Mandalorianknight

I agree with the general sentiment that this is a very strange and poorly allocated minifigure list, but I will say a few things- Damian's skin tone varies based on the specific source, but in most of the mainline comics I've seen and the animated films, light nougat makes sense for his head color. I can understand the sentiment behind wanting Bane and Croc-especially Croc- to have unique torsos, but given how little budget the theme gets I don't begrudge them saving a bit there to use elsewhere- just that they really shouldn't have used it where they did. Did we really need to spend a new mold slot on resurrecting the Batwoman cowl? Is she that essential to this set?

The lack of any specifics or jokes, just the plain statement, ironically makes this one stand out. Exactly. If I remember right, on some lego.com UI there's a list of categories, and it's something like "buildable characters" "original trilogy" (had a picture of Anakin) "Clone Troopers" The clone bros aren't called the prequel era bros, and whether their share of the market is as much as lego seems to believe or not, it's clearly what lego's responding to. Sure, but we're not talking about people who didn't plan on buying the set at all and happened upon it on discount. We're talking about people who say they are going to wait for a sale on a set rather than full price, which objectively does deny lego that revenue. If they are seeing that sales are greater when the sets are at a lower price... yes, that's good, that's what we want, that's why people wait for those discounts.

If it has a shell but still an interior in the style of the previous ones, the interior might not be much larger at all, even without considering lego's increasing tendency to markup to absurd prices. Inflation puts the 2016 model at $670, and I could 100% see the shell, additional figures, etc being $330ish of parts My assumption is that it probably will be either that, or your idea of ~25% larger, but at the cost of only having a partial interior with the essential rooms. They do, and this is absolutely correct. If retailers have to consistently put sets on discount, even if those aren't large discounts, they're going to be less inclined to give shelf space to those products vs ones that sell more at full price. Lego's influence is not nothing, and obviously it's not like they'd just stop stocking star wars sets entirely, but reduced quantities and/or not buying some of the larger set cases is definitely possible. I suppose that makes sense, it's not really a part that screams "Star wars" if you see it in other contexts. That said, it'll be nice to hopefully get on PAB and/or in other colors to use for civilians or imperial officer variants. You're right that 40% off or more means the retailer's actively losing money on the sets, but even 20% off means something compared to full price. Making half the profit you normally would (assuming 40% is the discount retailers get from lego, but I have heard 30 bandied about) is still something a retailer would look at if more people were waiting for that discount rather than buying full price. Of course not buying the sets in general (what I plan to do with most of this year's SW sets) will have a greater impact than sales, and the larger the sale the bigger impact, but anytime you're buying a set on any% discount rather than the MSRP, the retailer isn't getting those dollars out of you, and when it happens enough times/with enough people, the retailers will start wondering if the shelf space and capital wouldn't be better spent on a product that sells more at MSRP. (Even if that's just a more reasonably priced lego set)

This is only true if the retailers just had no reaction to lego sets going on sale. If walmart keeps buying sets and having to put them on sale, they're not going to buy as many sets, which hurts lego much more than a few joes waiting for the 20% discount from lego.com. We also know for a fact from lego that this type of thing does hurt them, and that they'll take such drastic actions as temporarily ending a theme, as they did with bionicle G1. And while not technically lego, falling transformers sales caused walmart to stop stocking figures of a certain size at their stores. This is 100% a thing that retailers do, it's basic economics that if you're stocking a product that isn't selling, you stop buying as much of the product. Yes, of course. We know lego's aware of this, as well, given the decision to end bionicle G1 before sales stagnated enough to cause retailers to stop stocking them.

I don't like Carol much but this is just too much, I wouldn't wish this set on anyone. @BrickBob Studpants did a pretty good job explaining this, but I'll add that it's three movies in a decade, not a very common occurance. We'll have to see when the marketing kicks in, but it seems like punisher's going to be a pretty major role, and he clearly isn't going to be kept as a spoiler character. I think there's a pretty solid chance.

If it's a big enough role I think it's possible. I don't think lego goes out of their way, but I'd be a bit surprised if they managed to leave out the iron man/nick fury/doctor strange of the next spider-man in Punisher. Whatever else is going on in the MCU, they know spidey brings in money, and I'm sure it'll get multiple sets.

Especially given that we know January won't consist of much, and they currently have ... 2 superman minifigures to pull, either this set is going to have like 12 people max (half of them civilians made of re-used parts) or the bat-family and their rogues will be visiting. Actually, you know what, there's a nonzero chance the aslume jumpsuit shows up, which would be incredible. I think that makes sense, they do love to use that color for clayface.

No, there is absolutely a hard line on making sets/figures for TV-MA/R content. Punisher's 2021 figure was not based on Jon Bernthal, but rather the classic comics. Notably daredevil received a figure in the same set- and again, based on the classic comics rather than the netflix series. Lego was essentially duped into making an Echo figure- they'd already made the CMF by the time the rating changed, there was nothing they could do. There is zero chance lego is going to drop a CMF series with Born Again based minifigures. Now, there might be some crossover- I'm hoping the SM4 sets will include our first Bernisher, and if Daredevil shows up in more TV-14/PG-13 content he'll have a chance too, but there is zero chance they make a product based on the TV-MA series.

Sam (was falcon, now captain america) has been mentioned in a few movies to be putting together an avengers team. The actual recruiting for said team happens entirely offscreen, we have not yet seen him interact with any new heroes besides his sidekick Yapper Falcon, and not a single movie has said who'd be on said team (besides maybe the other falcon? They might have said so in Sam's movie I don't remember). Some concept art and plot leaks have revealed that he will have built his team in doomsday, and aside from grabbing Thor and half the thunderbolts, it's all the least-liked heroes of the post-endgame movies. I think it would be funny if they continued the tradition they've built in these last two phases and simply have the team form entirely offscreen and show up out of nowhere, fully formed with no context. Alas, they have not. I do. I have no idea how, if you asked me I wouldn't be able to articulate it, but I totally do. DETECTIVE CHIMP UCS STATUE. DETECTIVE CHIMP UCS STATUE. DETECTIVE CHIMP UCS STATUE Yeah I dunno Arkham's Arkham I guess. It's better than my "they'll have somehow removed all the minifigures before final release" expectations. Compared to the state of the theme it's great, but if we'd gotten this back when we got sets I can't help but think it'd have been on the weaker side. There's a lot of strange figure choices, budget allotments, and the like. The build is nice but feels weirdly sterile for how i'd expect arkham to look. It's too clean, not that it's a difficult mod to change that. Ultimately it's a solid B tier set, but it could easily have been a slam dunk, and I'm confused as to why they made some of the choices they did.

Sure is! Very happy to see $10 sets making their return. Ideally, the parts from the 2014 set's landspeeder and the cost going into the molded dewback would be used to make this one significantly larger since it doesn't have any side builds, but you never know with their current pricing I guess. We'll follow up with ESB. I'm also going to add in a mech, since we seem to be getting one of those every year: Wampa Attack ($9.99): Small wampa cave and brick-built wampa with Luke Skywalker (Hoth) and a function for luke to "force pull" his lightsaber out of the snow. Millennium Falcon Microfighter ($12.99): Lando Calrissian (blue cape) Chewbacca Mech ($14.99): Chewbacca. Comes with a large bowcaster build and a bandolier using the spider-man web piece in black with 1x1 grey clips on all the bars. Hoth Battle Pack ($19.99): Comes with an E-web, probe droid, and a DF9 turret. Includes 2 snowtroopers and 2 hoth rebel troopers. The Dark Side Cave ($29.99): Dark side cave build with Yoda, Luke Skywalker (training), R2-D2, and Darth Vader (Luke's head underneath) Carbon Freezing Chamber ($39.99): Carbon Freezing Chamber with Boba Fett, Han Solo (white shirt), Princess Leia (bespin) and a stormtrooper. Snowspeeder Flyby ($59.99): Snowspeeder (using the new cockpit and pieces, but without the larger bottom hull and speeder) alongside a small trench with a P-tower, as well as an MTV-7 trench killer. Comes with1x imperial officer (colonel Stark), 1x snow scout, 1x snowtrooper, 2x Snowspeeder Pilots (Hobbie and Wedge), and a Hoth rebel trooper. TIE Shuttle ($89.99): Larger than the most recent bomber, comes with 2x Stormtrooper, Captain Needa, 1x TIE pilot, Bossk, and Zuckuss. Slave One ($139.99): Only slightly smaller than the 2019 version, but with more usable interior. Comes with Boba Fett, 1x Wing Guard, 1x ugnaught, Lobot, Lando, Princess Leia (Bespin), and Chewbacca (new mold with studs on the back to hold a small backpack printed with C-3PO parts and a bracket that 3PO's head is placed on.) AT-AT ($179.99): Our largest yet, with a two-level interior . Includes another brick-built tauntaun like in the snowspeeder flyby set. Comes with Luke Skywalker (pilot), Hoth Han Solo, a Hoth Rebel Trooper (based on Sargent Namir from Twilight Company), General Veers, a Snowtrooper Commander, and 2x snowtrooper. Also includes a new molded Vader Hologram piece. MBS: Echo Base ($349.99): Let's do it properly this time. Accurately shaped and larger ion cannon and 4-ring shield generator form two side builds, with the bulk of the build focused on the base itself. There is, of course, a massive gate that can fit a snowspeeder within it and has an opening feature. Some of the included rooms are a hoth corridor, the command center, the medical bay, and a tauntaun corral. Also includes a small midi-scale falcon (~350 pieces, a bit chibi, fits one figure in the cockpit and a few more in the main hull, which only opens in the center), two brick-built tauntauns, and a probe droid. Comes with Han Solo (hoth), Chewbacca, Princess Leia (Hoth), Luke Skywalker (bacta tank), Wes Janson, Dak Ralter, Major Derlin, K-3PO, R-3PO, C-3PO, R2-D2, 2-1B, Toyan Farr, General Rieekan, Pharl Mcquarrie, Rebel Trooper (Tigran Jamero), Rebel Trooper (Reye Hollis), Rebel Trooper (Cal Alder), Darth Vader, 2x Snowtrooper,

Your argument is "people dislike him because they're lego shills", and when asked to support that, saying "they're shills because they dislike him but he's great." There's literally no way to argue the point if going off of your premise that he's objectively great and there's no reason to dislike him. It's not a bait argument to ask you to back up the claim that the only reason people would dislike a youtuber or his content is that they're company shills. I'll tell you why I dislike him, as an example, since you can look back at literally all of my past posts and see that I am in no way bought by lego, as I very frequently criticize what sets they make, the quality of those sets, and especially the outrageous prices.. MandR infamously started and heavily encouraged children (Let's be clear- for everyone but Jang, who's hopelessly scattered and intertwined his channels to achieve this, the audience is primarily children. It's why people like Ashnflash are so "enthusiastic" and seem like they're putting on a persona, it's because they know who's mainly watching their stuff and they want to be a positive role model.) to relentlessly spam lego's social media for a specific set he wanted made. He was a major part of the "lego hates the prequels" charade, until it became literally impossible to even get children to believe it. He's had more influence on what sets lego makes than pretty much any other person on the planet outside the company, and yet he complains more than anyone else I've ever seen about pretty much everything lego does. And yet, for how relentlessly he bemoans helmet holes or what have you, he's still (to my knowledge- maybe it's changed recently and if so I'd concede this particular point) part of the buy-a-billion-clones-and-stick-them-on-grey-baseplates gang. He also uses the sporadic CAPITAL LETTERS?!?! EXLAMATION! QUESTION? EMOTIVE FACE IN THUMBNAIL? style of titles/thumbnails pretty frequently, which is clickbaity and something I find immature, but not something I would really put against him specifically much given how many people do that on youtube. I know this is off topic, but I wasn't gonna sit by for "The only possible reason people could dislike a public person is because they're shills for a group I dislike"

They wouldn't put born again characters in the CMF since it's very M-rated. Honestly with the lowering of disney+ content (and I believe correspondingly low performance of the shows that have come out since), I wouldn't expect another disney+ cmf. I've seen a lot of people say a Doomsday one is likely given how many characters it'll need to include, which I think is very possible, but personally I'm hoping they do classic marvel. I've been over this before, but it would be nice to get all the classic versions of the main avengers.

Exactly. Hero vehicles sell better than villain ones. This is what the marketing research found, so better or worse, it's what we get. I agree, I think a classic kirby red torch with the black vertical lines for a face would look awesome. Top tier post, this is my most-anticipated set of the year so far and the only one I'm 100% buying at full price. No, no, no... one fig. It's literally just a minifig thanos looking around at all the portals. I understand that the hero vehicles sell well even if they don't make sense, but this is two spider-man cars in three years. We don't need this. Daredevil, Moon Knight, Kaine, Luna Snow. If I say it enough, whatever algorithm is producing lego sets now will pick up on it. We know the designers have been on this forum.

Arguably we had more set-friendly DC content this year with the superman movie, which while I personally don't like what I've seen of, definitely had plenty of set potential. Yeah from what I've been seeing they need 600-700 mil at the box office to turn a profit, which doesn't seem like a guarantee, especially given whatever's going on with the non-US box office. I've lost all hope for slopsday being good and at this point, this is what I'm hoping for in the movie: 1. It's morbius level content, just absolutely painstakingly terrible (you know what? let's actually give the morbster a cameo), and everyone except the thunderbolts is just awful. 2. The "invincible avengers" team that's supposedly being put together is A: put together entirely offscreen to culminate the lack of setup for sam's samvengers, and B: evolves from just generally uninteresting to so outrageously unlikeable that people actively root for Doom. 3 (and this is the most important). Yelena and Ava apologize for bullying John into switching out his hat for that stupid beret and he puts his old helmet back on. (This isn't a meme, I legitimately hate the beret and now even if we get the thunderbolts in doomsday sets, John won't be accurate to Thunderbolts, which is the best non-nostalgia marvel movie since infinity war.)

I would argue that even from theory it's a rough year simply from the lack of variety. In theory it was a good year for clone fans, though in execution it fails. But for anyone wanting pretty much anything else, it's a rough year. Again, this is the first year time either in 25 years or EVER that we haven't had an OT imperial trooper in a single standard retail set. Obviously any sequel fans who want standard sets continue to drown. Mando actually's had a rough year as well, which is surprising, he had what, only the 4+ set? And of course you gotta shout out the prequel fans who just want stuff besides clones. But it's not even just the clone frenzy that's the issue. This year has, I think, the worst ratio of 18+ to standard retail sets the theme's ever had. I know we have a lot of location playset fans out there, and I don't think we got a single location retail set this year, which isn't super uncommon but is something to note. Basically, if you aren't gobbling up any clone that appears or someone filling their shelves with buildable statues, this is a rough year from concept alone. Totally agree. Helmet holes are a major upgrade for clone trooper figures, they've made them a lot more customizable. I love being able to give them rangefinders, visors, and even stuff that doesn't *technically* fit like motorcycle visors for flash visors, or goggles. The dogma-like thing is also an excellent point. It's the new talking point that's going to be rattled on for eternity because even the children watching can't be conned into thinking that lego hates the prequel era anymore. I don't think this is accurate at all. The most popular lego youtuber I'm aware of outside the clone bros is Jangbricks, and, I mean... c'mon. Unlike most lego youtubers, he doesn't receive sets free from lego. He buys everything himself, he's ruthlessly critical when necessary, he relentlessly criticizes lego for both actual set issues like the prices, smaller things like characters not having both helmets and hair in situations where it makes sense, and even stuff like the lifestyle photos being taken in a concrete bunker. He's probably the most critical one out there, though I'm not sure how exactly you'd quantify that. Even the other youtubers I've seen who get sets from lego, like Ashnflash and Duckbricks, absolutely criticize lego when they think something is overpriced or poorly done. They're just, like jangbricks, able to do so in a mature and measured way. You know this isn't true. This is a cheap statement that attempts to discount any criticism of MandR with the old "everyone who doesn't like my guy is a corporate shill" argument, which, again, you know is not accurate. Who here hasn't criticized lego and also dislikes MandR? Do you have any examples? Looks like this year's walmart gift set is the 2024 clone super pack, the ambush on mandalore pack, and the Rex microfighter, which is also quite rough if they're sticking with the $50 price point, as last year's pack was $85 value for $50. (Loved that one, I was tempted to buy two, great part/figure pack.) The way it is now, with the discounts on all three of those readily availible, you're losing money by buying the bundle.

Huge! That has to be why GR is coming back, and will be super, super useful for a certain flaming man... one who very famously recently did NOT receive a flamed-on minifigure... Jim Hammond, of course

The technic beams are distributing the forces applied to them onto the wheels, due to, as you mention, the head sagging and pushing the wheels together (ang against the technic beams). They also restrict the motion of the head- if it was just the beams, at least in the UCS model, the head would sag a lot more and the beams would likely snap. Looking at your model, I think a similar thing to the UCS model would happen wherein the wheels will support those beams.

Don't forget that it snaps like a house of cards if you hold it wrong. Depends on how old your kids are and whether or not they'd be happy to rebuild it, but that could be a recipe for a very upset child.

Very nicely made- I'm sitting by my UCS AT-AT right now, so I'd keep looking between the two while going through the images. While they're about the same scale you definitely have some major changes to the detailing and skeleton. As for the next, I can't tell for sure. my immediate thought in that last image was that the technic bars would snap like twigs, but with the wheels to support I think it's about the same as the UCS one. It'll droop, but I don't think it'll snap off. If i were you, I'd buy the parts and check manually to make sure. (Not the entire AT-AT- just the neck and attachment points. The body is heavy enough that you can treat it as a fixed support, and then you can just use a weight in the right spot instead of manually building the whole head.)

Oh yeah- the engine block was originally made when this was going to be more of a corvette-sized ship in-universe rather than a falcon-sized freighter, and then I found those 2x2 tiles with printed jets when looking in my printed tiles ziploc for some dials/consoles for the cockpit. This thing can ZOOM. Thank you! It is totally my fault I didn't get to enter it, just had the wrong date written down. Thank you! The functions were a lot of fun, my eventual goal is to design full-on transforming craft at this scale, so this was a nice warm-up in that regard. The minifigures are always fun to do for these, incorporating any new parts I've picked up over the last year And of course the lore is another one of my favorite parts to do for the contests. I may be surpassed in build quality, photo quality, part usage, etc, but I can confidently say no entries have beaten me in total volume of lore created. Thank you!

Don't people say the standard development time is 1.5 years? Even No Way Home didn't get it's spoiler set until 1.5 years after release, and that movie made about three times as much as even some of the more optimistic projections for superman. I'd say it won't be until 2027 where we'd be able to tell whether or not lego was changing course. (And of course not with a superman movie wave unless the box office magically swells to $1.5 bil or something, just, like, an actual wave in which at least a few of the sets include heroes besides batman and his family.)

Still can't get over how they trolled us with the mech this year including the white spider logo on the mech... but not the minifig

Incredible that we're getting the legend. Now we just need wolverized Venomarine. There's got to be a ghost rider fan on the designer team, I'm not complaining. If only they were also a fan of Moon Knight, Daredevil, Kaine, and Luna Snow. I've been advocating ironically for this for YEARS. I may actually buy the set, or at least the figure, this is almost on the level of the miles vs morbmobile set. When we get Venomized Coryo in 2099, you're going to... not eat your words because we still won't have had a wide release symbiote spidey. Yeah I mean this is pretty standard for marvel januaries, glad to see a cheap set with an interesting hero. I've been needing a ghost rider for my midnight sons display, and I'm glad I don't have to shell out for him anymore.

Sounds like I need to visit target this weekend, I've been waiting for something like that on the Paz battle. It really is- not that lego star wars is ever going to get to quite this level, but the larger transformers figures started going on clearance, and it got bad enough that walmart no longer stocks anything leader-class ($55) or above. To more directly tie it to lego this is why bionicle was cancelled the first time around- they were hitting enough sales that they knew if they kept pumping them out retailers would stop stocking them. Odd- it's a good set, though definitely overpriced, I hope you're able to find it somewhere (or given these US prices on it, just buy one on ebay. The shipping might be worth it with how discounted they're getting.) I honestly haven't been looking much. If it's not there when I browse walmart and target every few weeks, I don't see it. I'm not yet at the point of actively hunting it down. The precursor to the 327th pack. It absolutely will. It could be the action battle AT-AT and it'd still look like better value than the turbo tank.

True, but they were all (except for the sarlacc+skiff, but that's a grey area in being considered a location playset) under $55, whereas these are $70 and $100. Plus, unfortunately some of them don't seem to be doing too well- for one, Peridea's been hitting $25 around me pretty consistently (I'm resisting the urge to army build Thrawns and sell off the rest to recoup my losses) That's tough- I haven't bought a single 2025 star wars set. The only one that I'll probably end up with is the night trooper pack, and I refuse to spend $23, so I don't know if I'll get it this year. Reminds me of the time they tried to pull a fast one and price the first 332nd battle pack (my head actively physically hurts writing that) at $27. You know they're just waiting for the chance to jump the battle pack price up further. This is absolutely true, but also absolutely something I could see lego doing.