Weil

That's the worst one yet. There's so much wrong with it I'm not even going to bother listing the faults.

I don't think each genre needs a license. If you agree kids wouldn't distinguish middle earth LEGO from other fantasy themes then I think that really weakens your argument, LEGO already has all the molds and print designs to produce unlicensed wizards, elves, dwarves, orcs, dragons, monsters and so on. It's therefore liable to be MUCH more costly for LEGO to produce middle earth sets than it is for them to just bring out a new wave of fantasy compatible with Kingdoms. Furthermore these sets will still benefit from any increased demand for fantasy themed sets that the Hobbit films might create. If the license doesn't really add anything then it is such a waste of money to go for it. Personally I think a large part of what LEGO aim for in a licsense is something that is going to pull kids into LEGO at an early age and that there'll hopefully want more LEGO after the license expires. Star Wars is an obvious exception to this but that license has probably returned old or brought in new older fans of LEGO in a similar way. For example if your child is going to a birthday party of a kid who you know likes Harry Potter then getting them a Harry Potter LEGO set seems a good idea and it might be all it takes for that child to start collecting LEGO for the next 10 years. Similarly if your a little kid who loves say winne the poo or disney cars and you go into a toy shop then you're instantly going to recognise those sets, want to get them, go home and play with them and then the next time you go into a toy shop you may well just recognise any LEGO set as something you want to play with. Personally I don't think Hobbit sets would achieve this, you can't really be sure until the films come out because I don't know whether they're aiming it at fans of the LOTR films or this time going for younger kids and you also don't know how successful they will be. I don't think middle earth themed LEGO is a stupid idea and I wouldn't be that surprised if it comes out. I have no doubt they could make it work but I am a bit doubtful of the economic sense, whether kids really would prefer it and whether it is good for the LEGO brand. I am a bit biased, personally I prefer non-licensed themes. For a start they're notably cheaper but I also like that as much of the imagnination as possible is determined by you. I think non-licesed themes are more universely compatible with all other LEGO and for me that is what LEGO is all about. This problem is not just confined to the minifigures but that is a significant part of it. I think LEGO got an awful lot right with the Kingdoms line and I hope they continue to produce sets and themes along the same lines.

I think children would like Hobbit/LOTR LEGO sets but would they like them any more than non-licesnsed castle/fantasy LEGO sets? I'm not convinced about that really.

I think you've got a really nice design, it's looking like it's going to be a pretty classy place to drink! Definately more classy than most of the Pirate taverns seen around here I think if it were me I would make this into a court house or something like that. Perhaps with some cells full of swashbucklers in the cellar.

It's apparently down for maitenance. See the topic here. Pretty annoying! Hope it will be up soon and we can finally see your creation If you're fed up with trying to use brickshelf you could use something like Photobucket which is a free image hosting website. Edit: Your gallery is public now!

No just wait and someone who works for brickshelf will make it public in the next day or so. Someone has to verify your pictures as suitable uploads (ie Lego related) before they're made public. You can however link to your pictures directly before they make your folder public. Just go to your picture, right click and select 'copy link location' then paste the link inside img brackets. (or just click the insert image button and paste the link) It should look like this in your post: [img=http://www.brickshelf.com/yourpicturelink]

Here's pictures of the UK equivalent: Our catalogue is only 39 pages though, how many pages in the US one? Obviously more than the UK one if that's page 48! Edit: Might be worth a mod splitting the topic?

Yeah I agree I think it's a bit late, during the LOTR movie releases would have been a better time. Perhaps they'll test the water with some Hobbit releases to tie in with the film and then depending on how they do role out LOTR afterwards... Or perhaps they won't do any Tolkein based Lego, nobody here actually knows still.

I think one of these is your best option: Dragon Knight Helmet Fireman helmet Pith Helmet Morion Helmet But none of them are an ideal fit. Nice to see someone elses ideas, if someone wanted to do it with the armour then this torso might work well in red.

I read LOTR when I was a kid too after I read The Hobbit. I think quite a lot of kids did, nothing like on the scale of Harry Potter but still quite a lot and nearly everyone has seen at least some of the films.

Some are well known for example it's widely reported that City and Star Wars are some of the best sellers worldwide. A lot of the rest is just word of mouth, which is liable to be rubbish.

I would say the Imperial Guards fit into the late 18th century and early 19th century. The napoleonic wars took place in the 19th century and they're used by people to depict that frequently. If you look at the uniforms in the picture below showing uniforms from the Napoleonic War era then I think it's fair to say that the Imperial Guards have a pretty good resemblance with the uniforms on the left and the Royal Guard hat isn't that bad a match for the hats of the grenadiers on the right? Therefore if I am to dream up that the Imperial Guards have a company of Grenadiers that look like the minifig in my first post then I don't think I am being unreasonable. I am of course not telling everyone they should use them! I'm just explaining my reasoning.

Nice work! Like others say this could have fitted in seamlessly as an official set in the early 90s. Nice to see a MOC in the true classic pirates style. Like you I also prefer the 2009 wave redcoats but again like you I think it's much nicer to include the classic ones as they're a much better fit for this MOC. Good to see someone showing off that you don't need to build something complicated for it to still look good.

It's probably a little bit of a fine line but several forum moderators commented on the first one with the british line and the sammurai without asking for it to be removed and none of them have been further off topic than that one so I think it's pretty fair to assume it's fine. Best to leave that type of thing up to them anyway don't you think? I like the 3rd installment!

Be interesting to see what the torso design is like underneath the beard.

Same.

I completely agree, I think the 2009-2010 Pirate wave was great particularly the minifigures. Definately superior to the 1996-1997 wave. I wondered about this but I assumed it was far inferior to Lego. What I don't get is why these rival companies insist on ripping of Lego sets. Copying the bricks is all very well there's nothing to stop them now the patents have expired but I don't see why they don't come up with sets of their own. By ripping of existing or previous Lego sets they make themselves seen as a clear cheap Lego knock-off rather than a seriour competitor and also makes them open for lego to successfully take fully justifable legal action that they could otherwise avoid.

I laughed out loud at this one, very funny.

I don't think they're having trouble shifting them, I would have thought its a really popular set? I think it's more of the opposite - people are still buying it and therefore they continue to sell it. If you look at the Medieval Market Village you see the same thing, the set is from the 'Castle' line and also released in 2009, the release of 'Kingdoms' from 2010 hasn't resulted in the sets removal. I don't think anyone's expecting the return of the crown knights because they continue to sell the MMV though so by the same logic I wouldn't read too much into the imperial flagship being signs of a classic pirates return. That said, I hope that classic pirates do return in the next couple of years.

Is that meant to be an inflatable raft?! That's what it looks like...

Would go well with the gangster.

Just seen this from a company called 'sluban' it's even worse than enlighten

What do people think of the new PotC battle pack? It's just been released on the UK section of the online lego shop for £9.99. link I think it's rather disapointing that 3 of the minifigures are the ones from the other cheapest existing set, I think that was uneccessary and it would have made more sense to put barbossa and blackbeard in instead of the two zombies in my mind (and although they really had to put him in it I'm sure there's a lot of minifigures people would prefer instead of there being another Jack Sparrow). It's nice to see the redcoat officer though.

Thanks guys.

Great concept, fantastically executed! Love it.