sporadic

Yeah. I put illegal in quotes because it's one of those things that only a small segment of the community cares about. It's only illegal because of the logo raising the stud slightly. It is a red flag in some circles (LEGO IDEAS or the BDP, for example), but isn't generally a big deal. I only brought it up because as those tiles will be slightly stressed/out of alignment because of it. I think it's a good idea to use the studs for extra support of the tile-rails since trains will go over them. You could swap them out for hollow stud (Technic) pieces if it turns out to be an issue (which I doubt)

This is coming along really nicely. Looks great. I like it a lot. One minor quibble. The track tiles currently rest on studs, which is 'illegal'. Whether that matters or not is, of course, up to you.

So I'm not really a train guy, so this might be an impractical solution. I've experimented with using tiles on the side to replace straight track. The goal of mine was so I could have a working underground cable car, and needed track without spacers. It seemed to work, but I never did more than a short length and never had any idea how to do curves. But could you use something like that on one/both sides of the bridge for 7 studs to get it back on grid? I think this is really cool, btw.

Oh, I'm not claiming building physical versions of these is a good idea. My comment was just that there's plenty of space on a 1x1 round tile for two numbers. Looking at my dice collection, the only 10-, 12-, 20- dice (the dice that might potentially need 2 digits) I have where the numbers wouldn't fit are the 10's, and that's only because that facet is large enough to accommodate a larger font. But those only use 0, so it's still a single digit, so still not a problem. 10-siders with 00, 10, 20, etc, have fonts that would fit the 1x1. Now, there are many, many dice fonts, etc out there, so I'm not saying that's conclusive. But it does say that the numbers would not be unusually small on a 1x1 tile. No, I think the real problem with physical representations, as you say, is that they need to be scaled up so that they can fit those 1x1 tiles on every facet. This would make for some huge dice. And the rubber edges, which you need to keep the tiles from getting knocked off while rolling, just makes the problem that much worse. It would be a cool novelty item, but not really practical.

Have you seen the fonts used on most high side polyhedra dice? 1x1 round tile space is luxurious.

I also think that in the early days, partnering with petroleum producers was a no brainer for LEGO. They likely had deals to get their petrochemicals more cheaply from the providers if they included a side promotion. Don't quote me on that, because it's entirely speculation, but it seems very likely to me. The licensing back in the day always seemed to have a synergy component like that, not just a "This Cool Thing but in LEGO!" feel. Ie, when they made McDonald's sets, it was because of Happy Meals containing the toys, so there's benefit to both companies. The more "we pay you so we can make products with your IP" is, in my opinion, a very different beast.

Obviously the printed eyes and wings are exclusive to this set and might be tricky. I think there's a few parts of the new reddish orange which might not be common yet, and a few recolors of existing parts to dark red and orange. No new moulds according to New Elementary.

The dark wizard has two heads, one for each gender. The front is the 'normal' side and the back of each head has the 'evil' decorations. It does have the hood and cape, but no extra body parts.

That is sort of my point. Sorry if it wasn't clear. LEGO knew that trying to make mechs would result in inferior products. Such a set would never pass quality testing. So LEGO made things that worked for the parts they had at the time. Which were space ships and bases and so on. The sets they made were fantastic because the designers knew and stayed within the limitations of the System as it existed back then. So no, official sets were not fragile. But they weren't mecha. The interest was there, even then, though. Children (at least me and my friends) would make them anyway, having watched Voltron, Robotech, Battle of the Planets, etc. And we could, because, well, LEGO, but the few studs at the joints were never strong enough to make a playable robot. If you made them solidly, they were boring behemoths, too solid to be interesting, so you put up with reattaching arms and legs all the time. And such is true today. The BDP mentions that the models that they produce tend to be less sturdy than in-house sets, because MOC builders always push the bricks further than LEGO allows in official sets.

I think giant robots for minifigs has always been a desirable thing. LEGO tried at least since 6951 Robot Command Center in 1984*. It's just that in the 80's and 90's the parts were limited so fragility was a real issue which limited playability. That and the chunkiness of the parts catalog cause LEGO to mostly stay away from it in official sets. But building mechs has gotten much easier and more posable ever since things like Bionicle, etc. A lot of new build techniques also make them more sturdy so playability isn't as much of an issue. Which has also led to the various wildlife sets we've seen in recent years. * This is one of the first really large purchases I ever remember buying with my very own money. I agonized over it because it was so expensive to child me. But it was epic.

I think they should have given him a totally mundane name to go with his incredible disguise. "I am Bill Smith, totally normal earth being."

So mine hasn't been cancelled (yet, knock on (printed tile) wood). I don't think I was in the first 30min, though. Technically, I ordered on the 31st, but I'm on the west coast, so when I ordered (10:15ish), it was already the 1st for over an hour by EST. I am assuming they make it available at the same time for the whole continental US at the same time. So we can call that a lower bound (or if it gets cancelled, an upper bound) on sell out time.

True enough. I think it's unlikely. But maybe there's potential in other non-European Castle. Middle Eastern and its fantasy friend Arabian Nights would be amazing, for example.

Nah. It's a good idea and if I can come up with something really cool, I might give it a go. Otherwise, I can't see that I'd do much better than Farmfarm has in that Ideas entry, just different.

Drat. After I mentioned it and people jumped on it, I was starting to think about doing it as an Ideas set of my own. Might still, just not for Ideas.