Gorilla94

The hobbit book is just gorgeous. It hurts, that it most likely won´t be chosen.

Well... My point is this: "Castle" litterally means immobile and I don't speak just about the building of a castle but the whole era. The whole society behind it with limited resources which is structured in a way that keeps everything running anyhow. Where one dude is working for months at a chainmail armor and the question "can we really afford a visor for our knights helmet" is a serious question to consider. Where you wait with war until spring or summer because your troops will die by large numbers just because of the weather, if you don't. Let me put it that way: would you consider the Death Star a Castle? After all it has a dungeon, Throne room, weapon chambers. But there is also Vader's Castle and Jedi Knights. So would you consider Star Wars a Castle theme? In the modern classic fantasy universes as well as in legends and myths I know a dragon is something supernatural if not diabolicannd not a common thing... just like magical plants breaking walls. A castle isn't designed to fight back this rare and ridicilously overpowered creature most medieval texts see as the devil himself or at least a very high status servant of him. The idea of a castle is to force the average joe opponent into a long siege that makes it basically an economic battle between the food ressources of the defender and the aggressor's insanely high costs... A Castle was the gamechanger in that scenario. A peasant throwing rocks down the wall became a real threat while a trained knight who would ride just trough/over the infantry became in a moment just another footsoldier trying go climb up that wall... in fact real siege battles were pretty rare in history. Pretty much every fantasy I know handles their castles that way, too. A bunch of orcs that could slaughter a village is no threat if you have a few bows on top of the wall. The siege battles are always a big event. The ridiculous amounts of Uruk Hai, Saruman sends against Helm's deep also giving them explosives, the undead army in Markus Heitz' "Dwarves"-Novels... the support of a Dragon in Eragon. A Castle is not supposed to be one option in a fair rock-paper-sissors game. It is like Indiana Jones bringing his gun to a swordfight (and a Dragon would be a tank vs. Gunslinger in that example). A scifi-setting where flying vehicles are standard is because of that not a Castle theme even if there is a horse head on the vehicles as decoration. The core of what Castle means is missing in my opinion. I also don't say that an armored motorised vehicle cant be usefull even in certain scifi settings. It just isn't a Castle. They have a robot cook and a service robot. If they reached the point where it is cheaper to let them take care of the kitchen and have them as buttlers, it should also be cheap enough to be used for protection in larger numbers... Never wrote the guards wear no helmets. I wrote they don't protect their faces. Yes, they are using the old moulds from regular Castle themes. In these themes it made sense, that the simple soldier has a cheaper helmet than a knight, which means less metal, so no visor. In this context some are wearing crazy scifi-armors and medieval helmet designs without any protection for the face. Yes, bandits and other characters from older themes wear clothes fitting the world they live in. A world where a Castle means what i described in the first part. The characters from the medieval market or the water mill don't wear any armor and they are still Castle characters in a Castle setting. Well... a knight had two jobs: keep the place efficient as local representant of the nobleman above them. and be the elite in warfare in case they are needed. These "knights" are in a mobile tank driving around with the king and they are simply not needed as units. Like I said you could replace Lance with a belt keeping the lance in place while the scifi-motorcycle flies around. I'd say my argument was fine, but of course you are free to have your opinion.

Ah, sorry^^' Disney ownes the muppets, doesn't it? Then I'd say we probably get a Seasame Street cmf or a line of 4+ sets. One of those things will happen. Lego would never be so generous to give us 5 exclusive moulds for one set... especially in that price range.

I dare to assume a Disney 3 series including Seasame Street Characters - The moulding budget for the Ideas set would be way too generous for Lego, if they don´t use the moulds twice. They could give Ernie and Bert arm pinting then.

I love the workplace and the shield (if that is a printed element). I´d have hoped to get the new sword mould in another colour. The 3 I can see are the same like in the cmf. I really hope we get a reddish brown viking helmet with gold or silver print, which would allow me to make a perfect Eowyn. The rest is not my cup of tea...

Have you checked the pieces? I payed about 7€ getting torso, headgear and Legs from different stores a while ago. Wasn´t such a bad deal even with shipping because the stores had other interesting rare parts as well.

That is difficult to answer without knowing you. Do you like the other Lego videogames? The starter kit costs about 30€ at my place. You have about 9 hours of real story content and a lot more of boring searching for collectibles. For my part the 9 hours of quality content and some good jokes involving my favourite licences are worth that. On top you get 3 neat minifigs. The toy to live aspect makes this so much better than the other Lego Video games we get these days. I'd recomend this pack for pretty much anyone, but of course it is still a pathetic deal when you can get several hundreds of hours of high quality Gameplay with Witcher 3 or red dead redemption 2 for the same price. The fun packs and Team packs have huge differences in quality. E.T. has some cute sentences and great animations. I already bought his pack just for the figure before making the decision to get the game. He also gives you access to his movie-world (nice to see some Locations from those licences in brick Form but there is no Gameplay except for searching for collectibles). Same for the Gremlins. Unikitty has lots of new interactions with other characters including cute comments and funny jokes done in her original movie voice. No additional levels. Bane only says a few sentences from the dark knight rises which are completely out of place in 99% of situations. Also no new world. Bart has no voice at all and is only giving you access to Springfield, which you can already visit, if you have the pack with Homer. In general i'd choose only a few of my favourite Charakters to improve my experience in the main game. The level packs are pretty much like the fun packs in terms of different qualities. The Simpsons "level" pack for example is unbelievable short and is just a Lego version of a Simpsons Episode that was pretty much just chosen because it has very few characters in it. If you get it on sale for 15€ and don't have Homer so the minifig is something you want, we reach a point where you won't feel completely ripped off. I got the the Lego Batman story pack for 30€ which was hardly worth the money to me. I can use the printed elements for a batcave wanted the two figures and enjoyed the between 4 and 5 hours story driven Gameplay.

The new Mysterio Energy effect piece is cool. The arm printing design on Spiderman is gorgeous... it is a shake that the blue seines trough the print that much :/

Well... a "castle" is from my point of view (and the Oxford English Dictionary's) a fortified immobile building in most cases made of traditional material. In German the word "Castle" is closely related to "mountain" which shows how much a Castle is defined by being a immobile building. The Nexo knight's "Castle" was a metal tank on wheels... an open metal Tank on the top offering no protecting at all from the various flying units of the theme... and a vehicle in danger of driving into a mine field or get attacked from Below while parking - something that is a risk necessary to take when attacking but certainly none a place for civilians to flee into should have. I can hardly see anything "castle" about the theme. A knight is more than just a guy in an armor. He is the result of a society where a whole village is needed to get one guy into chainmail and on a horse. He is an expert in holding his lance and riding a straight line. This whole concept would not exist with this amount of recources and technology where keeping a bunch of war robots in a hut in case you get attacked would work better in every way. And certainly there would be no simple soldiers wearing a helmet not protecting the face...

Can't say I am happy about that ^^' TLBM brought us some of my favourite Figures like Poison Ivy, Riddler and Bane... thank you for the response anyways :)

I heared rumors of a Lego Batman movie 2 2022... they are Fake, aren't they? I mean they can't make a Sequel with Universal having the Lego Film rights and WB owning DC, can they?

To be honest, I don´t see it that way at all. I don´t get how my posts made me look like I want just a bunch of UCS-Sets. At a certain point a set is fine (in terms of what it represents as licenced fan merch as well as a generic toy and what is charged for what is offered) and just looses it´s cuteness by getting bigger and bigger. The bag end set nailed this point pretty much with the only downside being the stickers for the maps and the book. Size says pretty much nothing about quality. The small set with Bilbo, Gollum and the Ring is indeed one of the best in my opinion. The question is what is possible with a sceene. A Laketown-set for the third movie could have been done as a extremely small pack just including bard and the ballista or a still very, very small one including Bain, too. That´s cute and nice to get. It could also have been the flagship set including Smaug and a really big and detailed tower (the 80€ Set could have been a proper Erebor set without Smaug then - while Smaug is awesome the builds were a huge dissapointment - Dale can be skipped... nobody asked for the terrible overpriced tan ruin... in the end it would have been easily possible to do a wave still with the poorly chosen pricepoints but at least with better sets simply changing which set gets which setting). As a 30€ set it´s just "meh" offering nothing more than the small set except for Orcs without ears and Tauriel ... and there is a reason why this character is that cheep on bricklink and there are "non-Tauriel"-cuts of the movie. I might not have expressed myself correctly. What I meant was that somebody must have come up with the Idea that there isn´t enough money in the licence to go on with making sets. If it was different we would have such sets and less "new approaches" like nexo knights. That´s true. But with this, barrel escape also in wave one and then the release of Smaug in wave 3 it already doesn´t fit much with the releases of the movies. So I don´t see where the point is in making it an important factor if sceenes are right now in the cinema, if a character like Thror would be a desirable figure.

Seems to be the weakest numbered cmf until now for me... My highlight are the Aztec warrior and the castaway. The crab is probably the most adorable Lego animal I've ever seen. Bee keeper is cool with his accessory, too. The printed ladybug tile is cute. The violine is awesome.. Torso and Legs of the Centaur girl are nice to get... the rest I don't want for free :/ I am glad that there are only 12, if that is the new quality standard. Now I can stop collecting them all much easier. Would look stupid on display anyways to have 12 next to 16.

That's true. But I don't get why it has to be exactly this amount of sets for these pricepoints and in this case why a 300 parts set for 30€ has to be the the laketown set if it is clear that it won't be very good. I know that there are buisness decisions but in this case it would surely have been better to let someone with love and understanding for the material (both Lego and the licence) make the decisions from scratch instead of telling a designer which impossible Job je has to do with theme and price range and then claim that there is no demand for middle Earth/Castle sets, when few want that stuff. Pretty much nobody from this threat would have skipped Beorns hut and did a dolguldur-ambush-set with him instead... making a headpiece with just one angry expression instead of a usefull hair mould and a standard head with two expressions. Hobbit wave 1 included the spiders from desolation of smaug already. Smaug did not appear until a set for the 3rd movie. It is not like it would not have been possible to take some freedom releasing sceenes or combine them. The movie-3-Laketown set has hardly any relevance for the plot except for the ballista and the sets from wave 2 were still brand new on shelves. You could have easily put it on a roof in the first set, add Bain and there would be nothing missing. Should not cost more than 5€ extra... and to be honest i would not increase the price with the thought in mind, that the set isn't that gorgeous/iconic/impressive and not that desirable figures are included. I know, that this has nothing to do with piece count or production costs, but it is important when it comes to buyers decision.

There are also certain reading devices you can plug in to your PC. They have a bunch of movable dots in a flat surface to form the points of tactile alphabet. That way you can read a bit, click to move on with the text and read the next few words.

Oh didn´t notice that special gear until now and thought it was just a random guy taking a walk with his dog. That´s nice. I don´t think you can compare the baby mould with that dog gear. Babys made of standard minifigure heads and some third party pieces are probably the oldest custom figures I ever saw. From the superhero fan, who plays the sceene in Spiderman 1, where Peter saves a child from a burning building, to the classical mommy-daddy-child-roleplay scenario... Pretty much everyone ever using minifigures wanted to have a baby minifigure at some point, so I´d compare its release to the release of short legs in terms of importance for the main audience. I´d say it is not more or less likely than before. We will most likely see the dog gear again in the future (not neccesarily with a blind character but also a special police dog). We didn´t get a wheelchair cmf, too. An armlet would be indeed a good use of cmf arm printing (In fact that is something that should already have been in the city set - I mean come on. This is a case where it is much more needed than for example a wookie-figure with a brown armlet you don´t really notice a while ago) and If I had to choose between a boring city character with terrible accessory like the Series 19 Programmer and a blind character (that will just because of that make many people happy already) with a cute animal that is cool to get for everyone, I´ll prefer the second figure to be released for sure. If such a figure still get´s something like the programmer´s legs it would be a pretty popular one. I think a reuse of the old goat or the introduction of a new sheep with a cmf is a little bit more likely now with the ideas blacksmith set. I can´s see them just cutting the goat from the design or change it to a pig... On the other hand we are waiting for a shepard since what... series 15?

Hm... I trink that's a question of personal taste. I'd completely agree with you on the Vader Helmet. There isn't anything comparable to it. Stuff similar to the Witchking and Sauron helmets on the other Hand is used for lots of fantasy bad guys (like the Overlord from the Video games for example, the WoW Lich king or a certain Inquisitor outfit in Sacred 2) or even for the knight from Overwatch. It isn't that random in the fantasy genre like orcs but for sure not that much of a unique thing to fantasy like Vaders Helmet is to scifi - other than Sauron's Mouth's helmet wich is without the eyes indeed very unique... and ugly (like i said, it is perfect in the movie and a perfect representation of the charakter in Lego Form, but it is still ugly unlike the Witchking wich is just cool and because of that much more desirable as a toy). I agree in some points while I would not call it fantastic. Never said the Mines of Moria is a straight F in school grades. Dwarf, Elf and the Troll are definitely selling points. The clone orcs with terribly ugly faces and unprinted legs not so much. And I think we can certainly say there are more exciting things to get for a child than a kid with a scarf, too (not that I wasn't glad we got Pippin as a figure). 3 really cool figures, 2 "okay" ones and 2 bad ones and some usefull grey parts just do not justify this price. Same for the Uruk/Rohan set. It is certainly not a straight F but big improvements would not have been difficult. I totally see your point. My opinion is just "if you do a job, do it right". If they did one good one instead of those 2 laketown sets (3 if you include the polybag) and given the master just hair (maybe the shakespears hat like Filch from Harry Potter just in dark orange) and did not waste a mould on the strange hat that isn't even in the most important sceene where Thorin has his speech, it would have been a better choice. This way there would have been a mould left to do at least Orcrist as a mould or release a Thror minifig including a beard compatible with the special crowned hairpiece.

Well... a Balrog or Fellbeast without knowlege of the movies is still a cool demon/dragonlike monster...while boring gray wall is a boring gray wall. Gandalf for example is a nice Wizard minifig no matter if you see him as the Gandalf the Grey or a generic Wizard. Size does not matter in that scenario. If there have to be big sets, there would have been opportunities to do sets that feel like "ok, everything about this set is at least nice to have and worth the money the set could have been cheaper without it". That's what I mean with that there were bad choice made. The Witchking in his rotk design is just cool. Saurons mouth is well made as a figure but he is supposed to be disgusting. Without fandom love there are less people that would like to have hin than the Witchking. A Thror minifig would still have been a golden dwarfen king. The master of laketown on the other Hand is a strange guy with an even stranger hat and an ugly face. All I say is when planing the sets they should have had that in mind what could still be desirable if these are vieved as generic sets.

Oh, I don´t say we must have a complete mine. I just say that this set wasn´t that great and I ask myself why something that can´t become an A+ set no matter how well it would be executed (which the mines of moria set was not) is chosen to be release, while there are better options that stay ignored. There are people that would buy a big amount of cave troll and Moria Orc battlepacks and build Moria with there own bricks. Those won´t buy 50 80€-Sets. Children as the main target group had so many cool sets to choose from... why should they buy a gray wall? Because they are such hardcore fans of a very mature 3h 48 (the mouth of Sauron makes it seem Lego expects them to know the extended version) movie that has a very slow pacing few kids could stand even if it was much much, much shorter? If we want to do a Moria set it could be done with a smaller Balrog-Set including two fellowship members... that would sell to hardcorefans as well as children who don´t know the movies at all. A 40/50€ set is also in a price range that is less limited to christmas or birthday presents. My critisism about Weathertop isn´t exactly that it is too small. While I don´t like the SW microfighters, I completely understand why many children like them as a fun little toy or at least as a quite cheap way to get certain figures. Personally I´d think that a microfighter Ringwraith on a little brickbuild dragon would have been a good little set because of those reasons. Weathertop has much in common with a microfighter in terms of scaling down and simplification. My critisism is that Weathertop is just not working that way. I would honestly not be able to recognise it as Weathertop at the first moment, children who don´t know the movies don´t really care much about a little pile of bricks with stairs and it is much to expensive for a "there are some nice figures and a bunch of random bricks"-set. Again: A Nazgul or even the Witchking with a new helmet mould on a brickbuild fellbeast would have sold like sliced bread to all kinds of target groups. That´s quite true depending on how good the result should look and how much money you want to invest (is it ok, if Rohan soldiers have dragons on their armor? Should they have printed legs that fit with the torso? The really good ones are in my opinion 3 ones from vikings, one from prince of persia, the hun warrior´s from cmf series 12 and the ghost kight´s torso from series 19. Getting printed legs for the vikings and the Ghost are a pain.). But if we argue that you can use bricklink to compensate the insufficiencies of sets, we also can´t critisize missing pieces or smeared prints anymore. Depends strongly on the licence in my opinion to be honest. Middle Earth has "a problem" in that regard because there are so many important named characters and the narrative of lotr and the hobbit is in both cases basically a long connected journey of a fellowship. Star Wars the clone wars on the other hand was mostly about combats between clones and droids with a small amount of named non-clone characters in pretty much each episode. With one set including one of the separatist leaders and a Jedi you were ready to go army building clones and droids, which all looked the same. There was pretty much no set multibles of would not have been usefull to 95%. This way the Rohan soldier and Eomer suffer from quite the same problem like the 2 Jedi knights in the clone trooper battlepack about two years ago. Like I said: I see Middle Earth as a challanging theme to make really good sets of compared to a original Lego theme created with sets in mind and some choices done by Lego in trying to do so were pretty bad on top of that. I am happy for you to get them for a reasonable price at your place. I really am. But that doesn´t change that the original prices were especially for that time very high. And having to look for big sales to even start with collecting the theme is a really bad thing if you want to get people into it. That is why the literally "great" hall from Harry Potter was the right way to start the theme while giving no way of at least getting Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas in one set was pure greed and/or stupidity. Well... Again I´d say that is a question of the theme. Super hero sets sell pretty much just because of the figures and not because of a strange vehicle nobody knows. For the Harry Potter sets the hogwards castle builds play a much bigger role. For Star Wars it depends strongly on the ship or building if it is disirable. For Middle Earth it is a bit like this, too. Baggins end is an adorable set with a beloved location. It would also have even sold with less awesome Minifigures. On the other hand pretty much nobody asked for the Battle of the five minifigures ruins.

Wow... If the roumors are true that we get now just 12 figures per series in paper boxes and we still get such bland and boring figures (assuming that there aren´t parts missing that would improve the look of this figure at a massive scale) with only 1 new mould that abuses the cmf moulding budged to save money at other themes, this will make me boycott the product cmfs completely even if there is a good figure down the line (coming from someone who owns Series 1-20 completely).

I know and love most of them (but espcially the dwarfs) :D I am sure they would still sell well as a 1:1 rerelease today and even outstanding if they make an updated version with the new roundshield (or even an octagonal one), more beard colours (a white or blond dwarven beard would nice to get at all as well as the brown beard in a orange or black version) and maybe one new helmet. Of course I can´t speak for the international market, but when I was a child I would have done everything to get a box with standard tan bricks or at least yellow ones to build a pyramide and other things to expand my adventurer-sets. Today´s children might be less interested in building things without instructions than I was, but from what I can see there is still quite a demand. I get asked often by relatives with kids, where to get big amounts of certain colours for a reasonable price... and have no answer except flea markets or chinese fake bricks. I also hear toy shop owners ranting about the new brick boxes and how they could sell the old ones with a few basic colours while the new ones completely fail. If there are for example wall texture bricks, some plates and arches there could be some instructions for Wall designs and stuff like this, too. I don´t say every set should be like that, but if we take one terrible filler set every year and replace it with such a brick-box it would surely not be the worst Idea. To be honest I think Lotr and the Hobbit are just something completely different than a generic original lego fantasy theme: They have lots of named characters with very specific and detailed outfits and settings that are not ideal for Lego playsets. The Dwarfs need their individual beard moulds. The Rohirim are no SW-clonetrooper army. It hurts, that for example Eowyn is missing - a problem original Lego themes just don´t have, if there are just the characters they release. Helm´s deep is supposed to be ugly and while I really love the Minifigures (except for the poorly excuted berserker) the lego set is ugly bacause of that, too. So is the orc forge. Moria´s atmosphere lives 99% from the light and how big the place is. You can´t really reproduce this in a Lego set... A generic castle theme that is planned from scratch to look good as a toy does not suffer from these problems. Perfection is pretty much impossible this way, but it could still have been handeled much better. For example the Erebor set could have had a paper background like the old Studio sets to show the big cave full of gold. The box art looks awesome. The final product like a bad joke (except for the perfect Smaug). There were so many bad choices done by Lego in terms of which sceenes were made into sets, where the effort for example in terms of moulds was put in (Master of Laketown got an exclusive mould. No Thror, no Orcrist, No Sauron, No Witchking, no Narsil...)... and the worst was the price politics. Today the Uruk Hai attack looks nice next to the 501 battle pack, but back then the price of many sets the line had (Weathertop without any new moulds for 80€) were just ridiculous. So was the distribtion of minifigures. You need the whole first hobbit wave to get all 13 dwarfs and nearly all lotr-sets wave 1 to get the fellowship. To get that gorgeous Smaug you had to spend 130€ for pretty much nothing besides him. Especially Dwalins green Torso and Trans green axe were insultingly ugly (and comletely inaccurate). Azog was in 2 expensive sets... I say expensive instead of big on purpose thinking about the battle of five minifigures with Dain even reusing Gloins face print. These are the basics most people want before thinking about getting more orcs. Who has money left to start the generic bad guys army building after that even if that set then had a reasonable price point? A pack of 4 Dwarfs with toros and legs designed from the scratch to be switched with each other and still look good, different beards and helmets would give people an insane amount of good looking combinations - something you can´t do with the 2 Rohirim of which one screams "This is Eomers helmet and torso" right at your eyes.

To be honest I think a few certain battle packs would sell like sliced bread and increase brick sales. Let's imagine two Battlepacks like the koruit Erebor dwarfs and Uruks. Let's add a mountain mining adventure brick box. It should contain tons of good dark bluish gray and/or dark gray bricks and a bunch of yewel pieces from the 90s till the quite new moon Exploration ones. You could build castles with it. You could build a mountain kingdom for dwarfes. Even Star Wars Fans could buy bunkers, or spaceships with it and i am sure most would love to get crystals and stuff for a lightsaber crystal have. Children love having a big treasure cave anyways. Brick Plates like from the Hogwards Castle with minifigures using yellow heads would even be a very successfull brick box in their own. That's just one example. I could come up with many more. I think the brick sales would only break down, if Lego keeps releasing brick boxes with mostly strange moulds in colours of limited use.

Isn't there a castle roumor every year? I hope for a recolour of the viking helmet and the tournament knights sword in the ideas blacksmith. I'd love everything dwarfen we get :)

The little anubis tomb, which opens when you pull on a spear connected on a chain (5983). It had an audio tape with it. It was one of my first sets and is a big part of why I am such a history nerd today.

Oh, I can assure you, you will have a happy customer as soon as I find it there :D I am working on Simpsons moulds myself at the moment. I habe to admit it is much more difficult compared to Design custom prints ^^'