Pick A Brick

I love the Pick A Brick at the LEGO Imagination Center in the Mall Of America. I also like it's on the way home from work. That's both a good thing and a bad thing. I like the ability to mass a lot of a single element. GT-BT. The building possibilities from having a single new piece are greatly magnified when you have multiples of the same piece. Today I had the afternoon off, trying to use up vacation before the end of the fiscal year, and I thought on the way home why not stop in and see what's new in the Pick A Brick. You have to check it pretty frequently because it changes. I had been there 5 days ago, but that's a long time when it's over a weekend, whole parts can empty out. I had last friday afternoon off for the same reason and stopped into take a look at the new Factory Space sets. At a hundred bucks, for each of the two sets, I just aren't interested. It's the colors of the pieces in the sets mostly. White, black, blue and red are the basic colors. I'm looking for more grays, browns, and greens. I'm not interested in building the set as a set. The Space theme is pretty good but of little interest to me. There are a lot of small parts in the sets and even though they are fan created, and probably pretty small runs, I didn't think they are that great a deal for me. The Pick A Brick cups can be a great buy and I don't even fill the cup with the brute strength and precision of Dan. Dan works at the LEGO store and he can fill a Pick A Brick cup like no man. Dan wasn't there today but Judy was. She goes to the TWINlug meetings and is really interested in Train stuff. We were saying hello and chatting about LEGO, and I mentioned wanting to take a look at the PAB wall. See what was new. Plenty it turns out. She let me look in the storage area behind the PAB wall and let me pick out anything I wanted from the new stock that had just arrived. There is an elevator in the tiny enclosed area. It's just the barest minimun of an elevator. It goes down to the basement of the Mall Of America where stores have their storage areas. How cool it that. I looked throught the stacks of boxes and there were some good things coming. There were several interesting things, like the 2x8 black slopes, transparent orange 1x1 cones and 1x1 rounds, red 1x2x3 slopes. Or were they the 1x2x2 slopes. Now I can't remember. I was only getting two cups and didn't want to go completely crazy so once I focused in on the small evergreens and transparent sea grass I forgot about the rest of the stuff. It'll be a nice surprise for any who go. For some reason I really like the plant stuff. I wish they would get more of those 3 leaf plants. In both shades of green. Anyway, I filled 2/3's of a large PAB cup with sea grass and put about the same volume of evergreens in another. Buy two cups and you get a stamp on your LIC Loyalty card. I am so whipped. The staff were also assembling small cabinets. Red with white doors. I got some of those. You never know when you might need to put some cabinets in something, or something in those cabinets. I filled the rest of the cups up with small bits and pieces to pack in around the larger items. One of the guys pulled a small cup of trans-neon green jewels from under the counter, which I did not have any of at all, and put a small handful in one of my cups. When I got home and poured out everything all at the feet of the elephants some of the cabinets made a noise. Turns out some of them were filled with jewels too. That was nice, but they are nice at the store. I enjoy going there, even if I am not spending money. I need to bring a camera and take a picture of the new stuff in the TWINlug display case. Robots. They'll kick your ass! The store employees have a case but there are only a couple of Bionicle creatons in there now. I'll snap a shot of that when I remember to bring a camera. Must remember. Now I must remember to go to bed. I have to work again tomorrow. Need to have a little cash to pay for that next Pick A Brick bonanza. The little bamboo segments would be nice too. Maybe those round trees. I'll check back once in a while.