Lego Mini Figures Series 7 Galaxy Patrol

No Gentlemen! I have built, THIS THING! this week because I've been busy and I'm low on good parts not already in things I've built. But I do have some Lego goodness for you anyways, in the form of the Galaxy Patrol mini figure!



Blind packaged mini and trading figures are nothing new in Japan, but only recently have any American companies started using that angle. Mega Bloks has blind packaged Marvel and Halo figures, Hasbro brought up memories of Monster in My Pocket in their Handful of Heroes packaging with a hidden secret figure and for the last few years, Lego has been releasing waves of blind bagged mini figures available in no other sets. This guy is from series seven and seems to merge the current Space Police line with Classic Space.



He has new pieces in the form of a really nice chest and shoulder armor piece and helmet, his gun is recycled and his main body is obviously a standard Lego body. In a nice touch, his shoulder pads have the Classic Space logo on them that makes me remember to way, way, back.



The armor has a connection point on the front and one on the backpack, as well as two downward pointing "rockets" that other pieces can attach to. Though I don't see you adding much to this guy's armor without making it really bulky and weird looking. The black bar he's standing on is the standard base that accompanies each figure in this line.



His body underneath the armor has a lot of really detailed tampographing, including overlapping plates of armor, a collar piece, pouches on his thighs, and his name, "Luiz", on the left breast of his armor. His head has two sides, the one shown here is scruffy and has a cybernetic eyepiece. Actually, if they made a Lego Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect series, this is probably pretty close to how he would look.



His other face is made solely to be used with his helmet on, which is why I show you a picture with it off. Most of this face is orange to simulate a visor covering his face with the helmet on, which is a clever alternative to using an actual separate piece of translucent plastic. There are a lot of white details indicating distance increments and other readouts projected to his "visor" and he retains his five o'clock shadow. In a nice detail, the eye not using the targeting crosshair is squinting slightly.



Overall, a really cool figure and definitely worth the $2.97 asking price. Since the series is blind bagged, you obviously can't just grab one at a glance, but as his gear is some of the bulkiest in this wave, feeling the bags a bit might help you out. If you don't mind being seen fondling Lego bags in the aisles of Walmart. I didn't. Hell, this guy is so sweet, I might do it a few more times!



Finally, here's a scan of the poster that comes packaged with each figure, showing everyone else in this wave. There are some really awesome ones in here besides the Galaxy Patrol officer, including a hippie, Poseidon, an evil knight, an Evel Knievel alike, and a Scotsman (!) with a kilt (!!) AND bagpipes! (!!!) It's worth hunting them down just for the Scotsman. LEGO BAGPIPES!

Gentlemen! I have built, THIS THING! The Dogfish

It's Tuesday, let's make this a semi-regular thing! Without further ado, I give you the Dogfish Submarine.

This one has actually been built for quite some time and gathering dust, but better camera means showing off things I couldn't really before! This is meant to be a mid-size patrol and pursuit sub to help defend dig sites. That's what Atlantis divers are doing down there, right? Anyways.

Cockpit detail! One of the first things I tried to do when I started building this was to use the two ovoid green window pieces I had as "eyes" on a larger craft. As I built, the sub started becoming long and streamlined and the overall shape reminded me of the dogfish family of sharks which is how it got the name. Seems to be a trend in my naming of sea going vessels I build. Oh well, I promise I'll be more imaginative in naming when I'm not building fish subs.



And opened up. The two "eyes" swing outwards and the ridge of the "skull" lifts up, though it's sort of cut off in this picture. The pectoral fins are on ball joints so they can lie flat for docking. This diver is from the Wreck Raider set and is clearly the coolest because he has both an eye patch and a beard.



Here's a longer shot showing the cockpit open and the top ridge I mentioned. The fan turbines towards the rear rotate and the tail flukes can pivot up and down a bit as well as the aforementioned ball jointed pectoral fins. Looking at this one compared to the Stone Fish, I feel like there's no way the Dogfish could catch it. I suppose that's the point of the two ships designs though; the Dogfish is designed to chase for short distances and ward off with its weaponry while the Stone Fish is built for speed, speed and speed and would only need light weaponry to attack cargo subs or what have you.

Really, all that boils down to is that I spent more time and effort on the Stone Fish's engines...



Some engine and undercarriage detail. In theory, other divers could cling to those outer cages on the sides and get ferried from place to place as well as stow supplies in there. In fact, nothing really fits in there but guys can cling to the cages.

And to be thorough, an underside shot. Obviously, this submarine was built primarily with Atlantis sets. Specifically, Wreck Raider, Guardian of the Deep, Typhoon Turbo Sub and Seabed Scavenger. As usual, there may also be a few Space Police or Power Miners parts in there, but who can say really.

Well, that's it for the second installment of Gentlemen! I have built, THIS THING! I have one more thing already constructed I can show you next week, but after that I'll need to get busy on building something new. Tune in and see what the future holds!

Gentlemen! I have built, THIS THING!

After having a conversation a few days ago with an old high school friend about Legos, I had the urge to build something, so I went to dig out my bin o' parts. And couldn't find it. Damn. Moving on, I scrapped a couple of sets I had built and liked enough not to completely destroy after a week but which were getting beat up in the box they were stashed in, resulting in this!

I call it the Stone Fish, because it looks quite a bit like one. Unintentionally, I was just building with the pieces I had and ended up with a short, squat, heavy looking submarine. I was actually trying to build some sort of star ship when I started but once I added the propeller engines, it looked a lot more aquatic.

That's the alien pilot from the Space Police set I used some pieces of this from in there behind the semi-truck like windshield. He has a control yoke you can sort of see and a gun clipped into a rack next to his seat, but as I didn't design a way to easily open and close the cockpit, he's in there for the long haul.

Side view. I imagine the long, swept back fin on the top is a communications antenna.

View of all the engines and turbines, thing must be pretty fast. Although, it's also heavy both in real life piece weight and in universe (whatever universe that might be) due to it's undoubtedly thick armor.

Here's your overhead. I didn't really put any weapons on it mainly because I couldn't figure out any halfway decent looking ones with the parts at hand.

Undercarriage, nothing fancy. To fill space, I built this ship using parts from a couple Powers Miners sets, a couple Atlantis sets, a Space Police set that was a literal space pick up truck and a Star Wars Tri-Droid set.

And another shot of the engines and a bit of the hull. Note the little claws it rests on, those are used to grip surfaces so the sub can cling to unlikely spots and lay ambush to unsuspecting Atlantis guys. Whatever those divers are supposed to be doing in the Atlantis sets...

So there you go, give me a bucket of Legos and a couple days to fiddle with a design and this is the sort of thing I make. If and when I find the rest of my Legos, I'm probably going to pop the head off the alien pilot guy and replace it with the shark head piece of one of the shark man figures that are intended to menace the Atlantis divers but are too low tech to have built and subsequently piloted this thing. And so I can live out my Lego/Street Sharks crossover fantasies.