Hey, guys. I'm feeling much better than I did when I posted my last entry (and I did get a snow day ).

Okay, here's the point of this entry. I just saw this Barraki pic:

At first, I wondered why the heck LEGO Marketing would make the canisters in such a funny shape. They can no longer be stacked, which is something that every store that sells Bionicle canister sets has done before. Then I immediately realized something pretty smart on LEGO's part. The canisters are shaped in such a way that they must all be facing the same way when on display in a store, unlike the previously shaped canisters that get turned around by shoppers and get faced the other way so other shoppers can't even see the picture of what's inside the can. But the Barraki canisters are different now, so that when shoppers pass by an array of Barraki canisters, they get to see all of the front canister art of each of the six Barraki. I do think that LEGO engineered this to try to improve sales in some way, however small. From what GregF has told members, LEGO Marketing has been leaving no detail unchecked in order to increase purchases.

Oh, there's another thing, too! Brickmaster comes all in one package now! The last couple years have been very annoying, getting the magazine and then waiting for the package to come, or getting package and waiting for the magazine to come. It made everything arrive later than it needed to, I think. Now, it looks like LEGO ships everything off in just one bundle, cutting the number of Brickmaster shipments in half. That means that there are a lot less shipments to sort out, which means I might start getting my stuff earlier in the month (or at least in the month)! It probably costs some amount less in shipping, anyway.

Keep up the good work, LEGO!

Here's some pics of the Brickmaster bundle: Package|Disk|Magazine (which came folded around the disk. It comes with a Batman comic as well as a Bionicle comic now)

Well, I'm going to watch the Two Towers DVD now. Be back in four hours.