Alexandrina

Lol, I didn't realise they had names other than Cody and the blue stripe guy from the 2008 film. She can, but the more she bends the more vertical space she's going to need. To be honest I suspect the set wasn't designed for having the figures inside at all. Even if it's technically possible to fit one or both in, it's not going to be a proper fit.

It looks like 25893 (or 79194, they're effectively the same piece). Presumably this solves the mystery of how Majisto's scroll is floating in front of him - I guess it clips on.

It's incredible how sparse the lore is for this lot! Seems like it boils down to "galactic hub where all spacefaring creatures meet but also hates Spyrius"

It could be, sure, but unless this Brick bloke says something like this every year it suggests he at least has reason to be suspicious that the VIP packs are being abandoned.

Thanks for this I doubt I'll be able to get the set myself but it's always nice to plumb official sets for techniques to steal (especially when they're using BURPs, which seems vanishingly rare of late)

I absolutely second this hope! The mould is one of my favourites but the colour - while cool - does have limited utility in, for instance, Castle MOCs (or in my case fantasy brickfilms)

That said, "potentially ever" suggests that at the very least he's not aware of any scheduled for 2024. So maybe it is the end.

Fantasy uses medieval trappings and aesthetics but it's not inherently medieval (and in fact a lot of the popular fantasy isn't. Lord of the Rings takes a lot of its inspiration from pre-medieval sources; The Wheel of Time is on the cusp of industry and has fireworks and cannons; ASOIAF takes so many liberties with actual historical fact that you can't really call it medieval). And even with that being said, women as fighters is not an unknown thing in medieval folklore. For instance, you could argue that the "brown girl" in the local story of Fair Elinor is a fighter. Traditions of the hop-picking festival of 1800s Herefordshire indicate at least some tradition of women in the roles traditionally held by men.

I mean, there are female stormtroopers in every era but the Clone Wars (which is obviously an exception because all the clones are the same guy). We've had named female stormtroopers in canon since 2006, and their prominence in the recent era is definitely more pronounced (and also, since they are fully covered in the armour, it's impossible really to tell - but there seems to be evidence that even in the OT there were female stormtroopers, though whether that was actors in the suits or just George Lucas' intention is something I'm unclear on as the comment saying so cites a book I don't own). He could squeeze in under the BURP by the brown ladder couldn't he? I actually think the knight will have a harder time fitting in because the plume gives her extra height.

Wow - this is genuinely incredible, a wonderful build. The snow definitely feels like it's weighing down on the buildings.

I don't think we need those (well, maybe 1x7, but the longer you get the less use-cases that require a specific length of plate). What we do need imo is a brick and a tile to match the plate. I'm still surprised a 1x5 brick hasn't surfaced, I figured it was a certainty when the plate came out. (That said, I don't have any room on my bricks shelf for a box of 1x5s, so if they did release such a part I'd have to reconfigure my Lego room!)

There are also quite often (at least where I am, which is nowhere near anything) people selling GWPs on Facebook Marketplace for very reasonable prices - usually people who've bought a set and happened to receive a gift they didn't want. I wouldn't be surprised if the Majisto GWP is going for £20 or thereabouts by early next year, when looking in the right place.

Likely? Probably not. But I'll never stop dreaming! (I mean, until the reveal - then I'll stop dreaming.)

That said, if you accept the premise that it's not wrong for other companies/independent sellers to make Lego-compatible bricks and parts of their own, then Lego are also allowed to make parts that enter similar domains to independent sellers. (Also, at least in my experience, a lot of the custom parts seem quite flimsy and/or have awkward clutches - I once spent nearly half an hour wrestling to pull a head free from a custom bonnet I'd got from one of the custom sites) It's great that these niches are filled but at the same time I will always welcome an official Lego piece that fills the gap.

I'm certain we will. I'm almost certain I'll still want more! (Unless the set is literally just 100 unique female peasant torsos, I won't have enough for my purposes! )

I'm not sure we will necessarily (maybe Majisto re-release if there's enough stock for it) - simply because we're getting a Castle GWP now, so it would be quite soon to get another. Ideally we'll get something like you suggest. Preferably with two minifigures, at least one female, because there are nowhere near enough female peasant torsos.

That said, those same sets are also more expensive. In a non-PAB world I'd probably buy a dozen or so little tiny sets (those ones with a minifigure and a tiny build) but I'd be unlikely to get more than one of a mid-range set unless it was a really compelling build, and I'd definitely not be buying more than one of a large set - simply because I don't have infinite money. People who can afford to buy mid-size or larger sets in great plenty are the minority, I think.

Huh. Somehow I've just avoided getting any then. I should have known it was odd given dark bluish grey is such a normal colour to have in the brick.

Thanks for sharing this, it was (unironically) a fascinating read - even if I don't have enough technical or legal knowledge to understand most of it. That doesn't mention getting permission from Kiddicraft, but I don't think it's conclusive either. The case was more concerned with Lego versus Tyco, and Kiddicraft's involvement seems relevant only in establishing the dates certain bricks were first designs, the extent of Lego's modifications to Page's designs, and that Lego held the trademarks at the time of the case. Lego getting permission beforehand from Kiddicraft, or not, isn't relevant to the case so it wouldn't be mentioned.

People absolutely are, which is why this argument comes up every time Lego has the audacity to include women in historical sets. No - fantasy is a genre which has a lot of conventions. None of those conventions have to be included, but none of them are out of place. Women at arms are a part of the fantasy genre, as are dragons, witches, wizards, goblins, etc., and so Lego including any of these in a regular Castle theme wouldn't be out of place. Because they belong to the genre. Spacemen are very much not in the genre, so they would be out of place. We're not talking about historical characters, we're talking about fantasy characters who have a historical aesthetic. If this was a case of Lego specifically representing actual historical figures like William the Conqueror or Robert Guiscard (or Jeanne d'Arc or Queen Matilda) and changing the gender of those real figures while ostensibly still representing them I'd be on your side. Even if we're talking about specific folklore (such as sets that are explicitly Robin Hood and his band of merry men, rather than nameless Forestmen). The figures in this set aren't that. Now we can see inside I think the set looks even better (even if there's a weird perspective glitch on the interior image that made me think for a moment we were getting 1x2 tiles with masonry profiles). Majisto's scroll looks like a sticker which I'm sure will upset people but I have plenty of the original so if I end up getting Majisto I'll probably keep the plain white tile and sub in one of my spare originals. Are the dark bluish grey masonry bricks a new element or have I just had terrible fortune getting any in the past?

Honestly I've found Rebrickable insufficient for my needs. For my collection I need to establish: All the sets I own, incorporating inventory differences, different statuses of the set (is it built? sealed? folded into my collection?), whether I ever had the spare parts or not? - this includes at least one set which didn't match the online inventories until I submitted the evidence they were wrong. All the parts I've acquired from joblots, separated into those joblots so I can piece together possible sets. Parts I've purchased individually from Bricklink or PAB Custom parts which don't exist in the Rebrickable database Parts which I have but don't know the source from (I have two joblots' worth of parts I received as a child and never bothered to catalogue, so I want to know what those parts were) I also need to be able to keep track of how many parts I've specifically put into the correct boxes (so I know if I'm missing parts, or if I have extra parts I didn't know I had) and have various parts where I don't care to make a distinction between part types. For example, when I query my spreadsheet to see if I can build a design, I'm not really that bothered if a slope has hollow or solid studs, or whether a brick has bottom supports or not, and I certainly don't care about the different undersides of inverted slopes. I also apply a custom transformation to the part numbers of the new vented stud minifigure head, as I'm in the process of collecting every yellow face ever released and the different part number complicates things. Combine this with unintuitive categories for parts (the bricks, round category, for instance, has numerous arches and slopes and other things which make it very hard to find actual round bricks) and an unintuitive interface and it's just not worth the effort for me to use Rebrickable. (Also, my love of stats means I've got the year of purchase for every piece I've ever had, and thus have the ability to see which colour was the most prevalent in my collection in any given year going back to 2002 - something I don't believe Rebrickable offers). It's also easier IMO to export a parts list from Stud.io into a CSV file and then use vlookup formulae to see immediately whether I have enough of each part in my collection.

It's a display piece/tribute to the theme rather than a playset though. Catapults and things are cool play features but they'd have been out of place in the set imo.

I wonder if it's a holdover from the early days of the forum. If you revisit really old topics (stuff from 2004/2005) there's a lot of broken emoticons - where the emoticon no longer exists on the forum - and a sense that the forum's culture was different, much more informal, probably due to the significantly smaller membership. This is also the time where the 'juniorification' of sets was an issue, with lots of bigger parts in sets (and Jack Stone fresh in the memory). The html tags appear to be broken too, which suggests that it's residue from an older time.

I get the impression "design improvements" here was in reference to the bricks themselves, not the sets. In which case, there's a clear difference between Lego bricks and competitor bricks. For this reason I 100% hope Lego doesn't shrink - the quality of their bricks is unmatched, and I'd absolutely rather see them prosper than some company with inferior bricks but "better" sets (does such a thing exist?) take them down. After all, my sets get built once then folded into the wider collection for MOCing.

This is our window into the alternate world where M:Tron returned for a 2023 line. Love the way you've combined old and new parts (are those arms a custom decal or a real part that exists somewhere? Either way they're perfect for a modernised M:Tron astronaut).