Lyichir

How dare you insult the mine mech? It's like the Power Miners equivalent of the Power Loader from Aliens. I do agree about the snake mech, though. The Mine Mech fit in with Power Miners sets because they all had that industrial feel. But most of the snake vehicles are WAY sleeker than this thing. On the other hand, it's not much worse (or less original) than Nuckal's ATV was.

I think Spider-Man is up there. Hopefully we'll see some new sets for him after the Avengers-centric Marvel sets we've heard about.

These are neat, although what would be especially great is if they came in all the colors of the Minifigure packs. For that, we'd need them in Bright Yellowish Green, Bright Orange, Dark Azure, and soon, White. Would painting these containers work, or would the painted ones stick out like a sore thumb?

'90s child here, too. I voted the 2000s era space sets as my favorites; Life on Mars was a marginal inclusion but I DID like the modularity of the alien vehicles (for instance, their main base included docking ports for the red and blue mechs, and the tan mech had its own docking port that could be attached to the main base). The only space theme from a different decade which I felt deserved my vote was Spyrius, which, looking back, is still a solid theme with some great functionality.

Maybe it doesn't have the same potential it once did. I'd like to see a Mesoamerican-themed Pharaoh's Quest continuation, but have we actually seen the sales figures for Pharaoh's Quest? Maybe it didn't perform as well as expected.

I dunno... personally I was of the opinion that the sand green "shield plates" on him were some sort of vestigial wings. I think the wings in the show were only added so that it could fly along with the others. And I like to think that the "5" on Lloyd's shirt means he is 5 years old. Lord knows he acted like it in the TV show.

Would that really be necessary in the case of LDD? LDD isn't exactly text-heavy.

Oh, come on; it was shown in the animations that the water and dynamite didn't hurt them much. Those guys are tenacious. Think of them as pests like moles; only instead of messing up your yard, they're messing up the planet! And of course, keep in mind that Power Miners is rather... cartoony... compared to other themes. The dynamite leaves a black stain, and if the monsters were the type to drop anvils on minifigs I'm sure the miners would be left feeling a little dizzy at worst.

Actually, I believe PotC was a May release. In other words, it was somewhere between winter and summer waves. And I think that the theme may go on hiatus even if other movies are in the works. There haven't even been any trailers for the next one yet, which means it could very easily be one or two more years before the fifth movie hits theaters. And that's a long time for a license which, from my experience, doesn't sell a lot of toys except when new movies are out or at least on the horizon.

Ugh, no. I hate hat/hair combos; they're so much less versatile than just standard hats and hair. Yeah, one torso is a female torso and one's a male torso, so there's more than just the lipstick to tell them apart. And Mariko, what do you mean about the minifigs being hideous? Do you dislike newer-style minifigs, or do you just have something against rednecks?

I think it largely has to do with which heroes are in the Hollywood spotlight at the time. Marvel is focused on their Avengers movie, and DC is using Batman (an eternal favorite, and I'd argue more popular than Superman) and Green Lantern, who recently had a movie of his own. Don't worry; if these are successful, I have no doubt that other characters will be made as sets.

A wave with more of a vehicular emphasis would be neat. The Furno Bike was amazing, and I'm a bit disappointed that we haven't had anything like that since wave 1.

Kinda off topic, but I'm pretty sure they're just experimenting on him, rather than using him as a power source. Not sure if that's any more ethical, but that's kinda what we tend to do with newly discovered life-forms. And whether the rock-monsters need those crystals is up for debate; in both themes they hoarded more of the crystals than they needed, and in Power Miners specifically it seemed the crystals were more the sweets to their healthy diet of earth (does that make the vibrating an extreme sugar high?).

The problem with sets like those are that often neither of the sets feels complete without the other. And what that leads to is decreased sales for both sets rather than an increase in the number of people who buy both; this is why recent Harry Potter sets deviated from the original standard of models being integrated. Such sets can be done well, and indeed LEGO does so in other themes, such as with the recent set 4867 Hogwarts which attaches to 4842 Hogwarts Castle; or with the obvious example of the modular buildings. But doing so with Jabba's Palace opens up a new can of worms. Jabba's palace has the trapdoor leading to the Rancor pit. If the Rancor pit is excluded from the set, how do you make the trapdoor remain functional? And I disagree that more detail on figs compromises the "LEGO look". Personally, I love the new prints, particularly the new faces which feel more vivacious than the dead-eyed faces of such figs as classic Luke. To each his own, I suppose.

One difference between PotC and Star Wars is that the Star Wars franchise is continually updated in the form of Clone Wars, video games, etc.; whereas PotC largely is limited to the movies being released. For this reason, it's possible that PotC is neither ending for good nor continuing next year-- perhaps it's simply going to be on hiatus until the next movie is on the horizon.

My brother and I checked the LEGO Store in Paramus, New Jersey today, and they had the Dino sets in stock. They also had the HQ built and on display, and I have to say I'm very impressed with those Dinos.

I've never said it was impossible to pull off a LotR theme, but a lot of the suggestions of HOW they could do it have been nothing more than pipe dreams. We're not going to get a series of modular Helm's Deep sets, and we're not going to get a Creator-style Orthanc. We probably won't get a D2C set for the theme for a good year after its initial release, and there's no guarantee the theme will last that long. I see no reason to believe that Lego would attempt this theme differently than any other licensed theme before it, which means that a lot of people who have their hopes way up for this theme are going to wind up disappointed.

You have to factor in the fact that the set has many large and intricate parts, especially the dinosaur parts. Those are probably what are driving up the cost of the set.

That's awesome. Is the Superheroes contest Lego's holding still running? If so, this'd be an excellent entry for that contest, too.

The first time you probably just got a set from an earlier production run, before they had fixed the issue with the gold parts. The latest one you got was one of the more recently-produced sets.

They weren't blaming anything on Chinese quality; Nabii was just trying to dispel false rumors that next year's spinner sets would be produced in China. I assume your info came from Brickset, where later in the same topic Nabii clarified that the perception of spinner sets as inferior quality had little impact on sales, and that production was simply being shifted in order to increase efficiency by having the each entire set produced in fewer plants.

I don't know; the rivalry between the Lion and Dragon Knights in Kingdoms reminds me of the rivalry between the Lion Knights and the Bulls in Knight's Kingdom I. The Dragon Knights never seemed like as prosperous a kingdom as the Lion Knights represented; rather, the Dragon Knights are a small Kingdom of rebels and cutthroats, fighting against the just and lawful reign of the Lion Knights. So I can see why the Dragon Knights might have a less impressive castle than the Lion Knights. But the fact that the Dragon Knights are underdogs doesn't mean they're not a threat: consider the damage a small team of terrorists can do to a large nation, and compare that to the Kingdoms carriage set, which clearly represents an assassination attempt on the king.

I've had many Chinese-produced figs, and not one has had any more than a slight quality difference: certainly not to the extent of clone-brand discrepancies. A very subtle discoloration is the biggest issue I've had, and that was in older Chinese-produced figs (for example, my minfigures series 2 explorer had slightly-discolored tan parts, but my series 5 zookeeper has no such issue). But I'm not going to get anywhere arguing this; the Chinese=bad trope has become too ingrained into AFOLdom by now.

I always apply the stickers. I feel that usually they add to a model, and it's even fun to reuse stickered parts in MOCs (although that can be harder with licensed themes, which I only rarely collect).

Many of the collectible minifig monsters are themselves rereleases (or more accurately, reimaginings) of the old LEGO Studios monsters. If this theme does involve "classic movie monsters", I imagine they'll be actual characters as opposed to archetypes, like "Amset-Ra" (I think that was his name?) from Pharaoh's Quest, as opposed to the more generic collectible minifig mummy. I don't think there's even a 1% chance of LEGO releasing exact copies of collectible figs in any theme (besides, as they have done, in a few of the extended-line products like the Brick Calendar).