Haltiamieli

I've had a very skint year, and apart from CMFs my only Lego purchases have been two smallish BL orders and Gandalf Arrives. But now with some tax returns and other things that have slightly balanced my finances I could finally splurge and ordered Battle of Helm's Deep and Uruk-Hai Army from Amazon.co.uk.

For what ever reason, it seems that Jackson & co. didn't want Azog's design to leak out before the film premiere, so I doubt Lego designers had much choice. Warg Attack set isn't that accurate in other aspects either, and some things like Orcs lighting fires seems to have been taken straight from the book, when they haven't had enough information on the film scene.

Dunno, I don't think the Yeti would benefit from a lanky look (even if I too would like to see those parts reused sometime). Considering they're already doing the Cyclops in normal minifigure size (and e.g. the Minotaur before that), I think the Yeti will be fine enough in the same scale. Long arms with normal legs could be nicely ape-like, though.

I don't think they are introducing the smaller boxes so that people would be more prone to buy whole boxes, it's just a thing that's kind of relevant to AFOLs, so it was mentioned. The change itself was probably ignited by something else entirely. Maybe they want to have CMF series sold in even more places and presume that some smaller retailers would be less unsure about smaller boxes, or something like that.

With all due respect to Nuju Metru's creation – I've liked most of his LotR designs a lot and even the Minas Tirith is an interesting experiment – but to me it just proves how impossible an idea it really is. To paraphrase Boromir: "Not with ten thousand bricks could you do this. It is folly." It's like trying to design the whole Battle of Helm's Deep, with the wall, the fortress and the tower, with a $20 pricepoint. They used $130 and some people still complained it's too small, the walls too low etc.

It is a Cuusoo project; thus a MOC. That link is even on the Chinese page mentioned.

Yeah, that's nice. I'd like a wizard too, though a female sorceress might be higher on my wanted list - Lego hasn't really done one before, unlike old wizard chaps whom we've had plenty (but not quite exactly like the one in Heroica). Good call, I think that's quite likely. I don't mind, I still haven't acquired a single one as the clown didn't interest me otherwise. I hope the grandma won't have glasses so her head can be used for medieval figures too. There has always been a serious shortage of aged female faces in yellow (McGonagall yes, but I find the design rather hideous).

Someone, I don't remember who, did point it out a bit before EB crashed and the messages disappeared. It does indeed look suspiciously similar.

The problem with a Zulu warrior is that it might draw rather awkward attention to the skin colour(s) of the Lego people, any which way they would go: yellow may be an imaginary skin colour to represent all the people of the world, but it happens to be quite far from the darker skintones. I'm quite sure many would find a yellow Zulu strange-looking. And a dark-skinned Zulu, in the style of licenced themes, might look better by itself, but it would be the only coloured guy in a world of yellow faces. Thus I predict we won't see characters from (Sub-Saharan) Africa in the CMF series.

I suspect some sort of labels followed rather quickly after the bottling of wine was invented and gained popularity (in the 17th century, says Wikipedia), after all the different wines had to be identified somehow. According to this page, the invention of lithography printing technique in the end of the 18th century was an important step in the development of the labels. So at least for medieval scenes even the wine bottles themselves are anachronistic, never mind the labels (though of course glass-blowing is an ancient invention, so there has been glassware much longer). Personally I've decided not to care, at least until Lego provides my medieval drunks another method of drinking their licquer, like a brown/grey cup or a new tankard mold (somehow I doubt that happening, even with the upcoming Bavarian Lady).

Good call, I hadn't thought about that yet. Cool! Crows are quite high on my wanted animals list. TLC would probably just use the sea gull from Series 10 in black, but that's fitting enough I think.

Oh bother – that's how I remembered it, but somehow I got fooled by the date in Cuusoo. Funny, considering "2011-12-06" is in fact a rather understandable order even for a Finn like me (unlike "12-06-2011" would be, always befuddles me). Apparently I'm too tired and tried to be too clever. Off to sleep.

Ooh, only now I spotted it, the great miracle! A small dark brown barrel with a dark brown top. This is completely unprecedented. I had feared I would never see this glorious day.

While the Space Marines project did appear first, in the beginning of June 2011, I don't think it had time to be the inpiration for the Galaxy Patrol figure, for which we got hi-res pictures in the mid-October 2011. That would leave just a little over four month window for the whole design process*, and that's assuming they took note as soon as the project hit Cuusoo. I believe this is just a case of convergent evolution with strikingly similar timing. * Of course it was many more months before the product started to hit the shelves in the end of March 2012.

I'm hitting my head on the desk for not including the knight on my list. I always intended to, but when I finally made my list, I somehow completely forgot it. Well, I didn't do too bad even without the knight. Thanks Itaria, again, for holding this game! It was interesting pastime while waiting for the release. Now I'll start to ponder on my choices for Minifigure Series 12 guessing game!

Lego took them down after a few days. Probably the pics could be found somewhere in the web though, without doubt many did save them before they were gone.

I voted Series 9 because I don't really have an opinion on my favourite series, I suspect some others have done the same (though certainly novelty is the big factor here). I've collected CMF since Series 2 and I have ended up liking each and every series. Some more than others, I suppose, but it has always seemed too much of a hassle to try to choose my ultimate favourite. Only there's no "I don't have an opinion" option in these polls, so I have to choose something to be able to vote on other questions. Series 9 is at least good enough choice. What else? Yesterday I commented rather harshly on the Heroic Knight's choice of shield, and sleeping hasn't changed my opinion. Nearly anything would have been better than another crown. It's still a nice figure otherwise, I'll get probably get two of them, but it could've been, should've been, epic. At least I'm saving a lot of money, I feared I would go completely overboard with this one. My favourite is the Fortune Teller, altogether fantastic figure, only the face is a bit dime-in-a-dozen. Close behind is Forest Maiden, awesome figure (and nice shield, even if it is practically speaking mindless to have a long bow and a big shield). I'm not completely sure about the hair, but it's growing on me. Nice, but a little more generic would have had more uses. I'm a bit surprised by the Mech, it looks pretty cool. Better than the robots from Galaxy Squad, I think. Probably have to get one to keep company to my Galaxy Patrol guy. I wonder how the helmet would look on a normal minifig head? I take back my harsh words on Cyclops based on the back picture, it's actually quite cute. But I'm probably gonna be satisfied with one. The new distribution is horrible for me. Expecting a lot longer whiles feeling the packages between the store shelves.

I'd say the reference is just pointing towards the Forestman from Series 1 and reading anything more into that is a bit far-fetched. As long as Lego LotR is running, I think Forestmen is maybe the least likely old subtheme to return. Trees, elf-like figures clad in green etc. (half the people are already calling the Forest Maiden an elf). Nevertheless, I'd certainly like to see more of Forestman's merry band in the future CMF series, especially Friar Tuck if Lego could just find a way for him not to violate their no religious subjects policy.

Then again, wasn't that the joke? As they were going to publish the pictures in the social media, they imitated "hip" Instagram style for laughs. As a side result, they also sort of imitated the grainy leaked pics we sometimes get to analyse before official pics, which I think was rather intentional too.

Didn't this decade start in 2010 (or 2011, depending on definition)? Personally I wouldn't necessarily call nowadays the golden age of Lego, but I could call it a golden age, certainly. For me as a Castle fan the turning point would be the launch of Fantasy Era after the not-so-good times of early noughties and late nineties. There are certain things and aspects from late eighties-early nineties Lego that I would like to see return, but as a whole I don't think those were necessarily much better times. But simpler they were, in both the good and the bad meanings of the word.

If by latter you mean a return of the Kingdoms factions – Lion and Dragon Knights – I suppose you are right. That would be a bit repetitive. But I don't see how they could really "return to more classic castle" – Kingdoms was just that. Of course it was a rather short theme, so it didn't have time to include all the aspects of the classics. But if they would continue Castle under Kingdoms title and its established design style, just with new factions, I would be happy indeed.

Good and civilized westerners conquering the Middle-Eastern empire (Iran is the modern day successor of Persia, so called until 1935)? I'm not sure Lego would want to make a theme of that...

True, it does indeed look like there's a head and a helmet combo. Nice. Based on previous evidence - the Evil Knight and the Conquistador - I think it's quite safe to say that the knight won't have a torso print as it's covered by the armour piece. I'll be more than happy to be wrong, of course.

"I was really delighted that I'm now a piece of Lego. That's a dream come true." -

Yeah, that would be absolutely awesome indeed, and not completely out of possibilities. Though I shudder even to think how much money I might spend in that situation. After all, this crude design of mine has been my avatar pic all over the internet (except here since the beginning of Historica) for nearly a decade: But I dare not hope... so I'm settling for a griffin. That would be nice too, and wouldn't yet cause a budget crash. Yes. Interesting to see what it looks like from the front!