Toa Palpo

Interesting, I haven't watched 616 I might get to it eventually. Yeah, I mean I've seen a ton of awful products that still have the Marvel branding and characters on it over the years. They're not exactly picky.

That's really only because they can't seem to figure out how to do the comics justice. They just make generic, barely-related products and slap a Spider symbol on it rather than attempt to adapt scenes from recent or classic comic series. It's easy for them to make good MCU sets when there are obviously important things to include(except the case of Endgame where the sets had virtually nothing to do with the film outside of the figures). Imagine if they adapted stuff from recent comic series like Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy or Avengers(at least we're getting Robbie and his car so I guess that counts?). I think the problems are there is too much material for them to decipher what to do sets on, the comics aren't always kid friendly, fewer people read comics than watch movies or tv shows to understand the reference material, and Marvel has more control over what products can be made based off of movie and tv content. Then again, an argument could be made that good comic-based sets might make kids curious about the source material and might get them into reading comics. I think these problems would possibly be solved if Marvel had more say in the creative process to improve brand recognition and integration for cross-promotion of comic events. As it is, Marvel is really loose with the licensing of products as long as the characters look and act like they're supposed to regardless of the quality of the product they appear in or on.

That's definitely an unpopular opinion. I for one love arm and leg printing and will take as much as they can give us. It enhances the overal quality of figuress and makes them far more enticing. Not to mention there are many characters who need arm printing because certain arm details are a big part of a character's design like the the new Beskar Mandalorian figure. If they didn't give him arm printing a lot of people --myself included-- would have been pretty upset about it given how important it is to include details like the Mudhorn signet and the numerous arm weapons he uses in the show. Sure most Boba Fett figures don't include arm printing but the ones that do are far, FAR superior for including such necessary detail for the character's design. That's not to say every figure NEEDS arm printing. Arm printing would be utterly wasted on say, Imperial Officers but in general I prefer it when possible.

Exactly, I mean have you seen minifig print quality the past 5 years or so and the increasing frequency of discolored parts? I'm convinced at this point they just do not care that they suck at printing light colors on darker plastic and use the thinnest layer of paint possible. If they'd apply a 2nd or 3rd coat maybe prints would finally look like they do on the boxes and promo art.

True, hopefully that's the case. Not entirely unrelated, the new episode was incredible!!! Definitely some cool set and minifig potential. I can barely contain my hype! This season is really shaping up to be incredible and I hope LEGO delivers with a bunch more Mando sets later in 2021.

Ultimo? Now that'd pretty cool! I know you're probably making a joke about how mech-happy the LEGO Marvel team is but now I'm just thinking about how cool it would be if Ultimo shows up in the movie, I can't recall any rumors of it appearing in the film though. Imagine, in the climax of the film, FFF escapes and Mandarin uses Ultimo to try and stop him!

100%, I really want that. 2 decently sized Shang-Chi sets sounds great. With all the awesome characters rumored to appear in the movie, there's a ton of potential for great figures. I imagine one set will be Finn Fang Foom and the other will be a small arena with an overlook similar to what we've gotten from Ninjago for martial arts tournament stuff with a handful of cool figs. Hopefully FFF is the bigger set so they can make him decently sized. No side builds needed, just a big dragon and a bunch of minifigs to fight him.

I just watched the review of the Trouble on Tatooine set and came here to see if others had seen it yet. Beskar Mando is truly glorious and the set turned out really well. I can't wait to get my hands on it! Without any movies to promote, imagine if most of next year's sets are split between Mandalorian and Bad Batch. Probably won't happen but I can dream right?

I'm really impressed with how well the X-Wing and TIE turned out! Hopefully LEGO can keep the fighters at this scale for a long time. Half the price of the previous ones with just as much detail and accuracy with a decent number of figures, yes please! I'll definitely be buying both. It's so crazy that you can buy both of these together for the same price as the last X-Wing. There may not be anything crazy new or exciting this wave aside from the Mando set but this soft reset of set sizes is incredibly exciting on its own and bodes well for the future of the theme. Of course they were going to start with OT for this experiment but I'm sure they'll do the same for the ST... eventually. The PT sets never had this problem so it's understandable why they didn't include any for this wave. I'm confident we'll see some later in the year. Personally I would love to see a new Naboo N1 that's far more accurate than the previous versions but I digress.

I agree and I would definitely be down with a Snowspeeder like that. They've needed a new canopy for a long, long time. I think the fact that LEGO has greatly expanded the number and variety of small, useful pieces has made it a lot easier for designers to pack a ton of detail in a smaller package making it easier to make smaller models just as detailed. Single person fighters outside of Delta-7s, Delta-7bs and Eta-2s, have become waaay too large and expensive and reducing the scale while keeping the level of detail is possible now in a way it was not before and it's a great thing for everyone. Also, throwing in more figures just makes things so much better even if they're duplicates for a lot of people.

I gotta say, I love Zane's Titan Mech! It's on par with Lloyd's Titan mech in terms of detail and I'm really happy it has knees. I know a lot of people are sick of mechs but if they can keep making them at this scale and quality I'll be very happy. I'm also a big Gundam fan and these 2 mechs really feel like Gundam homages in a number of ways and I love it. Heck, just the fact that Zane's has skirt armor on ball joints that can accommodate leg articulation makes me happy because I build a lot of gunpla and that's almost always how it's done on Gundam kits. Honestly getting one mech that looks this good and is this big is worth them leaving out the ghost mech. I always liked Zane's better anyway but I wouldn't say no if they remake the ghost mech later down the line too.

It's a nice little set and I'm happy with how well the Beskar Mando turned out. The speeder bike looks good and the ballista looks much better then it has any right to. The camp is a fine little build. I really hope they do at least one more set for this episode to build out the scene with Cobb Vanth in weathered Boba armor, his speeder and a molded Bantha. I wonder if LEGO would marble sand green and silver like they used to do for Bionicle and a couple other themes with dark green and silver. I think that could work for weathered Boba armor. Or more likely they'd print sand green on silver parts.

It was literally the first line of my post.

Yeah I'm glad I have that one because it's by far the best, plus it had arm printing. It's crazy they only used that fig once and in such a cheap set. As far as the Carnage head/helmet goes, it's such a strange, random choice that it seems the only reason they would make it is because of the Venom sequel. Even then it's still a bizarre choice

Oh I definitely agree, we desperately need more characters and especially villian variety. I'm just trying to look on the bright side a little. It's definitely not perfect, I'd prefer if it had space for 2 figures and a trunk but I definitely wouldn't say it's worse than the speed champions car especially when the speed champions car is trying(poorly) to be a Challenger SRT Demon and not a 69 Charger which is definitely what it ends up looking a little more like. In fact looking at the speed champions Challenger, they borrowed a lot of its design cues for the Hellcharger. Considering the theme we're talking about, I'm just relieved it looks as good as it does. Some will hate the stud shooters, I definitely get that but if it had to have stud shooters, I think it was clever implementation and is an easy fix for those that can't stand them. Comparing pictures of the set with comic panels, it really does look spot on, not counting the front box art which does it a real disservice. Regarding your last point, that's kinda my feeling on the LEGO Marvel theme as a whole the past several years. I fealt the same way about the previous Ghost Rider set and the design of Johnny Blaze's bike. Not ideal but better than nothing lol. It was also such a weird design choice to go with the version from Hell Bent and Heaven Bound.

I'm referring to those being hyperbolic and saying the entire wave is trash and there's nothing new like, you know, a few posts up lol.

I find it amusing how some are complaining about no new characters and nonsensical, inaccurate builds completely ignoring the Robbie Reyes Ghost Rider and his Hellcharger which are both comic accurate AND something totally new (I feel like there's an All New All Different joke in there). The Ghost Rider we got before was Johnny Blaze, a completely different character. I get the disappointment with the rest of the wave though. At least we're getting some really nice variant figures of existing characters like with Miles, Doc Oc and a couple of Spidey suits, ntm the scale suit Cap everyone wanted and a couple of nice new pieces like the hood for Miles and Gwen as well as the pieces that Iron Man and Thanos are standing on in the 4+ set.

Finally! I'm so happy with how the ghost Rider set turned out, the Hellcharger looks amazing! I appreciate its forward rake and overall accuracy. I am a little disappointed they didn't even include a chain for Robbie but I guess there wouldn't have been anywhere to put it when he's in the car as there's clearly only enough room for one figure in it and nothing else. I do find it quite interesting that they show multiple ways to attach the flame parts to the wheels rather than one specific way and I love how they do they did the flames on the side and like that they also display it without flames when not being driven. They even include additional 1x2 black cheese slopes to cover up the spots where the flames attach behind the front wheels. Yup, the only disappointment is the lack of weapon for Ghost Rider but I have plenty of extra chains in both silver and trans-orange. I'd alao probably say the blower on the front is a little chunkier than it needed to be. They frankly didn't need to put those parts behind the stud shooters but it's not a big deal, just nitpick. The monster truck set is easily the 2nd best, the figures are fantastic, I love the PS4 game-inspired Doc Oc, I don't have Spider-gwen yet so I'll happily get this superior version, I love the parts they gave Mysterio, I don't have a comicbook Mysterio yet, the drones are perfect for the FFH drones and the truck itself is actually a pretty good. I also like the translucent white webs, it's always nice to get effect parts in new colors. The mechs are pretty good, Miles' is of course the best with that awesome figure and the trans-blue web parts. Cap's is 2nd best with that figure and the build overall. Thor unfortunately gets the short end of the stick with a lackluster build and a figure made of existing parts. Poor guy doesn't even get a cape. The other sets are pretty bad.

That's actually pretty cool and is definitely a good excuse for LEGO to be making more mechs. It seems like it will be a brief miniseries detached from the main Avengers series. I was a little worried they might be going back to the core generic team in 2021 for the main Avengers comic series since they have Hulk in there as well as Spider-man instead of current team members like Ghost Rider, Blade and She-Hulk. I love the current team and I don't want it to change anytime soon they have such an awesome dynamic.

Same, I loved Emperor Zurg when I was a kid. I also liked Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Magneto, Darth Maul, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, Jango Fett, Skeletor, and a TON of other villains. Kids like compelling villians because they provide heroes a proper challenge, they're often bombastic and dripping with personality and they're cool-looking.

"Tony Stark's office" gimme a break. There are tons of characters, vehicles and action locations they can easily do that would appeal to fans of all ages. Being a billion dollar toy company doesn't change the fact that Marvel isn't even among the top selling themes and hasn't been year after year despite the cultural phenomenon the MCU has become. They're failing to fully and properly capitalize on the license, something they sadly have a history of doing.

Approving isn't the same as dictating what the sets include. Marvel aproves a lot of crappy products all they care about is if the characters are represented well enough.

Exactly! Sadly the only way I see the LEGO Marvel theme improving is making a change in the decisionmaking team becuase that's what it all boils down to. I don't blame the designers or at least not all of the designers because they've done some awesome stuff over the years but there's way more terrible designs that not even the target market finds interesting. Marvel should be in the top 5 selling themes but it's not. We're in a comicbook renaissance. Marvel movies are cultural events that are insanely popular and make mindboggling amounts of money and yet for the most part LEGO fails spectacularly at capitalizing on the brand.

Ya I don't think it's Marvel's fault LEGO does a terrible job with the license. You don't see that problem with any other licensed Marvel merch. I think it has far more to do with the LEGO Marvel team and poor decisionmaking, not to mention LEGO generally has a big hangup on making sets based off of video games and only recently have started to get more laxed about it. Until they partnered with Nintendo you could pretty much count the number of video game-inspired sets with one hand and most of them were from Star Wars.

And as much as I liked him on the show, it's irrelevant now, the show is over and they didn't make any sets tying into it then so why would they now? The closest thing we got was Coulson and Lola in a set featuring character variants from the cartoon at the time. it's a variant, not the proper look for the character anyway. The comic looks of characters are far more important as they're the source material everything else is based on. Whether or not more people watched the show than recognize the comic appearance is irrelevant and serves the point of trying to get more people interested in comics and to learn more about the characters. Also comparing tv show views to number of comics sold as a metric for which version of the character people are more familiar with is comparing apples to oranges, they're not the same thing. Do you know how many people read comics without buying them? Or share with friends, or read them online for free or hell, have just seen pictures of the comic look? I remember seeing the comic look for Robbie on the cover of what I think was Hot Rod on some magazine racks when he was first introduced in the comics. I would prefer everyone buy a copy of the comics but I can't control what other people do. You can't properly quantify that and even if you could it's still irrelevant because every movie, show, cartoon, game, toy, etc is in service to the comics. I get it if you prefer that look, I personally don't but I'm just pointing out that it's illogical to have expected them to go with a variant from a few years ago over the main look he's had since 2014. I would say that his appearance on the show definitely increased awareness of the character and created new fans who may have been interested enough to check out the comics and was likely part of the reason they made the set to begin with, on top of the Ghost Rider hulu series that was supposed to happen.