Haltiamieli

I think it is rather a result than a reason. If TLC would have wanted to continue any of the themes, they could have tweaked the story arc to have some cliff-hanger ending to make continuing easier – or they could have just continued anyway, like Ninjago* or any second-class action movie sequel. Surprisingly the bad guy survived the nuke after all, or maybe the explosion opened a portal to another dimension for even more evil bad guy to pass through, or something. * Considering that the antagonist of the first year, Lord Garmadon, was apparently defeated and dropped to a rather background character in the second year sets, with completely new antagonists in the frontline. Even the protagonists' design and style were drastically changed, dragons to vehicles etc. That is the great thing about the quick circulation of themes. Certainly I don't see the phenomenon as a completely negative thing, it has both good and bad aspects. By no doubt Alien Conquest seems to be discontinued, but I was decidedly conservative in the first post, as there could, theoretically, still be an abundance of sets we know nothing about in the 2012 summer wave, of which we have yet only some leaked info. That's not exactly likely, of course.

There's this torso, but according to Bricklink it was never paired with red hips?

To me it looks like the horse would be in some sort of rodeo bucking position if it would be attached to a baseplate from its fore leg. But hopefully I'm wrong, otherwise the mold will be quite a "one-trick pony".

The nobleman is another new one. Admittedly only his torso print is really new, but usually that's the most important part anyway. Not much related to that, but if I could have made one wish to change something in the minifigs, I would have... well, of course I would have wanted a Black Falcon torso for the knight, but if I would have had two wishes I would have wished that the princess would have had this old high cone hat or something similar instead of such a common hairpiece.

Building Siskind's Blacksmith Shop from my old parts and BL ordered supplements was more or less my first project as an AFOL. This and MMV simply caught my breath when I saw pictures of them in Brickset and I instantly wanted to build my own medieval village. I don't think I saw any pictures of Siskind's original build before I completed my own project, only of the set as it was sold by Lego, so it's just an accident that while mostly following the official instructions I made some modifications to the interior that actually countered Lego's redesign. I did keep the attic though, I think it is a nice addition, but I added a ladder so that it can be achieve by the inhabitants. I'm planning to change the roof from blue to brown someday, but that would recquire some more BL orders... In some ways I like the Blacksmith Shop even more than the Medieval Market Village. It is a more simple and classic build, while some details in MMV (mostly in the blue house) tend to be a bit showy and unpractical for my taste. Blacksmith Shop is like a perfection of the 80s/90s design style, when MMV is clearly next generation, from the 2000s.

Pharaoh's Quest, one wave in winter 2011, no new sets after that Alien Conquest, one wave in summer 2011, no new sets after that Dino, one wave in winter 2012, apparently no new sets upcoming in summer Monster Fighters, one wave coming in summer 2012... I've been pondering this for quite a while now, and have been a bit surprised no topic has been started on this before (as far as I have noticed), though certainly others have mentioned same sort of observations and suspicions in the topics of the themes in question. It's still quite early to draw big conclusions, as Pharaoh's Quest is the only theme of which we know with certainty that it is not continuing with a second wave even after a whole year since the first one (like Kingdoms did last year, surprising many), and some might dispute categorizing Alien Conquest as an action theme (that doesn't mean it couldn't be a space theme too!). Still, to me it seems a picture is shaping, especially as I understand most of the action themes of the past, even the short ones, have usually lasted at least two waves. And I'm not sure if Lego even could consider whether or not to release another wave based on the popularity of the first wave if there's only half a year between them, as often is assumed ("it didn't sell well enough, so they axed it"), that's quite a short time to plan and produce sets? I believe that all these themes were always meant to be one-wave themes. Of course, there's the one obvious exception to this rule I'm proposing, and it's Ninjago, currently on it's third wave and going strong. But maybe Lego decided that Ninjago, even if it was to be a heavily marketed and planned to continue for a good while with TV series etc, wouldn't provide enough diversity, so they saw it as a possibility to produce another concurrent series of action sets in a quick rotation of different and at times a bit niche themes. What do you think?

While we may not be getting any fully fledged Castle themes as long as the LotR is running, we will surely have some close shots at least, like the Dracula Castle of the upcoming Monster Fighters theme, which seems to be more or less fully Castle-compatible except some of the figs. While I personally suspect people who are hoping for a historical antiquity theme or something like that are over-optimistic, there could very well be another action theme skirting around such ideas, like Pharaoh's Quest did (to some extent). Maybe even with less vehicles. Okay, now I am over-optimistic.

As 2011 was my first full year as an AFOL, I don't have much perspective in these things. I will probably just remember how the obsession started to show signs of staying instead of fading away after the initial burst in the latter part of 2010. Helping in this was the great (and all too soon axed) Kingdoms summer wave with Mill Village Raid as its crown jewel. Lord of the Rings license is great, but in retrospect I will probably remember it rather from 2012 than from 2011. Same applies to Kingdoms Joust, which I have yet to buy. From 2012 I presume I will remember the LotR theme, as mentioned above, and the desperate attempts to acquire enough money to hoard all the sets from the said theme. As a result I will also probably lament that I didn't have surplus money to buy any Dino theme dinosaurs from Bricklink or Dracula Castle from Monster Hunters or...

Throne? Afaik we haven't seen any pictures of the insides of the set yet, so there could be. Though when it comes to interior design, my trust in TLC isn't the highest.

I don't read through the instructions before I start to build, because to me that would spoil the fun of building by instructions and speculating what's coming next and how the end result will be achieved. Usually I follow the rules precisely, unless I spot some detail that's easy to change to something I like better (expecially if making the change after the whole building would essentially recquire first ripping the whole model apart). More often I just leave the modification work after I have completed the instructed build and have had time to notice what I like and don't like about it.

The Hornburg fortress is placed correctly in relation to the Deeping Wall, but On Stranger Tides noted that the tower is on the wrong side of the fortress, which is true. Personally I'm not bothered by it much, but hopefully it will nevertheless be in it's correct place in the final set and intructions.

Ladyfigs in a same set with normal minifigs? I think the possibility of that is much smaller than Lego changing all the minifigs to fleshtones, which I don't think is particularly probable in the foreseeable future either. I have to admit, though, that I also presume that if Disney license is some day brought to System sets, it will be with ladyfigs.

According to Jackson's interviews and somewhat evident in yesterday's trailer, they are trying hard to give each dwarf some screentime and individual identity, more so than in the book. But it remains to be seen how this is going to be reflected in the Lego sets. Even if many of the beards (are shamefully short and) can be printed on the head piece they still require quite a lot of unique parts (hair pieces, weaponry etc.). Maybe Lego will just produce their own versions of the dwarves with some normalisation to bring down the need of strange pieces.

How could they have? Both of these waves have been prepared before the theme was ever made public. They have to see how they are received and how they sell before even starting to reconsider.

Or "Dracula and his bride", to be exact ;)

As I said, the White Council and its actions against Dol Guldur will be featured in the movie even if they are only mentioned passingly and off-screen in the book. That has been confirmed by Jackson, and they have cast Cate Blanchett and Christopher Lee to reprise their roles (neither of which feature in the book) from the trilogy.* Exactly how much of the White Council doings we will see is still anyone's guess. But knowing Jackson he will not waste an opportunity for an epic action scene? It is not known either whether the scenes will be in the first or the second movie, or both. *It was even rumoured that Benedict Cumberbatch would do a double-role as the voices of both Smaug and Necromancer (aka. Sauron)... which would mean that the Necromancer would be speaking somewhere somehow. But I'm not sure if that rumour has been confirmed or debunked yet. P.S. Only a few hours till the first teaser trailer hits the interwebs! 7 pm PST.

Considering that the Hobbit movies are going to show the actions of the White Council, there's a remote chance that we could have a set of Galadriel and others laying Dol Guldur to waste in the Hobbit wave.

Ah, that sounds better actually. With any luck it could be great for new parts. Ahm... off-topic, sorry.

What they are? They are monster hunters, that's what they are. Or a monster hunter, as I suspect they are one and same person, but her iteration in the train set is still having Cavewoman's hair in original colour as a stand-in for the new brown one.

This year the advent calendars were City with police and Star Wars. So what do we have next year... City with firemen and Star Wars. Seriously? Star Wars two years in a row, and even the City calendar is so specific in theme that is quite useless for most other themes? I do understand that SW is the biggest cash cow for Lego, but I'm still disappointed. There are, after all, other themes too, like Ninjago (I don't like it either, but it could give quite a good array of parts and minifigs) or even Super Heroes or LotR (though it might be too soon since their launch). Will 2013 be City and Star Wars yet again? Frankly that doesn't seem that improbable anymore. (the guy in the hospital set has stepped on a banana and slipped, funny )

Hmm, not that bad. Dracula's Castle looks very cool actually, and there's a lot of interesting minifigs. If it weren't for LotR, I might consider buying it. Then again, without LotR Kingdoms would probably still be continuing so maybe I wouldn't have money to spend on this theme in that case either. But I may nevertheless buy the Cthulhian creature miniset, it's cute and cheap.

Dunno, it kinda seriously limits the playability of the set - it's a bit harder for you to act how Frodo wanders around cluelessly while the big ugly spider sweeps above him if he's wrapped up and apparently dead. It would be good for the collectors, by no doubt, but bad for the normal and casual customers, Lego's main audience. The set includes the infamous trio of Frodo, Sam and Gollum, so it will certainly be a set that also many non-Lego Tolkien fans will be buying, perhaps as their only pick in the theme. The desirability of the set could be hindered if the characters weren't in their iconic attires. It is possible, I suppose, that Frodo will have a "dead face" on the other side of his head. The same rules apply, though in lesser extent, to the Attack on Weathertop and the ghostly white Black Riders. It might have happened if Lego would have designed another set that included Black Riders, but such a set is coming in summer 2013 at earliest (as far as we can tell). Now in this set they would have to either drop one of the Black Riders off to make room for the ghostly version (and that would leave only one Black Rider, which is not too nice option), or some other character. Even that would make their profit margin smaller, because a ghostly wraith would require at least a unique crown and printings.

I might. Or maybe not. But personally I find comments like that not especially nice, as if people who care what the official sets are like as themselves are somehow inferior compared to the MOCers who just pour the pieces straight from the box into their drawers and never look back. "So what, you can MOC it" is a bit lame excuse, because you can negate any critisism against any official sets with it. Sometimes the Lego designers do a better job than other times. Sometimes we disagree with their choices. And I think we should be able to say it without someone quipping that we should stop complaining because we can MOC the thing. Like in the Medieval Marker Village I'm bothered that there's no stairs to the upper floor in the blacksmith house. I can understand why the designer did not include them (because most people would choose more interior details over some stupid staircase), but still it remains one of the few negative points I have about the set - even though I added stairs to my own version of the house, getting rid of the stable part of the lower floor. Another point why I care whether the sets as themselves look good or bad is that I am also a Tolkien fan. Even more than I am a Lego one. So I do care what they do with the license. I do care because some of my friends are already excited for this theme even if it's been ten or twenty years since they last played with Lego. For them it's not the minifigures but the whole set that is either going to get them inspired or disappointed. That all said, I appologise for the rant that you personally didn't really deserve. I just had to vent it out. Also I think the sets do look, for the most part, very good, better than I expected. And as far as I can see most of the commenters here have shared more or less the same opinion, or a somewhat positive one anyway, there has been only a few completely or unconstructively negative opinions.

I do agree with that, more or less. Excluding Gandalf's cart, all the sets are of quite dark scenes without much colour. A set like Prancing Pony might have remedied that a bit, but then again Jackson's Prancing Pony wasn't that colourful or cheery place either... The package design is quite dark coloured and foreboding too, something I already disliked in Pirates of the Caribbean and, to lesser extent, latest waves of Harry Potter.

One thing to remember is that while some big American company will be putting the Friends line away from the other Lego sets in the pink-y princess-y girl section of the store, that may very well not be true for most of the shops in the world, at least not after the initial launch and marketing push. Sooner or later a shop manager will look at the sets, notice that they look suspiciously like Lego and decide to put them among the rest of them (or maybe I'm a bit naïve, that remains to be seen). Admittedly I would be more upset with the thing if the closest Target store wasn't half a world away from me - I'm still waiting to see where Finnish retailers choose to put these products. I don't remember if Belville sets were originally placed elsewhere, but at least nowadays in the stores I visit the diminished line has been put in the same shelf as other Lego.