Gryphon Ink

Oh, TLG, why did you have to exclude the Dragon Knights AGAIN? Don't get me wrong, this is a beautiful set, and the Falcon Knight is rock-solid awesome. But I'm still a bit disappointed at the complete lack of Dragon love. I know the Dragons are supposed to be the bad guys, but I wish they could have gotten a nod here, in what definitely looks to be Kingdoms' "exit set". And, I know this isn't realistic, but in my mind's eye I was seeing a real tourney set with knights from four different factions. I guess it won't be too hard to mod up a couple of extra weapons tents, but still. I have to admit that the castle looks amazing, and I can't wait to see it combined with the King's Castle set. My daughter is going to love this set. I'll be over in the corner, crying for my beloved Dragons.

Took another step into Technic and got 8069 Backhoe Loader yesterday. It's an awesome set. Technic is WAY more challenging than System - this was the first time I've had to backtrack because I'd messed up a couple of parts. I love that it's actually a challenge to build. Luckily, none of the other Technic sets out right now (in a price range I can afford) appeal to me that much, or I could have a whole new addiction on my hands.

I agree, I'd much rather have a variety of plant pieces than a gazillion weapons. Most of the aftermarket weapons seem rather unnecessary and un-Legoish to me, simply because they add quantities of detail that don't exist in any other item in the Lego universe. And then for plant life we are stuck with the same handful of pieces that have been around for years. On the plus side, having only a few different plant pieces does encourage experimentation. I've seen some wonderful plant work in MOCs around here.

I'm just teasing, Christopher. I don't expect everyone who loves science fiction to watch B5, especially given its relative obscurity compared to things like Trek, SW, BSG and Doctor Who. But if you ever get the chance to watch, it is a really, really good show that paved the way for modern SF sagas on TV. Before B5, nobody ever expected televised SF shows to have a plot with a beginning and an end. B5 has a great unifying story and a lot of good characters who actually change, grow and occasionally die. I just have to tell you, though, that when you watch it you SHOULD watch the first season, but keep in mind that the show's true greatness only kicks in during the second season. Season One is just laying the foundations, establishing characters and such.

I'm pretty sure the times shown are a transparent sticker on the clock face. I'd be surprised if the clocks were working in the box.

<---------------- (points to avatar) Nice job, and it's great that you included instructions for it. But whaddaya MEAN, you've never seen the series? It's only one of the very best science fiction TV shows EVER. (Now waiting for a White Star model, and goes off to download instructions.)

Don't get me started. I grew up with a steady diet of Python. I watched Holy Grail and Life of Brian so many times I actually sort of burned out on them. But I still quote the movies regularly enough to annoy the hell out of my wife and co-workers. I love the Flying Circus almost as much, it beats the movies in the WTF factor. My favorite bits are probably everybody's favorite bits: the Lumberjack Song, Dead Parrot, the swallows in Holy Grail, and How to Disappear Completely, but I also like the odd bits like the philosophers playing soccer and Olympic Hide and Seek. I have to say I like Fawlty Towers even more than the Flying Circus. John Cleese will never be better than he was as Fawlty.

Not to mention it's all "speculation" - which is to say, a wishlist.

Okay, this is getting a bit silly. It makes no sense whatsoever for TLG to pay licensing fees for a franchise that most kids don't know about, and daikaiju films are particularly not a sensible choice for Lego to sell. ESPECIALLY not in the same year that they launch a dinosaur theme. Hoax.

Kind of hard to believe that they'd essentially duplicate three of the sets we already have for POTC without adding any of the very different iconic locations the franchise has to offer. I'm all for a continuation of POTC, but this sounds highly suspicious.

I've got to add my voice to the chorus. This is an amazing piece. This, more than any giant castles or realistically-working Technic machinery, is the kind of thing I show my wife when I'm talking about art being made with Lego.

Yep, all that. I've always seen Eowyn's slaying of the Witch King as a big raspberry thrown up in the faces of literary traditions that demanded male heroes. It's true that women take a huge back seat to the male protags in LOTR, but I believe Tolkien did what he could to show that women were just as much a part of things. And Galadriel IS one of the most powerful beings alive in Middle-Earth at the time of the war, which is why she has one of the Three Rings. Her hubby is Celeborn, BTW. Yep, it's one of my wife's favorite film series, and I'm active in a knitting community that is almost entirely female and has hundreds of rabid LOTR fans. I'd say it's one of the biggest fandoms in the female half of the geek world. Which should be no surprise, considering how many of the world's most drooled-over male actors are in the films. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the books and movies are all great... I think overall I'd be happier with Fantasy II as well, for all the reasons you mention. Given that TLG's official LOTR sets definitely wouldn't be as good as what we'd all like to see, I'd rather have a bigger variety of generic fantasy parts available for master MOCers to do their magic with, so we can see what Minas Tirith and Moria REALLY should look like. LOTR is one of the major roots of modern generic fantasy, anyway. Also, after seeing the Dino 2012 pics I have visions of orc cavalry storming a Dwarven fortress on velociraptors and triceratops. I'd rather build that than see an official Lego Balrog that is sure to disappoint us all.

I actually like the dinosaurs more than I thought I would, but the sets themselves really aren't screaming for my attention. I was thinking there would be a bit more scenery involved... I don't see myself buying more than one or maybe two of the smaller sets. And I'd love for Jake Raines to be part of the crew, but I think the some of the details look WAY too modern for him to be in the theme. The trucks have a very modern vibe to them, especially with that color scheme that would look ridiculously out of place in any time frame that Jake could have starred in. I'm thinking the Jake head that we see there is a placeholder.

Whoops, you're right. Because the PG13 rating didn't exist at the time of their release. Actually, PG13 was created at the suggestion of Steven Spielberg as a reaction to parents who were angry about the violent content in two of his then-recent PG-rated movies: Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom!

No, we didn't know anything from the first rumors. Because they were RUMORS with no supporting evidence at the time. It's kind of silly to expect everyone to treat an unsupported rumor the same as a proven fact. NOW we know what the theme is called, and it is no longer a rumor. Why, is there going to be a test?

The fact that you didn't like the books until later doesn't mean no kid ever did. I was hugely into the Hobbit and LOTR before I was in double digits. My mother read the whole series to me before I was six (twice for the Hobbit), and I read it for myself at eight or nine. I probably didn't understand every word of it at that age, but I sure was interested. By fifth grade (11-ish) I had gone through LOTR myself, and so had several of my best friends. My daughter, who is about to turn ten and just started fifth grade, read the Hobbit last year. LOTR was on the recommended summer reading list for her reading level this vacation, but it's still too dry for her taste - but she loved the Hobbit. Fred67 and others have said they like the books at this age as well. I don't mean to say that every single kid on the playground loves these books. I know a lot of kids that don't read at all and are only interested in what's on the Disney Channel. Those kids will be covered when the Hobbit movies, which are largely assumed to be two of the biggest tentpole events of 2012 and 2013, start to get advertised on the boob tube. Any toy vendor who hasn't bought into the the Hobbit merchandising empire at that point will be wondering what they did wrong in past lives to deserve such ill fortune. The Lexile Framework puts the Hobbit at 1000L, which is 6-7th grade reading level. Scholastic Books considers both the Hobbit and LOTR "Interest Level 9-12, Grade Level 8.1" which means, roughly, that while they expect kids to be able to read it in 8th grade, they expect them to be interested in it long before then. (Everyone who's following the debate, remember: the Indiana Jones movies, Pirates of the Caribbean series, Prince of Persia, and every Harry Potter movie since Goblet of Fire have been rated PG-13. In other words, kids in the age range that TLG most aggressively targets were not "supposed to be" interested in them - and yet, all of those were Lego themes.) Lightningtiger: most primary school library associations do, in fact, recommend having both Hobbit and LOTR on the shelves for seventh and eighth-graders and advanced readers in lower grades. In response to the fact that you don't see LOTR in K-Mart and Target - um, K-Mart and Target aren't real well known for their taste in literature. I don't see Catch-22, Fahrenheit 451, or Pablo Neruda's Garden of Odes on Target's shelves, either. (Or Citizen Kane in the movie section, for that matter). But all of those books are perennial best-sellers, and LOTR and the Hobbit are, according to Wikipedia, the second and third best selling books of all time (excluding religious works and certain political books which have been distributed in numerous samizdat editions). The Hobbit has been listed as #3 on the Nielsen "Evergreen" list of books that every bookseller MUST stock because they have been the most consistent sellers year in and year out since Nielsen started tracking book sales.

That right there is my biggest problem with Alien Conquest. I really like the theme. I think three of the sets are wonderful, while the Jet-Copter is pretty darn good and the Mothership is nice, but unfortunately overpriced and misnamed. But like a few others have said, the theme would need to escalate and possibly move into space ("Alien Conquest 2: Counterattack!") to really make it soar, and although I think it's early days yet I'm afraid that won't happen. We'll be left with only the Earth Defence HQ as a hint of just how good AC could have been. If I had any money to wager, I would confidently put down $100 on the EDHQ becoming one of the hottest "Classic Space" sets around in ten years' time.

This is sort of tangential to the main discussion, but TLG has not had a monopoly since the courts allowed other companies to use the basic brick design. All they have is strong brand recognition and customer loyalty, which are upheld by quality control and by not tampering too much with their core values - the ban against producing blatantly violent sets is part of their efforts in this area. You may not be interested in other building block brands, but plenty of other people are, especially when the other companies get hot licenses like MB's Halo theme or the Kre-o Transformers.

Those who argue that LOTR wouldn't be popular with kids (for whatever reason) are ignoring a very simple fact: LOTR IS popular with kids, and it has been for a good sixty years or so. Long before Peter Jackson brought it to the screen, the books were a publishing phenomenon that inspired everything from D&D to a million Saturday morning cartoons. the Harry Potter series wouldn't exist without LOTR - just try to tell me Albus Dumbledore isn't a Gandalf clone, or that Dementors don't remind you of Nazgul. Three generations of children have grown up with the Hobbit as one of their most beloved books, and a fair number of those kids went on to read LOTR afterwards, even without films and video games to remind them that it's cool. Now that there are films and video games, LOTR can only get more popular. It doesn't need vehicles.

I would go for Space Police, specifically Hyperspeed Pursuit or Lunar Limo. I'm still sad that I never picked up any of the great SP3 ships.

Because there really isn't any news, it's all just speculation gone wild. The "evidence" for LOTR is one guy's blog - with no sources, details or prior history to establish them as a good source - and a comment somebody at Travellers' Tales made over a year ago about how Lego LOTR "would definitely work". As far as I know, there's not much more evidence for Dino 2012.

You're right, I forgot about the Knight Bus and the ship. But even with those two, the theme was mostly vehicle-free and has been one of the most successful licensed themes - maybe even one of the most successful themes of any kind, judging by how fast the boxes disappear and reappear on my local shelves. I think when you're guessing if a licensed theme can succeed, you have to throw TLG's "house rules" out the window and instead judge it by how big the license itself is and how well Lego can adapt itself to it. I think LOTR can be done very well in Lego form, and the audience is MASSIVE. It's not only dedicated fans of LOTR, but also tabletop RPGers and geeks of all stripes who would like LOTR figs for displays even if they'd never buy any other Lego product.

Oh, I missed this when you first posted it, but that is a great creation, jake! It fits the alien designs perfectly and even sort of resembles that specific alien's head. I wonder if you could make a version of this with legs that fold up to form a saucer-like vehicle? That would make this a perfect invasion craft.

Got a nice bonus from work today, so I took some of it and went and bought 7946 King's Castle, completing my Kingdoms collection. I was torn between the castle and the very fine Earth Defence HQ, but in the end decided that the Spawn and I HAVE to get a castle at some point. I've only built the gatehouse and one of the octagonal towers so far - have to wait to build the rest of it with the Spawn tomorrow. Quite amazingly, my local Target is currently stocking a more or less complete line of System sets. It's the first time I've ever seen them carry all the themes.

Well, neither Harry Potter or POP had any vehicles except for the Hogwarts Express and a flying car that came in the same set. Kingdoms doesn't have vehicles except for a few carts and siege engines, both of which would undoubtedly be part of a hypothetical LOTR line. And while Atlantis has its vehicles, in several of the sets the vehicle is a tiny runabout playing second banana to a large monster. And it's a bit of a jump to assume that the creatures in LOTR would have to be molded. TLG have made dozens of brickbuilt monsters. On the shelves right now there are giant brickbuilt dragons, crocodiles, anglerfish, snapping turtles, sea dragons, scorpions, and spiders galore - and all of them, except for Aragog, look pretty decent. I would be thrilled to buy a set with a brickbuilt mumakil, and probably wouldn't buy a molded one at all. The same goes for an Ent. I want to see these guys in Lego bricks, not some big ugly piece of molded plastic. I'm a fan of Lego, not action figures. The only creatures I can really see TLG molding would be the cave trolls and the eagles, since those are on a scale that doesn't look great brickbuilt. And neither of those would be totally necessary for a first wave or two of sets. By the time people start shouting "what about the cave trolls?!?" TLG will know whether LOTR's profits justify new molds. Honestly, I'm still on the skeptical side here, but I don't believe the objections you've raised are really legitimate obstacles.