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DC Superheroes 2019 - Rumours, Speculation & Discussion

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We had reports of no price increase in Europe. Now Brickset is saying there are rumours of a 50p increase in the UK. Time will tell.

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1 hour ago, Hoth Rebel said:

It has to have something to do with the license. I can't imagine that Lego thinks a $1 price bump for a CMF series that isn't as wanted as let's say Wizarding World, Disney and probably even a regular CMF series is a good idea. I do agree that the printing on all the figures is very good and most of them look great, but the character selection isn't the best (generally speaking, I'm sure a lot of people like that we get random variants of heroes). 

The local Lego store here has only bought 40 cases for sale while they normally get 100+ and there isn't even a price bump here. The interest is just very low. I wonder what that and the extra dollar does in the US for this series. 

DC is property of Warner, much like Harry Potter. Unless they suddenly demanded a bigger piece of pie I don’t see the specific license being the issue. See my earlier post about character selection. They were never going to please everybody, especially if they want to make another series in future.

Have you clarified with the store that the forty boxes they have are all they are getting? Considering they are not going to be available for another month, it seems unlikely. I honestly do not believe that a Lego store would under stock one their own products prior to its release because the interest is low. No business does that. Staff apathy may exist, but the company is going to show the same amount of pride that they do with all their products. If the interest was that low the product wouldn’t have got out of the development stage.

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There's only a few more weeks of 2019 left and there's still no hi res Marvel pics and no DC set reveals yet. though to be fair most of the sets already revealed don't have higher res pics. Is that the way it always was I can never remember. Also can't wait for those DC CMF's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Def need extra Lantern rings.

 

 

Correction, I'm looking at Brickset now and seeing a lot of nice high res pics of next years sets, oops.

Edited by PremierComix

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9 hours ago, Hoth Rebel said:

It has to have something to do with the license. I can't imagine that Lego thinks a $1 price bump for a CMF series that isn't as wanted as let's say Wizarding World, Disney and probably even a regular CMF series is a good idea. I do agree that the printing on all the figures is very good and most of them look great, but the character selection isn't the best (generally speaking, I'm sure a lot of people like that we get random variants of heroes). 

The local Lego store here has only bought 40 cases for sale while they normally get 100+ and there isn't even a price bump here. The interest is just very low. I wonder what that and the extra dollar does in the US for this series. 

If it had something to do with licensing we would've seen the increase last year with Disney Series 2 

6 hours ago, PremierComix said:

There's only a few more weeks of 2019 left and there's still no hi res Marvel pics and no DC set reveals yet. though to be fair most of the sets already revealed don't have higher res pics. Is that the way it always was I can never remember. Also can't wait for those DC CMF's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Def need extra Lantern rings.

The DC set reveals aren't coming for another while. Like people have said tons of times before, the first DC sets this year don't come out untill summer (except for the Wonder Woman 1984 set)

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5 hours ago, Guyon2002 said:

If it had something to do with licensing we would've seen the increase last year with Disney Series 2 

Different companies have different license fees.

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15 hours ago, J4ck said:

We had reports of no price increase in Europe. Now Brickset is saying there are rumours of a 50p increase in the UK. Time will tell.

It'll probably stay the same price in the EU while we get stuck with the price hike as part of our conversion into the 51st State.

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1 hour ago, J4ck said:

Different companies have different license fees.

But Disney's fees are usually way higher than those of any other company (at least when it comes to lego), so if there is a CMF with an increase in price it would've made more sense for it to be Disney Series 2

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14 hours ago, RedHoodPug said:

DC is property of Warner, much like Harry Potter. Unless they suddenly demanded a bigger piece of pie I don’t see the specific license being the issue. See my earlier post about character selection. They were never going to please everybody, especially if they want to make another series in future.

Have you clarified with the store that the forty boxes they have are all they are getting? Considering they are not going to be available for another month, it seems unlikely. I honestly do not believe that a Lego store would under stock one their own products prior to its release because the interest is low. No business does that. Staff apathy may exist, but the company is going to show the same amount of pride that they do with all their products. If the interest was that low the product wouldn’t have got out of the development stage.

Yes, I'm practically an employee myself there. To be clear it's not an official Lego Store, but simply a specific Lego selling store. The fact is that there is no buzz around this release while other releases have way more interest from people (even when they're not officially released or shown to the public yet) hence the lower amount of boxes. Usually when this is the case they/we always have more boxes left then sold after a few months. That's not really a problem because you'll sell them eventually, but you simply don't want to sit with a lot of boxes you can't sell. We don't have discounts like in the US so there is no sale or something like that. 

The interest for CMF series like Disney and WW were so high that it wasn't even possible to order more as every store has a limit they can order (from Lego). I don't think this has something to do with 'getting through the development stage' as a lot of sets / themes have gone through that process and were bad ideas from the start. I think TLG wants to test the waters now that Mattel doesn't have the only rights for DC figures anymore. 

However, my personal opinion says this series is too close to the Batman Movie CMF series 2 (those didn't sell at all), the character selection just isn't appealing to people who don't have anything with DC and the price increase doesn't help it either. Don't get me wrong, I love DC and was looking forward to this CMF series but even I don't care for more than 3-4 figures. I know DC is part of Warner like Harry Potter, but that doesn't say much to me. The budget for the Wizarding World sets were way better than any DC related Super Heroes set so they could just have different licenses fees. 

Edited by Hoth Rebel

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44 minutes ago, Guyon2002 said:

But Disney's fees are usually way higher than those of any other company (at least when it comes to lego), so if there is a CMF with an increase in price it would've made more sense for it to be Disney Series 2

We don’t know what kind of deal Lego has DC in terms of this CMF :shrug_oh_well:

1 hour ago, Hellfire said:

It'll probably stay the same price in the EU while we get stuck with the price hike as part of our conversion into the 51st State.

There are NO plans to sell the NHS off, just Labour’s lies.

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I don't really get the anger over the price raise, the quality of the figures has raised DRASTICALLY, they went from being made in a shoddy Chinese second rate factory, figs from the older series are starting to fade in print, the quality on the 2018 bricktober packs is iffy depending on your copy, I've handled two sets of the marvel ones that jad the EXACT same quality problems, I get its an extra 16 dollars for the whole set, but now we are getting better quality figs from same factories as regular sets. I for one am fine with the price increase, Especially since it already raised to 5$ in canada earlier this year

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@Hoth Rebel practically an employee at a store that sells Lego doesn’t give you the inside scoop though. Unless the store got promotional material for this line long before the boxes there is a time discrepancy. The announcement was only made the other day, not exactly long enough to conduct sufficient market research to determine how much stock they should get. I would reserve my opinion on buzz until official release date. Wizarding World is very different because it tied in with the product relaunch, it was always going to be massive. Disney I can’t really comment on because that’s one line that I have seen hanging around for a long time after release, but that’s just my local area.

 The Batman series 2 was somewhat overkill, late coming and some of the character choices were questionable. On the flip side of that the C-list characters were popular with a lot of collectors because it was likely the only chance of getting them. I don’t think anyone could have come up with the perfect roster with scope for further releases. As a lifelong fan of DC, I want all of them and don’t care what order they come in. Harry Potter sets are getting plugged more than any other theme here, because it’s on a different level to DC. Super Heroes are dependable, whereas WW is hot.

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6 hours ago, J4ck said:
7 hours ago, Hellfire said:

 

There are NO plans to sell the NHS off, just Labour’s lies.

For fear of getting a slap on the wrist, this isn’t the place for politics. And even if it were, that’s one hell of a case of pot calling kettle black. End of.

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23 hours ago, legosamsonite said:

I don't really get the anger over the price raise, the quality of the figures has raised DRASTICALLY, they went from being made in a shoddy Chinese second rate factory, figs from the older series are starting to fade in print, the quality on the 2018 bricktober packs is iffy depending on your copy, I've handled two sets of the marvel ones that jad the EXACT same quality problems, I get its an extra 16 dollars for the whole set, but now we are getting better quality figs from same factories as regular sets. I for one am fine with the price increase, Especially since it already raised to 5$ in canada earlier this year

The discussion is allways quite the same when that topic comes up. If you thought a figure "made in a shoddy Chinese second rate factory" was worth 4€ the increasing quality is surely worth the new price. That's fine.

For the people complaining it's about 3 aspects: 

- what are we getting?

- how is the quality?

- that's the price?

The really old serieses had neat figures with very few "special" parts. Things like the Lizard man with two moulds specificly made for that character still exclusive today were very rare. The quality of the figures themself and their printing was great. The price was 2€

Simpsons 1 had more moulds that were just done for this series. They had tons of dual moulded arms and even short legs made with 3 Sports of plastic. Still produced in Europe with the same quality for 2,50€ including the licence fees.

The step to 3€ didn't seem justified by anything but Inflation. Most people swallowed it. 

Then came the price raise to 4€ for both - licences and nonlicenced serieses. But the number of crazy moulds in regular serieses increased so it was acceptable in terms of what we get. But at the same time the production was moved to China resulting in terrible quality. I had a Cat man unable to stand upright and nearly every figure was misprinted. If i had no Lego store at my City where employees take back the rubbish and allow you to feel for a new one - it took parts from 3 bags to get one Ducky-Batman without terrible moulding or printing errors - i would have stopped collecting at all at that point. So i kept getting at least the few that i really love because of their design... At that point many lost their Joy in the theme.

Series 19 was a big step back. The firefighter for example abused the cmf moulding budget financed by the higher price to introduce a headgear for this years City sets.

Now we have to pay 5$ in America and probably soon 5€ in Europe... and because you don't need Lego to survive it is a good depending in the buyer's feelings. If he feels like the price is ridiculous and maybe even starts to dislike the company behind the product it will have consequences in sales.

 

Edited by Gorilla94

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On 12/8/2019 at 9:18 PM, THELEGOBATMAN said:

If we are getting only one set, I hope it includes Wonder Woman (golden outfit), Steve, Cheetah (it seems she won't transform but rather wear a cheetah-stylised outfit) and Maxwell Lord.

didn't steve die in wonder woman though

 

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6 hours ago, gryffindorbrickkid said:

didn't steve die in wonder woman though

 

He did but then some stuff happened and now he’s not dead. They’re really keeping the hows and whys under wraps.

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Let's not get into discussing the movies please! A little drop of speculation about what the Wonder Woman sets might be is ok, though sets aren't always based off of trailer material as we saw with the Wonder Woman tie-in set last time.

Re: the price increase, to me personally there's nothing about this series that seems worth a price hike. Price increases for the CMF line have outstripped inflation, so they can't just be chalked up to that. I think they're more LEGO seeing what they can get away with. Current series are certainly much more impressive in terms of the amount of printing, dual-moulding and detail compared to early ones, but there's nothing exemplary about the DC line.

However, as Jangbricks has speculated on numerous times, it seems in the US especially RRP is being set to account for near constant discounts at the retailers. It seems like Target, Walmart and Amazon have at least a 20% off sale happening every other week. Even here in Australia the major retailers run small sales quite frequently, though of course the dollar amounts are much higher than the US to begin with and even after sales the prices tend to be above US RRP, and that's with the (currently terrible) exchange rate taken into account.

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2 hours ago, Clone OPatra said:

Re: the price increase, to me personally there's nothing about this series that seems worth a price hike. Price increases for the CMF line have outstripped inflation, so they can't just be chalked up to that. I think they're more LEGO seeing what they can get away with. Current series are certainly much more impressive in terms of the amount of printing, dual-moulding and detail compared to early ones, but there's nothing exemplary about the DC line.

The price increase feels even worse because they chose a very mediocre series to do it: some very obscure/unknown characters, reused prints from sets (reusing prints on a CMF is a travesty), some of these are the n-th version of X character and most of the accesories included appear regularly on sets so they are not that interesting. 

Also, I'm really sure but I count only 9(?) new molds, which is low for a CMF wave (Disney S2 had 16 new molds). So I don't really see where that extra dollar went. 

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1 hour ago, Robert8 said:

Also, I'm really sure but I count only 9(?) new molds, which is low for a CMF wave (Disney S2 had 16 new molds). So I don't really see where that extra dollar went. 

I count 10: Bumblebee's hair, Flash's helmet, Batmite's cowl, Cyborg's helmet, Batman's cowl, Cheetah's headgear, the lantern, Aquaman's hook hand, Stargirl's staff tip, and the clear posing piece that comes with all of them. It's certainly on the low end of new moulds, though not as low as the Batman Movie series 1 & 2 (aside: did 2 really have just two new moulds - a non-Friends Dolphin and the Soccer Mom Batgirl headgear?)

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The dolphin was in the beach people pack before the TLBM series 2 figures. I think the cape for Soccer Mom batgirl is a unique cut.

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4 hours ago, Robert8 said:

Also, I'm really sure but I count only 9(?) new molds, which is low for a CMF wave (Disney S2 had 16 new molds). So I don't really see where that extra dollar went. 

I do believe that recoloured parts counts under the new heading. In which case there’s also Metamorpho’s hand, the other lantern, the money bag, the fish, energy bolts, Joker’s hair, the skirt piece, possibly others.

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3 hours ago, RedHoodPug said:

I do believe that recoloured parts counts under the new heading. In which case there’s also Metamorpho’s hand, the other lantern, the money bag, the fish, energy bolts, Joker’s hair, the skirt piece, possibly others.

Anyone is free to view things as they want, and yes LEGO internally has certain parameters for "changes" that include recolours and prints on pieces/Minifigures, but new moulds are still new moulds vs simply recolours. In general I'd say recolours in CMF are just standard and expected, while new moulds spark more immediate interest. A cool new hairpiece or minifigure accessory is slightly more exciting than a nice recolour of an existing one, at least to me personally, though recolours can be great too.

It would be interesting to go through all of the CMF series and tally new moulds AND recolours, though quite a time consuming job. Especially since dual moulding was introduced, determining which arm and leg colour combinations are new beneath their prints and which aren't would require a very meticulous attention to detail.

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