Alexandrina

Honestly I don't think I read many other books he's in. I feel like he briefly turns up at the end of Legacy of the Force, but the only book I read between Vision of the Future and Invincible was the last Dark Nest book, and he's certainly not in that! Are you telling me Pellaeon is actually in Disney canon now? Why don't we have an official minifigure then TLG?

I never pictured Pellaeon with a moustache. He's always struck me as a clean-shaven, Piett-type officer Looking him up, all the pictures have him with a moustache, so maybe I just skipped over the part where he's described in Heir.

An update is what he needed - the original is one of the worst face prints Lego have ever come up with. It's up there with Willie Scott and the 1997 Native American minifigures

I can't bring myself to agree with this. Honestly I hate over-detailed designs anyway (I dislike 95% of leg printing and I can't think of a single situation where I'd want arm printing) but those pilot torsos are just ugly - they're too detailed to fit with the simplicity of early-era Lego, and not detailed enough to hold up to modern standards. I actually agree with you on the animated-era Phase Is, though the heads are hideous - at least they're covered, and it's easy to swap out. I remember being so annoyed when they finally put out a Mace Windu figure in a set I could afford and it was the CW face!

There were still a few similarities, sure, but there's a very definite change in 2009/10, when they moved away from the old face designs totally. Some of the new ones worked (I think Old Ben from the period is great, Leia is not really Leia but it's not an ugly design) but there were also flops such as the moustache-faced Hoth rebel from the Battle Pack. Luke is a glaring case too - they wanted to get away from the classic hair, but at the time they didn't have anything more suitable, so they gave him the long hair piece which just doesn't suit. They also changed the designs of the Stormtrooper/Rebel Pilot torsos, and while they kept the old Hoth Rebel, it was now marked as the 'officer' torso (They also tried an update on film-inspired clones, which lasted all of one set instead of just doing the standard clone trooper minifigure from 2005-07)

I'd be fascinated to know whether any material still exists/ever existed from the backstory devised for Lego's abandoned 'Europa' theme. It's always felt to me from the prototypes that it was set contemporaneously with the Pirates theme, so I wonder if there was any intended 'crossover' - in Lego's minds if not in the plastic bricks themselves

It didn't help that Lego abandoned the classic aesthetic for their first attempt at modernisation in the OT figures around the same time, and quite often didn't get it right. What we were left with was a binary choice between ugly CW figures and ugly OT figures. I actually lost interest almost entirely in Lego Star Wars around this time, because of how hideous so many of the figures were. (I bought a total of four SW sets between 2012 and 2018 - all of them for a specific minifigure which I was coveting bad)

Honestly literally none of those events ring a bell to me. Were they late in the series? I couldn't push through beyond mid-S4 because it was a chore sitting through a dozen episodes of poorly-written filler for the occasional cool five minutes Anyway, tbh if they want to release Plo Koon that doesn't really bother me. He's still in the films, even if he's one of the least interesting Jedi from the films they could have released. (And I actually thought he'd been released more recently than he has; for some reason I thought he was in a set in 2021/2022). Still, I'll be able to save plenty of money with this line-up. Hopefully Kit, Shaak Ti and Luminara Unduli aren't too far away, they're the glaring omissions of recent years imo (and Ric Olie)

I've honestly never heard of it tbh! Was it any good? The one fantasy series I'm hoping gets an adaptation is The Priory of the Orange Tree, though as it's a self-contained book it might be a hard sell - you could get at most two seasons out of it, and honestly it only needs one. I also enjoyed the Tearling trilogy, but that starts to blur the line between straight fantasy and urban fantasy in the later books Definitely the smart idea imo - I loved Mistborn but found Stormlight really hard to get into. I ended up DNFing the first book for a reason I've now forgotten. My worry with Sanderson in TV is he strikes me as a purist/idealist - he wants books to be adapted as is, which is admirable but unrealistic in almost all cases, and doesn't seem to be very willing to evaluate whether a change is actually good or not. I know with WOT he was freely conflating reasonable concerns with changes that just made sense with the reality of the format, or which were enforced (I remember him complaining about Siuan Sanche only being in two episodes of Season 2, even though that was an enforced change because they had to delay for Covid and Sophie Okonedo wasn't available for any more filming dates in the event). I would definitely be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt though. People do watch Prime but as a whole their stuff isn't viewed as much as Netflix or Disney - this is based on hard numbers. Prime shows practically never break into the top ten streaming per week, anywhere. I think the interface makes it less friendly for casual browsing, too. If you know what you're watching you'll hop on Prime for it, but you're less likely to just browse Prime when you're unsure. I dunno, I have mixed feelings about Amazon - on one hand, they give lots of money to shows they have faith in, and they generally give shows more seasons to prove themselves than other companies, but on the other hand they're allergic to merchandising and like meddling instead. (For example, common complains with the pilot episode of WOT: weird opening, episode doing too much in a short period of time - both the direct result of Amazon insisting on changes to the original script, which was supposed to be over an hour and a half long and start with the prologue to the first book) Sadly, Amazon getting the rights to a show basically guarantees no Lego sets ever come from it.

I didn't know that, and looking it up it seems he wasn't in the DS edition. I never had any consoles in the generation after that (other than the Wii, which was a terrible console for playing Lego Star Wars) so I never saw him. And I'm old enough that The Complete Saga counts as a new game in my book; I was mainly thinking of the original.

Was he? I never finished it (got bored and couldn't push through S4) but I only remember him in the very first episode. The 'imo' is carrying that comment tbf. I don't really have much interest in the Prequels, and even less in the Filoni shows, so sets based on them do nothing for me personally. I find that genuinely astonishing to be honest. I wouldn't even have him pegged as being in the top 20 most popular Jedi. Perhaps it's because my first exposure to Star Wars was the Lego video games, which he does not feature in, but he's always been firmly third-tier Jedi for me, alongside the likes of Barriss Offee, Saesee Tiin and Yaddle. I honestly can't even remember him doing much in the Clone Wars series after the first episode - whereas I can remember multiple Kit Fisto scenes. (And Kit Fisto had the coolest Top Trumps picture back in the day, so he'll always be king for me)

Seems like a pretty terrible line up tbh. Other than the U-Wing, which might be redeemed if we get a Dedra Meero or Bix Caleen minifigure, they're all pretty boring choices based on pretty boring material imo. You'd think for all the prequel era obsession we might have had a Kit Fisto minifigure in the last ten years, but I don't think it's coming in this wave. Baffled at the focus on nkn-entities like Plo Koon, tbh

That, to be fair, seems to be a pattern for all of Amazon's stuff. They seem to have a very strange and fickle audience in general - possibly because a lot of Prime subscribers only want next-day delivery, they're not interested in the TV stuff (or can't find it; it's really hard to find Prime Video content if you're using a PC for some reason). I'd be down for a series based on this but dubious - I'm not sure how the structure of the books lend themselves to HETV, and a lot would be riding on the performances of whoever they cast as Vin and Elend. I'd hope Sanderson has as little involvement as possible though; basic approval of elements, and consultations for questions of lore, but his comments about WoT gave me the impression that he doesn't actually understand how television works. He's an imaginative writer, sure, but not a TV writer imo. I'd also be down for Lego sets on the IP but honestly I don't see it happening even if a show comes out: the books have some very graphic elements such as the spikes, and I think the scientific approach to a magic system might alienate a subset of potential viewers. Happy to proven wrong of course.

I definitely feel like the market for fantasy Lego is there whatever IP it comes in. I agree with you that Wheel of Time Lego will never happen, but for me the main reason is Amazon's disinterest. If they really wanted to merchandise their products, I'm sure they could come to a deal with Lego, and if WoT stuff ever hit the shelves, I'm sure it would sell like hotcakes. Just... maybe not anything with damane in!! As for sports: I can only assume Lego's previous Sports iteration wasn't all that successful as it's been gone for near enough twenty years, but I think part of that is a poor choice of sports. Basketball and ice hockey are sports that are very popular in America but, other than a select few hotbeds, might as well not exist in the rest of the world. If Lego were to reconsider sports, I suspect football would be their first foray simply because globally it's the most popular sport there is, with players and teams that are recognisable across the planet. Maybe other sports might join in later but they'd all be more risky - and personally, I'm not sure the market is there for sports Lego. Corinthian Microstars didn't manage to last a decade making dedicated, cheap collectable footballers in the UK market, a market full of young football fans who had £1 a pop to spend at the corner shop. Are there enough people who would buy football Lego worldwide to sell it? Having said that, if I got my Wheel of Time bricks I'd be all in for American Football, or Cricket, or maybe even Curling Lego!!

Are we talking a one-off D2C or a full blown revival? I've always wondered where people see these rumours before they make it to Eurobricks

I'm not going to get into a debate on the quality of the show as I've already spent way too much of my life doing so on other sites and ultimately it boils down to personal preference, but the numbers for Wheel of Time are quite objectively not bad. Like I say, it's outperforming Rings of Power, and is one of the most successful shows on Amazon (it's since been dwarfed by Fallout, but at the point season two came out it was competing with Amazon's best viewing figures ever). Amazon shows in general don't do as well as things on Netflix or Disney, probably because there's a smaller subscriber-base. Even for those who dislike the show, though, I think Lego sets would do well. After all, for those uninterested in the franchise it's still a sorely-needed fantasy range, and for those who like the franchise but dislike the show, they can use the parts/sets to make their own MOCs

It's probably my favourite programme on at the moment and it's actually doing better than Rings of Power - unfortunately merch is impossible to come by. I don't think Amazon actually like having merchandise available for their shows; the sum total of official merchandise for Wheel of Time so far is tie-in cover books, about four generic t-shirt designs and a UK-exclusive Blu-Ray of Season 1. Not even Funkos. I do think a Lego tie-in would be doable if Amazon wanted it, but they've shown no interest in merchandising the show whatsoever

Let's face it, though, the different legions are functionally meaningless. They're all just a slightly different paint job with a random three-digit number assigned, to make another figurine to sell to kids. If every clone trooper in all Star Wars media had the same plain white armour except for commanders with the gold strip, it would change nothing at all about the world or the narrative on a functional level I haven't done any army building in the conventional sense for years at this point - back then, I was limited in what I could afford so my armies were 'every figure I owned'. For clones, I occasionally swapped arms to different colours, because the combo looked cool rather than because of any arbitrary designation. Nowadays I'm more interested in making films than gathering armies, and all my parts go in the relevant storage bin when they're out of use, so an 'army' can be any arbitrary number I pick. I normally go for squads of about twelve to eighteen, plus a commanding officer and two subordinate officers (both in Star Wars and other media) but usually wouldn't show all of these at the same time, and if I needed a bigger battle I'd just have a larger army

Ah, poor Mara - doomed from the moment she became Luke's wife. The books were never going to be able to kill off one of the movie cast after the Chewbacca reception, so really it was a matter of time before they needed a major death to up the stakes - and it wasn't going to be Jaina, holding the torch for the next generation. Mara's chance was of making the jump to the sequel canon, where she would almost certainly have survived the trilogy and (as the only Core 4 member to still be alive) would be indispensable moving forward. Fwiw, I actually reckon preserving nothing from the books other than 'Mara Jade is Luke's Jedi wife' would have fixed 80% of the issues with the sequels. You could even still have Luke being in exile - it would take, what, an hour's work to think up a solid way to knit the threads of 'Luke in exile' and 'Luke being married'. But this is straying from the Lego side of it, just a little! Though we're getting some good minifigures this year which seemed impossible not too long ago (Cal Kestis, Thrawn, Jedi Bob, Darth Jar-Jar). Perhaps Lego will throw us book-heads a bone next year

For what it's worth, even if it hasn't much basis in the canon repertoire, I think it's a really interesting idea (and one briefly touched upon in Andor, too) - there's nothing that says the entire Rebel Alliance has to be one homogenous mass. All they really need to have in common is a desire to be rid of the Empire (not even necessarily because they disagree with the Empire's general goal; it wouldn't be out-of-character for someone who wanted to be an Emperor in their own right to side with the Rebellion as a means to topple the existing status quo). There are bound to be revolutionary elements in the broad coalition of the Rebel Alliance. And for the reasons you've said, a group such as that would probably be a poor choice for a battle pack. I can defend my view on ESB at length if need be - it boils down to it being a very good but still flawed film in a trilogy of very good but flawed films, whose reputation is boosted imo by an all-time great twist and a very strong ending when the first two thirds aren't quite on the same level. Curious to know what this greater heresy is, I'm out of the loop on this thread clearly!

2008 and 2007, too. Then we got treated to Clone Wars faces, and they moved away from the original design philosophy for minifigures in even the OT sets. I often wonder what 2009 would have looked like in a world where TCW isn't a thing. Presumably for battle-packs we'd go back to the Clone Wars era, and get some new variants of the original Phase II helmet. I'm sad we never got the blue markings on that mould. But is there a chance we get some proper EU/Legends stuff? Most of the standard stuff from the OT would still have been on the shelves then, and they had started to experiment with EU sets. Possibly we get a Thrawn set to really test the waters for book-based stuff. Or possibly Star Wars starts to fade away as there's no new material to make sets from, and iirc the licence was up for renewal in 2008 - and originally planned to discontinue the range.

I did like 8083 a little bit, but I wasn't a fan of having Zev Senesca - named characters discourage buying multiples imo. And Hoth Rebels are my least favourite (Empire is my least favourite OT film) Still, it was better than a lot that came after

I'm insanely late to this but thanks for that shout. Trying to cobble together a Mara for a film I want to make, and couldn't find a torso that looked quite right. I was using the Iden Versio torso with nougat arms but it looked off in a way I can't explain

So, not sure if this is the right thread (as though I would love sets on the IP, my post isn't about it) but I got a bugbear in my head this morning and spent an hour at work thinking about how The Wheel of Time would be perfectly set-up for a Lego game, age rating aside (and even then, it's lower than the Horizon games, so age rating in itself doesn't rule it out) The two currently-released seasons lend themselves pretty perfectly to the structure that games like The Skywalker Saga have taken. Imagine: (Spoiler tag because I go into way too much detail and don't want to clog up the page) Having a game and also sets to go with it would be a dream for me. And honestly, with the amount of fantasy pieces needed, I think sets would sell really well too

But if you don't make Rebel battlepacks available when their Imperial counterparts are on the shelves, who are the Imperials fighting against? A handful of minifigures dotted like tokens in larger sets isn't really sufficient, and it also reduces the likelihood of kids being able to afford to get them. I wasn't a particularly hard-up kid but I still almost never got sets above the lowest few price-points - I'd get a £40-or-thereabouts set for Christmas each year, but other than that, if it cost more than £25 I had to save my pennies to buy it. This is in an era when the cost of living was lower, too. Looking at Lego.com, there are currently five sets that aren't Brickheads, Microfighters or Keyrings in this range, and they're pretty much all battlepacks. (In fact, 75738 is the only non-battlepack regular set currently available; at a push 75760 might have been in my price-range). The low-end sets tend not to have 'spare' minifigures, either (and they never have), so if you take away Rebel battlepacks, a lot of kids are going to be maybe able to get one or two Rebel troopers over the course of years. The nature of Star Wars means that Stormtroopers are going to be more represented. This is because pretty much every film/TV show has a large cast of heroes who we're following, and a handful of named villains, including at least one per film that doesn't actually interact with the heroes at all. So a lot of scenes are naturally going to have Stormtroopers to supplement the villains (or instead of named villains; it seems like half of the Original Trilogy is our heroes fighting nameless Imperials) whereas the reverse isn't true. Generic Rebels basically never appear in any Star Wars media without there also being plenty of main characters - and those main characters are going to fill a lot of minifigure spots, particularly in lower-end sets. Fwiw, anecdotally, I was more excited for the 2008 Rebel battlepack than I ever was for an Imperial/Clone battlepack.