Alexandrina

I think partly because it hits on all the things I don't like in Lego sets: - Brick-built creatures - Sets built on frames with a 'plaque' brick - That terrible machete piece (imo the worst piece Lego have ever come up with) But the boat looks really stubby to me and the minifigures are uninspiring. I might be influenced by the fact that Jaws was such a massive disappointment to me when I saw it (hyped up as one of the greatest films ever, when actually it's a middling summer blockbuster that was probably exciting when it was new but that was a long time ago now) but I just look at it and see nothing to get enthused by. Usually, even for licenses I'm disinterested in, there's something in the sets that I find interesting (even Hocus Pocus, which for my money is Disney's worst film ever but the set still looks cool)

I'd go several steps further than that. It's a mediocre-at-best looking set, based on a film that was slightly above average for the time of its release but which is now 40+ years old and hasn't aged especially well. There's nothing in the film that makes for an obvious compelling set, and what Lego have chosen to do doesn't seem to have been done well. This on top of the ill-advised nature of 'encouraging' people to fear sharks

I think if there was a moment for Uncharted sets to become a thing, it would have been tied into the film the other year. I've got to be honest, I don't think that's even near to being big enough for Lego. I'd never heard of it, but looking it up, Wiki says the series as a whole has sold three million units (for comparison, Horizon has sold over thirty million units and there's still a general mood of "I can't believe they've turned this into Lego" with every announcement of Horizon stuff). That's tiny, especially when you factor in that there have been multiple games so presumably a healthy chunk of those sales will be people who liked one game buying others in the same series. Factor in as well that there's always going to be a huge chunk of any fanbase that straight up doesn't like Lego, and you have a very small target audience. And honestly, there are so many much more popular franchises (both within and without video-games) that Lego would be better advised to target one of them if they need a new licence.

I think there's scope for the full range of prices in a Horizon theme. You could easily have a couple of smaller sets which are just Aloy (+ rotating other character) fighting various machines, none of which should be bigger than the Tallneck to keep it in scale, maybe throw in a Regalla's Rebels or something Sylens set, and then use the larger price-points for more elaborate set-pieces such as Cauldrons.

I can see the argument that it's more creative on the part of the designers, but I fail to see how it's more creative on the part of the kids building. Whether it's a licensed theme or an in-house theme, the kids are still either operating within the framework of somebody's design (by building the set per instructions, or using the defined characters as written), or they're creatively engaging by extrapolating from that basic framework into their own ideas. A child making up their own fantastical adventures with their Luke Skywalker minifigure is just as creative as a child making up their own adventures of Bo'sun Will. Functionally, whether a theme came from the brains of Lego designers or a prior media doesn't make any difference to the bricks in the kids' hands. When I think back to my own creativity with my Lego as a kid, the peak came when I created my own characters and stories whole-cloth from combinations of the bricks I had, but until Lego comes up with a new plastic that reads a child's mind and reshapes itself accordingly, the sets they sell are going to have to contain some form of pre-defined characters/settings - which, by the very nature of Lego, are basically clay for the kids to take further.

Maybe this is true, but I don't think that Lego wanting an exclusive minifigure in the set and Lego developing the faction further in the future are mutually exclusive. The prize machine is due out some time this year iirc (correct me if I'm wrong). We know that Lego cannot possibly have sets with these factions in the pipeline, beyond maybe a basic sketch - as they don't know which faction is going to win. Even if Lego immediately set to work on a set/theme for the new faction the moment the poll closes, it's going to be 2026 at least before we see that set materialise, by which point the prize machine - if it's not already discontinued - will be approaching EOL. So sure, Lego might want an exclusive to get people to buy the set, but would they really care after the prize machine's no longer for sale? It's not like they're going to go out of their way to never touch the faction again for the sake of the second-hand market. My personal take on it is that Lego aren't committing to making a set, but that it isn't impossible if an idea arises, and if/when they want a change from the Falcons/Lion Knights, the new faction will be an obvious pick. Does anyone else think of the Greyjoys from ASOIAF when they see the kraken? The colours aren't a match, but that was the immediate medieval-fantasy analogue that came to my mind.

Thanks for the update - it's quite useful to know whether the results of a method are actually going to last or not!! When you say "oxygen sensitive" bricks, are you referring to specific types of part, or just white bricks in general?

Whenever I get a job lot, I use a spreadsheet derived from my own master spreadsheet - which has a load of quality-of-life adjustments I've made over the years for my personal tastes, but fundamentally consists of four workbooks: - A "master" list, which contains every piece I've got in every colour I've got, as well as their prices and weights - A "within-this-joblot" list, which contains just the pieces from the joblot I'm sorting - A list of possible/likely sets - Inventories of the possible/likely sets (copied from Bricklink) I work through the pieces systematically, taking a handful, putting them on my desk, then looking them all up on Bricklink, finding their part numbers, and putting them on my spreadsheet (and the more you do this, the more you start to remember part names or numbers intuitively). For instance, I might grab a handful that includes half a dozen of part 3004 (the bog-standard 1x2 brick), four in white and two in black. So I'll add 4 to the relevant row in my "within-this-joblot" list for white 3004, and 2 for black 3004. A lot of pieces are very common, but occasionally you'll find one or two that are only in a few sets. Whenever I find a piece that came in less than five sets, I make a note of what those sets are. If I find a piece that only ever came in one set, I'll add it to the list of likely sets. And if I find more than one piece which is in less than five sets, and both pieces were in the same set, chances are I have that set. It's unusual for multiple rare parts to appear together in multiple sets. (I also discount any Dacta sets mentally; I'm sure there are joblots out there with Dacta stuff, but it's very unlikely unless there is Dacta-printed material in the lot somewhere). Keeping inventories of these sets allows me to see how many pieces from each likely set I've found - I have a series of lookups and sumifs working in tangent to accurately keep track of this (while only assigning each part to one set). It also allows me to see how many pieces are unassigned. Sometimes it's possible to identify specific sets through the frequency of common bricks. For example, while all the parts are incredibly common individually, if you have exactly 71 yellow 1x1 bricks, 183 yellow 1x2 bricks and 62 yellow 1x3 bricks, chances are you've got yourself the classic Yellow Castle. And in my experience, you'll usually end up with a load of leftover bits - every time I've got a joblot, I have a load of sets I'm almost certain are in there but top out at about 60% complete, and a load of bricks I simply cannot definitively pin to any one set. If you have enough sets, though, you can start to get a feel for the era your bricks have come from. If there are only really the core six colours, it's probably very old. If you have a lot of recognisable superheroes and Star Wars characters, it's probably quite recent. The downside to this method is that it takes a long time to set up (especially when you're starting from nothing, and have to add every piece to your database). But you get a very granular result, and if you get future loads of pieces, you'll already have the database ready to go. I'd estimate that at this point, I'll have to add about 5% of pieces from every joblot I get to my master list.

I'm not getting into the weeds of how legitimate Lego's initial creation of the brick was/whether Kiddicraft was copied, because frankly I don't know - but this seems like a spurious point to me. There's nothing malicious about the size of Duplo bricks, they're in scale with System bricks. Legitimate or not, once Lego had the size of their standard System bricks, the Duplo bricks were always going to be that particular size (and so too the Quatro bricks, when they were a thing)

More sets is definitely an intoxicating prospect. Especially because some of them are aesthetically pretty unique. I'm imagining a Plainsong set being unlike anything else Lego has ever made.

Sounds interesting! I might have a go for this one. Quick question (and I'm probably just being blind here not seeing it) - are the eligible licenses only those which were given regular waves, or do Ideas licenses (such as Doctor Who) also qualify?

'Lego Horizon' was not the Lego video game I was expecting to get but it's one I'll absolutely eat up. I think Horizon is my favourite 'new' gaming franchise (I mean, most of the contenders go back to the 90s so 2017 is new by that standard!) so I would absolutely play it. And if we get more sets? Wonderful!

If I remember rightly, Brickset has designers listed for some sets (and clickable, so you can click their name and see what else they worked on) but it's not comprehensive. Not sure if there's any more complete resource out there

I was about to comment saying that Standard PAB orders qualified for GWP in the UK as recently as this January, but actually checking my order history, it seems that only applies to VIP add-on packs

I'd like to see the games given a proper minifigure-scale treatment. There aren't many machines that are big enough to warrant a Tallneck-esque set (maybe the Thunderjaw, Slitherfang or that huge underwater one from Forbidden West whose name escapes me) and I also don't really just want to have a load of Aloys. Give me, say, a Cauldron set, or a Tilda's Mansion set, or even just vignettes - and give me Varl, Erend, Zo, Beta, Rost, etc.

Deviating from the thread a bit but your link has me curious: does anyone know if the Dark Red which was apparently a variant of set 666 is the same colour as what we nowadays call Dark Red? It seems to predate Dark Red bricks by quite a few decades In a bid to not completely stray from the topic: I think numbers are numbers. A set is going to have as many parts as it takes to make the set; I'd imagine Lego have a rough target they aim for with any given set (for pricing) but I can't for the life of me imagine that they'd quibble over getting a precise number of bricks, just for some conspiratorial esoteric messaging/the "funny meme number". To be honest, I'd be surprised if there's any number lower than say 1000 that hasn't been a part count in at least one set over the years. Bricklink seems to believe that there have been seven sets with 420 pieces (most notably, perhaps, Amazon Ancient Ruins) before now, too, including another set released in 2024

Is there any precedent at all for Lego having the rights to make sets based off a certain IP, but being disallowed from using certain media within that IP? I can think of instances where Lego chose not to use bits of media they had the rights to (The Temple of Doom in the latest Indy wave, for example) but generally speaking they tend to be able to pretty well access the lot (certainly they've done sets from every Harry Potter film and every significant bit of Star Wars media in the last twenty-five years, and they covered all the Middle-Earth films at the time of the last full wave in 2013)

Maybe I'm just not as big a Lord of the Rings fan as others here, but this set doesn't really do anything for me. It seems like an unwieldy-big build, with (on the whole) boring minifigures. Personally speaking, I might have bought it at £150 cheaper but at this price it's a straight no from me. But that's probably not a terrible thing. I still haven't bought Rivendell (perks of spending half of last year struggling to find a steady job and having little income!) so I guess I can focus on saving up for that instead of rushing to grab the big new thing.

IIRC the multi-packs are only available in America. Certainly, I just checked on the UK site and the current series is only available in individual boxes

My understanding was that a lot of the part choices were actually to use up excess part stock from recent themes (or if this wasn't actual solid confirmation, it was the general consensus) - it's the reason the entire theme is a hodgepodge of random bits, many of which were at the end of their life Honestly that was the appeal to a younger me looking at Bricklink - the sets were just chock full of cool pieces. Never really thought much of the parts themselves

I wouldn't ever modify a piece myself (because either I'll want the piece to reuse/build its source set at some point, or because I'd like the option to sell it in future if I want to) but I have come across a few pieces where the damage has made them potentially useful for films. For instance, I have a dark grey sword which looks as though it's been burnt at about halfway down the blade, which I plan to use in a scene some time soon.

What a fascinating summary, @Peppermint_M! I remember lurking on here in late 2007/early 2008, when you would occasionally get really blurry leaked images posted right in the forums. As I remember it, even back then the moderators were trying to encourage people not to post directly into the forums, but were perfectly fine with directly linking to leaked images - something which is clearly a no-no now!

Not sure if this topic already exists - I couldn't find one in a quick search - but I'm curious to know what unusual 'extra' pieces people have had in sets over the years, especially in cases where the part doesn't appear in the Bricklink inventory for the set. The other day I finally got around to building 4730 The Chamber of Secrets (which I acquired last year, still sealed, in a job lot). It's clear that the set hadn't been opened and then resealed - and in any case, all the parts still have that 'shininess' that new bricks have, which fades away with a bit of playwear. When I finished Bag 2 and had a leftover 2x6 brick in old Light Grey, I was confused and went back through the instructions to see where I had missed such a big piece. Not finding it, I assumed it would come later on in the build, and when I'd completed the set still without using it, I was confused and took to Bricklink... only to find that there aren't any 2x6 bricks in set 4730, in Light Grey or any other colour. I'm not really sure how a piece like that could find its way into the set, but I'm certainly not complaining! That said, is it a known thing for some copies to include this extra? And what other weird bricks have people found?

Honestly that's such a wonderful colour, even though on paper it perhaps doesn't seem like a fit. Though I'm more taken by your use of hinge bricks for column detailing on the walls - it's not a technique I've seen used before, and yet it seems like it should have been so obvious!

Oh I didn't realise it existed in white. Looking at BL, it was in a big superhero set some years back that I didn't know about. I'm fairly sure the torso is new, though, and I want it bad! I'll have to adjust the shooting schedule of my brickfilm so I can get my hands on these new figs