Lord of the Rings Ongoing Discussion

[GeoBrick]

1 hour ago, RichardGoring said:

And there is a portfolio image with all four recent sets. It really does make Bag End look small!

What did you expect? The set was made for Hobbits.
Besides, footprint-wise Bag Ends seems to occupy the same area as Barad-dûr.

[Black Falcon]

2 hours ago, RichardGoring said:

Tiago Catarino has a designer interview video up. At about 6:10 in the video, he talks about the original concept had the Balrog incorporated into the back wall of the book nook in a 2.5D style, as we speculated might be an option earlier. Then they thought it would be a shame not to have it as a full figure and they could use the wings from the fellbeast GWP. And the size of it was build around the wings.

Have to say I like the set better now after seeing the video - I especially liked how the wings oben and close together with the book nook. 

[RichardGoring]

4 hours ago, GeoBrick said:

What did you expect? The set was made for Hobbits.
Besides, footprint-wise Bag Ends seems to occupy the same area as Barad-dûr.

Made for Hobbits. Priced for Elves.

Although it is a problem when you're following something of both the scale and quality of Rivendell. In isolation it's generally an excellent set (trees notwithstanding).

[Jarreth2]

I'll never understand why Lego won't seem to produce pieces in a specific colour to match the general colour of a particular part of the build. My main point is the wrist joints on the Balrog, they're kinda jarring in light blue grey. Make them in black Lego .. you HAVE the capability to. 🙄

[MKJoshA]

Make sure you all checkout this Frontpage post. You'll need to make sure your login is attached to an active email address.

[Kaijumeister]

Seeing reviews of the Book Nook, my opinion on it isn’t as favourable as it used to be. Seeing it compared against the Sherlock Holmes one and pictures of the HP one just highlights how bare this is. 

My main concern when it comes to scenes or properties that are highly requested like this is the amount of effort that goes into their corresponding sets seems low as a result. Again, we get the 18+ black box branding and fancy formatting within the instruction manual, only for the set itself to be so lacklustre.

A £110 pricepoint allocated towards a playscale set of even a full diorama would have worked so much better here.

 

Edited May 28 by Kaijumeister

[hikouki]

5 hours ago, Kaijumeister said:

Seeing reviews of the Book Nook, my opinion on it isn’t as favourable as it used to be. Seeing it compared against the Sherlock Holmes one and pictures of the HP one just highlights how bare this is. 

My main concern when it comes to scenes or properties that are highly requested like this is the amount of effort that goes into their corresponding sets seems low as a result. Again, we get the 18+ black box branding and fancy formatting within the instruction manual, only for the set itself to be so lacklustre.

A £110 pricepoint allocated towards a playscale set of even a full diorama would have worked so much better here.

 

It is funny that according to the designer interview, they designed the Balrog around the wings and really wanted this set to be a book nook more than anything else.

Agree, they could have just designed this as a *nice* set rather than force it to be something else.

If this is a book nook, what is the Shire? A collection of paperweights? 

[kuzyabricks]

Yeah after reviews this will be a skip. I’ll just PAB the balrog eventually

[Blazej_Holen]

I hoped that reviews will make the set better in my eyes, but nah, its just skip. I am not interested for that riddiculous price... My last purchase was Barad Dur few months ago.. still in the box. This and Shire, is just something beyond my willingness to pay. Shame on Lego with this pricing policy. 

[McMurder_them_softly]

I quite like the book nook, just not for the price and agree with sentiment here - could have been better served as a set in a different style and feels rather forced as a book nook. I would like to get it on a discount. 

[hikouki]

19 hours ago, kuzyabricks said:

Yeah after reviews this will be a skip. I’ll just PAB the balrog eventually

 

17 hours ago, Blazej_Holen said:

I hoped that reviews will make the set better in my eyes, but nah, its just skip. I am not interested for that riddiculous price... My last purchase was Barad Dur few months ago.. still in the box. This and Shire, is just something beyond my willingness to pay. Shame on Lego with this pricing policy. 

I think I will wait til someone makes a MOC of the Balrog based out of this set. Some proportions seem wrong... I think the fig was optimized for play...

2 hours ago, McMurder_them_softly said:

I quite like the book nook, just not for the price and agree with sentiment here - could have been better served as a set in a different style and feels rather forced as a book nook. I would like to get it on a discount. 

I think the designer did a good job making a sturdy set based on Lego's ask, not the fans' ask. The Balrog was designed around the Fellbeast wings and for play. Then he had to design book nook sturdy enough within the piece count. Book nook between books looks good. Just don't put it beside the Sherlock set.

[The Stad]

This book nook situation is giving me flashbacks to the latter days of the last Age of Lego Lord of the Rings, when Lego misread the market and put out a wave of underwhelming sets. Then, when those sold poorly, they assumed it was because there was no interest and the theme was ended.
 

But who knows; maybe this set will be wildly successful and we’ll see the theme fight on and finally give us a Gondor-based set. 

[Altair1]

I think that even if the book nook does not sell well, they will still make a few more big sets which have proven to be successful (starting with Minas Tirith next year hopefully). 

[hikouki]

22 hours ago, The Stad said:

This book nook situation is giving me flashbacks to the latter days of the last Age of Lego Lord of the Rings, when Lego misread the market and put out a wave of underwhelming sets. Then, when those sold poorly, they assumed it was because there was no interest and the theme was ended.
 

But who knows; maybe this set will be wildly successful and we’ll see the theme fight on and finally give us a Gondor-based set. 

 

20 hours ago, Altair1 said:

I think that even if the book nook does not sell well, they will still make a few more big sets which have proven to be successful (starting with Minas Tirith next year hopefully). 

I am hoping that Lego is just 'experimenting' with different set styles, categories, and price points, and trying to find the sweet spot that sells well.

[Kraby]

Rebelnili strikes again!

https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-222985/rebelnili/balrog-durins-bane/#details

[TheDoctor]

12 hours ago, Kraby said:

Rebelnili strikes again!

https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-222985/rebelnili/balrog-durins-bane/#details

Again, like his later designs for Bag End, it's just too far removed from the original concept and just ends up looking like a MOC.

I would rather he just reimagined the Book Nook to be fuller and more complete like the Potter and Sherlock ones.

[Artanis I]

Looked like a wampa, until I realised that's not his legs but the column behind him

[Kraby]

On 6/1/2025 at 8:40 AM, TheDoctor said:

Again, like his later designs for Bag End, it's just too far removed from the original concept and just ends up looking like a MOC.

I would rather he just reimagined the Book Nook to be fuller and more complete like the Potter and Sherlock ones.

Intention for him here was to make a Diorama rather than a book nook, so I get what you're saying.

The thing is, a book nook is a book nook as long as it is closed, and there is not much you can do to upgrade the set while it is closed. Once you open it, it is no longer a book nook, and if you want to upgrade it, you can't help but wonder why you would stay in the limitations of the original set if you're going to display it opened anyway.

Always thought this scene should have been a diorama rather than a pseudo book nook, so I guess I am biased here.

Edited June 2 by Kraby

[MAB]

30 minutes ago, Kraby said:

The thing is, a book nook is a book nook as long as it is closed, and there is not much you can do to upgrade the set while it is closed. Once you open it, it is no longer a book nook, and if you want to upgrade it, you can't help but wonder why you would stay in the limitations of the original set if you're going to display it opened anyway.

An opened up book nook can still a book nook if you design it to close again. And that is the constraint the LEGO designer had compared to the MOC, that whatever they designed had to be foldable. With most sets, a good fan designer can do better when they have no constraints compared to a LEGO designer with constraints. You end up comparing different objects.

[TheDoctor]

40 minutes ago, MAB said:

An opened up book nook can still a book nook if you design it to close again. And that is the constraint the LEGO designer had compared to the MOC, that whatever they designed had to be foldable. With most sets, a good fan designer can do better when they have no constraints compared to a LEGO designer with constraints. You end up comparing different objects.

Exactly my point.

Rebelnili may as well have just made his own MOC from scratch rather than just borrow the Balrog from this one plus an additional 1,500 pieces. 

That's why I liked the original Bag End mods, it only sought to improve the (obvious) shortcomings of that set. 

[Admittedly, I actually really like the changes he made to the Balrog with some of the palette changes and additional flames and trans orange parts embedded in the body.]

 

Edited June 2 by TheDoctor

[Kraby]

1 hour ago, MAB said:

An opened up book nook can still a book nook if you design it to close again. And that is the constraint the LEGO designer had compared to the MOC, that whatever they designed had to be foldable. With most sets, a good fan designer can do better when they have no constraints compared to a LEGO designer with constraints. You end up comparing different objects.

This is right!

My issue here is with the choice of this concept itself.

I feel like they should have commited to the set being an actual book nook, or an actual playset/diorama. In this case trying to do both, we end up with a passable version of each. Perhaps trying to design the set around the fell beast wings was too difficult.

I understand not everyone is a fan of book nooks, and maybe they did this to try to appeal to a broader audience, but I would be curious to see them design actual book nooks that don't open so that the designer can focus on what it looks like in a single specific way, not necesseraly LotR, to see what they would come up with.

The concept did work a little better with the Sherlock and HP ones, I'll admit.

I'll also agree that it could have very well been just a MOC from scratch, not related to the set at all, but for someone like me, who wants to support the theme, but wishes it would have been a diorama, I'm happy with what Rebelnili came up with, since it uses ~75% of the set pieces.

[MAB]

9 minutes ago, Kraby said:

This is right!

My issue here is with the choice of this concept itself.

I feel like they should have commited to the set being an actual book nook, or an actual playset/diorama. In this case trying to do both, we end up with a passable version of each. Perhaps trying to design the set around the fell beast wings was too difficult.

I understand not everyone is a fan of book nooks, and maybe they did this to try to appeal to a broader audience, but I would be curious to see them design actual book nooks that don't open so that the designer can focus on what it looks like in a single specific way, not necesseraly LotR, to see what they would come up with.

The concept did work a little better with the Sherlock and HP ones, I'll admit.

I'll also agree that it could have very well been just a MOC from scratch, not related to the set at all, but for someone like me, who wants to support the theme, but wishes it would have been a diorama, I'm happy with what Rebelnili came up with, since it uses ~75% of the set pieces.

Obviously we don't know what their plans are, but it could well be that when it comes to the Balrog scene, then we get this book nook or nothing. There is no evidence that they want to make smaller diorama sets (smaller compared to the ICONS sets) for LOTR, so getting in this unusual form might be the only option. It fits with the other book nook sets they are doing and the designer (or possibly LEGO) has made the decision to allow it to be flexible so that it converts to an open display piece rather than a closed box. Personally, I don't see the point of book nooks, so giving buyers a choice of how they display it is good. I wouldn't buy a set where most of the parts just form a box and you have to look into it very closely to see anything.

When it comes to LOTR, I imagine they got the impression that kid style play sets were not popular first time around, and so they stick with more adult aimed sets and this means either big display sets or quirky things like the book nook. So long as they produce something, I'm happy enough that it can be adapted into something I want if I want to which is the same for the original play sets. I own them all from first time around, but all were adapted to my taste.

[hikouki]

5 hours ago, MAB said:

Obviously we don't know what their plans are, but it could well be that when it comes to the Balrog scene, then we get this book nook or nothing. There is no evidence that they want to make smaller diorama sets (smaller compared to the ICONS sets) for LOTR, so getting in this unusual form might be the only option. It fits with the other book nook sets they are doing and the designer (or possibly LEGO) has made the decision to allow it to be flexible so that it converts to an open display piece rather than a closed box. Personally, I don't see the point of book nooks, so giving buyers a choice of how they display it is good. I wouldn't buy a set where most of the parts just form a box and you have to look into it very closely to see anything.

When it comes to LOTR, I imagine they got the impression that kid style play sets were not popular first time around, and so they stick with more adult aimed sets and this means either big display sets or quirky things like the book nook. So long as they produce something, I'm happy enough that it can be adapted into something I want if I want to which is the same for the original play sets. I own them all from first time around, but all were adapted to my taste.

From about a year ago or two, Instagram was filled with adverts for those assemble-yourself wooden/ cardboard book nooks and I think they ended up being pretty popular, especially after some of them included lighting. I think Lego was sort of jumping the bandwagon here, and at the same time testing the waters, so to speak.

I feel Sherlock was the most successful of the lot. This LOTR seemed to have run out of budget for pieces and even then ended up being somewhat overpriced. If the sides opened to reveal a backdrop, and there was a light brick somewhere, this set would have been amazing! Of course there is also the case of the Balrog being a bit pudgy, although I can't complain that they considered making it an actual 'figure' instead of a 'stuck-on' background build.

[TheDoctor]

46 minutes ago, hikouki said:

I can't complain that they considered making it an actual 'figure' instead of a 'stuck-on' background build.

Exactly this!

Probably one of the most glaring omissions from the original releases.

Would have preferred a $25 battle set from back in the day, but hey; we finally have him!

[kuzyabricks]

I found out I have quite a bit of insiders points I didn't know about. And yet I have no interest in buying this set. I swore to myself I would buy everything with the LoTR logo from Lego but I just can't bother with this set. I really like the balrog itself but to me it seems at most $60? I have no interest in the book nook and I don't want to spend that much money for a lame backdrop((( If there were more figures I'd be more inclined but I really don't need another Gandalf even though I love the guy. Hopefully there is another D2C around the corner.

On 5/31/2025 at 1:27 PM, Kraby said:

Rebelnili strikes again!

https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-222985/rebelnili/balrog-durins-bane/#details

Got really excited for a second hoping that this was only using pieces from the official set. This costing as much as the shire is unappealing. Bummer.