jdubbs

I think the principal "misunderstanding" as you put it is that people keep looking for ways to rationalize the things they want into a manifest reality. As I've tried to say repeatedly, keep expectations low (and you can only be pleasantly surprised) but folks seem bound and determined to do the opposite...

The Mando/Child brickhead is August, not September. The advent will also be September, and the first of the D2Cs should be out in May, at $200ish.

There should be at least one other helmet this year (non-Star Wars).

While it is true that Walmart (and Target) have launched certain sets — in some waves — at discounted prices, it's also true that all of the January 2020 Star Wars sets launched at regular retail prices, and remain so 2+ months later. There is no guarantee that the April wave will be discounted from LEGO's suggested retail pricing when it is released.

I don't think it's as much a matter of "more secrecy" for these particular sets as it is a matter of LEGO getting better at plugging the leaks. The vast majority of minifig leaks came from Chinese factories, where workers would (allegedly) smuggle figs out at the end of their shifts and sell them on the gray market. Over the last year, LEGO appears to have clamped down on those, cutting off a reliable predictor of the sets coming 3-4 months down the line. (For instance, we knew that the UCS Y-Wing was coming once a Gold Squadron minifig leaked; we knew Cloud City was coming once the Cloud Car Pilot leaked, and so on.) The retail catalogs no longer have box shots of many upcoming sets, and those stores that receive them are reluctant to share, for fear of digital watermarks being traced back to them. Fewer sets are shown publicly at Toy Fairs, and product shots are distributed to retail stores closer to launch. Several of the more prominent leakers got muzzled one way or another, and the rest realized that sharing everything you receive the minute you receive it, is often counter-productive if you want your sources of info to remain viable long-term. So, all-in-all, there are fewer ways to see sets/figs far in advance than there used to be.

I don't know why people fixate on this stuff so much, or what it really has to do with this thread, but if you connect the dots between the two reports: According to HothRebel, who who referencing something said at the German Toy Fair back in January: "Top 7 is in no particular order Architecture, Ideas, Harry Potter, City, Disney, Ninjago and Technic." A month or two later, LEGO's annual report infographic lists Marvel Superheroes and Star Wars in their Top 6. Marvel and Star Wars: both owned by Disney. So, this could easily be a case of those two getting lumped together under the "Disney" umbrella at the German Toy Fair, but broken out as their own separate themes in the annual report... just a different way of slicing and dicing the stats. Also worth pointing out that these are are all pretty meaningless. LEGO is not a publicly traded company, is under no obligation to itemize sales down to this level, and can pretty much make up whatever they want in these "reports". Listing a bunch of themes in their "top 6" or "top 7" is pretty vague, since concrete metrics aren't identified. What makes them "top-selling"? Number of units sold? Gross sales? Net sales? Most profitable? Most improved? It's anyone's guess. These lists could mean anything. Or nothing at all.

A representative of LEGO was quoted several years ago as saying they couldn't do a CMF because of Hasbro's license agreement with Lucasfilm. (Which, incidentally, was just renegotiated... hmmm.) But that did not preclude LEGO from releasing minifigure polybags (with a dozen or so parts for a "stand" thrown in) or from releasing battle packs, which have a greater concentration of figs-per-parts than we are talking about here.

I don't think Hasbro has anything to do with it. Ninjago, being LEGO's own IP, is a different animal from a licensed line like Star Wars, where LEGO has to shell out a percentage of each set sold to Disney/Lucasfilm. Minifig parts are more expensive than other parts, so limiting the number we get in licensed sets help LEGO keep their prices from being even higher than they already are. While it is true that Harry Potter (another licensed line) has more figs for the money in most of its sets, those figs are simpler (fewer leg prints, lots of immobile "short" legs, etc.), and with more reused parts (the same torsos used over and over) than what we typically get with Star Wars. Last year's 20th Anniversary Stormtrooper pack is one set that fits this model... 4 identical figs are cheaper to produce than 4 unique ones, so we ended up with an uncommonly high number of figs in a relatively cheap set.

To clarify, my comment didn't have much of anything to do with MandR. My beef is with people who are somehow finding reason to complain that LEGO is offering preorders on a set that so many people have been asking for... as though there is anything conceivably wrong with that. The OP suggested that people "defending" LEGO were making 'excuses" for the company... I just find this all utterly baffling. Some people really will complain about anything... And, definitely don't think of me as your leader.... you may end up over a cliff. :)

What exactly is the problem with LEGO making a set available for preorder 6 months in advance? Last I checked pretty much everyone who visits this thread does so because they want to know the sets that are coming... 6 months in advance. So LEGO takes the very rare step of previewing the set exactly when people are clamoring for it, and then... people complain? Huh? What needs defending here?

There is a GWP for May the Fourth, similar to the mini Endor and Hoth builds from the last year or so.

This set has been speculated to be an exclusive or D2C because of something Stonewars reported. It has shown up in a few North American retail computers, however... an indicator that it may be more widely available, at least in certain regions.

There's a good chance the build shown at ToyFair is just a prototype, and the final product will use a print like the other Brickheadz.

You may be thinking of Kenner's original contract with Lucasfilm, which just required them to make a small annual payment of something like $10k and fork over a very small percentage of action figure sales. Despite terms that were incredibly favorable to Kenner/Hasbro, they did somehow manage to lose the contract when they neglected to make one of the annual payments. After which George was able to renegotiate on his own terms, which just so happened to coincide with the release of the Special Editions and then the prequels. There is an episode of "The Toys That Made Us" (on Netflix) that goes into greater detail. Since then Hasbro has renegotiated the contract a few times (they gave up the 12" action figure license at some point, for instance, and allowances were likely made for Disney to make its own action figures) so I doubt Hasbro has all that much leverage over Disney.

I think that might be taking things a bit far. It's one thing to disagree about the quality or merits of a particular set. Another thing to say people stink for expressing an opinion. I don't think anyone here is "blaming" you for disliking the set. You're certainly entitled to that opinion. But for those who say "it sucks because it's not this other moc that's 2x the size", or "it sucks because it has a sticker" or "it sucks because it didn't include every mini figure I was expecting", well, there are valid counterarguments to those opinions. Which I and others here have every right to point out. It's not an indictment of you personally to make those points.

LEGO remakes sets that are sure-sellers, and so far nothing specifically from a tv show has really risen to that level. How many Clone Wars-specific sets have been issued more than once? Perhaps a Jedi Starfighter or so? Hardly the same as a $130 flagship set. If you’re passing on this set in hopes of a remake, you may be waiting a very long time. Were you seriously expecting LEGO to make new molds (especially molds that large/complex) for characters that appear only in the first fifteen minutes of the first episode of the series?

Correct. The MOC I was referring to was smaller that the LEGO version.

That MOC is double the size of the LEGO set (±2000 according to the designer, versus 1023 for LEGO's). You're not comparing apples to apples.

There are always better MOCs. But MOCs play by much different rules. Don't have to be affordable (and rarely are), don't have to use readily available parts (and many digital-only MOCs rely heavily on nonexistent colored parts), don't have to live up to LEGO's standards for safety, quality and ease of build, etc., and don't have to be stable (one MOC of this ship that I built had landing gear that immediately collapsed under the weight of the ship... it had clearly never been built in real bricks). So, don't judge LEGO by an impossible standard. The set number is a pretty clear indicator this set began design development a year or so ago. (The Child was probably the only part "rushed", since LEGO wouldn't have had access to him until November.) Possibly, but I think a better solution would have been to scale up the engines, which ideally would have been another 2+ studs larger in diameter.

No. I’m referring to the fact that the same conversation (“Set description says new Mando!” followed by “Fig must certainly be a placeholder then!” followed by “Could just be a new face print”) keeps repeating over and over again.

Am I stuck in Groundhogs Day again?

Both the promotional and in-person photos of the cockpit glass appear to show a single piece, not two parts joined together.

Some of you guys seem to have taken the news that three sets may have been cancelled — sets which have been omitted from pretty much all informed discussion for weeks now — as a sign the sky is falling. It's not. As they say in Tara: tomorrow is another day. And probably a pretty good one, methinks.

Some sources (might be the same as stonewars', or might be different) did list those sets initially, then subsequently updated them to say they were cancelled. At the time I assumed that one or more of them might end up as a retail store exclusive, so I opted not to mention this all here, as I didn't think people wanted more bad news. But this is one of the reasons I've been pessimistic on all these skipped numbers showing up. I cannot speak to the reasoning listed in the article (Disney wanting to cut back, etc.). It would make sense (I guess) if Disney truly feels the market is oversaturated, but it's the first I've heard of such a thing.

This all depends on when you are referring to and what you mean by “on display”. In the last few years Lego has moved the product that is furthest out (2H of the year) to private viewing rooms and limited access to those who have certain credentials. Photography, etc. prohibited. This is the approach taken at the European toy fairs this year, so it’s likely the same would be true in NY. But the sets coming out in the first half of the year (April) may very well be on full public display, perhaps even with one or two “special” things Lego wants to show off early. They have done this at least once before, when they relaunched the Harry Potter line and showed the Great Hall 5-6 months ahead of its eventual release.