LEGO IDEAS - The Medieval Blacksmith

[chill9394]

Black falcon torso, legs and shield as well as tan horse back in stock on bricks and pieces!

[VTsquatts]

48 minutes ago, chill9394 said:

Black falcon torso, legs and shield as well as tan horse back in stock on bricks and pieces!

Wohooo finally snagged some here!!!!

[Aurore]

1 hour ago, chill9394 said:

Black falcon torso, legs and shield as well as tan horse back in stock on bricks and pieces!

Thank you so much for the info! 

[Roebuck]

I was too late, at least the horse has galloped away in Norway
However with no backorders to compete with it should come trotting back soon

[GeoBrick]

Things sell out quickly. Only the legs were still available. :(

[Vorkosigan]

So, when I saw this set had Nexo shields for its roof tiles, I knew I had to do a little mod. Some may call this blasphemy, but I had fun with it. Note: no Blacksmith sets were harmed in the making of this mod, I put it back to normal afterwards. 

[Henry Bricklider]

10 hours ago, Vorkosigan said:

So, when I saw this set had Nexo shields for its roof tiles, I knew I had to do a little mod. Some may call this blasphemy, but I had fun with it. Note: no Blacksmith sets were harmed in the making of this mod, I put it back to normal afterwards. 

I appreciate the Nexo Knights love. I think you might be on to something with modifying castle sets to be more in line with the general aesthetic of Nexo Knights.

[CallMeCarbiz]

12 hours ago, Vorkosigan said:

 

While I am not a fan of Nexo "replacing" castle I do enjoy seeing these mash ups of themes.

[GeoBrick]

Heh, that's funny.

[Zarcania]

Clearly funny ! 

[CallMeCarbiz]

The Blacksmith is back in stock in the US. Get it now before the scalpers do.
https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/medieval-blacksmith-21325

[Robert8]

Winnie the Pooh set was just leaked and there are 5 new molds, pretty much like Sesame Street. Including a new animal mold: Eeyore

 

I feel this is kind of unfair. They could give at least 1 new mold to unlicensed sets. Like the goat mold here

 

 

[Roebuck]

6 hours ago, Robert8 said:

Winnie the Pooh set was just leaked and there are 5 new molds, pretty much like Sesame Street. Including a new animal mold: Eeyore

 

I feel this is kind of unfair. They could give at least 1 new mold to unlicensed sets. Like the goat mold here

I agree, the sets themself with the actual build would probably not be any better, but the details would improve a lot with the same budget. B-bay could not bring back the monkey, gold coins etc and had to leave out soldiers and several animals because of the low budget. Likewise the Blacksmith could not bring back the goat, recolor the hare or include hens and other animals and more figs

[Alexandrina]

7 hours ago, Robert8 said:

I feel this is kind of unfair. They could give at least 1 new mold to unlicensed sets. Like the goat mold here

Disney own the rights to Winnie the Pooh, right? Is it possible that the presence of new moulds in a licensed Ideas set is part of Lego greasing the wheels of their arrangement with Disney; I imagine there's a lot to be lost on certain more steady licenses if Lego are releasing Disney-licensed products that Disney see as sub-par. It might even be the case that Disney insisted on new moulds, since it wouldn't really be possible to do Winnie the Pooh without them. The in-house Ideas wouldn't have the same benefit of a more powerful third party wanting to be appeased.

Alternatively, it might be the case that Lego anticipate selling more of the licensed Ideas than the in-house ones (whether or not that's correct). I know the Pirates of Barracuda Bay was a good seller, but would Lego not have already committed a budget to the Blacksmith by that point? Not sure of the lead time on designing new sets.

The third possible explanation - and I don't know how Lego budgeting works, specifically, so I might be way off-piste here - is that the Ideas budget for the year is to be spread around every Ideas set, rather than having a budget per set. If there's only so much money for all of their Ideas combined to have new moulds, I can definitely see Lego figuring that it was more important to get moulds for characters integral to one of the properties (they couldn't exactly leave out Winnie in a Winnie the Pooh set, for instance) rather than as an addition to a set that doesn't strictly speaking need new moulds. It would have been nice to have goats and such, but the Blacksmith doesn't fail without them, so they'd be lower down the priorities for spending the budget.

[Lego David]

8 hours ago, Robert8 said:

I feel this is kind of unfair. They could give at least 1 new mold to unlicensed sets. Like the goat mold here

In the LEGO Ideas rules, they specifically say that you are not allowed to propose new molds, and they will only create new molds if they deem it absolutely necessary. I assume that's probably because they want to limit the budget of Ideas sets to as little as possible, unless the set is based off a popular IP that they believe will be profitable, and they can't do that IP without creating the new molds. 

[Lion King]

1 hour ago, Roebuck said:

I agree, the sets themself with the actual build would probably not be any better, but the details would improve a lot with the same budget. B-bay could not bring back the monkey, gold coins etc and had to leave out soldiers and several animals because of the low budget. Likewise the Blacksmith could not bring back the goat, recolor the hare or include hens and other animals and more figs

100% agreed. And Sesame Street set has new mold per minifigure. I think Sesame Street is a win but I don’t own it yet. I may be wrong but it has some many stickers, rather than printed pieces?

[RichardGoring]

1 hour ago, DBlegonerd7 said:

100% agreed. And Sesame Street set has new mold per minifigure. I think Sesame Street is a win but I don’t own it yet. I may be wrong but it has some many stickers, rather than printed pieces?

Many, many stickers. The Winnie the Pooh set has quite a few too.

[Lion King]

18 minutes ago, RichardGoring said:

Many, many stickers. The Winnie the Pooh set has quite a few too.

Exactly. I guess Winnie the Pooh set is a bigger winner then. 

[MAB]

Does the Blacksmith and POBB sell OK without new parts? I imagine yes. Sure a goat would be nice, but a goat is not going to drive the sales of the set to most people.

Would Sesame Street and Pooh sell if the minifigures were built out of existing parts only? I imagine they would look terrible and not sell at all well. The figures drive the sales of those sets. Sesame Street without any characters (or with bad renditions of them) would be pointless.

This is one difference between licenses and non-licensed. If something doesn't look like the license, it won't sell. Whereas there is more freedom for non-licenses. Leaving out a goat is not that big a deal for the set overall. Leaving out Tigger would be.

[Roebuck]

2 hours ago, MAB said:

Does the Blacksmith and POBB sell OK without new parts? I imagine yes. Sure a goat would be nice, but a goat is not going to drive the sales of the set to most people.

Would Sesame Street and Pooh sell if the minifigures were built out of existing parts only? I imagine they would look terrible and not sell at all well. The figures drive the sales of those sets. Sesame Street without any characters (or with bad renditions of them) would be pointless.

This is one difference between licenses and non-licensed. If something doesn't look like the license, it won't sell. Whereas there is more freedom for non-licenses. Leaving out a goat is not that big a deal for the set overall. Leaving out Tigger would be.

While most of what you say probably are true, a goat would drive sales of any set
I do not say that the Blacksmith needed 5 new moulds, but with a similar budget like that it could easily included a goat or two and 3-4 other animals and still had not used half the budget of this set, not very fair is it

[The_Creator]

As miffed as I am that the licensed Ideas sets seem to get more new molds than say MB or POBB, this explanation makes the most sense. Also, if this new Ideas Pooh set sells well (I can't imagine it won't - I even want it now with the final redesigned product) I bet we will see more Disney Pooh sets in the future, and TLG and Disney are likely planning on that.
 

3 hours ago, MAB said:

Does the Blacksmith and POBB sell OK without new parts? I imagine yes. Sure a goat would be nice, but a goat is not going to drive the sales of the set to most people.

Would Sesame Street and Pooh sell if the minifigures were built out of existing parts only? I imagine they would look terrible and not sell at all well. The figures drive the sales of those sets. Sesame Street without any characters (or with bad renditions of them) would be pointless.

This is one difference between licenses and non-licensed. If something doesn't look like the license, it won't sell. Whereas there is more freedom for non-licenses. Leaving out a goat is not that big a deal for the set overall. Leaving out Tigger would be.

 

[Aanchir]

On 3/4/2021 at 12:32 PM, Roebuck said:

While most of what you say probably are true, a goat would drive sales of any set
I do not say that the Blacksmith needed 5 new moulds, but with a similar budget like that it could easily included a goat or two and 3-4 other animals and still had not used half the budget of this set, not very fair is it

Keep in mind also that the Winnie the Pooh and Sesame Street sets have a considerably higher price per piece than the Medieval Blacksmith Shop — and while some of that is probably to cover royalties for the use of third-party IPs, the cost of the new molds is likely a factor as well.

And honestly, if the designers really felt like the set would sell a lot better with more animals, they probably would have focused on ones that they currently have molds for, like cats, mice, rabbits, hares, chickens, owls, songbirds, or deer. After all, the main reason the AFOL community considers goats so much more desirable than other farm animals is their scarcity. Plus, since nothing else in this set is even farming related, non-livestock animals likely would have been a more fitting choice anyhow.

On 3/4/2021 at 1:33 PM, The_Creator said:

As miffed as I am that the licensed Ideas sets seem to get more new molds than say MB or POBB, this explanation makes the most sense. Also, if this new Ideas Pooh set sells well (I can't imagine it won't - I even want it now with the final redesigned product) I bet we will see more Disney Pooh sets in the future, and TLG and Disney are likely planning on that.

Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Winnie the Pooh or Sesame Street "4+" sets in the future, much like the Mickey Mouse ones rumored for later this year.

[Alexandrina]

7 minutes ago, Aanchir said:

And honestly, if the designers really felt like the set would sell a lot better with more animals, they probably would have focused on ones that they currently have molds for, like cats, mice, rabbits, hares, chickens, owls, songbirds, or deer

You got me excited for a second thinking that there'd been a deer released other than the reindeer/patronus that I'd somehow missed. 

I agree with you: while goats would have been nice, they're not essential, nor are they inherently more interesting than, say, pigs or cattle. I'd much rather them make their return in a set where they're essential, perhaps a future Medieval Farm set.

[Aanchir]

1 hour ago, Alexandrina said:

You got me excited for a second thinking that there'd been a deer released other than the reindeer/patronus that I'd somehow missed. 

Sorry! I referred to it as a "deer" because in all honesty, it more closely resembles a European red deer than an actual reindeer. Real-life reindeer tend to have shorter necks (which stick forward like the necks of cattle or oxen, not upward like the necks of gazelles or horses), white or grey coats rather than brown ones, and wide muzzles like moose rather than narrow/pointed ones.

The LEGO "reindeer" was most likely modeled off pop-culture portrayals of "Santa's reindeer" which likewise tend be based on European red deer, American white-tailed deer, or other species from temperate climates, not actual reindeer species. As such, I feel like it'd be able to represent those more temperate species fairly accurately. By contrast, Sven from the Frozen sets (24872/59104) is a closer approximation of what actual reindeer look like. Hardly the sleek, nimble woodland creatures a lot of people expect to see on their yearly Christmas cards!

 

[Alexandrina]

1 minute ago, Aanchir said:

Sorry! I referred to it as a "deer" because in all honesty, it more closely resembles a European red deer than an actual reindeer. Real-life reindeer tend to have shorter necks (which stick forward like the necks of cattle or oxen, not upward like the necks of gazelles or horses), white or grey coats rather than brown ones, and wide muzzles like moose rather than narrow/pointed ones.

I think my own ignorance is more to blame! My overriding memory of a deer experience was at a... effectively a safari park, but only with farm animals (not sure how that works!) where I went in my youth to feed the deer. Except they were all female deer, and I was at that impressionable age where my assumptions on the world were being set in stone, so in my mind deer don't have antlers.

Of course, they do - but my mental image is out of date.