Mandalorianknight

I get that, but at the same time wouldn't it be considered more of a waste if you kept collecting something you didn't want to collect? Sort of a Sunken Cost Fallacy issue. The good news is that legos keep their value extremely well, and you could recoup a pretty big chunk of the original cost put in by selling off the collection you no longer want. It won't be (my guess is it's a Venom bust, maybe Hulk or Groot?) BUT how awesome would a Magneto bust be? You could have his actual face obscured by shadow with just white eyes showing like a lot of his aura farming panels do. This remains the most interesting one to me, just because of how far ahead of the other doomsday sets it is. Exactly. There's no obligation to pour X amount of money into legos every year.

I've never been into the games, but they seem enjoyable. I am surprised they cancelled Sands of Time with how well-known of a franchise it is. A last airbender set would be pretty cool. I know Avatar notoriously struggles with spinoffs and adaptions, but they at least keep the IP in the public consciousness, and the combination of that and how beloved the OG show is would definitely let an Appa set sell well. I had failed to consider video games- I would love some Smash Bros content, though it's sort of an amalgam of other IPs, many of which have started to show up in lego form (though somehow only Zelda at figure scale). I'm not huge into video games, but many of my favorites are part of IPs we have sets for and yet little to no coverage for the game itself, which I guess is part of more what I think about with dream themes at this point- dream subthemes. Jedi: Fallen Order/Survivor: We got one statue and a minifigure in an unrelated set, but between the Stinger Mantis ship, tombs and other iconic locations, and all the giant creatures, it would make an awesome subtheme. Not to mention all Cal's ponchos where you could get unique, desirable minifigures just by swapping out the pattern on a piece of cloth. Marvel Rivals: PLEASE, lego, you give me Rivals waves and I'd never ask for anything again. This is the only game I've played multiplayer on in years. It's got some of the best designs most of these heroes have ever had, and it has so much set material between the convoy vehicles and some of the more iconic locations. It even has a prime option for the buildable characters lego loves with Jeff the Land Shark. You could fill endless CMFs with all the characters and skins, and sets at varying price points with all the vehicles and temples. You've even got a giant mech with the Vampbuster suit. Moon Knight: The two MCU minifigures we've had- much like the show itself- aren't bad, but really aren't who Moon Knight is in the comics. MK himself would be great for sets, as in the modern era he consistently runs with two outfits simultaneously, has a fun group of supporting characters (Former avenger Tigra, vampire receptionist Reece, essentially his own henchman/goon in Soldier, his spiritual brother Hunter's Moon, and so-bad-at-being-a-villain-he-gave-up-and-joined-the-good-guys 8-ball), and unlike many marvel heroes, he actually owns stylized cars, jets, and planes. And not even just sci-fi VTOLs like his newer mooncopters- MK used to run with a stock white helicopter called the Mooncopter, and as recently as a few years ago drove the Moonmobile, which would fit right in at that $25-35 superhero car set slot. The Justice League: There's this little known group from a small indie company called Detective Comics. Lego technically owns this license for their small Batman line, and so the door is open to making sets based on these really obscure but fun heroes like "Wonder Woman", "The Flash", or "Green Lantern".

It was absurd that Jessica and Scarlet Spider both got snubbed, but we got werewolf and sun-spider. At least the spider-cyborg seems to have been intended to have more of a role in the movie at one point (Though given the series released two years later, I guess that excuse doesn't really work.) I bet he'll be a sandwich board like the Ewoks.

P stands for Prince of Persia. A returning franchise AND video game related. (Obviously not- I assume, maybe there's a new game coming or something, but it's funny how well that lines up) As I've said here before I've been lucky to get almost every IP I love in lego form- even Dune somehow. (At least, all of them that can get sets- I understand we'll never get Lego JJK or Invincible and respect that). The one thing I really want that we don't yet have is for Transformers to escape Icons and become a full theme.

Aw, man, I totally had it in my head that "big bad wolf" referred to Death. I was planning on getting him and Puss In Boots together for a diorama, but now I'm not sure I'll get any of these figures- I don't have much of a connection to Shrek, and while I loved The Last Wish, the only physical recreation of it I'd want to make is the final battle between Puss and Death. That said, taking away my personal thoughts on it, it's objectively a perfect choice for a CMF and is going to sell like hotcakes. A TON of millenials and Gen Z will be buying these trying to get Shrek himself.

You're never going to make everyone happy with GWPs, but what I would go with is something that, while not including any exclusive elements, does provide an addition (though not an essential one) to the set/sets it comes with. In Gondor's case, a mini Grond with some re-used Barad-Dur Orcs, or a Gondor Soldiers Battle Pack would both be excellent choices. That way you get something that feels worth buying the set day 1, but at the same time dedicated collectors can bricklink or PAB the parts separately if they missed out.

You gotta use the bat-credit-card. Impossible to max out. The joke does illustrate the issue LEGO runs into though. If they're only making batmobiles, and if the batmobiles do poorly, is that because people want wider DC stuff, or because even batmobiles don't sell anymore? Conversely, if they're a smash-hit, does it mean people want more batmobiles, or that they want more DC in general? Unfortunately as much as we want to say LEGO should make wider DC/Justice League sets, kids just don't know or like the characters that much. The reason the 18+ sets generally have that same issue is, I would guess, a lot of the adult market is the guys who would, for example, get scared off if there were minifigures in the midi-scale star wars ships. I'm sure their research has found that there's a lot of adults who will buy the UCS batmobiles but think DC stuff besides Movie Batman is dorky or whatever. Hopefully Arkham does well and we can start to branch out again. Thanks, I'll check it out.

For Lord of the Rings specifically I understand this, because the sets are all ~$500, but for most themes, would you not simply take whatever budget you planned on using for the old theme and transfer it to the new one?

I can't speak for everyone, but I don't really collect many of the DC offerings. I bought the 2021 Tumbler and some of the polybags and that's about it for this modern all-batman era. I would love it if lego would branch out into more heroes again- as of now I only have some batmen and robins, the 2014 Flash and the 2013 Soup- but as-is, I'm fine with my batman and batmobile and don't see the need to collect too many other batmen and batmobiles with my limited budget and space. I may pick up the BvSmobile to mod into the Snydercutmobile because while I don't like BvS much, I'm apparently whatever the limited target audience was for the snyder cut (despite only being vaguely aware of it before the trailer) and would like a representation of that film -the best job any live-action DC has done at conveying that sort of new-mythological comic book event feeling-, but in general I'm just not looking to collect every batmobile. And since batmobiles are about all we get, it means I don't really collect much of the DC universe. For people who do, I suspect there's almost an element of the limited offerings being more of an impetus to purchase the few things we do get- I'm sure there's many people who, if the coming 3 batmobiles and logo released alongside a wave of justice league stuff, would choose the justice league stuff. But since these 4 sets may well be the only options for the year, there are probably a number of DC fans out there who consider something better than nothing and pick them up.

I thought it was $1000. For $650 that's an amazing deal for 8000 pieces and the LOTR license. This may supplant Rivendell for me as the one that I buy.

Absolutely amazing. The Hall of Kings looks like a MOC in the best way possible.

It's just a remake of the 2023 walmart combo pack, except they've removed the jokers so it's just the 1989 batmobile, batwing, and a little gargoyle with three identical batman minifigures.

That checks out- I couldn't remember hearing anything but like I said it makes sense that it would have. I didn't remember the disney calendar but if anything that would amplify the point- there are just enough of these out there at this point that doing one for every theme becomes self-defeating. I doubt lego views it specifically as a "marvel or minecraft" spot, but I would assume they do have limited slots and as such can't make a calendar for every theme. I think we have a pretty good chance- while an 18+ set, he has shown up before, and now he's going to be a major character in a PG-13 movie.

Good move to keep quiet if unsure, but yeah, the trades reported on him back in august. He and Punisher are in the camp of being safe to discuss, I think a few of the villains as well but I don't want to namedrop them outside spoilers in case they aren't. Then you've got some of the leaked villains and heroes who haven't been officially reported on, and then stuff like Sadie Sink's character where as far as I know we STILL don't have a reliable leak on who she is. Sets normally take about a year and a half before release to develop (I would hope the ACs take less, but even if we say it was like 10-11 months, they still wouldn't have too much sales data to go off as I assume the ACs get the most sales in late november/early december), so I doubt they had minecraft sales data when they decided to go with marvel this year- for that same reason I'm not sure the 2024 one underperforming (did it underperform? I imagine it would have- it wasn't the most inspired- but I don't remember hearing much in that respect) would have impacted the decision to swap to minecraft in 2025. As for why they have to share a slot, I assume that's shelf space and self-competition. They already do City/Friends/Star Wars and more recently Harry Potter every year. I would imagine having six on shelves at the same time might be pushing it a little, especially when it's multiples of the licensed action themes. (Which, as a side point, why do we not have a Ninjago AC over these licensed ones? Lego would assumably save some money, I can't imagine it would do poorly, etc. It's not like Christmas needs to be canon to the universe given we have the star wars one.)

Is there a second bigfig character rumored? Lego typically doesn't look at a single minifig's desirability and go "yeah, that's enough to bump the price up $20". I assume the $60 set just includes Hulk, but I have no idea what's going on with the $90 one. That's some hoopty-level stuff. My pipe dream is that it is a final battle set that's a sort of mega battle pack featuring like 14 minifigures (Let's say: but realistically this is just a Hoopty situation but with a character who might be popular enough to pull it off.