Subject:
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Trip Report: PaB at St Jacobs
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto
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Date:
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Mon, 13 Sep 2004 07:01:17 GMT
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Viewed:
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1696 times
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I had a very unusual scenario at work this week, which was to waste exactly half
a tank of gas in a demo vehicle. You see, apparently some insurance rules
require show vehicles to have less than a quarter tank of gas before being
wheeled into the Metro Convention Center. And of course, our brand new car
was...filled to the top. Driving around town didn't manage to do anything to
the fuel gauge, I had barely made a dent by Friday afternoon.
So, where does one drive to use up exactly half a tank of gas? On a Saturday
morning? St. Jacob's of course. I drove out to Waterloo region with Derek on
Saturday to see the grand spectacle that is the first Pick A Brick in Canada.
You see, people have been crowing about the lack of an official Lego store in
Canada for years. Ever since the bright, snazzy and largely overpriced Lego
Brand Retail stores have popped up in the States, us Canucks have cried for some
fair trade in terms of having a store put here. We'd finally get all those
great S@H sets in a retail venue, but more importantly, we'd get the famous
"Pick A Brick", the "bulk" Lego shopping experience!
Now, "bulk" is a little bit of a misnomer. When I think "bulk" I think, break
out the Blue Giant pallet jack and let's move some skids! Images of a fast food
nation, the giant burgers at "Farmer Boys" in San Bernadino on Route 66, a giant
ore carrier of nothing but ABS! But bulk here means picking from little bins of
plastic parts, carefully putting them into small containers. "Bulk" Lego is
about as "bulk" as finely made sushi.
There seems to be two primary methods of Lego Pick A Brick:
When I was in Germany, the "Lego Fabrik" (German for, "Are you kidding? It's
just one IMM and a lot of decoration!") theme park factory tour had a Pick A
Brick at the end. There were literally hundreds of bins, but you filled up a
bag and paid by weight.
There's another kind, I think in the States where it's by whatever you can cram
into a cup. I tried this in Boston and I think John has been to one in Chicago.
It's the ultimate combination of two key things I like: Being a Lego fan and a
cheapskate. Thinking of ways to pack the little cup as full as possible is more
fun than the contents of the cup. Where else can you think of carefully lacing
Town fences and 1x3 inverted slopes with 1x1 flat tiles lightly sprinkled in
between?
More on these Pick A Brick methods in a minute:
Debates on where such a store would be aside (is there really any argument? Of
course, it would be in Toronto!) we were dashed by the rumours of a Lego Pick A
Brick at the St. Jacob's Countryside Toy Outlet, Canada's version of Lego Brand
Retail. In fact, they're not Lego at all, but a wide selection of Lego's
product line in an Outlet Mall run by an independent retailer.
One day last month, I log into my voicemail at work and hear a jubilant John
Guerquin with the news that on his way back from work, he went to St, Jacob's
and there it stood: A Tree of Pick A Brick Buckets had arrived.
News of this broke quite quickly:
http://news.lugnet.com/market/shopping/?n=11693
So, off it was to Pick A Brick on a sunny Saturday morning. The Pick A Brick
tree is right in front of the cash register in the middle of the store. PaB's
from what I can see seem to come in three variants:
The Lego Park kind: A hundred or so of bins.
The Large Store kind: A wall of about 32 different kinds of bins.
The Small Store kind: A tree of about 24 different tubs.
We seem to have the latter. The selection of pieces at St Jacobs seems pretty
run of the mill: There's some exotic colours on hand (the new medium blue,
pink, purple and lime green) but nothing super useful.
Each tub seems to hold a mixture of different parts: The one piece I wanted a
lot of (1x2 jumper plates in black) were mixed in with other types of parts.
The friendly cashier offered to pull a full box from the back room when I
couldn't find the jumper plates myself.
At the top of the tree is a small shelf with bags. A small bag is $6 Canadian,
a large bag is $10. The rules of PaB are clearly stated:
1. Do not talk about PaB.
2. Do NOT TALK ABOUT PaB.
3. Do not stack the bricks.
4. Bag must be zipped shut.
The bags themselves area designed for the maximum amount of frustration one can
possibly imagine. They have a zip lock top, which is great, except there's
another three inches of plastic above that with two handle cut outs which flap
back in like ears of Dumbo. Any funneling of little pieces with your cupped
hands is bound to end up on the floor when those handle cut outs come into play.
So far, no one in the Southern Ontario area has stepped up to violating Rule 3.
I'm not honestly sure as to why this is the case, but I suspect it's because the
staff is so damned friendly. This in mind, I began to fill by plastic bag with
1x2 jumpers, all of them falling out and dropping to the floor due to the bag...
...and some grey 1x4's...hey, is there something weird with the colour of them
these days? They seem lighter or bluer in shade....anyways, I also got many 1x2
horizontal joint pieces in black as well. Two bags was all I was to get and I
think that was Derek's self imposed limit too.
So...what's the verdict on PaB? Well for one, the bags are hard to pack to the density and efficiency you could get with the hard plastic cup.
It's also difficult to make it part of regular building and purchasing, because
you never know what's there. If you saw lime green this week and started
building a project which suddenly called for a lot of lime green, by the time
you returned it might not be there. But then if you stocked up when you saw it,
you'd have a pile of lime green you might never find a use for. At least with
regular sets you know for a year or two what's available.
Maybe if a diehard AFOL was to catalog the contents every few weeks, that would
make planning projects to use such pieces easier, but that's a tall order and a
labour of love. It's something I must give a lot of credit for those who put up
S@H specials or the other PaB contents online weekly.
The selection is fine to start with, but I would like to see more architectural
bits like more slopes and arches and different 1xN plates in other colours.
That said, it makes a very fun treat. $6 for the bag is pretty reasonable and
just at the price where it's not prohibitively expensive. It's almost like
going to the candy store in a way and if it were closer to Toronto, I'd probably
go every week. It's like that sushi place on Bloor or the Chicken Selects at
McDonalds...addictive.
Calum
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