Clone OPatra

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Posts posted by Clone OPatra

  3. Posted

    This series looks pretty good to me. The level of detail is extremely high across all of the figures and there are a lot of new parts, many of which are quite generic. Can't complain about that!

    Like others, I'm slightly concerned about some characters we're missing. The likes of Rita Skeeter and Madame Pomfrey aren't really going to fit in any set and are best suited to CMF anyway with their designs (and Rita's quill).

    Personally I would've rather seen certainly Lily & James swapped for  characters that have more interaction with other characters, and Neville is a bit of a dud but I get why LEGO wants to include a set of Gryffindor robes in a series and the accessory is good.

    Lockhart can be done justice in a set I think, so I'm not worried about him, yet.

  4. Posted

    3 minutes ago, BRIX LIFE said:

    GUYS......... I note that the cho minifig is so great but if we look the details, it look like a strange fig because it's the Cho's head in Ginny's outfit (Cho's dress in the movie is grey)... Look :

    The colour choice might be odd but it's clearly the design/pattern of Cho's dress, not Ginny's.

  5. Posted

    Enough of the JK Rowling stuff. I get why people think it's relevant, I really do. At the same time, as a MOD it's my role to keep these discussions both on topic and pleasant for everyone.

    Therefore: stop with the JK Rowling and all not directly LEGO talk. First and last warning.

    Thanks.

  6. Posted

    48 minutes ago, Kim-Kwang-Seok said:

    Now it looks less round, less accurate and contains much more parts. So the problem is how and why they build sets this way now. 

    This is exactly what I was going to say about the Tie Bomber comment ("excuse") in the interview. It's not that the Tie Bomber isn't do-able, it's that LEGO themselves have backed themselves into a corner with their outlandishly large/complex/overpriced TIE designs to the point that they can no longer do a bomber to match at a reasonable price point. 

    It's a case where the team really needs to look at itself and say, ok, we need to do a standard TIE to hit a $50 USD price point, and a Bomber could be 65-70. But when they're releasing a Grevious Starfighter worth $50 at most for a bollocks $80 USD, we know it's not going to happen. LEGO has now designed and priced itself out of doing desirable models apparently.

    Once again that interview I feel makes things worse than having no interview at all.

  7. Posted

    3 hours ago, Tommy269 said:

    This might sound really stupid and I might have missed something, but in Hagrid's hut, year 3 Ron has the same hair piece as the Ron in the 2018 sets. Yet in the year before, CMF Ron had mid legs and scabbers so he must of been in year 3 and had Han solo's hair in orange. Why would they recolour a piece and then never use it again. Why does year 3 Ron change hair piece?

    In addition to @Guyon2002's answer, to me it seems also that the CMF was done by different designers than the minifigures in the sets, because the trio especially use a different "design language" for their faces and look. They're almost like alternate versions of the characters and not meant to seamlessly match up with the versions in the set, the plus side being that one can easily use their parts for different characters (besides Harry's head) without muddling things.

    We were all confused by the discrepancies in leg length used as well, but that too seems down to the designers going more for consistency within a wave of sets or CMF than consistency across all of the waves.

    On a different note, the three brick-pattern stickers applied to the long rounded SNOT section that goes up the front of the Astronomy Tower have already started peeling on one edge after one day. I applied them pretty straight and in the position that the instructions show, so that's disappointing. Has this happened for anyone else?

  8. Posted

    Now that I have a couple of these in hand, I've got to say I find the very obviously rendered box art quite off-putting. I don't know if the previous waves used actual photos or digitally created ones on the boxes, but they looked a lot more photo-real and so much better. The box-art for this wave looks kind of like a knock off.

    It's a minor gripe I know, since what matters is what's inside the box and these sets are great, but it's just odd.

  9. Posted

    11 minutes ago, Mandalorianknight said:

    Of course, but they can't say that outright in an interview. A designer saying "Yeah, we just wanted to squeeze more money out of the fans" would definitely get him at least reprimanded by lego.

    Yes of course. I'm just pointing out that sometimes reading such non-answers is worse or more frustrating than having no answers at all. Silence is better than BS.

    Doing bigger and more detailed vehicles is a fair enough reason though, even if they weren't strictly necessary.

  10. Posted

    Wow most of the answers in that interview seem so rubbish.

    "It is not necessarily the sort of set we would typically design but the demand was very clear." - They wouldn't typically design a set with minifigures of a particular specific faction? What about sets as recent as... the Inferno Squad battle pack, a faction with a likely very limited fanbase? Or the Sith Trooper battle pack?

     Why'd they make it bigger than a battle pack? $$$

    Also a shame that they had access to Clone Wars Season 7 material in advance and all we got is a 501st BP (which isn't even S7 specific really) and Ahsoka and one Ahsoka-helmet clone.

  11. Posted

    1 hour ago, Micmac said:

    Kmart australia is doing its usual messing around when it comes to pricing the new Harry Potter stuff. They started getting the sets in this week and I got the two small sets together for $64 but was in there today and they are up to $70 now. All the other new Harry potter sets have gone up too. They do this every year. Target have 20%off at the moment and its across all the new sets so shop there I think but no Burrow listed yet.

    Yeah I noticed that. Shame that Target Australia is going to be shuttered and phased out, especially when it comes to LEGO prices!

    Target Aus had the AT for 20% their full price, but their full price was listed as $10 below full RRP, so it was actually 25%. Doesn't usually get better than that.

  12. Posted

    I know this is old news for everybody who is in or sourced sets from the UK/Europe, and not helpful for people still waiting in the US, but the sets have finally started to show up more widely in Australia with some immediate discounts and I've got the Astronomy Tower and Umbridge sets on order. I'm so excited to finally crack into these sets!

    I haven't looked forward to a LEGO release this much since.... the 2019 wave :laugh::moar:

  13. Posted

    20 hours ago, jdubbs said:

    But I maintain that some of this is down to "I'm used to it this way, so changing it to that way just looks wrong". Not unlike the Vader or Stormtrooper helmet transitions.

    That new Stormtrooper helmet still looks horrible and will look horrible to me to the end of time. They took what was a perfectly good and well-proportioned for a LEGO minifig piece and swapped it for a massive bobblehead that can't even turn.

    9 minutes ago, dvogon said:

    For me Ahsoka is one of the remaining minifigs I didn't have, and this set at 29,99€ has a good price, before I thought it was around 40€. 

    Hate to break to to you, but the AAT with Ahsoka is 40 euro. And somehow even though it's wider and has one more minifigure than the last Episode I AAT it doesn't have many more pieces for $15 USD / 10 euro more. Oddly I've seen some YouTubers say the last one was $30 USD, when it was actually $25, though it was 30 euro.

  14. Posted

    6 hours ago, Sabre-aN said:

    Also now that we have official images of all the new clones I whipped up a quick comparison so I could see what they would look like with black hips and/or coloured arms like they used to have, might also be of use to someone else:

    Thanks so much for this mock-up! For me personally the thing they most need is the black hips. There's just not enough contrast without them. I thought the blue arms would be necessary too but looking at the options, white arms surprisingly look fine to me once the hips are swapped.

    People have already covered most thoughts I might have had. I'll just say, the Soulless One price reads to me like a data entry error.

    Person 1: "Whoops, who put $80 in the system for this??"

    Person 2: "Ah well, just leave it, we've been selling other starfighters for around the price, no one will ever know."

    There are issues also with "pricing for discount". First, it makes the LEGO store and LEGO online irrelevant if that's the point of the pricing, or it disadvantages people who go to those outlets for their LEGO. Second, not all regions of the world get the same scale of discounting as goes on in the US, so once again the entire world besides the US is screwed over by prices that are set overly high in order to be discounted.

    The AUD prices are a bit wonky to begin with: for some reason the Soulless One and Night Buzzard are priced the same in Oz ($120), while the ITS and Final Duel which are the same price in many regions are $10 apart, with the ITS actually being the cheaper of the two despite having more pieces! :wacko: The same weirdness happened with Harry Potter this year, so I'm not surprised, but it's still weird.

    Overall this wave should come across as spectacular given the broad range of sets covering source material from many eras, some including desirable figures that people most certainly want, but the aspects that are a let down unfortunately aren't insignificant.

  17. Posted

    11 hours ago, tafkatb said:

    Also got two "meh" figures, the Viking and the similar-to-but-legally-distinct-from-a Power Ranger, and the Pajama Girl, which I wouldn't have sought out myself but my wife really likes, so she's going into her collection.

    Just goes to show how different people's tastes can be - the Viking and Pajama Girl are the only two I really want from this series (though I still haven't gone out shopping to get them), and the 80s musician is tied with the Diver for my most meh of the bunch!

  18. Posted

    10 hours ago, Flak Maniak said:

    Is this the main/only B&P thread?

    Yes it is. At this point it shouldn't really be in Licensed anymore, and the topic title is wrong, but then again so many people who have been frequenting this thread for quite a while are used to it being here and I wouldn't want to confuse them either.

    Welcome to the B&P mania!

  19. Posted

    I don't mind waiting how ever long it is until the sets are widely released here, and then bar one or two waiting even more until they are included in a sale. The sets will be just as good whether I get them now or even 3-5 months from now.

    But cool for all those people with the desire and means to get them now through various channels.

  20. Posted

    Having seen that clearer AAT picture I actually think it looks really good as a representation of the animated ones in the show. I haven't looked at them side by side, but just the LEGO one alone looks nice to me, especially in the alternate angle. From recollection alone, the show model always looked a little wonky compared to the film ones in TPM.

    I still shudder in trepidation of the confirmed price, but I'm looking forward to getting a Star Wars set after all this time.

  21. Posted

    18 minutes ago, koalayummies said:

    I'm sensing sarcasm but I can't be sure cause of the medium of communication.

    Well I suppose I was being sarcastic about thinking that you were intentionally kidding, but the rest wasn't. And you just posted a picture of more figures that weren't designed for the keychain line besides the one with a unique torso and otherwise basic parts. There's no comparison between the resources that go into a line (CMF) with many unique moulds and new designs, and how those up-front costs are factored into the sale of that line to consumers, and a line (keychains) that takes pre-designed minifigures and slaps a keychain into them.

    Let me just say that I've been enjoying the discussion though and there have been many interesting points made!

  23. Posted

    32 minutes ago, koalayummies said:

    So hypothetically if Lego were to offer the Minifigure series via D2C, each figure is known, one can purchase whichever one wants, no blind bags, what exactly would be the problem with that?

    We can hypothesize about endless possibilities, but we also don't know LEGO's business and production model when it comes to the CMF. It's quite possible that stocking and selling each minifigure individually would dramatically increase LEGO's costs for the line (which would then affect the end product one way or another), or they'd mishandle it like they have with some of the most desirable D2Cs, and the army-building figures would disappear in no time never to return again. You simply don't know.

    I hypothesize that making the figures blind bags allows LEGO to make more niche or "risky" minifigures than they would if everyone knew exactly what they were buying.

    Personally I didn't reply to the "alternatives" you brainstormed because I'm more interested in just discussing the realities of the current product that is produced.

  24. Posted

    11 minutes ago, MAB said:

    At least with CMF, the toy is something complete that can be used instantly. Whereas stickers are less useful unless you collect every single one. Sometimes, the stickers are only just part of a larger picture and need the other part to make sense.

    Additionally, unlike those stickers you mentioned and the sort of blind collectibles that Australian supermarkets keep running (mini products, Shopkins, Ooshies), I'd argue there's nothing about most series of minifigures that make them inherently go together as a set, encouraging many multiple purchases in order to complete it. So while in the product description LEGO says "X number to collect", and yes they come with a sheet showing the whole series that can be ticked, the minifigures still each stand on their own and even multiples are useful since they can be customised with other minifigure parts to make them not all the same. Many blind bag plastic toys are just the thing that they are, and their primary and perhaps sole purpose is to be collected as a set (and then forgotten about when the next series comes out to collect).

    In any case @koalayummies, I did think the article about the addicting and gambling qualities of blind bags provided interesting food for thought, but again not all blind bag toys can be treated the same. Complaining mummy bloggers do nothing for me as a source, and the quotes you pulled seemed to stem more from single-purpose toys than from a customisable toy like LEGO.

    If I didn't explain myself well, the barrier to buying up all of the desirable minifigures is time. Even for someone with 100% accuracy in feeling the bags, it still takes a long time to comb through many boxes to find the three or less copies of a desirable minifigure per box. I do see that as a significant barrier to entry for would-be scalpers and resellers. I did not mean that there is any barrier to eventually getting the minifigures one wants, though I'd also point out that this thread isn't a realistic population sample when it comes to how proficient people are generally at accurately feeling bags. Of course AFOLs on Eurobricks will have gotten pretty good at it by now.

  25. Posted

    On 6/7/2020 at 8:04 AM, koalayummies said:

    How do blind bags prevent gluttony? They just feel up your vikings blind bag or not. 

    Blind bags might not prevent it entirely but they certainly create a barrier. Scalpers and army builders are going to scalp and army build, but when the bags are completely blind it's quite a time consuming process which I think ultimately gives the "rest of us" a chance to get what we want. If the minifigs were identifiable then those very desirable ones would be more likely to be gone in an instant and you'd have to quite literally get lucky that you arrived at a store when new stock is put out to find anything.

    This is an interesting discussion about the blind bags in light of Covid. Personally I haven't ventured out to buy any of Series 20 in light of the circumstances, though now that the risk is significantly reduced here in Australia, I'm feeling more comfortable going out to buy some and just taking precautions like washing my hands very thoroughly afterwards.

    Even in light of Covid I bear no ill will against LEGO's completely blind method in principle and don't think it has to change. I hope they never do a one (or less) per box figure again, and I personally haven't been enthralled with the products themselves as much lately, but the minifigures being unidentifiable besides through feel seems fine to me.