LEGO holiday gift guide - 2014 edition

It's that time of year again, where I share some of my picks for the best of what LEGO has to offer this holiday season. It's been a big year for LEGO collectors. I am hard pressed to recall a time when there were this many different sets and themes available on the market. In fact, there are so many products to choose from that my nearest LEGO Store can't even stock them all!

As with the past two years, I'm going to break this down into price ranges. This is mainly to help those who wander onto the blog figure out what's the best they can get for the money they plan to spend. Also, this is by no means a comprehensive list of what's out there right now. These are just some of my picks based on sets I've built, seen built, or read reviews on. They are what I would recommend to friends or family who ask "what LEGO set would you buy for so-and-so?"

LEGO holiday gift guide - 2013 edition

It's the holiday shopping season again, and it's a great time to look back at some of the best LEGO has to offer from 2013. Whether you are buying for young fans or older ones, these are my picks for what I would love to give or receive over the holiday season.

These picks are obviously not a complete list of all the great things that LEGO has to offer. They are based on my own experiences building them (at least many of them), general impressions from reading reviews, and from looking at the inventory/instructions from the sets. I don't think you can ever go wrong with any gift that involves LEGO. As an AFOL though, I field questions from parents all the time about what's the "best" set to get for their kid or relative. This list represents some of the suggestions I tend to offer.

Several LEGO 'The Lone Ranger' sets now available on Amazon

Despite not having watched a Lone Ranger TV episode since I was a young child, I find myself surprisingly interested in this upcoming line of sets. I guess a large part of that is the complete lack of a recent wild west theme from LEGO. There's just something about bandits and wide brimmed hats in brick form that seems appealing to me.

Wal-Mart briefly had the sets online earlier this month and I have seen at least a few reports of them being spotted in the wild. Amazon.com currently has a few of the sets available for preorder at RRP, with an expected shipping date of April 15th.

Up for preorder so far are the Cavalry Builder (79106), Comanche Camp (79107), and Stagecoach Escape (79108). The larger sets are not yet up, but I will add them when they are. The train and mine are available through horribly overpriced third party sellers, just in case you do not want to wait a week.

UPDATE: All sets now available! Silver Mine Shootout (79110), Constitution Train Chase (79111), and Colby City Showdown (79109) are all now listed at RRP.

LEGO Hobbit sets now available

The second wave of Lord of the Rings LEGO sets is starting to show up in stores. They went on sale through LEGO.com earlier this week and now they are also up on Amazon.com. There are reports of them showing up in major retailers as well. I want to take a few minutes to go over the new additions to the line and offer some of my thoughts on them.

An Unexpected Gathering - I'm going to start off with the set that's probably going to be the best seller of this wave and the one that's probably the most anticipated. For $70 you get a 652 piece set that includes six minifigures. Not an amazing deal, but decent enough for a licensed set. It's of course based on Bag End and it does a fairly good job at capturing what a hobbit hole might look like in brick form. There are some impressive MOCs out there already, but I find it hard to imagine LEGO doing a better job than this with a retail-friendly release. It will probably be the first set from this wave that I pick up. I might even be tempted to not wait for a sale.

LEGO holiday gift giving guide for 2012

Christmas is one of my favorite holidays of the year. I love the music, the decorations, and the lights. I also love that everyone at least tries to be a little bit nicer. Of course, I also love the gifts. Especially being on the giving end over the past few years as our nieces and nephews grow, along with our own little one.

My interest in LEGO has spread through our extended family. The kids are discovering the hobby and even some of the adults have shown a desire to do a little building. As a result, I already have several sets to wrap this year and I'm sure they will be opened to great excitement in the coming weeks.

I thought it would be fun to sit down and go over some of what I see as the best gift-giving options for the little (or big) LEGO fan on your list. Several of these sets I have built and even reviewed here, while others are based on my impressions from looking over other reviews and the parts lists. I'm a little late for Black Friday, but there's still plenty of shopping days left before the holidays.

Restraining myself this season

The holiday shopping season is in full swing. Much like many other LEGO fans, I am on the hunt for deals and also trying to keep my spending under control. It was not as hard as I expected. There honestly have not been that many good sales out there the past couple of days and I managed to get out of the initial "Black Friday" period picking up only two sets.

Probably the best deal out of Friday was at Barnes and Noble. In-store they had a BOGO 50% deal going for "educational toys," which included LEGO. In addition, there was also a 30% off one item coupon that you could print out and stack with the in-store discount. I ended up picking up a copy of the City Garbage Truck and the Droid Escape for about $26. The store did not have much else that I have been looking for and I'm really trying to control myself this season.