Haltiamieli

Yeah. While I may argue why I think Lego chose to do Riddles for the Ring instead of an army builder, there's no denying that personally I too would like to have army builder sets. Certainly in this case as I agree that Riddles for the Ring is rather lacklustre set with its big rock and uberlame boat (on the other off-topic-y hand I think Gandalf Arrives is one of the best sets of the first wave, if every set is judged in their own price ranges and taking the subject matter in account). I hope that Fives is right in that we will get our army builders eventually. I can see no sane reason why we shouldn't, except the whole theme bombing completely- - But wait, that isn't sane either.

The sales of Gandalf Arrives or Riddles for the Ring themselves may not be anything to write home about compared to some sort of army builder set that would be scavenged by the hordes of AFOLs (though AFOLs are still a marginal group in numbers and we might often overestimate our buying power). But in the long run Gandalf Arrives or Riddles for the Ring may return the investment just as well if not better. Catering to the AFOLs is preaching to the converted. Our money is already largely in their pockets. The smallest sets however are (among other things) the decoy, the gateway drug. You buy that one small innocent and cheap set, and before you know it you want the second cheapest set, and the third cheapest... Soon you are eyeing the Helm's Deep - - and wait what's that, Lego Modular Buildings? That Town Hall sure looks awesome... Cha-ching. Of course most people won't get that far, certainly not the kids at least, but still they are the future.

Here.

As far as I remember nobody has yet posted pics here from this one eBay seller who has a Legend of Chima and Turtles fig for sale... he/she also has one Goblintown goblin and two mishmashes of Tauriel and Legolas parts (1 & 2). Nothing spectacularly new, but details and backpritings.

I too find Calvary builder set very improbable, considering Lego's strict stance on religious subjects and all. Sorry, I just had to... But yeah, Cavalry Builder is probably a preliminary name. Or maybe the film includes a Wild West version of Dr Frankenstein and his monsters.

If the big climax of the second movie will be as I believe, a Laketown set could very well be the biggest one of the next Hobbit wave. One or two houses and the bridge making up the town with Smaug, Master of Laketown, Bard the Bowman and two or three warriors/civilians (rather small amount of minifigs anticipating the cost of big molded Smaug... if he's brickbuilt however then there could be some more). That set would surely be awesome. Possibly mind-blowingly so.

Hmm. I'd like to have some of those bird and wolf sets. Lions and crocodiles do not look that interesting in comparison.

Indeed, too cute But seriously speaking, they are not as cutesy as I feared. Much better than the dog and cat from the first wave. Maybe some of them could pass in other themes too - I might buy turtle, squirrel and rabbit ones.

Picture from Brickset: So it really is a new torso, though the dress slope isn't. Hurray! Not sure what I'm gonna do with all those strangely coloured bricks, but there's a good fig and a horse and some useful pieces anyway so it will be worth the price (what ever it is). That's a really lame carriage, by the way

No no no no no. No unnecessary flesh (or yellow, for that matter) in unnecessary places. I'm certain that TLC could design a helmet that would be nicely Elvish without showing overgrown ears. Hopefully we will see such a mold sometime in the future. I suppose the best chance for that is the Battle of Five Armies in The Hobbit part 3, as I view any Last Alliance sets as a rather improbable pipe dream and we have probably seen all we've gonna see of the battle of Hornburg too.

Then again, Prince of Persia looks very much like any random action movie, and they ended up making a line of it (possibly with some pushing from Disney, or maybe they just miscalculated badly). So something similar could happen here. But Wreck-It Ralph is coming already in November and TLC has a pretty full oeuvre for the start of 2013 with many new lines (at least TMNT and Chima, probably Galaxy Squad and to lesser extent The Hobbit too), so I don't think there room for Ralph (and we should have heard of it already). Conclusion: could have happened but won't. Imo.

While it is used as front in that picture (judging by the hand holding a stick that can be seen in the right side), it's quite clear that it's officially backprinting - all the official pics are other way round, and the other side is a bit more detailed (except the fling).

Bugger, that's unfortunate. The fling makes the torso much less useful. Oh well, nothing a cape cannot hide...

The question is rather hard and my opinion will very possibly change with more pictures or when I get the figs to my hands, but I ended up voting Bifur for that beautiful hair piece with beard, even if it's quite useless outside of the context, considering the axe head. Dwalin is high in my books, and so is Gloin and Balin. Fili isn't bad either. I may need the movie to convince me about Nori's hairstyle, otherwise the fig is quite cool. I don't know why but Bofur's torso seems to me a bit unpolished compared to the others, as if the printing didn't work properly.

Didn't he say that he bought them from eBay? You can't sell figs from sets you didn't buy, after all.

Simply awesome. This is more or less exactly what I've dreamed of building someday, if only I had the necessary resources and building skills. I like how this looks like an extension of the official set and retains the style and scale but takes the grandeur and trueness to film to completely new levels. Maybe you could add some length to the Deeping-stream? In the official set it looks a bit pathetic, like a murky pool instead of a running stream.

Yeah, that one (also here) is from the same set of pictures, but there were others. I'm sure some of us saved the pictures on our computers, though. The official pic from the Lego Hobbit website shows a hint of the torso print, but I suppose you knew that already.

There were pics of a few leaked figures, among them Bombur and Legolas with Tauriel's head, that we talked about in this very topic in the beginning of The Erased Time (I think). Lego asked for the pics to be removed, so while possible I suppose by the very nature of internet, it's not easy to find those pics anymore. I haven't seen them since.

Hopefully something very boring

Admittedly he's arguably farthest away from his movie counterpart, but I think his minifigure version still has some of that endearing quality that I like about his film character. Besides the torso looks rather useful for medieval minifigs. I for my part cannot get over my dislike of Kili even when it comes to minifigs: he has a strangely shaped stubble that looks awkward (even without considering that it's a stubble on a dwarf!), the same hair as Thorin in the exact same colour (admittedly a new hair piece so it's not really bad, but would've been nice to have in a different colour), and as far as we've seen he's the only dwarf that dares to have a fleshy triangle on his torso.

The set with light blue bicycle is 10660 Pink suitcase I suppose, mentioned in this topic.

On the other hand they wouldn't have had to start from scratch. They have inevitably tried different sorts of sets before ending up with the final line and have many ditched pitches in various stages of design process. Some of the more finished ones could possibly be chosen, dusted off and made ready with some adjustments. And they would have some parts already done, like all the finished designs for the characters (the dwarves) that were to appeared in the original sets. So depending on when they heard that they would have to scrap some of the sets (could be 3 months ago or yesterday), they might be able to offer some new ones instead. Or maybe not. We do not know.

Interesting notion. If they want the princess to be able to ride a horse, she has to either have legs instead of a dress slope or both pieces. I wonder how they approach this.

Oops, it seems they are indeed still in production. I have just assumed that the old style ones went out of production when the new part was introduced, but it hasn't happened. According to Bricklink there was still old-style flames with pins in 9483 Agent Mater’s Escape and City Firemen Minifigure Pack this year. A bit strange, I would say. Maybe they are phasing out slowly?

I'm pretty sure they wouldn't use the flame pieces like that even if they were still in production - it's all nice and well for the digital game, but the connections aren't simply strong/durable enough for any play or active posing.