TheUnusualBuilder

What angle is that?? Agreed. I think the ideal for a Sonic display model would be buildable characters similar to the large Mickey and Minnie from a few years ago - Sonic and friends were designed as rubberhose characters, so that style of figure would fit perfectly. Plus, there would already be a prefab piece they could use for the forehead and eyes rather than the... INTERESTING solution LEGO came up with for ol' Shads here. I imagine it's because SEGA is marketing 2024 as the "Fearless Year of Shadow", with the character getting a major role in the third movie, a major expansion to Sonic Generations, and an animated miniseries. SEGA probably asked for a Shadow-themed display piece, which led to the decapitated edgehog we can see. No. He's... THE ULTIMATE SO!!!

The Shadow the Hedgehog head set was just revealed and... I'm an optimist, but I'm also a realist. And this is REALly one of the worst display sets LEGO has ever made. The spikes look fine (not great, but fine), but everything about the face is just terrible, from the balloon cover center to the studded eyes to the barrel nose to the choppy muzzle. If LEGO couldn't come up with a remotely good design here, they shouldn't have wasted the set slot. On the bright side, this is a really accurate model of Shadow's head from that one Pakistan Happy Meal commercial.

Everytime somebody complains that LEGO hasn't done ENOUGH Clone sets in the last few years, an angel gets its wings clipped and deep fried in peanut oil.

Oh, I'd LOVE if LEGO Star Wars could start doing some cute $10-$13 playsets, especially since Microfighters are all but extinct. Not holding my breath for it to ever happen, though.

Can it really "continue" if it was impressively broken this very year?

Considering how much smaller he'll have to be for the set to also include the pram (and presumably scale well enough with R2-D2), I imagine they'll have to incorporate some prints for the face rather than fully brickbuilding him, so hopefully it'll be an improvement.

Buildable Grogu isn't that interesting, but I imagine he'll be smaller to fit into the new builable character scale with R2-D2 and C-3PO (hence also getting the pram this time around).

Acclamator sounds interesting, I'm surprised to get what will presumably be a very sizeable model for only $50, though I suppose it is very flat. I'm curious whether it'll be the all-gray Attack of the Clones version (which was done for the only previous LEGO Acclamator in an Advent Calendar) or the Clone Wars version in Venator livery (which would pair more nicely with the Invisible Hand).

According to Brick Clicker, the last two sets are a $50 18+ midi-scale Acclamator (prototype Star Destroyer) and a $100 Buildable Grogu in his pram.

$45 for Ahsoka's Interceptor is INSANE. I know that LEGO price-gouging is nothing new, but here it feels especially egregious since the ETA-2 is up there with the Millennium Falcon as one of those sets where LEGO's essentially been selling the same set with minimal changes for 20 years, just at an increasingly higher price. It would be nice to get a total overhaul with a new cockpit, but I'm not holding my breath - like with the Coruscant Gunship and Dark Falcon, doing a funky variant here feels like an excuse to NOT have to improve on past models. Hope the minifigures are nice, at least - I'd expect a new Ahsoka, R7, and some Glup Sh*tto clone to placate the whinging masses. Great to finally get a new ARC-170 after 15 years, hopefully it lives up to the hype and is a good size for the price. I have no particular interest in whatever clones they include, but a new Plo Koon would be pretty nice. Midi-scale Home One is amazing news, it's one of the ships that really came to mind as perfect for this Starship Collection, and I'm super excited for it - I think it'll pair exceedingly well with the Nebulon-B, and if it looks good enough it might push me to give in and also buy the midi-scale Tantive, to have a complete Rebellion fleet. I'd love if the unknown $50 midi was finally the Naboo Royal Starship, but I'm not holding my breath - I'll predict it's a Lambda shuttle. $30 4+ N-1 is interesting, but in a very uninteresting way. I'm expecting it to be based on Mandalorian, with a fairly bland figure selection (Mando, Grogu, Stormtrooper), but I'd love to be surprised. The real question is (and this will likely never be asked with a 4+ set again), will this end up looking better than the awful full-size model? Lord, I hope not. No way am I spending $240 on something with about 2.40 seconds of screentime (especially when there are so many cooler subjects in TPM).

Knowing LEGO, next year's UCS sets will both be based on The Phantom Menace and we'll get a UCS Eta-2 in 2026

Yeah, I'm already worried the ARC-170 will be all we're getting, but I'll choose to have a bit of hope. I'm not expecting something amazing like a UCS of Anakin's ETA-2, or the all-ROTS summer wave that some people want, but if we can get either a large Mustafar playset or a "high ground" diorama I'll be pretty happy.

Jedi Bob's Starfighter revealed by thebrickreporter on Instagram Looks interesting, it basically looks like an early-2000s era Delta-7 but souped-up, with big blaster cannons and huge engines underneath

It's alright, but imo it pales in comparison to the 2006 and 2014 versions in terms of both size and interior, not to mention one of the most bland minifigure selections in LSW history. It does look very nicely detailed, but imo if they weren't going to focus on the aspects that make it a playset it should've just been a midi-scale ship, like the Executor from last year (which is a much better Imperial Flagship set for less than half the price). In my opinion the best set of the summer is the buildable C-3PO, but in terms of minifgure-compatible kits I'd cast my vote for the Skiff & Sarlacc - while the price is abominable and Boba is inaccurate, the rest of the minifigures and both builds look really fantastic. That said, I think it's almost inarguable that the summer waves were absolutely crushed in terms of quality by the March and May releases - based on those two waves I would've called 2024 one of the best years LSW has ever had, a sentiment which I unfortunately no longer hold.

Bricksie just uploaded a review of the Duel on Peridea set, confirming the Night Trooper gets a new zombie head underneath the helmet.