Gryphon Ink

Beautiful, man. I love that interior!

I'm having some difficulty understanding how it's relevant that Spark and Disney both happen to be American. Care to explain?

Agree with that 100%. Blind packaging is a proven sales tactic that sold a billion boxes of Crackerjack and fifty gazillion Kinder Eggs. I still buy Kinder Eggs every time I can find them, because it's just such a kick finding out what you get - even if the actual toy turns out disappointing, it never stops being fun. Plus you get a chocolate egg no matter what, so everybody wins. There are more efficient ways to get a chocolate fix or a silly molded plastic toy, but none of them are as fun. The blind packaging of the CMFs definitely makes them fun. It's not just "run to the store and pick up a Dwarf Battlepack for my enormous Dwarven Legion", it's go to the store, hope to find a dwarf, feel the packets, this one's a dwarf, no it's a gladiator damn it I can feel his helmet, that one's either a dwarf or a clown, and what the hell is THIS ONE?" Buying your minifigs becomes a mini-game. I realize there are many AFOLs who would vastly prefer to just buy the Dwarf Battlepack, but I doubt the CMFs would have sold anywhere near as well as they are if they had not been blind packed.

After viewing all of FBTB's pics, I still think Moria is a bit underwhelming for the price. The troll is nice indeed, and I'd love to have Boromir, but there isn't enough there for me to shell out the money. But that's a good thing, because this theme could easily have become way too expensive for me. The Uruk-Hai Army set looked like a total throwaway at first, but not anymore. Eomer and his horse look amazing, as does the "painted" Uruk. And that ballista is probably the most evil-looking siege weapon I've seen in Lego form. Attack on Weathertop looks awesome. Seriously, I don't understand why people are unsatisfied with this. You get a complete structure that looks grand from every angle, a trapdoor (those are always fun!) and an extra room to play with - no, that wasn't in the movie, but it works - and how many times have we heard complaints about how licensed themes only give you the pieces to recreate a specific scene, robbing you of the ability to use your imagination? This set doesn't. The minifigs are incredible, and the Nazgul's horses look especially wicked. This is the first set I'll be buying from LOTR. Helm's Deep, I have nothing to add to what everyone else has said. Damn, this set looks fine. Very much worth the money IMO. Unfortunately, that is a lot of money, even if it's good value. I'll have to save up for it.

I had the same feeling. I'd rather those bricks had gone into the actual structure. The set does look cool, and just adds to my feeling that TLG are really aiming at adult fans with these sets - the Orc Forge and Weathertop both look like awesome desk decorations for LOTR nerds. But those base parts could have been sacrificed to give the whole thing a more cohesive structure.

There are three really good ways to understand LOTR/The Hobbit: 1. Read the books, starting with the Hobbit. They are really good books, even if they are a trifle dry compared to modern fantasy books. 2. Watch the movies. They are flat-out awesome. 3. Read the books and then watch the movies, and continue with reading the Silmarillion, then go on to posting on TheOneRing.net, obsessing over Lego LOTR MOCs, and playing far too much D&D. Bonus points for playing Munchkin and chortling over LOTR references in the rules.

To balance out Oky's vote against the Burrow, I'll throw in a vote for it. I think it's one of the most beautiful sets in any theme in the last couple of years and a classic Harry Potter location, but it also serves the essential purpose of giving people a place to live that isn't Hogwarts, which adds considerable depth to the Harry Potter universe. Throw in an assortment of fan favorite characters that aren't available in any other set, not to mention a pig, and you've got what I'd call a classic Lego set. Hogwarts Castle, the Burrow, and Hagrid's Hut would, in my opinion, be the essential sets out of what's currently not too hard to find at exorbitant prices. If you have the extra cash, Diagon Alley completes your HP world. I can't remember if you get a Voldemort from any of those sets, though.

No, "size matters not" Yoda would say. Sorry... couldn't help it.

That's not quite accurate. In the first half of the book, there are a number of enemies: goblins, wargs, trolls, elves and giant spiders, not to mention Gollum. And then we have the expansions that PJ and Co. are doing for the movie versions, which will probably include lots of orcs, Sauron and possibly a Nazgul or two. Plenty of enemies to pick from for a wave of seven or eight sets. I expect there will be one biggish goblin set (Goblin Caverns) in the first wave, with possibly another set based on the chapter where the heroes run away from the goblins and wargs, climb up a tree and are rescued by the Eagles. My predictions for the first Hobbit wave: Bag End "Roast Mutton" (the trolls) Gollum's Cave Goblin Halls "Flies and Spiders" (Mirkwood) Rivendell Mystery set depicting the White Council driving Sauron out Maybe the tree-climbing scene

There are a lot of them here, too. POTC, Alien Conquest, Hero Factory, Cars and Harry Potter are all still overflowing the clearance aisles at both my local Walmarts, and I've seen a bunch of items from other themes too. In the majority of cases, the ones that are abundant in clearance are the lackluster sets that I wasn't interested in buying, so I can definitely see a case for the idea that they didn't need to produce so many sets. And Cars and POTC don't seem to have sold at all! Even at the lower prices, I see the same number of boxes on the shelves every time I go in the stores.

One of the real failings of Tolkien's books in general, as far as modern audiences are concerned, is the distinct lack of compelling females who actually do something. Eowyn is really the only one who has an active role in the books, and Arwen's part there is even smaller than it is in the movies. They had to make up several scenes for her just to get her on camera. Which worked quite well in my opinion, I love her in the movies. For the Hobbit movies, they are actually making up a whole new character (Tauriel, played by Evangeline Lilly) so that they have at least one female who gets some action scenes. And it's possible that Galadriel will be in the fighting against the Necromancer, which was only hinted at in the book. I think the lack of females and Nazgul will be corrected in future waves. I think it's a pretty sure bet that there will be a big set containing the Witch-King/Eowyn confrontation, since it's one of the iconic moments from the books and the movies. And if there isn't at least one set with Arwen in it, TLG will be missing a great opportunity. In both cases, the sets will most likely contain women and Nazgul. And according to rumor, Tauriel will most likely have a big part in the battles of the Hobbit, first fighting the Dwarves and then in the Battle of Five Armies, so plenty of opportunity for her to be a minifig.

Big problem there in that you don't know what feminism is. Feminism is not sexism. It's the exact opposite. Feminism is about equality between the sexes. Period, end of story.

Everybody got a little Lego action today. I got City Park Cafe and a S6 Statue of Liberty, the smallest kobold got an S6 Skater Girl, and I was able to make my eldest spawn VERY happy by finding a Series 5 Dwarf for her.

Is it just me, or does Moria not look like it has enough pieces? It's supposed to be almost 800 pieces. I don't see that in the structure we see in those pics. Is it possible there are parts that TLG aren't showing us yet? While we're at it, let's speculate on what's happening inside Weathertop. Why does the hill open? My bet is it's something to do with Frodo putting the ring on. Either there's a trapdoor that Frodo falls into to simulate invisibility (which would be lame, and really doesn't require an entire hollow hill) or there is something inside that makes the Nazgul "transform" into their spectral forms (but that would mean there are minifigs that haven't been shown yet, which at this point seems unlikely even in my most wishful thinking). Actually neither of those things seems terribly likely - so WHY does it open up?

They're not the Wolverine claws, they are the same as the assassins have in POP. And Batman only comes with the jetpack wings. It's a very cool set for the money, though.

I just don't understand the general feeling of disappointment with the Nazgul minifigs. Nazgul are men/creatures shrouded entirely in black so deep you can't make out any details of them. They have no form inside of their armour, and the armour is mostly hidden by their night-black cloaks. Outside of Frodo's moments of "Ring-Vision", the only detail we see on a Nazgul in the first movie is their spiky gauntlets and boots, both of which are impossible to render on a minifig. How exactly were TLG supposed to make these minifigs look any more like Nazgul? I sort of feel the same way about Gandalf. Guys, he's an elderly wizard with a long grey beard, who wears grey EVERYTHING and has a tall, pointy wizard hat. He looks exactly like the stereotypical wizard we've seen in a million Lego sets, because the stereotypical wizard we've seen in Lego sets, and in D&D, and in every other fantasy book/game/movie/TV show, is based on Gandalf! Granted, they could have made the new minifig a taller, skinnier hat and a better staff - but that's not going to magically turn this minifig into the exact likeness of Sir Ian McKellen. I just feel that some people expect way too much from minifig design.

I disagree that the discussion of lore from the books is irrelevant, since almost every design choice and plot point in the movies is based on elements from the books, sometimes very minute and obscure details. For an example that's relevant to the current discussion, the idea that orcs are bigger than goblins is not just something that Peter Jackson and Co. made up. It is based on this line from the Hobbit: So basically, the fans of the movies and the fans of the books are both right! PJ and Fran Walsh did make a few heinous changes in the story due to artistic interpretation and the fact that not every element in a written work translates well to the movie screen. But when all is said and done, both of them were rabid fans of the books long before they were cinematic bigshots. They obsessed over "the lore" like your worst comic book fans, argued the fine points just like the rest of us fantasy fans, and when it was time to decide how things would look in their movies they did almost everything "by the book". This is why they had Alan Lee, one of the great Tolkein illustrators, as lead concept artist for the trilogy.

But it's not just a question of how effective Lego's advertising was. There are a myriad of factors that shaped the landscape of children's toys between 1981 and today. Girls' and boys' toys were not nearly as polarized in the early Eighties. Many things were much more unisex. Elementary-age girls' clothing in the Eighties was nothing like it is today - the kid in the "What It Is" ad wasn't a tomboy, those were totally normal clothes for girls her age at that time. Disney Princesses and Disney Fairies, two of the most powerful brands in the children's market, hadn't been invented yet. Marketing campaigns did, of course, target boys and girls separately, but the segregation was not nearly as complete or as relentless as it is now. Starting sometime in the Nineties, EVERYTHING has been split into "blue" vs. "pink".

Hrrumph. I thought you were giving away a copy of the set. Now that would have been REALLY, REALLY MAD. It also would have worked much better for me... Now I'm MAD (American mad) because you weren't as MAD (British mad) as I thought.

Er, you'll notice that even the people nominating it for this prize are aware of some of the problems people are talking about. They describe the set as follows:

I'm so happy TLG upgraded Nya into an action hero like the boys, I will buy this set even though I have no interest in spinner sets. Her armor and helmet look very cool.

Well, there really isn't supposed to be anything behind the curtain wall, since all it's supposed to be is an outer barrier. But I'm sure that the citadel isn't completely hollow, because even in the blurry Toyfair pics you can see that some of the windows in the citadel are shadowed - meaning there is some structure in there blocking the light. I do get what you mean, and it's a shame the citadel doesn't have a complete top floor, but the whole thing looks solid enough to me, with the visible ramparts and whatnot. The Moria set gives me the same feeling you're talking about, though, and that's a big disappointment to me. It just looks like a shell. I hope to be pleasantly surprised by it when good pics come out, because all the other sets look awesome.

I'm just a tad disappointed this wasn't based on Firefly. But it's a great MOC. Awesome work on the walls there.

Helm's Deep looks EPIC! They are definitely going after AFOLs with this theme. Both HD and Weathertop look more like fan-made scenes for display than the usual playsets in licensed themes. These look far better than most of the POTC sets. Still a little concerned that Moria really doesn't look like much. As the second most expensive set, I expected more of a structure. What I've seen so far definitely doesn't appear to justify the price tag, except for the fact that it has a bunch of the best minifigs in it. The troll looks great, though.

They look like they're from VERY different time periods. So do the vehicles, judging by those ultra-blurry preliminaries. I wonder if that's actually part of the story. Since we have all the classic monsters working together, it could be pretty cool to have an opposing team made up of several generations' great monster hunters, with the still-unknown female hunter representing the modern monster hunters from the Eighties to today. Probably too esoteric for an official Lego theme, but I think it's still possible.