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So, I bought five CMFs through S@H, and they arrived yesterday - I actually got my top two most wanted from the series, the 80s Musician and Breakdancer! Also got two "meh" figures, the Viking and the similar-to-but-legally-distinct-from-a Power Ranger, and the Pajama Girl, which I wouldn't have sought out myself but my wife really likes, so she's going into her collection.

I actually considered an Elvis impersonator for my food series, with his prop being a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich... but for the music series maybe a new Gretsch-style guitar, or a 55SH-style microphone. Barbershop singer... the only "instrument" I could think of would be a 1x1 round tile printed as a pitch pipe, but they could also have something more directly barbershop related like a new comb element. (As for what the sheet music would eventually spell out - "Everything is Awesome," naturally.)

Surprise surprise, I'm gonna go with a food-based series. Every figure comes with a food accessory: Chilihead: a lover of all things spicy! Comes with a bright red bottle with a pepper print. Flame-patterned shirt, sunglasses, and spiky bleached hair. Guy Fieri. I'm describing Guy Fieri. Chocolatier: I'm picturing a steampunk aesthetic for this, inspired by Toothsome Chocolate Emporium, with a fancy dress and the Calamity Drone hat/hair in varying shades of brown and gold. Accessories are a 1x1 round tile and 1x1 heart tile with truffle prints. Pumpkin Spice Fan: loosely based on myself. Wearing a sweater with autumn leaves motif, the scarf accessory in a new color (maybe dark red or green), and a coffee cup with pumpkin print. She would probably, let's face it, have the Karen hairpiece. (That part is not based on myself.) Croissant Suit Guy: we already have pizza, hot dog, banana, and watermelon suits to go with their corresponding parts, high time one of the best LEGO food pieces gets the costume treatment! Despite being around for over 20 years the croissant hasn't had many recolors, so this could include a medium nougat variant. Vegetable Gardener: if the sausage piece were recolored in dark green, it could look like a zucchini, don't you think? This figure would also come with a new hoe accessory, and she'd be dressed in muddy overalls and a sun hat. Lunch Lady: white uniform covered in stains of indeterminate provenance, a new hairpiece with printed hairnet, and a very disgruntled expression. Her accessory would be the triumphant return of the Fabuland ladle, and a 2x3 tile with lunch tray print. Lemonade Stand Kid: a little girl in summery attire, with the baseball cap/ponytail hairpiece in some new color combo. Accessories include a new pitcher element and a hand-painted lemonade sign printed on a 2x4 tile. Carnival King: a Mardi Gras-themed figure with facepaint, jester hat, collar ruff, and outlandish green, purple, and gold attire, with a 2x2 round tile with hole printed as a king cake. The Muffin Man: The Muffin Man? The Muffin Man! With a chef's hat printed to resemble a muffin, a muffin accessory made from the new cupcake mold introduced in the Trolls sets topped with a 1x1 printed tile, and a torso print with an apron just barely concealing his own muffin top. Stadium Snack Vendor: would have a new neck accessory piece, similar to the baby carrier, but with a wider, flatter extension to hold two 1x2 tiles, one printed as a packet of peanuts and one with a design similar to but legally distinct from Cracker Jack. Gummi Bear: a monochrome (aside from minimal torso printing to suggest a rounded physique) minifig in either red or green, with the bear headpiece from the Panda Suit Guy, carrying a 2x2 tile printed as a bag of gummi bears, raising all kinds of ethical questions about potential cannibalism. Craft Brewer: similar to the S5 Lumberjack, but with brighter clothing, a bushier beard, and neatly combed hair, with a new larger, textured version of the mug element, and a printed bottle of root beer, yep it's definitely root beer, this is a toy for kids. Miss American Pie: picture something like a red-white-and-blue version of the S11 Pretzel Girl, with the flared plastic skirt piece rather than fabric and a new color of the high pigtails hairpiece. Her accessory would be a pie printed with a lattice pattern on top. Girl Scout: with a green and brown uniform featuring a sash covered in colorful badges, and a new dual-molded beret with hair piece. A 1x2x2 cookie box and two different tiles with new cookie prints round out the accessories. Schoolteacher: a very prim, strict-looking figure - is she actually a historical character, or does she just dress that way? She would have a slate tile with a diagram of bricks representing a simple equation, and of course an apple - and this could be an opportunity for a really fancy, multicolor printed apple, red but with a brown stem and green leaf, maybe even a printed worm! Backyard Barbecue Guy: with a new color for the balding hairpiece (perhaps with some sunburn-red printing on top), a spatula, and a brown tile printed with grill marks. His apron would have some terrible LEGO-themed pun like "Master Grill-der" on it.

Nicely done! I'm supporting it - would love the chance at a LEGO Eames House after the one planned for the Architecture line never saw the light of day. As for what I'd improve - the use of ladders to delineate the window frames is quite clever, but makes the front façade feel very heavy and dark. Do you think the build could be rearranged so that they're directly behind the window panels to give the impression of a flush surface?

The modulars existed before Creator Expert, they will exist after.

Before the pandemic, a certain degree of spontaneity in my day-to-day life was essential. I didn't realize how essential until it was gone - no more aimless browsing at the library or bookstore, no more mulling over the menu at the coffee shop, no more making up meal ideas on the fly at the grocery store based on what ingredients were freshest or on sale that week. The fact that I now have to know exactly what I'm doing, and where, and when, at seemingly all times, has cranked my anxiety way up, without the release I used to get from the occasional pleasant surprise. To that end, my therapist has challenged me to find new ways to get that process of discovery back into my life, and I hit on the idea of blind-bag minifigures. I have never bought them without feeling them up to know exactly what I'm getting, so now, for the first time, I'm just ordering some online, and I'll get what I get. I might even be inspired to build something new that I wouldn't otherwise have thought of if I were only buying the specific minifigs I wanted. (I also threw in a DOTS pack while I'm at it, for some surprise printed tiles as well.) So while I can't speak to anyone else's experience, blind bags are helpful for my mental health right now, and I felt like that perspective should be shared.

A leaked image of an upcoming Star Wars set features a character named Vi Moradi, who has the short Black Widow hairpiece in black with blue tips! First time I've seen this hairpiece with printing.

I know by now not to completely trust anything unless I see it myself (and even then there are exceptions - sometimes I would uncover information about something so early on that it would be cancelled or significantly altered by the time products actually released), so I wasn't really counting on any of the rumors to be true, but I will say I've been deliberately conservative with my 2020 LEGO budget precisely because of the possibility of a $400 Diagon Alley set. So I suppose the absolute worst that could happen is... I would have an extra $400 in my budget? I mean, I'm still hedging to be on the safe side, but it also potentially opens up some other possibilities for me. ETA: Ah, I don't think I'd realized that. The first rumors of it seem to have surfaced while I was taking a break from (most of) the internet, so it was difficult to piece together all the news I'd missed out on.

Beautiful build! My wife and I just went to Universal (for the second time) last October, and already I want to go back!

Credence, Dobby, Tina, Queenie, and Jacob would all be "non-sorted," and I guess Percival Graves as well since he most likely went to Ilvermorny? Mad-Eye is the unknown; I don't think it was ever established what house he was in.

No, that's just the City Ski Resort from last year.

I'm pretty sure it is a broom - a gift-wrapped one! And the thing in front of the piano is another one of the gifts.

Much better images have turned up now. Definitely Parvati.

How do we know they don't have anything to replace them with? Even before the pandemic, release dates for movies would get shuffled around on a semi-regular basis, so it seems pretty likely that LEGO would be accustomed enough to this to have contingency plans in place. For all we know, they might have dozens of comic-based set designs tucked away just in case they need to fill a gap. (Obviously production and shipping times need to be factored in, but if the actual design process is complete and just waiting for the green light, four or five months might be plenty of time to get products into stores.) Personally, I think the likeliest scenario would be akin to what we've already seen with the Minions sets - maybe one or two Eternals sets could be released as originally scheduled, with the rest held back until a little closer to the film's actual release. And yes, Disney absolutely would have a say in this - maybe not force a delay, but certainly strongly suggest one, possibly involving hired goons.

Some intriguingly minimalist designs on this one. Hopefully pictures of the others will be posted soon.

Weird question, right? But I was considering making a "Favorite LEGO Batmobile" poll when I found myself in an ontological quandary on exactly which sets to include in it. So, in preparation for said poll, I pose the following question: what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of essential Batmobileness? Which ones "count"? The Tumbler is a Batmobile, sure, but is Bane's Tumbler a Batmobile? It's the same vehicle, just with a different paint job and additional firepower. And most importantly, Batman doesn't drive it, which feels like the main reason why it shouldn't count. Similar to how War Machine is an Iron Man armor with a different paint job and additional firepower, but wouldn't be classified as an Iron Man armor mainly because Iron Man himself doesn't wear it. There have been several sets with a more "buggy" type vehicle, like Rescue from Ra's al Ghul, Joker's Trike Chase, and, well, the Bat-Dune Buggy, and I'm inclined to categorize those separately from Batmobiles, but I can't really articulate why. I feel more confident excluding the Bat-Moon Buggy (featured in the Bat-Space Shuttle), Bat-Go-Kart (TLBM Batwing), and the little ATV thing in the Mobile Bat Base, but still couldn't succinctly sum up why they're not Batmobiles. (OK, clearly I can't do anything succinctly.) So, I'm curious to see others' opinions on this. What are the characteristics that all Batmobiles must have? What features would make something definitively not a Batmobile? Am I allowed to exclude the Tim Burton one just because that movie sucks? (Come at me bro.) What is your take? No wrong answers! OK, some wrong answers.

These are all great, and I especially love the Chocolate Fairy! I feel like a whole series of food-themed fantasy characters could be fun!

The Taj Mahal was a lot easier to re-release because almost all the parts were still in production - a few had had some slight changes, but not in any way that really altered the build. Café Corner is a bit trickier - I feel like using the modern equivalents of some of the retired parts would result in significant enough aesthetic changes to make it feel "off" - like the skis that no longer have hinges, or the panels that now have side supports that alter their profile. Not to mention the five-high, frameless doors that don't even have modern equivalents. (Well, unless you count train doors, not that I think you would have any problem with more train doors in circulation , but they would make for a pretty different feel.)

There were comic-based Justice League waves in 2015 and 2018, and yeah, two data points do not a trend line make, but I feel like that could bode well for 2021.

Was Diagon Alley even featured in the fourth and fifth years? I had been speculating about something similar but realized I couldn't think of anything for those two.

If I'm remembering this correctly, green was part of the initial palette for Automatic Binding Bricks but then actually cut out of the lineup (or at least drastically reduced) with the launch of System i Leg. Apparently there was even some extensive internal debate about the inclusion of green bricks around that time. I'll have to go back and watch the show again to recall exactly what they said about it. I sent David C. Robertson a message to see if he has a primary/contemporary source he can share for the Mondrian connection his book mentions. For years I've thought of it as a "yeah, sounds about right" bit of inconsequential historical ephemera, but now my interest has been very much piqued and I really want to get to the bottom of it!

I watched the LEGO episode of The Toys That Made Us yesterday, and they also mentioned that Mondrian was the inspiration for the color palette, and that this was LEGO's first major improvement over the more drab colors offered by existing plastic building blocks like Kiddicraft. David C. Robertson and Bill Breen's excellent Brick by Brick also makes a passing mention: "The new product was patented in 1958 and within a few years bright yellow, red and blue Lego bricks, colors inspired by the paintings of the Dutch Modernist painter Piet Mondrian, were scattered across the floors of millions of homes."

That's pretty much what I'm hoping for!

I don't think they'd be "nearly identical" just because they're both Slytherins; Ron-as-Crabbe definitely has a more unkempt look to his robes than Harry-as-Goyle, so there's certainly room for variation there, just like the different variations on Gryffindor robes in the first series.

Are there any images of Pigsy without the chef hat? I'm wondering if a reprint of that head mold might be used for Piglet in the forthcoming Winnie-the-Pooh Ideas set.