Lyichir

I thought about how a Friends-style set would work for that, but while it seems easy on the surface, I'd think you'd find a lot of difficulty if you tried to build an entire theme around it. Consider this: from what I've seen in commercials (haven't gotten to the movie yet), Merida is just about the only character who the Friends proportions would suit. Her brothers would necessitate a new "Friends child" mold, her father would need a very large, very specialized mold... the list of issues goes on and on. Meanwhile, I don't think regular minifigures would work that well, either. Most Pixar movies have a very expressive, cartoony style. With minifigures you'd have to eliminate that almost entirely, lest you enter a Clone Wars-type situation where the figs neither match the source's style (due to a lack of features like noses) nor fit in with other minifigures (due to having large, expressive eyes instead of the classic black bead with sparkle). In summary, just because a movie is good doesn't necessarily mean it would make a good LEGO theme. I do wish LEGO had done sets for Wall-E, though; apart from the humans, most of the characters are mechanical and non-humanoid, making them well suited to LEGO.

You're the first AFOL I've met who thought of complex techniques like SNOT and jumper plates as "gimmicks". Personally, I feel they're ideal for making a detailed model. SNOTwork is amazing for making detailed surfaces which face in any direction, and jumper plates are essential when building at a small scale (either with high-detail structures at a normal minifig scale, or almost any sort of "microscale" structure). I feel it's been a long time since all parts came in all colors. You'd probably have to go back to when LEGO consisted only of basic bricks in primary colors! As soon as LEGO began to diversify, parts began to show up in rarer colors. A good example of this is the original dark grey, which until the late '90s was primarily used only for minifig accessories and mountain pieces! The "LEGO System" never meant that all colors would be represented by a full range of parts; rather, it meant that all LEGO parts would be compatible with other parts in one way or another, and that still rings true today. And in fact I'd argue that the color selection of parts has improved greatly since the early noughts, when there were far too many colors represented by far too few parts each. Some of the worst offenders would be Belville or Scala colors, which were rarely used in other sets whatsoever; my main exposure to some of these colors would be early Harry Potter sets, some of which included parts I have yet to match to other parts in my collection.

Hmm... I'm not sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, LEGO Universe turned out to be a major bust. But on the other hand, perhaps they can avoid that type of failure this time around by using lessons they learned from LEGO Universe. I'll have to wait and see, I suppose.

"Nothing but a MAJOR controversy"? Actually, they have been something else: a MAJOR success. And somehow I doubt reducing action features and conflict in sets would attract more girls to buy the sets. If anything, it would probably cause LEGO to LOSE some of their male audience. The attempts to have females in sets are currently far from pitiful (examples include CITY, which has a much more even gender ratio than it had in years past; or Atlantis, which despite being an "action theme" had a woman as the main character). LEGO has been gender-divided for a long time; the main difference was that boys bought sets and girls mostly didn't. Friends is accomplishing a lot despite being a "girls theme": it's proving to skeptical retailers that girls will actually buy building toys, as opposed to only buying dolls. Eliminating the Friends theme would be a step in the wrong direction, and would be equivalent to a show of defeat in the eyes of these retailers.

To be fair, I expected either the American price to go down or the British price to go up. They were just too disparate compared to each other and to other worldwide releases. Rather than them "jacking up" the prices, I think this was a case where they made a mistake in the pricing in the initial announcement. And they aren't really cheating anyone this way, since preorders haven't even started yet. So yes, it's awfully expensive, but really all LEGO is doing is levelling the playing field, which was way off balance in the initial press release.

I'm sorry, but this is clearly a case of confirmation bias. You were deliberately looking for issues, and you found them. But let me play devil's advocate for a bit. First of all, I remember bricks from a decade ago being noticeably worse than new ones at some of the things you say. For instance, I've never experienced "squeaking" in any but the oldest of my bricks (like, for instance, the old style of plate which had a waffle-like grid on the underside instead of being like plates). But even if you do hear squeaking in your newest parts, consider that that is an issue which would be alleviated by wear. Older bricks may have sounded exactly the same when they were new, but since they've been used for much longer, the rough edges which cause squeaking have been worn down. I've never noticed any connection issues with newer bricks either, save for that the newer ones come apart more easily when you're actively trying to remove them. This, in my mind, is a good thing. I hated having to struggle to remove plates from plates or Technic pins from Technic beams (more on that later). And as for fragility, I'd like to know which parts you compared. After all, most of the fragility issues I've noticed in parts occur with parts that weren't even around ten or twenty years ago, like cheese slopes, the older ones of which could crack through normal use. I've never heard of anyone's new plates or bricks cracking through normal use. Perhaps the thinner walls of modern bricks could be shattered more easily if, for instance, you bent or stressed them to the point at which they snapped, but if you're using parts incorrectly or without due caution you get what's coming to you. In terms of mechanical movement, I can't think of any way in which the older bricks are superior. I, for instance, have a good quantity of older Technic pins, and I must take care not to use them in MOCs. The old black pins were so firm that they did cause issues with smooth rotation (and, might I add, they squeaked when doing so). Moreover they were near-impossible to remove without going at them with your teeth, which left marks that only made all these problems worse the next time you wanted to use the part. Try rotating a newer Technic pin in a newer Technic beam. Hear that sound? It's okay, it's very faint. That's the sound of progress. Meanwhile, I continue to maintain that color issues are overblown. Colors like Yellow are indeed different than they were many years ago. I like the new ones more. Gone are the days of yellowed bricks or extreme color inconsistencies right out of the package. Today, the colors are richer and more vibrant, and if that comes at the cost of slight translucency, I'm all for it. There are still issues with color differences, but they're far less extreme, and dealt with swiftly. The newer Collectable Minifigs are a lot better than the older ones in this respect. That's how progress happens: slowly but surely. I'm not going to argue that people who notice issues shouldn't report those. After all, progress can only happen as a result of feedback. It's the doomsayers and whiners who I take issue with. A minor issue does not mean the company has forgotten what quality means, and it's certainly a poor excuse to swear off the brand entirely. Raising a stink over problems online may be the modern way of dealing with stress (just look at Facebook drama), but dealing directly with the company can still be more effective. And in some cases, such as the thinner walls of bricks, looking at the issue from a different perspective can show them to be more of a solution than a problem. After all, clone brands can't yet master the fine tooling required to make brick walls thinner while keeping them compatible with the classic parts. It's changes like these that help LEGO to stay competitively priced, even as the price of oil soars. A final note. Back when LEGO was a smaller company, a single quality-control oversight could, at worst, result in a couple "flame-colored" bricks (which, ironically, fans would cherish as a rarity). Now, in the days of worldwide mass-production, an entire batch of sets could be shipped to stores before the issue can be addressed. Is this bad? Yes. But it's the price of growth. And it means that even a widespread issue does not have to suggest an endemic problem. LEGO still cares about quality, and you'll often find that the issue you observed has been fixed within the year. Sometimes a little bit of patience goes a long way.

This just strikes me as comparing apples to oranges. I don't know which of these lines will last longer or be more successful, but it hardly matters since you'd be hard-pressed to name themes aimed at more disparate demographics than these. They're even stocked in different aisles in most stores! As such, I doubt sales of one will have any effect on sales of the other.

It's hard for me to effectively judge whether we are truly in a "golden age", since those sorts of things are usually best defined in retrospect. After all, I was a fan of late '90s/early '00s themes like Rock Raiders at the time of their release, but looking back, that period seems more like a "dung age". LEGO is certainly better off than they were a decade ago, and lines like the Minifigures, which sell well largely as a result of their connection to the LEGO brand, would certainly suggest that we are currently in a "golden age". Personally, I think LEGO has never been better than it is now, despite minor quality issues that are continuously blown completely out of proportion. But I have reservations about proclaiming the start of a "golden age", particularly with the future being such a nebulous thing. Perhaps LEGO will grow overconfident and make mistakes leading to a crash like that in the late '90s. Or perhaps LEGO will continue to soar upward (after all, while I remain skeptical of the upcoming LEGO live-action film, if done well it would truly be a hallmark of such an era). I prefer to ignore the nomenclature and just enjoy what we're getting now, whether it's a golden age or just another step on the path.

This. So much this. So many supposed fans of LEGO are so quick to foretell the end of LEGO based on one-off problems that it almost seems like they can't wait for the company to go out of business. It's like they think LEGO's ultimate goal is to screw over all of its customers, when in reality I've found that they have one of the best Customer Service departments of any company I've interacted with. They genuinely listen to fan concerns, and in fact maintain a healthy presence in the community. But too often it seems that "fans" would rather ward off other customers with stories of doom and gloom than actually consult with customer service and try to get problems fixed. Even the best quality control will occasionally let an issue slip by, especially a company as large as LEGO has become. But problems that do slip by can be caught by fans, if they let the company know as soon as they detect a problem instead of trying to incite mass panic in the fan community. Personally, I wasn't planning to get this set anyway, since trying to collect the entire Monster Fighters theme would surely break the bank. I'm limiting my wanted sets to the Vampyre Castle and possibly one or two other sets, like The Zombies or The Swamp Creature. Although that Haunted House looks pretty good, as well...

In all honesty, the only reason I would conceivably stop purchasing LEGO would be if for some reason I were rendered unable to do so. If I were in dire financial straits, I might stop purchasing LEGO (at least temporarily). But I can't think of anything LEGO themselves could do to stop me buying. LEGO is a diverse enough company to catch my interest with a new theme even if I lost interest in another. And LEGO has, over the course of my life, become better and better, and I see no reason why that trend would reverse. LEGO is a very reliable company, and I hope to establish a career with them in the future. At that point there would certainly be no stopping my purchasing (unless, of course, they started giving me it for free! ).

This in all likelihood just suggests a bad batch of parts. It in no way suggests a trend, and it would be silly to judge TLG's entire future on what seems to be a one-off problem. If this issue starts consistently showing up with other parts in other sets, then we have a problem, but there's not nearly enough evidence of this issue to extrapolate that this is or will become an endemic problem. ACWWgal, while I do appreciate your taste in video games, I don't appreciate all the doomsaying. Whether it's this or the collectible minifigures, you seem quite quick to proclaim LEGO's decline. No one set or theme is going to ruin LEGO forever.

Well, for this brick in particular, Duplo probably works better. Spongebob is taller than he is wide, like this Duplo brick, whereas the 2x4x3 brick is wider than it is tall.

I believe that just meant that the regular Batman sets would be on store shelves coinciding with the movie. We don't know anything about more Batman sets. Sorry to disappoint.

Nothing ever said that they would be releasing that, and since it's basically just an Emerald Night mod, it's possible that it was simply a conceptual model for how the Fangpyre vehicles would be normal vehicles that had been "snakified". A shame we don't seem to be getting any sort of exclusive sets for this half of this year, but I guess that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

It's not over yet; we're getting at least one more wave next year, possibly with more to come. The news of its death has been greatly exaggerated.

The molds you've designed for new animals are neat, but the printing doesn't look "LEGO-y" enough. The detail is far too fine, which makes them look far less cartoony than comparable LEGO animals. Larger eyes would help, but really all of the printing should be simpler and less fine. As for my most wanted animals... 1: Lion (both male and female variations; the female one could be repainted as other large cats like tigers or panthers) 2: Gorilla (I envision it as a mix between animal molds like the new bear and "megafigures" like the Hulk or the Castle Troll) 3: Deer (ideally one with attachment points for a separate antler piece) 4: New Horse variations (such as a new foal in line with the new poseable horse, or zebras, unicorns; heck, a horse neck to accommodate minifig torsos for making centaurs would be excellent, although that might not belong here) 5: New Elephant (while the old one was good, a new one more in line with newer animals like the dinosaurs from the Dino theme would be excellent)

Actually, there is. The symbols on all of the staffs are hard to make out in the show (since instead of colored printing they're engraved into the "jewels" on the staffs), but you can see them vaguely in close-up shots. The Anacondrai symbol resembles the gem on Pythor's head and chest. It wouldn't be perfect, but I could probably reverse engineer a printed version of said symbol. The problem would be printing on such a small and specialized piece. I know there are people who can custom-print LEGO parts for you, but I don't know whether they could do that part, especially since it's not technically official LEGO.

Those TV listings are 100% unsourced. The episode descriptions are almost certainly bogus, since they fly in the face of what we know about the show so far. And even if the episode titles are correct (and we have no primary source for those, either), pirates could easily be just one faction of next year's antagonists, or even TV-exclusive foes who won't appear in sets. It's too early to say for sure, but the information we do have is so unreliable we might as well have no information at all.

You've got it. The wonderful thing about the Serpentine Staffs and Silver Fang Blades is that they are identical save for the Serpentine emblems, and every set with those emblems has duplicates. I intend to do the exact same thing as you, since while I'm not the biggest fan of Lasha's Bite Cycle, I lack both a Lasha fig and a Venomari staff, so the Bite Cycle gets me both of those plus the Fang Blade. I'm still a bit disappointed that there's no sign of an Anacondrai Staff in any set. I'm considering buying a trans-purple 1x1 round tile from Brickforge, but I don't know how I'd go about stickering or printing it.

I think you're out of line to suggest that the set is copied from this MOC. Try looking at how they differ instead of how they resemble one another. You'll find that, rather than being "nearly identical" as you suggest, the models are significantly different from one another The roofs are quite different, with the MOC's roof becoming less steep farther down. The patios are quite different, with the set having a sort of balcony as opposed to the MOC, which simply puts a simple roof over it. And the set is generally more "ruined", with shutters falling off, windows boarded up, and damage to the patio steps. There are some similarities, but these can be chalked up to trying to depict the same thing. This explains the color (I'm sure LEGO tried multiple colors before settling on this one, probably for the same reason sand green was chosen for the MOC; sand green is just a good decrepit-looking color) and the style (both are three story Victorian houses with patios, explaining the similarities in architecture). In any case, there's certainly enough difference between that MOC and this set to invalidate claims of plagiarism. Could LEGO have taken inspiration from this MOC? Very likely; I'm sure the model builders looked at lots of MOCs to study techniques that could help them with this model. But how is such a thing supposed to be prevented? Are designers to abstain from ever looking at MOCs so that they can ward off claims of plagiarism? If they do look at MOCs, should they make a determined effort to never use techniques from them, even if those techniques prove to be the best solution to a design problem? AFOLs take inspiration from one-another all the time, and it's ridiculous to suggest that when LEGO's own designers do so they are doing something that is somehow illicit. I know if LEGO designers made a model that resembled a MOC of mine, I'd be far from offended. Heck, I'd be proud that my model was so close to one designed by LEGO's best and brightest.

That's the best part of this, IMO. It seems to essentially take the gameplay of Grand Theft Auto and turn it into a family-friendly game. I've never played GTA because the mature themes turned me off, but I've heard amazing things about the open-world gameplay, so this game looks right up my alley. There's no hypocrisy on LEGO's part here. LEGO won't license media that's not kid appropriate, but that doesn't mean they're not afraid to put their own spin on it. Mars Mission riffed on a lot of the motifs of Alien, and the Collectable Minifig Spartan is a veiled reference to 300. There's a difference between something being a reference to a mature work and having mature content itself.

I agree. While I love the new Hulk fig, there's a difference between a monster-man like Hulk and an extremely buff normal human like Bane, or even Juggernaut. I think LEGO should stick to normal minifigures for these sorts of characters as much as possible. I suppose if they were to do a Fantastic Four-based set, though, the Thing could go either way.

I think part of that depends on what supporters have pledged to pay for such a product. If a majority of them understand realistically what such a product would cost and are willing to pay that, a larger product would be understandable. But if many of the supporters only pledged to pay $100 or some similarly low amount, the product would probably be produced at a smaller scale, if at all.

We don't even know for sure that it will be replaced in 2014. Kevin Hinkle's statement suggested they would want to have an end planned so it doesn't fall into what he called the "BIONICLE trap" of continuing as it hemorrhages sales. But since they went against their initial plans to end it this year, it's possible that they could extend it yet another year when the time comes to make that decision, especially if next year's sets outsell even this year's. That's why I was wondering whether or not the "replacement" may be launched alongside Ninjago instead of replacing it as originally planned. That largely depends on how similar it is to Ninjago: if it's a brand new story theme but in a completely different "genre" (such as a Greek mythology-based theme), it could potentially launch alongside Ninjago. But if it's something too similar (for instance, a more historically-accurate Ninja theme), it definitely wouldn't happen until Ninjago ended.

Or at least as a preorder bonus. I'm excited for this game, and if it comes with this minifigure of the main character, even better! Even though he's a character in the game, I'm sure he'll still be usable in standard LEGO City, perhaps as a more specialized officer (like riot police, for example). Although if he's a preorder bonus, getting a whole squad of officers like him could be very costly...