Gryphon Ink

I doubt that this castle will be $89, no matter what its piece count turns out to be. TLG haven't had a castle that cheap in at least the last few years. As the flagship set of this theme, the castle will be at least $99.

Am I the only one who thinks Leonidas looks totally baked? Crawley actually looks great, both with his headpiece on and without it - without the headpiece he actually looks rather nightmarish. The vehicle - meh. I'm not a big fan of the big toothed wheels and have yet to see them look decent on any vehicle, and this one has not changed that impression.

Wow, you really nailed him! Instantly recognizable. It's hard enough making a good-looking generic Ent, but to capture Treebeard's features so accurately is a great accomplishment. The whole scene is very good, too. A nice dynamic action scene. Awesome work!

I agree with Oky, the Bakery was initially one of the sets I was looking forward to the most, but it seems to have almost exactly the same features as the City Park Cafe. I'm also disappointed with the small sets in this wave. I did not think Andrea's bedroom would be almost exclusively devoted to beauty products. I don't want Andrea to be the beauty-obsessed Friend! The big sets, however, more than make up for the disappointing smaller ones. The Dolphin Cruiser looks wonderful, except for the rather ridiculous curly slide on its stern. I'm sure it will be easy to take that off, though, leaving you with a very nice yacht of an impressive size and surprisingly neutral colors. The dolphins are super-squealy-cute. Wish they were a tiny bit bigger, though. They look rather guppyish! The school is also awesome and a definite buy for me. All three minifigs are great, and this is another set that could easily fit into other settings. I'm thinking I'll get the Cruiser for Spawn #1's birthday, the Bakery for Spawn #2, and the school for myself. I'm also looking forward to the fawn, hedgehog and poodle polybags. The Friends animals have gotten much better after the original puppy and kitten - those were hideous IMO, but all the animals that came afterwards have been less exaggerated and slightly more realistic. I got the squirrel and cat polys for my daughters a few days ago, and think I'll have to go get at least another squirrel for myself. That little guy is great! Looking like a VERY nice year for Friends!

It's interesting that the "dark faction waylaying the light faction's carriage" concept has been reversed this time around. Aside from that, very similar sets to the first year of Kingdoms. The castle is not bad, but I have no need to buy it since I'm very pleased with the Kingdoms castle and plan to buy almost all of the LOTR and Hobbit sets this year. I may buy the Dragon Mountain set and the treasure carriage, though. Dragon Mountain is very nicely done, features a wide variety of characters and, of course, a dragon. One can never have too many dragons. I'm not crazy about either faction's color schemes, but the heraldry itself looks okay to me. Yes, it's cartoony. So what? For "realistic", I've got LOTR. That theme is so muted and realistic it's almost drab. I like that look, but I can totally see why TLG went with bright colors and exaggerated motifs for Castle's heraldry this year. For the same reason they didn't try to reinvent the wheel with the designs overall. There is only a finite amount of disposable income going around, and if they have too many amazing new themes coming out they WILL start to cannibalize their sales at some point. I, for one, never expected there would be any Castle this year for that exact reason, but I guess they feel there are enough children out there who are turned off by LOTR's dark colors and themes that they can afford to do Castle concurrently. Which is a net gain for all of us Castle AFOLs, so I see no reason to complain. To whoever was asking if the Friends deer is really a deer, yes, it is. The Fawn was confirmed as one of the Friends collectable animals sets a while ago. I can't wait to find it "in the wild", and I do think it will work with traditional historical/fantasy MOCs. Some of the Friends animals are too exaggeratedly cute for regular Lego layouts, but a few of them do work. This looks like it will be one of them.

I love it, especially the X-Ray viewer and the snowmobile. Very nice design all around. It's a little odd to see a helicoper in the Winter Village, but the chopper is nicely built and is even accurate for the loosely defined time period of WV. Great entry overall!

I think the biggest problem with this suggestion is that anyone who would be willing to expend $1400 on building one scene has almost definitely already discovered Bricklink and uses it extensively, rather than paying the premium for official sets. I liked your concept of LOTR "Creator" sets better when you applied it to specific structures. The premise can only be stretched so far. When you try to apply it on a large scale you are inevitably going to run into a problem of waste: pieces that need to be included to make a building interesting, but noone needs 32 copies of them. This goes for minifigs, accessories, doors and animals, as well as specialized bricks. A person who wants to buy 2 copies of a set will generally accept a certain amount of waste, thinking that somewhere down the road they may need those special pieces, but when you're working at a huge scale you'll probably want to get only the bricks that you actually want for the project. It's also wasteful from TLG's point of view to try and tell people "look, if you buy 10 of these you get Barad-Dur" instead of just making a Barad-Dur set. If they think the demand is there, they will just design a Barad-Dur set. If the demand isn't there, they won't be spending all that money to design modular/Creator/LOTR systems on the off-chance that AFOLs will go crazy for them. This reminds me of the train system that they had a while ago, where they sold individual cars for people to pick and choose to build a unique train. Lego Train fans still talk about what a great concept it was and how they wish TLG still did something like that, but the fact is the system wasn't profitable for TLG. They make a lot more money selling complete trains and only having a couple of them on the market at any given time.

Nice review, Rufus. The set is not my favorite, but it really fulfills the Creator philosophy of 3 in 1. All the models are very different from each other, and all of them look okay. I don't, however, think any of them look really good - just okay. The plane looks swooshy on top, but the sides and bottom are a hot mess. Eric looks cool in a Transformers style. I find it easy to imagine that he can turn into that funky plane. So if you're looking to build a Lego team of Kre-O style transformobots, Eric makes a great addition to the obvious choice, 31007. Otherwise, I think this is a pass for me.

Actually, on looking at the map in my newest acquisition, the turreted building doesn't have any people or activity around it, so it's probably just a background building. All of the buildings that are sets show something going on around them. Got Emma's Foal set. I haven't put it together yet, but I'm happy to say the foal looks good next to regular horses. It's a bit more cartoony, but not too much.

Forgot to mention, my eldest always reminds us all, "when Dad dies I get all his Lego". She's prepared.

My first daughter played a big part in getting me back into Lego, in that I wanted good toys for her that weren't Barbies and I wanted things we could do together. So I have always let her play with my Lego and use whatever bricks she wants, except for some special pieces. All of my sets are accessible to her as long as she puts them back. She has only broken a couple of sets and has always put them back together pretty well. My second daughter now plays with my sets, too, but some of them are off limits or only to play with when I'm with her. She is pretty rough on pieces, so I don't let her have free access to my stock, but she does build sets with me when I buy them. She loves the Friends minidolls, so I let her play with them and mix and match their outfits. Takes some tracking down sometimes to get all my parts back, but that's okay.

A school and a bakery, new animals, new characters including males? So basically, everything I want from Friends? My CFO - I mean, wife - is NOT going to like this. So, has anyone figured out what that big turreted building is? The next big Friends house, maybe? I know it's big for a house, but these girls do seem to be rather well off.

Honestly, this whole thread has become one big "complain about how TLG is not making your personal dream LOTR sets" session, alternating with "LOTR is doing terribly, no it's not it's doing great". No offense to the guys who are posting realistic comments, suggestions and pictures - thanks for keeping it positive. But the rest of it is a bit depressing. Personally, I'm thrilled with the line and happy for every set we get. While it's a disappointing that there are no new orc printings yet, let's try and remember that there are legions of orcs in Lord of the Rings, and most of them look almost as similar as Stormtroopers. Take your same-old-same-old "Mordor Orcs", swap out the legs for a different shade, substitute a couple of weapons, give some of them the greasy-looking Thorin hair and use a few different helmets on others, and you've got a perfectly decent orcish rabble ready to fight. For the rest of it, come on! Look at what we're getting here! They said TLG would never make LOTR, and here we are. They said Helm's Deep would look terrible in minifig scale, and it turned out to be one of the greatest Lego castles ever. They (including me) said there was no way we'd see a corsair in LOTR, and look at that ship! We've got Corsair PJ (and he looks great)! We've got undead warriors! We've got Saruman, the Mouth of Sauron, Arwen, White Gandalf... the list goes on. And Orthanc. How many times did I predict TLG would not attempt to make Orthanc? But there it is. Another Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli? Oh, boo hoo. Guess what, not everybody has those minifigs already. I still haven't bought Helm's Deep, and I probably won't ever buy Mines of Moria. Here's my second chance for Green-Shirt Legolas. And another chance for the millions of kids who just discovered LOTR through the Hobbit movie to get three of their heroes. This is not "a wasted opportunity". It's a WONDERFUL opportunity for new fans and old to get into this theme. Sorry to be all shouty, but would you guys all rather still be trying to MOC LOTR settings and heroes using the Fantasy-Era trolls?

That is one of my fondest Lego-related wishes. Unfortunately, I don't think TLG are ready to take a chance on "feminizing" their precious action themes, but we can hope that change is coming. We are sort of getting there with action girls like Eris and Nya and their excellent vehicles, but I'd love to see more than one female per theme. It's kind of hard to pass the Bechdel Test when there is only one female in your fantasy universe. I'd like Lego themes that took some inspiration from the Dragonriders of Pern (equal opportunity for girls and boys there) or the books of Tamora Pierce (great YA fantasy for girls with loads of talking animals but equal amounts of swordplay and monsters). A bit off-topic, but I have to say I've watched a few episodes of MLP: Friendship is Magic with my hopelessly addicted daughters, and that is a much better show than I ever imagined it would be. There is some really great humor going on in that show. Too bad MLP is Hasbro, because MLP Lego would be wonderful. I will NOT buy MLP Kre-O!

I have two daughters, eleven and four years old. They both love Lego already, but Friends has brought them deeper into the hobby and introduced them both to new things. The 11YO likes the detailed furnishings in the theme, all the little toilets and drum kits and whatnot. She still likes LOTR and other Lego themes, and would rather build battle mechs and castles than beauty parlors and pet salons, but Friends has also furnished her with real-world characters who enjoy nerdy pursuits like her (building robots, karate, doing magic, huzzah!) and has found a happy place in her heart. We have spent some time showing eachother the new tops and hairpieces in each new wave the same way we compare the different Hobbit minifigs. The little one has just graduated from Duplo and discovered an amazing passion for Lego, sparked mainly by the bright colors and cute minidolls of Friends. It has been utterly amazing to watch her build with me. We started out with me letting her do a few steps in each set I bought, pointing out what bricks to add and where they go. Now she is reading the instructions by herself, finding the bricks she needs, figuring everything out herself, and I am no longer allowed to build any new sets without her handling at least one of the submodels by herself. Although she is an awesome kid, she is in that highly irritating Barbie/Disney Princess/Polly Pocket/MLP stage that girls seem to be required to pass through starting at age four or five, and Friends has tapped into that gestalt while encouraging her to think constructively, interpret diagrams and work on number skills. For these positive elements, I have become a massive fan of Friends despite my initial reservations and a few lingering issues. The question in our household is no longer will we buy a new Friends set, but which one of us gets which set. For my own use as an AFOL, I think the theme has a better ratio of hits to misses than some themes. Some of the parts introduced in Friends are just as useful to me as the specialized parts we see in the CMFs and other new themes, and some of the sets have very cool construction involved. I've got the Heartlake City Pool set on the table in front of me now, and I love it. The way the jacuzzi and the toilet and shower stalls are built is just wonderful, and the overall design flows harmoniously. The submodels don't look like afterthoughts - everything works together. It was fun for us all to build and offers hours of play time for the kids, and yes we did get a beautiful new outfit for Andrea! I like the minidolls and I can totally understand why TLG made them instead of using standard minifigs. They just touch that Barbie-Polly Pocket vibe and appeal to this generation's girls more than minifigs with their flat faces and blocky bodies. They are cute and feminine without being sexualized. Kids get to change their outfits without it seeming totally obsessed with accessorizing like Polly Pockets. My wife never misses an opportunity to point out that I'm playing with dolls, but I like them almost as much as I like classic minifigs. But I do hope TLG will start to introduce more variety in the minidolls. The current wave has been excellent for introducing a wider variety of clothes and a few new characters, but it would be nice to have some older people and some males in the mix. However, it seems to be standard practice in marketing to girls that the ratio of female to male characters is wildly uneven, and older characters often don't exist at all, so this aspect may not change at all. It also ticks me off that the minidolls' hands don't swivel. Combined with the lesser problem of the legs, it gives the minidolls much less mobility than minifigs have. But I suppose this is a tradeoff that we get for a more realistic body shape. As to what else TLG could have done better, I'm not really sure. I was one of the ones who strongly objected to the very idea that there needed to be a "girls' theme", and I still think that a lot of the things Friends accomplished could have just as well been accomplished within the City theme and without so many pastels. A few of the sets, like the purple convertible and the beauty salon, seem to aim for the lowest common denominator in girls' toys, but those sets are more than balanced by other sets that focus on healthy non-stereotypical activities and far less purple. I am happy that TLG has simultaneously been putting more female minifigs in regular Lego themes. We're seeing female police officers and train drivers and warrior princesses all over Lego World this last year, and it's wonderful to me as a father and as a feminist. But I acknowledge that Friends has a special appeal to my daughters and offers a great building and playing experience. I hope it will be around for a long time.

Nice review, Pandora! I like this set, even though it's very similar to the City Park Cafe. I had never seen the Fabuland sign piece, and the new version is great to have. The poodle is one of the cutest Friends animals and looks like it will go with the standard Lego dog without seeming too out of place. And Joanna is wonderful! I love her top, and the new hair, but most importantly this is only the second dark-skinned minidoll face. It was quite disappointing when I got the Butterfly Beauty Shop and found that the "new" character was just Andrea with different hair. Now we can have some variety.

Yes, me. I just don't like the big molded creatures much. They de-emphasize construction and make it more like you're collecting action figures, except no Lego molded creature was ever as detailed as good modern action figures can be. I see everyone talking about how clumsy a brick-built FB would be, and I'm like, really? Have you seen the Ninjago dragons? Or Angler Attack? Or any of the MOCs people here have made of monsters from Bionicle and HF parts? They don't look clumsy at all. They look like awesome monsters... made with Lego. Which is sort of the point of why I do Lego. Even the new Creator eagle is a nice creature model, and that's a $15 Creator set with no special parts at all. I think TLG could design a Nazgul and Fell Beast set going for $25-30 that would look fantastic, with a molded head and maybe new molded wings. I'll buy a fell beast whether it's molded or brick-built, but I'd strongly prefer the latter. It's just more "Lego".

If we're talking about new live-action movies, I don't think Disney will rush into making a new one. I actually think they will let Indy sleep for a while and then reboot the series with a modern flavor. Audiences were pretty disappointed with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and that really taints the Indiana Jones brand name. They will wait a few years until Crystal Skull is a more distant memory. Meanwhile they will be feeding the flames of fandom with new video games, graphic novels and maybe some novels. These things are not as big a financial risk for the company.

Nice job. That stove is an excellent WV-esque detail.

Yup, I think you got it. Sounds like Deathleech understands this, too. It mostly reminds me of when I was a kid and Empire Strikes Back was about to be released, and we would drop everything we were doing any time they played the trailers on TV so we could sit six inches away from the screen and analyze every blip and blob in the trailer. It was awfully fun to speculate, but NOTHING in that movie played out the way we thought it was going to.

I like what I'm seeing for the 2013 wave. No, it doesn't cover all the bases, but I think it's a solid wave. Wizard Battle - GREAT small set. Saruman available at this price? Gandalf with hair at this price? AWESOME! I know a lot of you guys wanted Orthanc, but this gives you everything you need: take your Wizard Battle and your Orc Forge set. Hold the Wizard Battle six feet in the air above the Forge. Now imagine there are 10,000 black bricks in between the two sets. Voila, it's Orthanc! What a fabulous design! And the PPP ratio is out of this world! Council of Elrond - again, great set for its size, although it definitely could have been bigger and captured a little more of the flavor of the Last Homely House. But this looks nice, and we get Arwen and Elrond! Woo-Hoo! Black Gate - I don't know about you guys, but I can't see a thing in that picture except for the spikes atop the wall and a tower on the right-hand side. But I agree that there is a wavy shape at the top of the box that MIGHT be an eagle, and if it is that is awesome. Seems like a solid set, lots of key characters and a big surprise in the form of the Mouth, who is one of the creepiest villains in LOTR and has only a tiny role. That, to me, is showing a lot of love for the AFOLs and AFOLOTRs especially. Thanks TLG! Corsair - really can't tell about this ship from the art. You may remember I did not believe they would make a corsairs set. Well, I admit it, I was wrong. This ought to be a cool set, but I don't know that I'll buy it before the inevitable clearance sale price drop. So many minifigs suggest that this is a gigantic set that I don't really need to have. Awesome stuff for Pirates fans, though. To those who are saying that this sucks because they missed a lot of iconic scenes in this wave, I say take heart in this: the fact that there are so many key scenes that haven't been done yet, tells me that TLG are confident in LOTR and are saving those preciouses for next year, making 2013 the "middle chapter" year. LOTR will return! In 2014 we will see a Balrog, Witch-King, Eowyn, Fell Beast, Gothmog, Faramir, and the gates of Minas Tirith, if not the whole city (see ongoing debate ). It's going to be awesome. And what about Treebeard, you ask? Well, here's another prediction: Treebeard is the 2013 exclusive. $40 ($50 if it's a TRU exclusive), includes brickbuilt Treebeard and Pippin, Merry and Grishnakh, a small tree.

This is outstanding, sdrnet! Every piece of it feels very well thought out, and the overall look is amazing. It does feel like it's a little bit too grand for the WV theme, even if the piece count is similar to the Cottage (bigger pieces?). I think if TLG were to do a building like that, they would probably have eliminated either the tree or the monument to keep the price down. But they definitely look wonderful together.

Great entry, Kai. Looks different enough, but similar enough, to be part of the theme. Very cool. Don't think you need to worry, the Post Office doesn't have any of them either. A lot of people think that the strings of lights are required in every Winter Village set, but they aren't. Not everybody strings up lights for the holidays!

So, with a few more days left until 2012 is history, what do people think of LOTR/HOBBIT now? To me, it seems like yesterday we were arguing over whether it was even plausible that TLG would do LOTR, whether it was a good idea, and whether it would sell. Now we've seen one wave from each trilogy, and although I have seen some disappointment around the forums - not enough grand architecture, too many stickers, no bendy legs for the dwarves, etc. - it seems like overall the theme is a BIG winner for TLG. The sets are not all super-legendary quality, but most of them are good, and some of them are brilliant. The minifigs are incredible, most of the sets are reasonably priced, and it seems like the theme is selling very well. It might not be "The Next LSW", but it certainly seems like a successful theme that could go for at least three years and inspire an active fandom amongst AFOLs, second only to LSW. What say you? Any lingering disappointments? Does anybody just plain not like this theme?

I just wanted to add that I'm very pleased with that car. Lots of SNOT and Technic and cool angles. It's interesting. And I like that it's an unusual color.