BrickBob Studpants

„Wrong direction“ in what way exactly? What they gave us was excellent, it‘s just the things they omitted that bothered me And The Hobbit was treated very well, not much missing there. B2T: I‘m with @LOTR34, as long as FB isn‘t done I‘m expecting the theme to continue. Once they‘re through with DH, I think they‘ll release sets across all of the films to fill in the gaps rather than cycling through the films pair-wise again. ...or they just start to remake everything once more (please don‘t)

I would love for the Middle-Earth themes to return, but I doubt it‘s going to happen Sure, there‘s the Amazon show on the horizon, but we don‘t know how that will turn out in terms of brand fit and if a show even warrants the comeback of a previously movie-based theme in the first place. I mean, would the HP theme have returned if FB was a streaming show rather than a film series? Moreover, the previous sets apparently didn‘t sell all that well among kids. Fans like us loved the theme (apart from all the glaring omissions ) and so do scalpers nowadays, but did kids?

I'm probably setting myself up for disappointment, but an Arquitens would be really neat since it's A) new and B) could provide minifigs of most of the important characters in season 2:

Sounds pretty promising Sad to see there still aren‘t any battle packs though, so we can probably kiss them goodbye for good

I think minifigs would make sense to be included in a D2C set (or a future CMF series), but I don‘t see them releasing regular minifig-scale sets. The main reason is the characters designs, most of which do not translate well into minifigs Most of the enemies, especially the smaller ones, would have to be one-off moulds to fit into that scale. The theme has a lot of new moulds as is, and versatile ones at that, which couldn‘t be said about a specialised Gumba mould for instance And how would you approach something like Bowser without having him brick-built?

These are some interesting suggestions, well done @Bugbot20082! Now here's a tricky question: since the amount of minifigs has been reduced to 12, which I assume to be the new norm for all future series, which four categories would realistically be removed? I'd say two of the three students, one extra and Hogwarts staff / ghost

Looks like I got lucky, it‘s „in warehouse“ now The other HP sets aren‘t, but at least I don‘t have to pay through the nose for the GWP

Jurassic World Agreed. I don't think the sets spoil anything, it's just all 10 Eternals and their spaceship, 5 Deviants (including their leader Kro), and the Celestial Arishem. None of that implies anything story-wise and the characters were all confirmed long ago, so releasing these sets early should be a-ok from a spoiler point of view. Marketing-wise, this could be tricky unless they drop alongside or shortly after the first teaser

That's what I'm hoping

12 sets even?! How come there were this many planned? Sure, JWD is the big finale and all, but that still seems quite excessive to me, compared to previous years. I assume there were supposed to be 2 waves then?

9 sets? That’s quite a few more than we previously heard, isn’t it? I doubt they‘re all based on JWD, so it’s pretty likely some get released this year as I see no reason to delay the ones that aren‘t based on the new film

In my case, it says “waiting for new stock” for the MBoM. I ordered my sets right at midnight and now half of what I ordered is either backordered or awaits new stock, including all the HP sets. Just great. I initially wanted to order with express shipping, but once the sets became available it all went so fast I forgot to select the option Sure, express shipping isn’t exactly cheap, but at least it’s half as expensive as paying a scalper for the GWP

Every set released since August has the “play it in [the game]” blurb on the back of the box and the 2020 summer wave sets even included codes to unlock characters. Doesn’t that count as a tie-in already?

One of the reasons this thread blew up so much were discussions about fake clues courtesy of that royal Gollum-wannabe, but I think we can reach a similar count depending on the nature of the leaks. If we don‘t get a set list and just minifig leaks instead, this could very well get to that level

I certainly hope not. If it‘s a mistake, this is in no way bad enough to get someone fired and as @Guyon2002 points out, this had to pass multiple instances first, so it‘s either intentional or many people are to be blamed for it. It‘s just mindblowing to me that these sets may hit shelves before the first teaser drops

I‘ve only seen one picture of the box that all the other would-be leakers are copying, so it‘s no wonder nobody can provide more details Unless you find the original source that is...

Celestials have already appeared in the MCU: there was Eson the Searcher, who briefly showed up in the first GotG (wielding the power stone to demonstrate its destructive power), an unknown dead Celestial whose head was turned into Knowhere, and in GotG Vol 2 there was Ego (who originally wasn't a Celestial in the comics I think). From what I can gather, the Celestials created both the Eternals and the Deviants, and the latter are a sort of evil counterpart to the former.

I‘m also glad about that. The minifig selection is still weak, but at least there aren‘t any embarassing mistakes in the set itself

I fail to see the problem. Disney S1 introduced at least 19 new parts (thus more than one per fig in average) and other series also featured more than 10 new parts Or how about the two Simpsons series where a majority of head moulds were exclusive to the respective minifig?

These look impressive! I wonder how those pictures got out though, shouldn‘t the sets have been postponed to next October a couple of months ago? These catalogues don‘t get printed that early, or do they? And looks like the mystery of the new Venom „tentacle“ mould has been solved, I knew they were designed for something else!

It‘s not the designing phase itself that takes that long, 1-1.5 years is the whole process between the inception of a set and the time it hits shelves This includes designing, testing, quality control, and production. Of course, the 1-year estimate is just a rule of thumb and the process varies between sets. A set like the Spider-jet obviously required less development time than a D2C set The Spider-jet at least survived the testing phase unscathed, so the target audience must’ve liked it well enough

Agreed. He needs a new mould, which is why I put him on the top of my list. None of the other characters need one as much as he does

I think the leaked mermaid piece is from the upcoming Vidiyo (sp?) theme since one of the codenames was ‚Mermaid‘ after all That would kill the chances of minifigs of famous singers, but oh well... Unless it‘s someone stuck in a mermaid costume for a music video or something If that happens, the speculation will be even more insane than this year Bring it on! I thinks it‘s a pretty likely scenario. The only chance I see for set names to pop up earlier than the minifig leaks would be the 2HY retail catalogue. As jdubbs has said a while ago in the SW thread, the lack of toy fairs might force TLG to rely on the catalogues again to present their new line-up to retailers. Depends on whether they‘re willing to take the risk, given that the 1HY catalogue leaked in a spectacular fashion, burning the source forever

It‘s not a bad replacement, far from it actually, but I still prefer a specifically designed face print over a repurposed one I wouldn‘t mind that, but please only after they‘ve already released everything else we‘re clamouring for right now. A Creator Expert- style Knight Bus or Hogwarts Express set would be pretty silly when we‘re still missing Gringotts and Hogsmeade

The Wonder Woman and Cheetah minifigs from the DC CMF series were reused in the SDCC set and the WW84 version also featured her CMF face print. Moreover, the Flash face print from that series was repurposed in a Jurassic World set. I wish they could‘ve done that earlier, would have improved Krum & Cedric significantly