Why were there no MARVEL sets for the Thor 2 and TWS

[smkaemp]

I still do not understand why we did not get a single set from either of these There was potential for awesome sets, yet TLG didn't bother to even attempt to make one. Any thoughts as to why this is?

[iamwhoiam]

I was wondering the same thing! Both would have made amazing sets!

[Ryker_Hill]

Not to mention ASM2! Such great potential.....

[wesker]

My guess:

1. Licensing could have been a factor. Lego may only be allowed to produce sets from only one MCU film per year, or it simply may have been cheaper for them to do so. Iron Man 3 and GOTG just happened to be the bigger films for those years.

2. In the case of Captain America - the second film wasn't very "toy friendly". There weren't a lot of options for potential sets outside of SHIELD vehicles - and they had already been released two years earlier with The Avengers. The only thing the film had going for it was the characters and most of them are going to show up in future movies anyway. Thor is a different story. There were plenty of great set possibilities for the second movie, which brings me to the next issue...

3. While Thor is popular as a character, he isn't quite strong enough as a brand name. Just look at Hasbro's action figure line for the first Thor movie which failed to sell any product. If someone was interested in a minifigure of Thor and he was currently available in two sets - one labeled under Thor: The Dark World and another under The Avengers - chances are that person is more likely to go with the Avengers set simply because its a stronger, more appealling brand.

[strangely]

I'd guess popularity and demand played a part. They probably save the sets for movies they know will be big and will have a higher demand for sets. And character wise Guardians offered a lot more than CA2. Why get another variant of Cap and Black Widow when you can have an entirely new team of characters. As for last year I'm sure it was just a popularity contest and Iron Man beats Thor unfortunately.

And I'm thinking any movie that involves Natalie Portman already has three strikes against it based on how little she appears in the Star Wars sets.

I would have rather had Jane Foster than Pepper Potts, I mean it's not as if we don't have a ton of redheads in this theme already, but I guess I'll just have to wait a bit longer.

Also I'm betting that they tend to choose the movie that features things that would better fit into the standard price points. Why make sets for the bigger than life Asgard when you can slap some Iron Man variants onto a boat. It's a lot easier to compress Tony Starks mansion into a $40 set than it is for a castle.

Not to mention ASM2! Such great potential.....

That seemed like Disney's hand. They did after all take show based sets and intentionally use movie villains. So I'd say they wanted to capitalize on the movie without completely supporting it. Essentially they used Sony to create demand for those terrible USM sets. And it worked, so I can't exactly fault them on that one.

[montgocloud]

LEGO doesn't decide how to allocate sets with the Marvel license, Marvel does. Marvel is at fault for the lack of The Winter Soldier and The Dark World sets. These two movies had very poor toy marketing outside of LEGO too. The toy marketing for Iron Man 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy, meanwhile, was much, much stronger.

[LMB10]

Yeah, it's down to marketing, they wanted to market Cap and Thor - but they didn't need as big a push as say Guardians did.

Marvel wanted to market their shows and movies - so made the best of both by using movie characters in the tv show based sets

[Gatthekid]

Perhaps TLG knew more people would buy one theme over another. I, for one, would much more likely buy GotG sets than I would say, Thor or Captain America sets if they were side by side on a store shelf.

Of course, my opinion is a bit biased as I'm much more partial to GotG than any other Marvel theme.