Karalora

That's the Series 17 Elf Maiden.

There is a lot to unpack here. I'm not saying they completed the movie as-is with the expectation that it would be televised and then went "Wait, no, we have to recoup the cost of Bette Midler, someone phone up AMC." I'm saying there's a very "Disney Channel" vibe to the overall tone of the film. The way it keeps telling us the witches are scary and threatening while showing us three goofy idiots, the strangely toothless behavior of the two school bullies, the embarrassingly cheap makeup on Billy the zombie...this sort of thing is much more typical of Disney's made-for-TV portfolio than their theatrical one. It seems very likely to me that the initial intent was for a TV showing, but at some point during production they decided to put it in theaters (in part, yes, to recoup the cost of Bette Midler), and maybe they then decided they could get a little saucier in the dialogue. And tits or no tits, it still got rated PG, so draw whatever conclusions you want from that.

I'm in a similar boat. I let it play once every year trying to figure out what so many people see in it and it just leaves me cold every time. It's a Disney Channel Original Movie that somehow got the budget for some huge stars and that catapulted it into a theatrical release, but the script betrays its made-for-TV roots.

How about a peacock that can switch between a spread-tail piece and a trailing-tail piece?

It makes sense to use Ideas as a source for TV-based sets if you consider that TLG might not have a good handle on which shows have crossover appeal for the kind of people who like to play with LEGO. Everyone who submits a sitcom to Ideas can be assumed to be both an AFOL and a fan of the show in question, so it functions as a marketing shortcut in that way. This is of course separate from the question of whether TLG should keep approving these sets at the expense of other types of concepts.

I was at the Woodland Hills, CA store the other day and they were fully caught up, with ample supplies of the new Castle, Western, and Pirate minfig parts.

See, I definitely disagree with this. There is more than one kind of creativity. Translating a work of art (which a sitcom is, even if it's not high art) into another medium is absolutely a creative endeavor, and the limited components (shapes and connection points) available add another layer of imaginative skill to the process. When your options are limited, you have to go the extra mile to get the results you want, you know? And I think licensed sets have the potential to inspire creativity in people who don't normally think of themselves that way, because they give them a place to start. We're going to be seeing stop-motion films that recreate famous scenes from the show, and maybe the people who make them will get into stop-motion itself as a result. There's nothing wrong with being disappointed when a set concept you were really excited about gets passed over and one you have no interest in makes the cut (I'm still holding out hope that TLG and Nintendo will pull the trigger on a Legend of Zelda line, even though I know it's unlikely), but I don't think any of us can say it's objectively worse.

From TLG's point of view, a set like The Office is an opportunity to reach out to mainstream adults who otherwise would never have looked twice at LEGO. It's a hugely popular sitcom, people love having merch that references it, but not a lot of that merch is toys, meaning the license probably wasn't very expensive. The set will sell like hotcakes, and out of adults who buy it for themselves, some fraction will discover that they enjoy building with bricks and enter the hobby. Are we really going to gatekeep how AFOLs find LEGO? Because if licensed sets are an invalid point of entry, you'll have to kick me out--I only got back into the bricks because of the ATLA sets back in the mid-00s.

What I like most about fora is the organization of discussions into threads, with every post and comment saved, in order. Contrast this with something like Discord, where every channel is just a continuously scrolling blur of conversation, and if you don't enter a discussion as it's happening you basically lose the ability to even know about it, much less participate.

This advice is fine as far as personal enjoyment and enrichment goes, but the community aspect is all about sharing...and you can't share if no one wants to take what you've got. You say it should be about discussion rather than approval, but in order to have either you have to be able to draw some eyeballs. If the attitudes in this thread are typical, then the AFOL community is going to wind up gatekeeping itself out of existence. If you disdain the entry points into your hobby--in this case, official sets (particularly licensed ones that can attract people via their non-LEGO interests)--people will stop entering.

As I was reading @jodawill's post, a thought occurred to me: maybe people respond more to community threads and videos than ones about MOCs because they want to participate. If you like an official set, you can go out and get one for yourself, build it, adapt it, play with it...and meanwhile talk about your experiences with it. If you like someone's MOC, you can't do that (unless you are skilled enough to reverse-engineer it from the images alone and have the parts for it). Honestly some of the comments on this thread are very discouraging. There seems to be a consensus attitude of "If you don't build MOCs, then you aren't a real fan, just a consumer," but at the same time you've got people turning up their noses at any MOC that isn't the biggest, slickest, most complex and detailed thing on the block. How is anyone new to the hobby supposed to develop the skills they need to get good, unless they can get constructive feedback on the stuff they make while they aren't good yet? I don't post photos because I have stalled out at a very low skill level, and that's largely because it's intimidating to try sharing my work when the lion's share of the attention goes to the experts.

I would rather have had a full minifig-scaled Haunted Mansion but given this is what's on offer, I will take it. Points in its favor: It's Anaheim's version. (I am a California kid.) They went with a human butler minifig instead of dressing up Mickey, which was what I was almost certain they'd do if they ever made an HM set. Because it's small, I won't have to drop $200-300 on it. And make no mistake--I would have, for a full-sized one. But it will be nice not to have to reserve a couple months' worth of entertainment budget for this. It's actually a really good piece count for the price. I hope they do the Enchanted Tiki Room next! Or a Jungle Cruise boat!

It's so hard to read tone on the internet...I didn't mean this as sharply as you seem to have taken it. I was sincerely wondering if I had ever come across as snobbish about my opinions.

...yes? Sorry, have I said anything that gives the impression I don't respect the differences of opinion here?

I have seen some absolutely ransacked CMF displays. And quite apart from the mere appearance of the bags, in these pandemic times there's something extremely unappealing about handling items that you know someone else has handled extensively. I'm not a germophobe by any means, but it makes me uneasy enough that I have passed on purchasing CMFs in-store because I didn't want to touch such abused bags.

I have no objection to there being a code that the knowledgeable can use to find what they want. My main issue with bag-feeling has been how much it messes up the bags for the customers that follow. Although I would also hope that a code would be paired with some kind of purchasing limit to keep resellers from snatching all the less common ones.

I think the main difference is the alteration of the minifig to promote another trademark. Someone just selling a minifig on the secondary market isn't piggybacking on the recognizability and popularity of the minifig to prop up something else. A customizer who creates a minifig to resemble a character that has never been done officially, and then sells it, is at least selling that minifig as a LEGO toy, probably to a LEGO fan, and almost certainly with ***CUSTOM*** plastered all over the listing. Someone who makes 50 minifigs with a third-party logo on the torsos to hand out to customers at a corporate event is in dodgier territory, and I think it's the latter that TLG would like to crack down on. Not to say that this isn't a petty move, because I question how often that sort of thing actually happens to be worth worrying about. But again, IANAL.

IANAL either, but I think the iconic appearance of the minifig is a registered LEGO trademark, and this extends to physical minifigs. I don't know whether this extends to grounds to sue for infringement if TLG says "Hey guys, please don't use our trademark in this way" and someone responds with "How 'bout I do anyway?" It would probably depend on the judge.

I mentioned it in my opening post!

After reviewing the thread, I would like to note that we now have lambs for potential Easter MOCs (and sheep for Nativity scenes, if you're into that). The deer has indeed become easier to get hold of thanks to the new Santa's Sleigh. It's almost Independence Day here in the States, so I'll indulge in some pure national fantasies that TLG is under NO OBLIGATION to serve: Minifigs: Uncle Sam of course ( @Robert8's Mr. Stars and Stripes nails the look...of course every depiction of Uncle Sam nails the look, there's only one look), and it would be nice to have a Colonial-era woman in a period gown and mob cap to play Betsy Ross and/or be the counterpart to the Revolutionary Soldier. We're pretty good on all-American animals (bald eagle) and food (hot dogs, pizza, etc.), so I'll skip those categories... Misc.: A red-white-and-blue fireworks tube! It's obviously possible to build one out of simple parts, but I'd like a stars-and-stripes print to really drive the point home. Or maybe a small stick with a burst of a transparent color on top: a sparkler!

ngl, seeing the amount of grousing about it does have me slightly going "hee hee hee, more for me then!"

Bringing this back in light of the Series 23 CMFs, which fills quite a few of my requests for Christmas, including the Snowman, Nutcracker, Sugar Plum Fairy, and candy cane accessory, plus a few I didn't specifically ask for! We're also getting a man in a turkey costume for Thanksgiving, and the recent farm sets have introduced a corn-on-the-cob piece. Great job, TLG! Keep 'em coming!

That's fair. I didn't mean to imply that kids would never do this, only that to me it seems much less likely. Kids don't tend to have the leisure to spend a long time squeezing bags, because their movements are controlled by adults. If anyone decides a gamble isn't worth it at five bucks a pop (or however much it's raised to in the future), that is totally valid and I will not criticize your decision. All I'm saying is that there are upsides to this move too, and one of them is that it makes things more equitable for people who don't have the time and inclination to feel bags. Maybe the ideal situation would be including some kind of code on the packaging like there were in the earliest waves of bags. That favors research rather than time-dumping for those who really want to guarantee a given figure. It could take the form of a printed code applied to the box at the same time that the minifig parts are put into it, so the boxes themselves could still be identical (saving the production costs of several different ones).

This is not a terrible point--the investigation into, and in some jurisdictions outlawing of, gambling elements present in online video games targeted at children is a good example of how insidious this sort of thing can be and why it shouldn't be tolerated. Of course, the truly insidious thing about the video game version is that the gaming account would be linked to a credit card, enabling a hooked child who had not developed any impulse control to just spend and spend and spend without thinking about it. At least with CMFs, a kid has to physically select a material object, and in most cases will be limited to whatever cash they have on-hand/whatever their parent is willing to spend at that moment. So the potential for damage is much less. And I might as well bring up the fact that I have never seen children rummaging through a box of CMF bags, groping for a telltale accessory. In other words, the people most likely to be damaged by the gambling aspect aren't the ones who can most easily take advantage of methods to avoid it.

I did point out that it's not just about the appearance of the packaging. Would you want a set that had some kid's snot smeared all over the box? You could just wipe it off... Would you want one that looked like it had been opened and then taped shut with Scotch tape, or would you suspect that some of its contents had gone missing in the interim? I understand people's disappointment in no longer being able to feel for the minifigure they want, but I have always viewed that as, well, cheating. It's meant to be a gamble. Feelable packaging favors people who have the ability to be at the store when a new box is set out and spend as much time as they want inspecting the bags. With unfeelable packaging, everyone is on the same footing--you select a package and take your chances.