Toa Palpo

I'm VERY excited by the prospect of a Kraken faction, especially with those colors! Teal, dark green, and spring yellowish-green is such a fantastic combination and the possibilities of what such a faction would look like are tantalizing. Do they simply come from a coastal fishing city or are they fish people, a la Lovecraftian Deep Ones? Do they have armor and weapons adorned with tentacles? Do they have octopus-shaded helmets? What types of weapons would they have? Do they have proper swords and spears or do they use makeshift weapons out of hooks, nets, paddles and whatever else? Regardless of whether or not it wins this vote, I certainly hope LEGO is planning to make sets in the near future that utilize this faction because there is so much potential around the idea. As a huge Lovecraft fan, I'm chomping at the bit for more Lovecraftian LEGO goodness. Hidden Side came close but wasn't quite there.

Thrawn and Ezra both look fantastic. I can't wait to see Enoch and Ahsoka the white. Enoch is definitely the biggest question mark because there are so many different ways they could go about doing his helmet and so many ways it could go horribly wrong.

Barad-Dur looks amazing, as does all of the new minifigs! So many new molds too. My favorite part of the build is definitely the eye, wow that's perfect! The Fell Beast promo... exists. I'm honestly glad it's nothing special so I don't get fomo from it. Man, I really, really hope we start getting some regular retail sets for LotR again. I can't afford this or Rivendell and I so badly want a large $30-$50 brick-built Treebeard. It really sucks we've only been getting massive d2cs and brickheads thus far.

My money has been on a Lothcat. It's just too marketable and too perfect not to do.

Don't do that, don't give me hope. Nightcrawler is my favorite X-Man and I would love a minifig of him. Agreed, I wish we were getting more sets --more affordable sets at that. As badly as I want a Nightcrawler figure, I'd much, much rather have him appear in a cheaper set, or better yet, a cmf so he can get level of detail needed to properly pull him off. I do have some hope that the fact that they can make X-Men sets again and the overwhelming popularity of 97 will result in more sets being made at some point. An X-Men vs Sentinel buildable figure seems like a no-brainer and could include a variety of different X-Men figures. There's always next year.

It's not laziness though, that's always the go-to complaint but LEGO isn't lazy, it's worse: they're stingey. They're sacrificing quality to save tiny fractions of a cent for each set to maximize already consistently high profits and they've been doing this across the board.

I don't see much talk of this but is it bothering anyone else that LEGO has decided to take a page out of Mattel's playbook and stop painting the claws on their dinosaurs? This is a trend that I hate and it's really disappointing to see LEGO being cheap and sketchy like this when they already charge a premium for these sets and continue to make record profits every year. They can absolutely afford to paint the tiny claws on all their dinosaurs.

The 3 sets look great overall! Bumpy looks cute, the Stegosaurus set has good builds, though if I'm being totally honest, the Stegosaurus itself is kinda disappointing and I can't believe there's no articulation in the tail. Why was it not done like the Ankylosaurus? I'm still glad we're finally getting one though. The Allosaurus set looks great and the new head mold is excellent.

Wow, that trailer was insane! I really just thought they were giving us a variant of a Gungan, not actually going full Star Wars meme with Darth Jar Jar hahaha! I can't wait to see Jedi Bob's Starfighter. I guess this trailer means we should be getting the other sets revealed soon. I was not expecting these sets to be based on a LEGO animated Disney+ film but it honestly makes so much more sense now.

The exterior of the ISD looks great to me. The interior is a little messy for my liking and while most of the figures are nice to have, nine of them except Cal are super desirable. Speaking of, I can't help but be a bit disappointed. He needed to have BD-1 and a poncho. Still, he looks good other than that and I don't have an ISD in my collection but have always wanted one, so it'll be nice to finally have one.

The Death Star playset actually being a new playscale Star Destroyer changes everything! I was not all that excited for the Death Star but a I've always wanted but never had a playscale Star Destroyer.

The newly revealed sets look great! I especially love the bp and bunker sets. The figures look fantastic and the builds look great. It also looks like the 2 sets can combine. My only complaints with the bunker set is that it's definitely too small for the price and Gideon should have had a cape. Rex's Y-Wing is a perfect little set and I'm so happy to be able to get that figure for cheap! Luke's X-Wing mech is way better than I expected. Still, would have been nice if he had the printed arms but at least they come on a keychain that can easily be swapped out.

I LOVE the Surtur set! This might be the most excited I've been for an MCU set in quite awhile. By the way, anyone else find it strange that the name of the set includes "construction figure" in it? That seems totally unnecessary. That said, Surtur looks fantastic and I really appreciate the inclusion of the fire demons. Thor looks fine. Okay now it's a 10/10 set! Absolutely agreed! As far as the other sets go, the only other one that really interests me is the Leviathan. It's amazing it took this long to get a set like this.

I absolutely love Cole's Titan Mech! It might actually be my favorite, though Lloyd's is definitely close. Lloyd's is the only one I actually own, though I very much love and want the others, they just haven't fit into my budget as I have other themes that are higher on my list but I might have to make an exception for Cole's mech since he's always been one of my favorite Ninja. I've always been a sucker for Earth elemental characters like Onua from Bionicle. It's weird that it only comes with one minifig and I have to be honest, I'm really not the biggest fan of it, there's just way too much white for a character who's typical color scheme is primarily black. I do love the recolored Dune ornithopter blade for the two-handed sword though! Granted, a sword doesn't suit Cole as well as turning it into a scythe would, but this will be much easier to pose and won't be too heavy for the arms. The tournament set is great, so happy to see Tox there and I absolutely LOVE what I'm going to call the "blood claw" pieces for the new wolf warrior. I can absolutely see those being reused in regular red for Carnage in a future Marvel set. The combo vehicle is pretty mediocre in my opinion and the new style for the Ninja just isn't that good in my opinion. Easy pass.

Probably the other anniversary sets as well as Jedi Bob's Starfighter and the Dark Millennium Falcon. I'm not going to hold my breath for the rest of the sets but we could see some others, who knows. I think it would make the most sense for them to highlight the sets I just mentioned given the anniversary and leave the regular sets for later. I know Jedi Bob's Starfighter and the Dark Millennium Falcon aren't technically anniversary sets since they don't have anniversary figures but they are clearly intended to be celebrations of the theme and I could see them having anniversary bricks(assuming they're actually real, of course).

I definitely wouldn't go that far, all of the non human-headed figures were pretty good, even Chewbacca. I mena, General Greivous was fantastic and all the armored figures worked great, especially Boba Fett. It's just such a shame they didn't sell all that well. I miss constraction figures so much, as a die-hard Bionicle. It's definitely a huge omission from the episode 1 lineup but they could and should still do one, it just won't look as good as it would have with chrome parts. I don't think they ever would have done an entire set in chrome parts though, unless it was a smaller UCS like the N1. With modern parts, the best we could hope for is a set covered in drumlaquered silver and molded silver pieces with some light bluish gray parts mixed in. I'd honestly rather have a somewhat compromised design like that than never one at all though. Heck, I could see them maybe making a midi scale set of the vehicle using a lot of drumlaquered silver pieces on the outside, but I think most of us would rather have something minifig compatible.

The Great Hall looks nice but personally all I want is that new troll, it looks so good! I have a lot of nostalgia for the original troll set so I might have to get him from bricklink later on. Is it just me or is the new Aragog too good? Creepy... The mandrake and Buckbeak are fine for what they are but don't really interest me. The diagon alley sets look fine as well... wait, am I seeing a ton of new wand molds? They must come on a new sprew but then why aren't they being used by any of the figures? Curious...

Man, seeing the canceled AT-RT and B2 were depressing. They look incredible! Such a massive shame that the line was canceled before they could be released....

I couldn't agree more! The revealed anniversary figures look good. I'm very happy for Cal but ai can't believe they didn't give him a poncho. I'll have to get one for him. Hopefully he does come with BD-1 to help make up for it. Compared to Saw and Fives he does seem a bit underwhelming. Maybe he could have done with some dual-molded legs or arms or some side arm printing or something. Young Leia is just okay, nothing interesting. I had hoped she would at least come with Lola but if she had, it probably would have been shown here. Nien Nunb looks great but I agree that he probably should have had mid legs. Ezra looks excellent to me and I have zero problem with his blue eyes since they've been consistently doing this for characters like Hera and Ahsoka, and I don't mind the yellow for Maul but then again, they're also aliens so eh, I don't know. The new X-wing does look pretty good, very good parts useage on the back. I don't know, I already have the most recent X-Wing and TIE and I don't feel the need to get more. That set would really need to wow me in order to take budget away from something else and I just don't see that happening with everything else coming out this year from LEGO Star Wars alone.

I'm really loving the alternative builds for these sets, especially Doom-Blob. Man, the minifigs are all so good! I also concur with some of the others that it's a bit disappointing and concerning that Mr. Oz is nowhere to be found. Wven if he and Albert just use the gold outfits for season 2, I still eould have expected them to appear in at least one more set. Man, I'm surprised by how much I am loving that Panda mech! The quadrapedal form leaves something to be desired but the bipedal form more than makes up for it. Also, I didn't notice until now, but it includes a brand new armor piece for the shoulders. My immediate thought was "well, it looks like we're getting an MCU Vulture buildable action figure" but it's a cool piece. I look forward to seeing the Panda in action in the show. Hopefully it's like Logan's version of Z-Blob or Bunchu. I think the only thing that would have put this set over the top is if it included Sneak and a place for hom to sit on the Panda's shoulder or something since he's Logan's little friend. Edit: I totally forgot that we've already seen that new piece because it's also the face of the Z-Blob Knight Mech. It's still cool to see that new piece in more than one set and more than one color. Also, I think I know why I love this set so much. It reminds me a lot of the gorilla tribe from Chima. They were my favorite Chima faction and they had giant Gorilla mechs with wooden armor. Castle Nocturnia looks amazing, such an awesome build! I love how very Escher-esque it is and the sideways structures encourage you tocflip the entire build on its side for different experience. Extremely clever. Phil the Manticore looks excellent and I would have honestly taken him as his own little set. The price tag seems a bit iffy though. It's a bit lacking in size and scope for $200 but maybe the value will be more apparent once reviews start rolling out.

The red panda and panda sets are both fantastic and I love that they include the evil version of the characters with the regular versions. I also love that Izzy's Dream Creatures also comes with a normal red panda from the upcoming city sets. The mech-like panda build is so great. Based on the way the set is named, it seems to imply that Logan might turn into it but it could also just be his dream creature like all the other characters have. Also, I love that the panda has bamboo armor and a bamboo blaster!

Holy Exo-Force!!! That rollercoaster set is so good! The overall design is fantastic with the shaping and details but the best part is absolutely the recreation of the Exo-Force Stealth Hunter. The rest of the sets also look great, especially the excavator and dock with cargo ship. The tourist bus is great too.

It looks like the TIE pilot has arm printing which is nice. The MSE droid being included is funny to me. Overall, if you squint, it looks very bice but that center section of the cockpit feels a bit jumbled and just... weird. They did a good job making it noce and round on the sides but I feel like the front could have been handled more cleanly. Regardless, it's definitely a steep asking price and certainly not something I'm going to pick up, as much as I like the TIE Interceptor as a ship.

I'm very happy with that droid carrier, it looks much better than I expected and I love the use of some newer curved elements. It's also bigger than I was expecting too. I'm getting the buildable R2 for my wife and the Sith Infiltrator for me so this is going to be an easy clear of that $160 threshold to get it.

All 3 of these sets look amazing. I can't wait to see the rest of the wave.