Technic and DUPLO® might get a look in but only the super cool ones.

I love all the banter in online AFOL communities discussing just about every aspect of LEGO imaginable. But discussion of new elements feels somewhat underrepresented! We all love that "ooooooh" moment when we open a set and find something totally new, or a piece in a new colour, don't we? My hope is that this will be yet another place where AFOLs can contribute their thoughts and their MOCs, but this time wholly focused on the elements.

Element 362202 (but I call it a Threeya)
first appeared in 1979 in
894 Mobile Ground Tracking Station

I remember "ooooooh" moments from my childhood in Melbourne. Hinge bricks. Jumper plates. The humble 1x3. The arrival of Space brought the arrival of lots of Old Grey [BL] / Grey [TLG]. Ooooooh.

Fast forward to London some *cough* thirty years on and I stumbled, bleary-eyed, out of my Dark Age... and one of my early realisations was that I'd missed out on quite a lot of elements! I devoured the BrickLink catalogue, setting up Wanted Lists of all sorts of pieces. Quickly realising this would prove painfully expensive, I had the foresight to limit myself to just one colour, bley. (Ooooooh.) By no means do I have every element available! But I got a huge amount of the useful stuff and it wasn't that long before I was nabbing parts in almost any colour. So when a cool new element comes out these days, boy do I want it... who cares if it will be as common as brick separators in a few months, I just gotta get my hands on it and play with it. Preferably in large quantities.

So let's see how this goes, and please get involved in the comments!