SOCL

Ergh, despite my pleasure at being the soon-to-be-owner of many of the sets I've always wanted, suddenly I don't feel so great (i.e. I went to eBay and spent a little too much money).

Dude, I had forgotten all about them! Man, those guys were awesome too! I remember when I was little and would look at my Lego magazines and think: "Whoa! Legos and magnets! What will they think of next?!" Actually, I still have most of those old magazines in a box somewhere. Maybe if I can find the box, I'll make some scans and post `em so all us can geek-out some more. Now that I think of it, there's bound to be some sight on the Internet with images like that. I'm, there's got to be at least one more extreme geek than us who made a website out the old days! In the words of my friend Matt, "It's time to Google that b!tch!" EDIT: Here's a site with a little Lego Galaxy storyline some guy made up, but it has some pretty good pictures of a lot of the original Lego figures. Of course, there are a lot of ones he made up, but you know how it goes. EDIT 2: Here we go! Apparently contains a listing of all the original Lego space models, as well as those early 1980s models you gusy mentioned. EDIT 3: Holy crap, there it is! I have this one! It was the first Space Police set I ever recieved! I still have all the pieces, just not the instructions! [/geek] EDIT 4: And I had this one, and this one, and this one, and this one was the first one I ever bought with my own money (quite an achievement back then!). And also this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, too! And my father got me this one once the day before he left for a Navy, 6-month deployment so I wouldn't be too sad. EDIT 5: Guess where I'm going next? EBAY! It's time to get my hands on those sets everyone else had but I did not!

My sympathies for your day, Krytos. I've had similar days, most recently I was at the mall (actually, leaving) with my kid-sister and Becca when these two blokes decide it'd be funny to hit on my sister (not literally hit, but make catcalls). My sister isn't enjoying this too much, and I don't particularly appreciate it. After mumbling a few things under my breath, I tell my sister to hurry up so we can get out of there; the two guys hear this and decide to make even more catcalls, this time at me, calling me "Pimp" and few other things. I'm just a little pissed off already (gasoline here is at $2.15 per gallon and had to fill up the car!) and my sister, wanting to stand up for her older brother, turns around and says a few choice words at the two morons. The two morons, taken aback by my sister's words, turn to each other then start laughing. So I'm thinking, Okay, that's the end of those idiots. We get to the back end of my car and I use the pager to unlock it, when suddenly I hear footsteps running...and they're getting closer. That's right, one of the guys decided to make a run at me and my sister. Now, my sister is a blackbelt in Tae Kwon-Doe and I'm a blue belt in Judo (as well as having been fighting since grade school), so this guy doesn't stand a chance. My sister ducks under the guys tackle and squares him in the face with a nice kick, sending him to the ground. This is when the second guy shows up, I suppose in an attempt to keep honor and get revenge for his buddy. He comes after me and, as usual, my instinct isn't to do some cool Judo move, instead I avoid the tackle...he stops and takes a swing at me...I block (thanks, Judo!), grab the guy's shirt and treat him to a broken nose. My now some passer-by has called security and within time a few pepperspray-carrying gents show up and tell my sister and I to back off, which we do without protest. In the end, I was hassled by the secuirty guys for having got into a fight, to which I tried to explain that it was the two idiots' faults for having attacked us. When they said they were going to view the parking lot security cameras, they come to find out that the one monitoring are area is out. Luckily enough, a few on-lookers were asked to come along and atest to what I say, so they let me off, but not after the eldest one (who looks like Marine in his uniform and takes his job way too seriously...yeah, you know the type I'm talking about) pulls me aside and says he never wants to see me around "his" mall again. I readily committed his badge number to memory and when I was home again, I made sure to let the mall's head office know about this fool. It's not as bad as yours, Krytos (jeez, I really would have wanted to beat the sh!t out of that guy!), but it's a bit of a gripe.

Dude...what were the names of those sets? I think I might actually have some. Actually, I have a big ol' TYCO bucket that I got when I was rreally little (my first Legos, actually) where the little Lego guys were made of plastic.

Not to go too off topic (by the way, I hadn't meant any offense), but rumor has it the Vatican may want to Saintify (sorry, I'm not sure of the verb for "to be made a Saint")* the late Pope John Paul II. *Yes, I realize who satircal that came across, but I assure you, it wasn't meant that way.

I almost believed it, too. What with the motorized Lazy Boy incident and all. ...wait, I just realized something. Was that little story of your supposed to in someway to tie to this: Are you relating my idea to your "neighbors" idea? I think that this, in conjunction with other arguments here, can safely put the argument to restSo it would seem, but leave it up to the official site to be so vague. I mean, they simply it hint at eventually becoming what will be stormtroopers, but it doesn't say that stormtroopers are clones.* Yes, it may imply this, but by simply stating "clone troopers", who ever wrote it still leaves the idea open to debate. In other words, the quote may very well be interpreted as stormtroopers are clones, but it may also be interpretted as the clone troopers being the inspiration for stormtroopers. Now, whether 'inspiration' means the basic look and feel of stormtroopers was inspired by clonetroopers or whether stormtroopers were inspired to be clones because of clonetrooper inspiration is also open to debate. A good quote to bring up GAT, but it somehow only thickens the plot (if not frustrates us over LucasFilm's continued vague references). *Yes, I know I'm being inconsistant with which side I take, but I'm trying to argue both sides.

Sounds like a ploy for an Energizer commerical.

RIGHT-ON! It's good to see that someone else thinks like I do! Yeah, when I was a kid I was totally into the 'Town' sets; I even had (still have) the huge airport that came with two helicopters and a passenger plane (though the cool double-rotor chopper got stolen...damn you Brandon Fann!!!)! And do you remember the old-school space sets? Like the Space Police and Ice Planet? And what about the Black-Tron! Yeah; you want to talk about the some cool stuff, man! Especially the reall old school Space Police and Black-Tron! I'm not talking about the mid-90s ones where the Space Police's color is green and the Black-Tron's is...well...black...no! I'm talking about back in the day when Space Police was blue and red and Black-Tron was...well, they were black back then too, but they were 100% black! I mean, even their helmet visors were black! [/geek]

Force Commander - Imperial March Rage Remix

Hey, whoa, man, I had only realized the wrongness of my post after the fact (I hadn't remembered what had happened to the Holy Father at the time of writing the post).

That depends on whether the NJO galaxy map is official (since numermous other books refer to the Unknown Regions as being about a third the size of the Galaxy Proper if not larger)...but that's EU, so moving on.... Do you get what I mean, though? I mean, throughout the EU the ship is referred to as Home One as though it were the vessel's true name, but consider. This is a Mon Calamari cruiseliner converted for military duty, something that is more-than-likely illegal. Probably having to hide-out from the Empire and not wanting the Empire to track down say the manufacturer or the original owner and punish them, the Rebel Alliance decides to stop calling the vessel 'Home One' as a callsign as long as it is deployed with the fleet and engaged in combat. Other vessels in the Rebel fleet--also wanting to avoid exact identification--are given similar call signs, so a Corellian corvette might be 'Home Six' and a Nebulon-B might be 'Home Three'. Thoughts? Another idea (that just occured to me) is that this converted cruiseliner probably had a civilian name and needed a more martial name, so they temporarily call it 'Home One'. After a while, the name sticks and it becomes the ships new name. Again, just an idea. Well, movie is canon, plain and simple; we can't pick-and-choose.

Speaking of Legos, I was in one of those imperialist department stores...you know the ones with the yellow happy face.... That's right, Wal-Mart. Well, anyway, I was one yesterday and I came across the most...interesting thing: A Lego Star Wars video game. That's right, a viedo game where you can be a Lego Star Wars character (out on PC and PS2). Not to sound old-fashioned, but I was always pretty pleased with playing either Legos or video games, but both? It's like the eighties where they movie directors thought that to make a cool/good movie, all they had to do is combine two cool things (i.e. Surfer Ninjas, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, etc.).

And you didn't get one? Pity. You would have looked so cool with one on, too! Hmm...that seems to make sense.

Jahled, will you be our next pope? (sorry, that was wrong)

If we go back to the First World War we find pilots, who weren't clones, getting into planes that were nothing more than an engine strapped to a canvas wrapped frame, taking them into the air and firing machine guns at other pilots. Insain, yes, but they did it.Point taken, but consider the fact that in the Great War, pilots began by only taking recon flights for ground troops. The odds of them getting shot down by another plane at the beginning were little to none, the pilots having to rely on their individual marksmanship with pistols! Additionally, being shot down by a ground-based rifle or machine gun was also quite low. My point is, the pilots of the Great War aren't exactly the best example since their mission began quite differently from that of a fighter plane. Additionally, the pilots of the Great did not have available to them aeroplanes with armor, much less shields, where pilots in Star Wars have always have the option of simply not being a pilot or even becoming a Rebel pilot where they could fly a shielded fighter. I realize that like in the Great War, TIE pilots don't have a choice of fighter available to them, but then again, fighters with shielding exist; in the Great War, there was only one style of fighter ("nothing more than an engine strapped to a canvas wrapped frame"). Yes, but did these servicepersons volunteer or were ordered to take on this mission? I imagine TIE pilots are ordered to do their jobs, additionally, if they're clones they are probably 'programmed' to follow any and all orders. Well, the only problem is that we don't know if all or at least some are genetically engineered to be unemotional. I would assume yes--since it would make a far more efficient soldier--but with no evidence to back this.... Also, I wanted to address the fact that many people seem to believe that the Galactic Empire has to have a HUGE Armed Forces. I mean, yes, they need a HUGE force to control the galaxy, but this doesn't mean that the entire starfleet or the army has to be as enormous as we might think. Going with examples presented in the movies, we never really see enormous amounts of ships or troops that prove a starfleet in the billions or so-forth. I mean, yes, there's the Death Star and its enormous amount of troopers and so-forth, but this could be a large fraction of the Empire's forces versus the theory people have about it being a relatively small amount of forces. Again, you do indeed need a large force to control the galaxy, but where in the movies are we told of HUGE amounts of anything? Additionally, if the Galactic Empire's starfleet was that huge, why was it dismissed as being a threat by Mon Mothma during the breifing aboard Home One before the Battle of Endor? Just a (crazy) idea. By the way, did any one else find it weird that Home One is the name of the Mon Calamari vessel? To me it was simply the ship's callsign during the Battle of Endor (similar to the Millenium Falcon being 'Gold One'). Some people might say that ships with names (not fighters) would be called by their names only, but again, the Millenium Falcon has a proper name and is simply referred to as 'Gold One'. So, in order to mask the name of an ex-Mon Calamari cruise ship they would call it 'Home One' so that way the Empire--if they were listening in--wouldn't know the ship's true name. This led me to assume that all Rebel warships at the Battle of Endor have callsigns 'Home [number]'. Again, another (not-so-crazy) idea. About the prequels and canon: Since The Phantom Menace came out, Lucas and LucasFilm has kept a tight reign on everything Star Wars, trying to keep everything in the EU and so-forth in line with the movies. This leads me to believe that there is a possibility that all EU material released post-Episode I might very possibly be canon--after all, the official iste lists most of it. For instance, the likelyhood that novels like Jedi Trial or Labyrinth of Evil--due to Lucas' (& LucasFilm's) tight hold and checking-up--be official canon. Just a(nother crazy) idea.

I condemn you to be BEAKed!!!

Have any of you seen some of the creations made by the employees of Lego?. Click around, tehre are some impressive models here, but my favorite has to be the one for the Executor-class (click on the 'Starships' picture)!

Yeah, nationstates is fun if you have patience to wait and wait and wait. Beyond the issues and making some cool tweaks to your nation, there isn't much more you can do. And, no, despite what some people may say, the game does not allow for war.

I think this was asked in another thread, and Evaders provided a link to a patch that fixed the problem so the game works on XP. Of course, it's for the Windows 95/98 version of the game.

was obi a civilian when luke found him? same for yoda Weren't they? I mean, sure, Leia called Ben "General Kenobi", but that doesn't mean he was still an active-duty military officer. I mean, we call retired generals and admirals "General" or "Admiral".

Yeah, that's what I was talking about! String theory! It talks about how, in his waining days, Einstein was trying to write the theory, a theory he called "The Theory of Everything".

Thank you for the refresher...it's be a while (about two years) since I read any of the NJO. I'm making my way there, having completed every novel from Truce of Bakura and currently reading I, Jedi in an attempt to read all post-ROTJ novels. As crazy as it may sound, so far it's worked. Have you read Republic Commando: Hard Contact? It's pretty good read. I won't go so far as to disagree without understand so, what?

To adddress a few quick points.... It was mentioned that stormtrooper armor comes in different sizes...okay, then why does Han fit so well into the armor and Luke "can't see a thing"? Additionally, we have the infamous quote, "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" Not to be a pain, but it sounds (and by the looks of stormtroopers throughout the movies) to me like they're all about if not the exact same size. Okay, so I don't particularly believe that al the stormtrooper are clones, but its very likely that many of them are. Perhaps those that aren't are the officers, who probably have to be a certain height in order to stormtroopers. No, this is not unheard of, either. Look at the Third Reich, they had a height requirement for the SS shocktroopers...oh, by the way, in case no one knows this, the Third Reich's SS were called 'Stormtroopers' before they came to be known as the SS. Again, it does not seem so unlikely that they would recruit troopers, but probably ones that met the clone requirements. Additionally, the different voices heard from stormtroopers can be attributed to these non-clones who meet the clone-status qualifications and are then cloned. Quite simply, even if it was used only for the sake of debate, I seriously doubt there were different sizes of armor. Also, it seems that the idea of clones doing different duties is difficult to grasp. The truth is, though, we have clonetroopers who are trained to be pilots, we have cloned troopers who are trained to be commandos, we have cloned troopers who are trained to be gunners, etc. These are specific-role clones, so it's not hard to see that the TIE pilots are most likely simply an evolved version of clone pilots. Again, Jahled made a good point: Who in the right mind would suit up in a unshielded, weak-frame, no-environment-in-cockpit fighter that relies on numbers alone to win against X-Wings and Y-Wings? I believe a bunch of clones trained for the sole purpose of piloting fighetrs would...anyone else would simply be stupid. And, despite what it may seem, it would be less costly to mass-produce an army of clones versus an army of recruits. I know averages would make this easier, but the fact is you would have to still have variety. The USA's army has attempted to cut costs by making uniforms that a soldier puts on and then puts in the wash for x-amount of time...it then shrinks to be the right size. Even so, this is more expensive than having everyone be the same size and then having x-amount of the same uniforms. It's all a matter of cost-efficiency, and an army that has no 'human needs' to speak of would cost less than an army of personality-ridden recruits. By the way, has anyone considered Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome? Clones would, odds are, not suffer fro, the psychological strain of combat and watching their buddies blown to bits as compared to emotional, compassionate humans. An army full of soldiers suffering from such strains be wasting money on paying for psychological evalutations when compared to an army that has trained-from-birth fighting machines who don't care--they simply follow orders.

They were a tad difficult to pilot and use (esp. the snowspeeder), but beyond that, they were pretty useful once you got the hang of flying. I don't know what you find wrong with the Commando Clonetroopers that had jetpacks, but I do agree there was an inbalance between forces. I mean, playing as the Empire, it didn't take very long to destory the Rebellion 100%. And at Hoth, fighting as the Rebels is a near hopeless struggle! Then again, though, you have the Clonetroopers versus the droid army, which turned out to be quite even if not more in favor of the droids.

Being a civilian and Jedi is a contradiction? How's that? Luke Skywalker resigned his military commission to become a Jedi (after the movies).... I mean, yes, you have the Jedi as officers in the Clone Wars, but wouldn't that be an exception due to the time of crisis?