Brickadeer

I partially agree. I highly appreciate the new and more detailed printing. That doesn't mean though that I would not like to see a modified minifig that goes for more possibilities of actions. So, with regard to your initial statement, the question is how far this "we" extends into the market. With regard to the animations, I'd say it's not of importance of what they are intended to do, but what they actually do: do they create expectations that extend the possibilities of the actual minifig or not? Do they lead to situations in which the real minifigs are experienced as disappointing (since inferior to the animation) or not? These are empirical questions; I hope Lego has done some research on it.

That may be true. However, I believe that Lego will have to adress this problem within the near future, depending on how fast Hasbro will expand its kre-o selection. Lego has already realized this problem, otherwise the movements of the rendered minifigs would resemble the possibilities of the real minifigs. I think that Lego tries to avoid this problem by offering more detailed painted minifigs. If this should be correct, that is a strategic decision which - in my judgement - will fail in the long run.

I'm not impressed by those transformers. There can be no doubt, however, that the limbs of the Hasbro minifigs can be moved in more different ways compared to Lego minifigs. I think that in this regard Lego is somehow backwards. Especially the possibilities shown of rendered Lego minifigs (commercials of new sets) exceed those of the real minifigs. I think that Lego should get rid of this contradiction. This step is overdue since quite some time.

They could make a space exploration theme as well. This would include the explorers and some buildings/locations/wrecks of an ancient space travelling race that is basically unknown. They could introduce a villain as well as some kind of antagonist, and a plot that is about the race of decrypting the mystery surrounding the ancient race first.

Well, the proportions seem wrong, the front part seems too small compared to the back part, the upper front part is too short compared to the lower front part, and the whole upper part is too flat. I wonder how the interior looks.

Awesome! The Malevolence looks much better to me than on the prelim pics, and the Battle Droid Commander looks like a Battle Droid Commander :)

Good point. Well, you can try to get his adress via Bricklink. You can announce to file a charge, or even file a charge without announcing. I'm not an expert, but I think what he did is not in line with U.S. law. You didn't pay by paypal, did you?

Hm. He immediately reminded me of Qui-Gon Jinn (Light Flesh with Black Chin Dimple), and Legolas seems to wear some traditional Bavarian (German) or Austrian dress. He looks like Florian Silbereisen with Bow and Arrow. Who is Florian Silbereisen? Can't get enough of Florian Silbereisen? Flori 13 years ago.

Although I'm watching TCW regularly, I absolutely wasn't aware of this ship until I read your post I liked you build immediately, especially the view from above. There are some variation from the original ship, but that seems due to the general difficulty to build curves with Lego bricks.

The fact that prices may have been stable for a certain amount of time does in no way mean that it is the "normal" price. You may consider it as normal since apparently you've never experienced significant variations from this price though, but this concept of "normal" may result in false expectations of future developments. I do not know the causes of the price increase: is it caused by increased costs of input factors? Is caused in an expected shortage of oil or an expected shortage of oil caused by certain developments in the Middle East (that means, if oil is the base material for Lego bricks, something I don't know)? Is it because the produced numbers of sets were reduced? Is it because customers are prepared to pay higher prices? Is it because of the lowered exchange rate of the Euro compared to the US Dollar? Because of the current fundamental uncertainty about the economic and political future (and as a general rule) I would not suppose that the prices for Lego will ever fall again. When I began to be interested in Lego SW, set 8014 (Clone Walker Battle Pack) was available for EUR 7,86. Thus, I expected the price of 7913 to sink as low, but it didn't sink below EUR 9,99. With 9488, the situation may be even worse. Currently, the lowest price (Germany) is EUR 11,99 plus shipping. This is a tremendous price increase. I would not be able to say, however, if 8014 was unsual cheap or if the increase of price was unusual high.

Hi! Now that we have Commando Droids, I wonder what in your opinion resembles the Vibrosword at best: The Scythe (left) or the Katana (right) - or do you have other suggestions? Uploaded with ImageShack.us

If in doubt, I'd proceed as described here:

Speed of movement is an issue, but it takes a lot more to decide a combat. If these duels were about realism, they'd be pretty short, while the eye of an observer would not even be able to recognize what aspect of a certain action within two sequences of actions was deciding the fight. Generally, fighting scenes in cinema are unrealistic simply to give the audience the possibility to see and to understand what happens; roughly speaking, these invisible aspects have to be translated into visible actions that form a quite different visual sequence of actions.

I'm not sure about the Elite Clone Trooper & Commando Droid Battle Pack. Lego calls it an "Elite Clone Trooper", and the set seems to sell pretty well. But it's a fact that it is a specific character that is commonly called "Hammer".

Certainly Italy has to worry about more than just $2 billion dollars debt ;)

I find that both duels are fundamentally different. The PT duels e.g. between Kenobi and Maull or Kenobi and Skywalker are about action. Both fighters try to defeat the other one physically (this is not quite correct, since Obi Wan has no choice but to physically harm Anakin, although it takes some time until he realizes his lack of options). In the duel between Kenobi and Vader, however, this is only true for Vader. Vader seeks revenge and Kenobi's death; Kenobi on the other hand knows that he won't leave the Death Star alive for several reasons. The conflict is about who's will will have prevailed at the end of the situation, and Kenobi knows that he again will prevail. He even tells Vader that he can't win: Vader is a mere tool to unify Kenobi with the force. Later, Vader says that "this is a great day because it has seen the end of Kenobi and is about to see the end of the rebellion". He simply doesn't see that Kenobi continues, and that his physical death was part of his plan to let Luke escape as a prerequisite to end the reign of the Sith. It takes some time until Vader realizes how far Kenobi's plans actually were; at the end of ROJ he seems to see clearer. So to me, the physical part of the duel is simply not important, and I find that acrobatic minimalism emphazises the more abstract meaning. Comparing the duels on Mustafar and the Death Star, one might say that Anakin's will prevailed on Mustafar although Kenobi defeated him physically (Kenobi wasn't able to prevent Anakin from joining the dark side, so he left Kenobi with no choice), while Kenobi's will prevailed on the Death Star while Vader defeated him physically.

Well, I think that we have to accept the explanation given by TCW. Besides that, I find that it doesn't fit well to Anakin's personality to fake a reaction. He's more the type to give in to his feelings and to what he thinks is right. Usually, the human attention is caught by events that do not fit to our explicit or implicit expectations. So of course noone looks at Anakin's reaction to evaluate the truth of the rumor of Obi Wan's death. But a casual observer might have realized that Anakin did not behave like implicitly expected.

Well, I think that building small vehicles both accurate and in the correct scale is not possible since Lego parts are not small enough. AFAIK that's true e.g. for the AT-RT and most, if not all, speeders.

I just wondered...are there any creepier Lego minifigs than this Uruk hai and these Orcs?

That was clarified in the first part of the story. Anakin's reaction to Obi Wan's death was a nessecary part of the plan to make everyone believe that Obi Wan is really dead.

Thanks for the link. I'm pretty pleased with Gollum, but I still find that Aragorn looks too much like Boromir :) Maybe it's because both use the same hairpiece, although in different colours.

RIP :(

I think the cape is not evely shaped, but partly flayed like that of the Dementor. I suppose the arm to be in the right place; the hand at least is visible.

Well, I generally like them. However, I would like them even more if the combination of sets would make more sense, e.g. combining three TCW sets or three ep 1 sets etc.

I've seen Super Pack 66411 on ebay today: Uploaded with ImageShack.us