Lord of the Rings Ongoing Discussion

[Lordhelmet]

13 minutes ago, hikouki said:

I almost feel like Lego is really poking around, trying to apply the LOTR theme to its various set types in order to see which ones 'click' with the fan base.

They had a runaway success with Rivendell and tried to exploit that with Barad-dur. Now I feel they are trying to figure out what else they could sell with the least minifig/s with the most price.

Hopefully they poke around with battle packs, $10 sets, and regular play sets

[sahidko]

Wouldn't get my hopes up. So far besides the expensive location based "UCS" sets we got booknook caricature of one of the most iconic scenes of the whole trilogy and a overpriced helmet (oh yeah and two limited GWPs). At least people will be able to get cheaper Sauron minifig.

[hikouki]

3 hours ago, Lordhelmet said:

Hopefully they poke around with battle packs, $10 sets, and regular play sets

 

2 hours ago, sahidko said:

Wouldn't get my hopes up. So far besides the expensive location based "UCS" sets we got booknook caricature of one of the most iconic scenes of the whole trilogy and a overpriced helmet (oh yeah and two limited GWPs). At least people will be able to get cheaper Sauron minifig.

Let's see, what set types have they not experimented with:

Battle pack

CMF

Mech

Modular

Art

Botanicals

Speed Champs

Mini Dolls

[mirkwoodspiders]

I like the Sauron helmet and will be picking it up. I like that it will have a Sauron figure, but don't any problem with LEGO initially putting him in something more expensive like Barad-Dur.

If LEGO puts something exclusive behind a high paywall, the complaints roll in: "You're cutting off too much of the customer base from this exclusive thing."

If they fail to give anything exclusive behind a high paywall, the complaints roll in: "You expect me to pay that without something exclusive?"

LEGO does what I assume is the best for business, which is what I'd do if I were running a company.

As far as playsets go, I'm not sure if there's been any other themes that have gotten rebooted exclusively in Icons/Creator then gone on to release playssets, so I'm not hopeful for LOTR but maybe LEGO will surprise us.

[RichardGoring]

47 minutes ago, hikouki said:

Speed Champs

Mini Dolls

Can you imagine a fell beast Speed Champions with a Witch King minidoll. Honestly, I hope they do it, just so I can sit back and watch! 🍿🍿

[hikouki]

2 hours ago, mirkwoodspiders said:

I like the Sauron helmet and will be picking it up. I like that it will have a Sauron figure, but don't any problem with LEGO initially putting him in something more expensive like Barad-Dur.

If LEGO puts something exclusive behind a high paywall, the complaints roll in: "You're cutting off too much of the customer base from this exclusive thing."

If they fail to give anything exclusive behind a high paywall, the complaints roll in: "You expect me to pay that without something exclusive?"

LEGO does what I assume is the best for business, which is what I'd do if I were running a company.

As far as playsets go, I'm not sure if there's been any other themes that have gotten rebooted exclusively in Icons/Creator then gone on to release playssets, so I'm not hopeful for LOTR but maybe LEGO will surprise us.

Minifigs have become a serious collectors' piece. If you're a serious LOTR fan, for the most part, it shouldn't matter anyway since you are likely to buy most sets, like most of us here. However, I think the LOTR line of minifigs has not quite reached the maturity of the Star Wars line.

1 hour ago, RichardGoring said:

Can you imagine a fell beast Speed Champions with a Witch King minidoll. Honestly, I hope they do it, just so I can sit back and watch! 🍿🍿

Now that they have made a helmet, I can definitely see them try something under the "Art" theme. Maybe something to hang on the wall. I would not mind a map of Middle Earth, and include some figs too.

If they decide to re-do some Hobbit locations, perhaps a modular-compatible Lake-town?

And perhaps a Treebeard mech? 

[Lordhelmet]

12 hours ago, hikouki said:

Now that they have made a helmet, I can definitely see them try something under the "Art" theme. Maybe something to hang on the wall. I would not mind a map of Middle Earth, and include some figs too.

If they decide to re-do some Hobbit locations, perhaps a modular-compatible Lake-town?

And perhaps a Treebeard mech? 

I would be good with Art and most of th list your provided.  There is a lot of cool Art that they could do for Middle Earth, I do like the map idea.   I would even go for a tree beard mech, the original ENT is very similar to mechs today and even has the arm throwing motion.  Athelas botanical?  

14 hours ago, RichardGoring said:

Can you imagine a fell beast Speed Champions with a Witch King minidoll. Honestly, I hope they do it, just so I can sit back and watch! 🍿🍿

Hahaha, we will get a witch king minimill as the only witching.  

[BrickBob Studpants]

1 hour ago, Lordhelmet said:

Hahaha, we will get a witch king minimill as the only witching.  

Seriously though, once we get the ROTK version of the Witch-King and Eowyn (and preferably a Mûmakil), I'll be completely satisfied with TLG have done with LOTR

[Lordhelmet]

3 hours ago, BrickBob Studpants said:

Seriously though, once we get the ROTK version of the Witch-King and Eowyn (and preferably a Mûmakil), I'll be completely satisfied with TLG have done with LOTR

Autocorrect did not like what I typed :) .  Minidoll and Witch King.  

[RichardGoring]

Sauron in the helmet set is the same as the original.

[hikouki]

7 hours ago, Lordhelmet said:

...  Athelas botanical?  

...  

I'm in for that one as well!

[Altair1]

On 1/5/2026 at 2:31 AM, hikouki said:

I would not mind a map of Middle Earth

That would be amazing! As long as it is well done, not like the disappointing World Map from 2021...

[MAB]

On 1/3/2026 at 9:23 PM, Mandalorianknight said:

Exactly. People overuse the word scalping. Usually the only things that get scalped are GWPs or other very limited- release sets. (Though when the Rex microfighter came out, the people who wanted to keep Rex's price up definitely scalped that one- it was going for $50 online for like a month). The people selling Sauron aren't buying up all the copies of Barad-Dur, they're not preventing anyone from obtaining anything.

With Lord of the Rings, I don't even blame lego for putting sauron in such an expensive set, because they only seem to be doing these large icons sets. And even then they've now dropped him in a $75 set.

Indeed. Anyone with a Sauron for sale is not a scalper but a reseller. Scalpers would have sold all theirs months ago, or just sold the set. 

[MAB]

Let's do an experiment. Here are the current and recent sold BL prices for Sauron, just taken today. First image worldwide, second image UK / GBP only. It should help see what happens to the price of a Sauron minifigure both as sellers (and buyers) find out about the new Helmet set and then again at the time of release.

 

 

On 1/4/2026 at 7:15 PM, Lordhelmet said:

Hopefully they poke around with battle packs, $10 sets, and regular play sets

I dread to think what a $10 LOTR set would like like. It is now 14 years on from the original series and the cheapest sets (Gandalf Arrives and The Wizard Battle) in that range were $13. So $10 now would probably get you a single figure and a few parts. 

[kuzyabricks]

Finally got around to buying the balrog set....full retail price too. I did however not build the original set, instead I built this amazing alternative build from rebrickable. Very structurally sound and fun to put together! VERY happy with the results, I put mine next to the mines of moria. This is what I wanted when I first heard rumors of the set. I highly recommend. 

 

https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-244278/a_miles/10367-balrog-and-gandalf-alt-build/#parts

[Roebuck]

20 hours ago, MAB said:

Anyone with a Sauron for sale is not a scalper but a reseller

Maybe, but if you try to sell it for a super high price you try to take advantage of others, here in Norway a few sellers try to sell it for the same as the new set will cost  So maybe scalper is not the right word, maybe swindler is more fitting

[MAB]

1 hour ago, Roebuck said:

Maybe, but if you try to sell it for a super high price you try to take advantage of others, here in Norway a few sellers try to sell it for the same as the new set will cost  So maybe scalper is not the right word, maybe swindler is more fitting

The unreleased future set did not even exist as a rumour when they priced them though, so irrelevant.  Pricing of anything is dynamic depending on supply and demand so the price will presumably drop as the leak spreads and definitely when the new set is released. I don't think anyone is swindled though,  as they can buy the complete set themselves just like the reseller. Nobody is forced to buy from a reseller.

[Altair1]

On 1/4/2026 at 8:15 PM, Lordhelmet said:

Hopefully they poke around with battle packs, $10 sets, and regular play sets

I would love to see that, but I doubt it will happen. The thing with the small cheap sets is that to be profitable, Lego needs to sell a lot of them. But the LOTR theme is not as popular as SW or HP, especially amongst kids. It is mostly adult fans who buy LOTR sets, and these fans are apparently not numerous enough. Lego has realized that the most profitable LOTR sets are the big expensive ones, for which the margin is bigger so even if they sell less of them they still make enough profit.

[Kraby]

Watch the Minas Tirith GWP be a Gondor soldiers battlepack 

[Yperio_Bricks]

1 hour ago, Altair1 said:

 But the LOTR theme is not as popular as SW or HP, especially amongst kids. It is mostly adult fans who buy LOTR sets, and these fans are apparently not numerous enough.

There are not many kids that can afford to buy sets that cost 270-500 $/€. And most kids won't get too excited about book nooks or helmets either. If there would be smaller sets and battlepacks, kids would buy them imo. And many adults too.

 

Edited January 7 by Yperio_Bricks

[BitByBrick]

12 minutes ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

There are not many kids that can afford to buy sets that cost 270-500 $/€. And most kids won't get too excited about book nooks or helmets either. If there would be smaller sets and battlepacks, kids would buy them imo. And many adults too.

 

Agreed. One could argue that AFOL and younger LotR fans would buy up so many of these battle packs that Lego would easily make a hefty profit. Both kids and adults, that are unable or unwilling to purchase the expensive sets, could now afford to buy multiple battle packs for play or MOCs… in addition to those who did buy the expensive sets and now want several battle packs for army building. I would go further and predict these smaller sets would be very hard to find at stores or online because of the high demand for them. It would, however, take a motivated executive or ultra passionate Lego employee to get the ball rolling? Wishing is not a strategy, but a coordinated campaign of fans might… But, alas, these smaller sets will not come to pass. 

[MAB]

17 minutes ago, BitByBrick said:

Agreed. One could argue that AFOL and younger LotR fans would buy up so many of these battle packs that Lego would easily make a hefty profit. Both kids and adults, that are unable or unwilling to purchase the expensive sets, could now afford to buy multiple battle packs for play or MOCs… in addition to those who did buy the expensive sets and now want several battle packs for army building. I would go further and predict these smaller sets would be very hard to find at stores or online because of the high demand for them. It would, however, take a motivated executive or ultra passionate Lego employee to get the ball rolling? Wishing is not a strategy, but a coordinated campaign of fans might… But, alas, these smaller sets will not come to pass. 

Small sets weren't particularly popular when they did them a decade ago. I imagine that is still in the LEGO corporate mind. And since then adult LEGO has become a thing, and all-inclusive big sets seem to be working well for LOTR. Plus they will probably find if they release small sets - especially if they duplicate minifigures from big sets - then sales of the bigger sets will suffer. And if they don't duplicate the (main) figures, then there is little incentive for people without the big sets to buy the small sets. 

[Altair1]

6 hours ago, MAB said:

Small sets weren't particularly popular when they did them a decade ago. I imagine that is still in the LEGO corporate mind.

Exactly, I don't think Lego wants to risk getting burned again, unfortunately... 

Edited January 7 by Altair1

[BrickBob Studpants]

13 hours ago, Roebuck said:

So maybe scalper is not the right word, maybe swindler is more fitting

Not that I’m defending them, but how is it a swindle? People get what they pay for, no? If someone pays $100 for a minifig they could get in a currently available set, that’s kinda their problem

14 minutes ago, Altair1 said:

Exactly, I don't think Lego wants to risk getting burned again, unfortunately... 

Sets geared towards kids between 2012 and 2014 when new movies actively came out didn’t do super well, while sets geared towards adults a decade later without any new movies being around (ignoring RoP and the upcoming HfG) do really well.

They could still release smaller sets later on, but there’s an easy conclusion to draw from the above

[Mandalorianknight]

14 hours ago, Roebuck said:

Maybe, but if you try to sell it for a super high price you try to take advantage of others, here in Norway a few sellers try to sell it for the same as the new set will cost  So maybe scalper is not the right word, maybe swindler is more fitting

I mean, isn't that on the buyer, provided it actually is the Sauron minifigure?

My point is, nobody's forcing you at Uruk-Hai Scimitarpoint to buy the overpriced secondhand minifigures (I mean, I hope they aren't). Is it extremely financially unadvisable? Absolutely. But unless the sellers are preventing people from obtaining the figure the official way (i.e. scalping by buying a ton of the copies of the set), they aren't depriving consumers of anything. It's simply adding an option to get sauron- a very poor option, but an additional option nontheless.

I'm happy we're getting him at a cheaper price point- especially since I wasn't planning on getting Barad-Dur- and I don't feel bad for the resellers, but I don't think what they were doing is particularly scummy. Now, if the helmet gets scalped like the rex microfighter did because the resellers want to keep the price up, that would be a different story.

7 hours ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

There are not many kids that can afford to buy sets that cost 270-500 $/€. And most kids won't get too excited about book nooks or helmets either. If there would be smaller sets and battlepacks, kids would buy them imo. And many adults too.

The question becomes how many kids are interested in lego LOTR? Lego doesn't seem to think kids are interested in Castle in general, and I don't know how popular LOTR is with children. I know it's still fairly popular with older teens and young adults, but I don't know how much of that primary 6-12 demo has even read or watched it.