MAB

It really depends what definition of minifigure scale you use. It will not be minifigure scale if you define it by the dimensions of the location (tower) by the dimensions of a person. However, it will (hopefully) be minifigure scale in that minifigures can interact with the build. Orthanc, for example, is clearly not minifigure scale based on the height of the tower compared to the height of a minifigure, but it is minifigure scale in that the interiors are designed around minifigures. I also consider that both a display and play set. I hope Barad Dur is similar.

Nice idea. I remember drawing figures similar to that in Maths class!

To me, these 40 or so years apart are similar. They are more similar than they are different. If any LEGO fan from then picked up a modern figure, they'd recognize it as being similar to those of the past. Whereas these ones, I'd call these different. The new ones are just updated to modern standards mainly because the old ones were not particularly detailed. I think they are more in line with what modern collectors expect. I don't think I'd buy into modern LEGO if it was producing decorated parts that look like they were designed 40 years ago. But I prefer modern sets to use modern parts and modern design techniques, even if they are based on nostalgic sets of the past. Similarly if I want castle figures, I want them to be made with today's design standards even if sometimes the detail goes a little too far. If I wanted an old design, I'd build the old set. I'd feel LEGO was being quite lazy and that I was being taken for a ride if it just re-released old sets using only old parts without improving on the design at all.

Castle minifigures look like the old designs, just with small updates. The colours used in new Castle sets is also similar to those of the 80/90s. Same with Pirates. Blacktron Cruiser is close to the original but so is the Forestman Hideout.

That page also contains Dungeons and Dragons, Snow White, Lord of the Rings, Vikings, Pirate Ship and Eldorado Fortress. This is just advertising showing other stuff that is slightly similar to try to get you to look at as many of their products as possible and purchase them.

I use the 32+1 drawer cabinets for minifigure parts, and also one for technic parts. They are pretty good quality, although they were only £7.99 when I last bought them. For building parts, these drawers are not really big enough.

The vintage macaroni bricks can be offset, unlike modern ones. So you could use those to create a 4x4 circular cross section cane. Plus it would have an open core to run cables through.

For me, the value of older sets is that they are old and vintage and have survived rather than the play value. We have seen with bricklink, people want age appropriate parts to restore their sets. They tend not to want to use modern parts to restore an old set. If LEGO were to re-release vintage sets instead of modern updates, I really wonder who they are for. They are not for the vintage collector and they are not for the modern kid. That leaves the nostalgic adult that remembers the sets but doesn't care about authenticity. No doubt there are reasonable numbers in that group now. But as they don't care about authenticity then design changes to use modern parts should be fine. However, I prefer what they did with GE and LKC, scaling them up to match the growth in the builder.

They also charge more than the manufacturing costs for sets, whether that is real money or the monetary value of VIP points.

Which set do you think the original version of the Lion Knight's Castle is?

King Theoden. I thought this was the most beautiful figure at the time of release and it hasn't been bettered since. It looks like him, the armour is superb but the figure also looks good without the armour.

I think I'd prefer to see Kingdoms or Fantasy Era style and if not, some Black Knights and Wolfpack, maybe a bit more Forest or Dark Forest. Anything but Classic Castle. The heraldry was rather plain and I wouldn't have any use for more yellow.

The only thing good about reintroducing that set would be the number and variety of minifigs. They have just done a grey Creator castle. If they did something similar in yellow but with the existing factions done recently, I doubt it would sell too well. It is just a minifigure pack with a lot of yellow bricks.

They look real to me.

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Yes. My D20 are fairly normal sized but the numbers are a reasonable size as they can use the whole facet. Whereas using a1x1 round tile means wasting space as the curve must fit on the facet, then the number fit on the circle. And if they end up like LEGO buildable dice, they need space for the rubber edges. Sometimes a non-LEGO (or LEGO-like) solution is better, especially if you want a comfortable playing option.

It isn't the same thing. There is a big difference between not doing something and having a policy of not doing something. That is like saying LEGO had a policy of not making plastic toys for the first couple of decades of its existence. I really doubt they had a policy of not making plastic toys, it was more that they did something else (making wooden toys) until an opportunity arose that they took. I imagine it was the same for licensed themes. In the 70s and 80s they didn't really need to do licenses as many toy manufacturers made their own toy ranges back then. There were far fewer licensed toys and kids tended to play fairly generically - cowboys and indians, cops and robbers, Robin Hood, pirates. There was no need to license that type of toy. Star Wars was a bit of a disrupter in the way it was merchandised, although not the first by any means. There were licensed Batman toys, Man from Uncle toys in the 60s, and TV series such as The Six Million Dollar Man had toys in the mid 70s etc but the merchandising really took off for SW but it didn't dominate the toy market. Remember Kenner was relatively small before they hit the big time with Star Wars. The big brands did not get involved early on. Kids were still used to playing generic storylines and with the big company's own toys. So I imagine that LEGO didn't do licensed themes in the 70-80-90s as they didn't need to do them and probably also because they were not ready to do them. That is, that they didn't not do them as they had a policy against doing them, but as the need / opportunity wasn't there. Part of the reason I think they weren't ready was as LEGO really wasn't very good at doing accurate creations pre-2000. Imagine trying to make SW ships using only 1980s bricks. I know what that was like, as I did that as a kid. They were terrible - red, yellow and blue and looked nothing like the screen versions. They would never had sold if they were on the shelves next to accurately shaped and coloured ships, and figures that looked like the characters. Movie based marketing really took off in the 80s and 90s, and LEGO were probably late to the game. I again reckon that was down to not being able to do characters in anywhere near enough detail to be able to do licensed products and partly just inertia, they did what they did and continued doing what they did as that is what they did. But once they had a much wider range of parts and colours and were able to start doing figure printing to look reasonable for licensed figures, and looking at the way movie and licensed based toy marketing was going, they decided the opportunity was there to start doing licenses. But none of that points to a policy of refusing to work with licenses.

They will be tiny numbers if you can print two of them on a single 1x1 round tile.

It wasn't because of their policy. It was because they didn't do any before. We simply don't know whether they had a formal policy of not having licensing deals. The fact that they were producing sets based on licenses indicates that they were open to using other companies' IP. Its true they had a tradition of developing in-house ideas, although many of those were based on external traditional stories or life.

I don't believe they were opposed to licensed themes. LEGO had already done loads of licensed sets from the 1950s onwards. There are plenty of Shell and Esso sets showing they were willing to use licenses where they thought it was appropriate. They missed the boat with Star Wars first time around, but then that was really when toy tie ins took off and many of the big manufacturers missed it. It wouldn't surprise if they didn't want to partner with Star Wars in the 80s as they would have been the minor partner and I really doubt if their SW toys would have sold anywhere near as well as screen accurate toys at the time.

That is true of LEGO in-house too. Ninjago has had a movie, a board game and video games, books (and comics), TV series, obviously toys, as well as clothes, lunchboxes and flasks, backpacks, pencil cases, bedding, curtains, ... all based on that franchise.

How are those dice going to work for numbers above 9?

That speculation is already in this thread. Without sources, rumours and speculation become very circular. Some says something on one site, then references it from another, then references the second site on the first as proof others are reporting it. To me, 269 parts for a buildable ring in a display stand is not that high. Display stands can take a lot of parts.

And I bet nobody in the intended audience noticed the difference.