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Gryphon Ink

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Everything posted by Gryphon Ink

  1. Gryphon Ink
    Wow. I'm speechless. This is unbelievably cool, and I will immediately steal every idea I can from it. Those overstuffed chairs will be first.
  2. Gryphon Ink
    Wow, that's a lot of beach. "Mission at the Beach"? If that's not just a weird translation glitch I'm calling it now - sea turtle rescue or first aid on a dolphin. I do hope the girls get to go somewhere other than the beach. How about a hang gliding set?
  3. Gryphon Ink
    Of course kids can mix and match and invent new stories. They do this all the time. But 99 kids out of 100 will never play Superman as a bad guy or Darth Vader as a good guy because they know that's not how the story goes. They will always be aware of the stories behind these characters; they don't start from a blank slate.
  4. Gryphon Ink
    I got a Weathertop from Wal-Mart that had been very carefully pilfered by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. They had taken out the bags that had minifigs. One of them was missing, and the other one taped up and replaced sans minifigs. And they had put in an extra bag of Weathertop pieces that didn't have any minifigs, so they had obviously done this with at least two sets.
  5. Gryphon Ink
    I love how you solved the front end of the camper. Great construction all around! The "hippie" version actually reminds me of the Mystery Machine from Scoobie Doo. It looks a little too random, in my opinion. I get what you were going for, but I think too many flowers kind of spoils it. I wonder if it would be possible to mount the "Andrea" tile from Andrea's Stage on the side or rear of the hippie combi without spoiling its lines. Many of the old hippie VWs were named and had their names as part of the artwork. (I may or may not have grown up in that culture).
  6. Gryphon Ink
    Sweet! I love the roof construction!
  7. Gryphon Ink
    I hate to say it, but Molly Wood makes several good points, especially when you're looking at it from a parenting/educational point of view. There is too much emphasis on minifigs. Come on, we all know this. Half the people on Eurobricks only buy new sets for the minifigs, and I think we've all at least been tempted to buy at least one Turtles set or one Lone Ranger set (one Chima, one LOTR, etc.) just so we can have the iconic minifigs. Lego Star Wars has seen revamp after revamp that basically consisted of releasing a very slightly modified set with new or more detailed minifigs. And we eat it up. And do I have to mention the CMF "theme" that so many of us have to collect complete sets of? There is literally NO building in this so-called Lego theme, and how many of us are totally addicted to it? There are too many specialized parts in every set. Yes, of course we can use all those specialized pieces in MOCing, and more is better in terms of the options you have when you finally collect enough pieces - but the sheer variety of pieces you get in a set means that it is harder to do different things with that particular set. This is okay for AFOLs who collect set after set after set. It's not so cool when you think of children who don't have that much disposable income. A kid who only gets a handful of sets each year has much more limited options to recombine those specialized pieces in new, imaginative ways than s/he would if the parts were more generalized. The focus on licensed characters and settings does limit children's creativity, no matter how loudly we protest. When you buy LOTR vs. "Generic Fantasy Castle" you are buying specific characters with preset stories and a certain "right way" that the settings should look. Weathertop is supposed to look like this, and be the setting for a fight between Aragorn and some hobbits on one side and Nazgul on the other. That's the "rulebook" that you get with that set, and once you've built the set and played out that fight, there's little encouragement to do anything else with the set. A generic Castle set is much more open to the children's imagination. They can make up any story they want, because the set doesn't come with its own canon. The minifigs can be named whatever you want. The King's Castle can be built in whatever configuration you want. The Dragon Knights can be the good guys or the bad guys. The Lion Princess can be a prisoner, or maybe she's actually eloping with one of the Dragon Knights. Maybe everybody will end up teaming up against that horrible red dragon. All options are open. You get a much bigger sandbox.
  8. Gryphon Ink
    You could be right about a Smaug set, but the $10 set is never an exclusive.
  9. Gryphon Ink
    Guys, even a small wave is almost always going to have a $10 set and a $100 set. The small set is a crucial part of TLG's sales strategy (the small impulse buy/extra present) and the big one is just as critical. There is no way TLG would leave both of those sets off a hot licensed theme timed for maximum exposure during the Christmas season. They might as well say screw this ABS stuff, this year we're going to sell wooden ducks. Ergo, the set list is fake. No ifs, buts or maybes. It's just something somebody made up.
  10. Gryphon Ink
    Unless I'm mistaken, we do know from the books that not all of the Nazgul were present at Dol Guldur. The scenes in FOTR where all nine of them are chasing the hobbits are seen as an unprecedented event. I believe the Witch King is already supposed to be in Minas Morgul at this time. But really even the most educated guesses are not necessarily what Tolkien had planned. It's all extrapolation based on his notes and a few lines in LOTR. Even the Silmarillion was published posthumously and is to a large extent the work of Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay, working from JRRT's notes. There's no final, definitive history straight from the author for what happened in the battle of Dol Guldur.
  11. Gryphon Ink
    Have to agree with Bobsy, TLG wouldn't touch GOT or ASOIAF with a ten-foot pole. It is a nice MOC though.
  12. Gryphon Ink
    I like how he compares Lego addiction to drug addiction. But seriously, this is kind of disturbing. AFOLs use the secondary market a lot. It's not nice to think that the Helm's Deep set you just got a great deal on might have been stolen and could be funding drug dealers.
  13. Gryphon Ink
    I'll take a Blues Brother, a Maori warrior or two, a Yeti, a Woman of Science, and three cat ladies. No desire to get any of the others. Personally, I think they're scraping the bottom of the barrel here. I'm sure there's a limited market for mountain climbers and roller waitresses, but did anybody here really want a pink windup robot? Also, TLG take note please: it's perfectly okay to call your elf a Christmas Elf. As the token Jew I'm here to inform you that elves making or distributing toys for the holidays is not a tradition shared by any other religion. I know your marketing department screamed out loud and told you "no! No! Don't mention Christmas! You'll alienate those other guys with the funny holiday traditions!" but sincerely, we do not want your Christmas elves no matter what you call them. They are not part of our holidays.
  14. Gryphon Ink
    I just meant that just as Bombadil is the LOTR character most fans of the books missed in the movies, Beorn is the Hobbit character fans of the book will miss in Lego form. You could be right about him appearing in TABA sets, but I think the odds are against it. The Battle of Five Armies already includes wargs and eagles, and I think TLG will not want to make a special new Beorn mold along with those creatures. It's just not economical. Too many big animal molds means fewer minifigs and bricks, and people will balk at buying an expensive set that's very light on construction and minifigs.p
  15. Gryphon Ink
    Wow, what a surprise! I really love the idea behind this. This would be an amazing present for a kid in her teens who is interested in architecture or city planning. Right up there with NXT and the flagship Technic sets. Great to see Lego cotinuing to be educational! The white may be limiting, but it's sort of standard for achitectural models. It would limit the set's functionality more if they had substituted different colors of bricks, IMO.
  16. Gryphon Ink
    Lynx, I think you and I should go Hobbit-watching together! I have exactly the same issues with the movies that you mention here. I'm even more down on the movies since I just finished re-reading the Hobbit and LOTR cover to cover (first time since before any of the movies came out) and am reminded of all the rich lore and history and secondary characters that had to be skipped over in the movies, and the character growth that all the Hobbits go through in the books, which had to be mostly ignored so that Frodo and Aragorn could be the great heroes of the movies. Still, this won't make me stop loving the movies and everything that they did get right. And even AUJ, for all its faults, is one of my favorite movies of the last few years. I could pop it in the DVD player right now and start grooving on Erebor and singing Dwarves. There is some magic in those scenes, one of the things that PJ definitely changed for the better. Thror going crazy in his treasure vault might be over the top, but it works so well and sets up a great character arc for Thorin, and Richard Armitage is living that role. Again, I agree, BUT EREBOR!! What a great location it is, and I am so eager to see what TLG makes of it. It's jumped over Moria in my personal list of most amazing locations in Middle-Earth, and is almost up there with Rivendell. This HAS to be the flagship set of this wave. Anything else would be an insult to the movie set designers. I'm thinking Erebor with Smaug for a $120 set, Thranduil's halls with Orc action for $70-90, the Laketown Chase in the $50 slot, small Dol Guldur scene for $20-30, and (hopefully) Radagast or (probably) Bilbo for $14. Assuming the 5-set quote (thanks, Deathleech!) is accurate. Beorn, unfortunately, gets cut again. I'd bet on it. The size that he is in the trailer makes it prohibitive for TLG to do him as a bear, at least. I think Beorn is destined to become the Hobbit trilogy's Tom Bombadil as far as Lego is concerned.
  17. Gryphon Ink
    I think it's legitimate to mention it. Like she said, a lot of people are looking for those arches. And most of us eventually start looking at new sets as parts packs. She is just saying, guys, this one is an awesome parts pack. Personally I'd keep this together, but it's obvious that some serious MOCers will be buying multiples for parts. No sense in TLG acting like that isn't part of the appeal.
  18. Gryphon Ink
    There's no reliable basis for that, as far as I know. It's just one of those things that started getting repeated. There could be 4, 5, or 8 sets for all we know.
  19. Gryphon Ink
    If we're talking Lego themes, totally Middle-Earth, as an Elf in Rivendell. If all worlds are open, the Culture. Because when you're in the Culture, you basically HAVE all the worlds.
  20. Gryphon Ink
    Is anybody else thinking that Radagast is a natural for the $12 set in next Hobbit wave? Assuming they would be willing to do a scene from AUJ in this wave, he could be in his home with the hedgehog on the exam table, with maybe even a giant spider. I'd wish for the bunny sled, but as far as I know there isn't a bunny mold outside of Friends, and those Friends bunnies just aren't Rhosgobel rabbits, no way.
  21. Gryphon Ink
    They are both beautiful, Legopard! If I had to pick one, I'd definitely pick the Beetle. I've seen a lot of campers, but very few Beetles, and I love the way you shaped the hood.
  22. Gryphon Ink
    This is all true, but I disagree that this makes it "not really full of substance". It has lots of substance, it's just that it's a children's book and the substance is not in descriptions of battles or flowery prose, but a more subtle, lingering effect in your imagination and your psyche. I think it was fine for PJ and Co. to add things to the story, and of course they needed to flesh out the Dwarves because in the book most of them were very much non-characters. But I just don't agree with the direction that they went in a lot of cases. It's a lot like the MOS movie, there are people saying "finally, an update to the tired old Superman formula!" and there are people saying "these guys just don't get what makes Superman work." I think PJ genuinely loves the Hobbit and all of Middle-Earth, but he seems completely blind to the fact that his ideas don't always mesh well with JRRT's ideas.
  23. Gryphon Ink
    I really hope they don't try to invent prequels and turn Middle-Earth into yet another ongoing franchise. The LOTR movies were very good interpretations, but the Hobbit so far has been less Tolkien's work and more like a high-budget fan-fic. AUJ was still a fun movie, but it's not at the level of Tolkien's work. Quality in Middle-Earth seems to drop considerably when other people try to write the stories.
  24. Gryphon Ink
    Good catch, but I always interpreted that more figuratively, a bit like the Orcs thinking Sam must be an enormous Elf warrior in ROTK. You're probably right, though, as PJ usually gives very literal interpretations to what Tolkien wrote.
  25. Gryphon Ink
    I've been wondering how they would handle Beorn. Until the movie teaser was released, I assumed he would be a Hagrid-sized human and a normal brown bear. But in the teaser, his bear form is ridiculously oversized. Peter Jackson just seems to want to make everything bigger than it should be. If he really is that big in the movie and it's not just an optical illusion, the brown bear mold is just not going to cut it. So I wonder if they will just not make Beorn in bear form, or if there will be a new giant bear mold.
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