VincentLord

The No Way Home set being a good build with not-so-good figures was absolutely not on my bingo card. The A-Force set looks alright to me, but definitely not at this price point. This is turning out to be a surprisingly meagre year for me personally in terms of Marvel sets.

Not sure if I am personally excited for a fourth Wolverine, but I am generally happy about the inclusion of Storm and Beast. The latter is not one of my favourite X-Men (and not very visually interesting, in his TAS iteration at least) but I am excited to be getting mutants who haven’t received figures before. Kang is also a pretty big surprise for me, as he is ostensibly the only non-Disney+ character, and I’m really glad that we’re getting Agatha and especially Werewolf By Night! Solid selection overall, aside from being in the clear minority that would’ve been fine with one MK figure I would barely change a thing.

I’m as disappointed as anyone with regards to the ToD/DoD situation but I’m choosing to wait until more news comes out for both cases. I’m glad that the sets we do have are so good. The sets each look brilliant and are very reasonably priced, in my opinion. The Tomb especially has grown on me immensely since the leaked pictures. Here’s hoping for more Indy sets.

The sweat on Belloq’s back is a chef’s kiss detail, wow. The tomb set finally makes sense to me now that I see the back, definitely a lot more interested in it now.

I cannot wait to see how the interactive features work. I'm liking the look of this a lot more than I did when the diagonal half of that other picture leaked last month haha!

I really do not care that much about minifigures so I am unfussed about that aspect, but “LEGO nail the donut wings on the Bowie but mess up the fuselage” was not on my bingo list. It’s so long compared to its width and to the rest of the vehicle, I can only assume it has something to do with stability.

Considering the set budget, Carl’s House is pretty great based on these 64 pixels! I was worried how they were going to handle the balloons but I think this gets the point across quite well without chewing into the piece-count in any major ways. I’m not as into Up as I am into the rest of that era’s Pixar output but the execution on this is good enough that I’m tempted to get it anyway.

I get people’s qualms with some figures, but this is in my opinion perhaps the most gorgeous set Lego has ever produced. The colours, the detailing, the overall composition—this is the kind of product that I completely understand they’d ask €500 for. Praying that this sells well and becomes habitual rather than a one-off.

I’m going to wait for better/official pictures before I come to any conclusions, but like others I am a little befuddled at both the sheer vibrancy of the colour scheme and at how ostensibly small that boulder track (and the rest of it, really) is. It probably doesn’t help for the overall wow-factor of the set that half of the picture is black bars hahaha

Some anecdotal food for thought regarding Lego’s strategy: I would absolutely never pick this set up if it was part of a larger theme. However, there only being one set means that, even if the price is exorbitantly high, it will be sitting on shelves for long enough that it just might make me (a fairly average casual AFOL I reckon) crack at some point by lack of Lego LotR alternatives.

The tomb is weird to me, very diorama-esque but looks sparse based on this picture. I really like the Last Crusade set though, both vehicles look great, and I think the Temple of Doom is a real winner both stand-alone and compared to the original! I get that the skull isn’t very accurate but I think it fits the aesthetic of the set quite well.

I think the helmet might be my favourite one yet across themes in terms of pure aesthetics, but it does look really small for that price. I'll gladly buy it if it gets a deep discount at some point but 80 euros for something that small feels silly even for 2023 licensed sets standards.

I am ridiculously excited about this one. I usually wait for good deals on expensive sets but if they stick the landing on this I might just buy it day 1. To be frank, I’d be quite happy even if it’s basically just a diorama-style remake of 7623 but with a much higher piece-count/amount of detail. And, as a fan of the man, I am really glad to be getting a modern Alfred Molina figure hahaha Edit: Having read the Promobricks article now, the monkey’s paw has curled a little—the set is apparently smaller than 7623, despite the piece count. Not supremely weird though considering the fact that the level of detail will probably be a lot higher.

I really adore the CMF line-up; in terms of merchandise/collectables I am much more of a Marvel-person, but I wouldn't be surprised if I get more figures from this line than the Marvel line later this year (assuming that is MCU-based). The Coco figures are musts for me, as well as the Pinocchio figures and Mulan, and I'm certain that the Robin Hood and the Princess and the Frog figures are going to be great as well. I actually really wonder how they're doing Baymax; I won't be particularly interested if they're doing a standard minifigure but if they're doing something special, I'd love to see how they tackle it. I have a bit of a crackpot theory, though. So, this is absolutely setting myself up for disappointment, but despite Coco being one of my favourite Pixar films, I'm a little surprised at the fact that the Pixar representation is limited to two figures from that film rather than e.g. Miguel and a character from something else. Obviously, films like Finding Nemo, Wall-E and Monsters Inc. don't lend themselves to minifigures very well, we're already quite covered on the princesses front, having multiple recent films from one studio would make little sense in a '100th celebration' line and Toy Story, Incredibles, and Up are already covered. However, to me, Ratatouille sticks out; it's gotten quite a bit of merch lately in my experience, and Linguini with Remy would be a single character 'slot' that would pretty much cover the entire film. Could its absence here somehow be related to the Lego Ideas project—not necessarily because Lego are planning on greenlighting it, but perhaps because they are considering it? The optimist in me would like to say that they aren't included because the film is eventually getting its own set, the pessimist in me is afraid we end up getting nothing at all by virtue of Lego not including Linguini in the CMF because of the Ideas project being under consideration and then ending up not greenlighting the project. It could very well be neither, but I find the film's omission a bit odd.

Chipping in to say that I really like the polybag. I already have two of the minifig (not that I mind, it would be my favourite of all time with the 76108 hairpiece) but the micro-buildings are adorable and a great addition. Definitely picking one up if I find it somewhere.