Mandalorianknight

This is such a stupid end for the theme. Look- it's not a bad set. $100 doesn't even seem like an awful price- not great, but not awful. The real issue is why this set is being made at all- sure, it doesn't look bad, but why is this the singular set we're getting? A mini-UCS from one of the worst received Batman projects? We've landed in batman fully become a theme aimed at adults- I'm telling you, it's not long before this gets thrown into Icons. And they're not even choosing the popular movies anymore. It's only a matter of time before we have an official Bat-nipple suit and BvS Murder Batmobile.

Official Brickbob Studpants requested lego set. The AC is... interesting. Not sure how to feel about it. On the one hand- new mold in an AC, and I'm counting 4-5 new prints? And a character with Arm Printing? More than the norm. On the other hand.... two minifigures and a microfig? In an AC? That's absurdly low. The harry potter one has eight. EIGHT. And it's not like the repeats are why- most of the calendar figs are repeats anyway. Very double-edged sword- a new mold, but at the expense of the vast majority of the figure count. our first Jawa in what, 7 years? But it's got the sweater so it's not usable as a normal one. (This is a me problem, I just have an affinity for the Jawas) Also- why is this where the sequel presence is coming in? No Kylo or Poe minifigures in half a decade, but god forbid the public is deprived of Babu Frik and a recolored BB unit. (Happy Frik is out there now, of course, but still a weird choice. I wonder if we're getting Anzellens in TMAG sets next year and they moved one up to use for the AC.)

I mean, it made more money than any other R-rated movie, and it was pretty well received with both the general audience and fans of the franchise. You personally may not like it, but that doesn't mean the director's bad. By pretty much any objective metric he delivered a good movie- it made a crapload of money and most people who saw it really enjoyed it. It's not a godfather-level masterclass in storytelling or something, but not everything has to be the godfather. Star wars has never been the godfather. Levy has delivered extremely successful and entertaining popcorn movies before, I see no reason why him being hired would be an issue. Especially when most of the other directors Lucasfilm's hired created bombs or extremely divided-reception movies and then had their projects quietly cut. Yeah- I personally still think they should just be doing small $15 sets, but if they have some sales data showing that the mechs do better than those, and it gets kids interested in star wars, fine, more power to them. Phew- glad there won't be an issue with that. The visual of Boss Nass emerging from a bunker just feels menacing to me. He hasn't canonically died- maybe he's been hiding out all this time, waiting for the other sith to be killed.

No, it was my discovery, my home, and they just expected me to throw it away? I think the difference is most of those themes are massive nintendo IPs. The Jedi games sell very well, but stuff like Mario and Pokemon are juggernauts, and they're also very family-friendly, colorful, in line with lego's image. (No idea what's been happening with that horizon-lego crossover so I can't speak on that, and I don't think the aslume set will be based on the games.) Lego claimed the latter was the issue with the jedi games- they're too "adult" to get sets (which.... absolutely BS. Even if lego didn't know about the edgier stuff in Andor S2, there's no way they're considering the Jedi games more mature than that, or even something like ROTS or Rogue One.), but I think it's pretty clear the real issue is the former. They just didn't think the Jedi series was going to be popular enough to warrant sets. That said, both games sold very well, so I do think you're right that a Mantis could be coming for the third game- not necessarily because lego is doing more game stuff, but because it's proven it's popular. Too soon. I mean look, however much anyone liked the show, objectively speaking given the overall reception it was a good move on lego's part. The show was aimed more at adults and had it's second season cancelled- it's not much of a leap in logic to predict how the sets would have sold. I didn't realize who you were talking about first and was getting ready to defend the Rory Mccann casting I think the majority of adults feel that way, me included. I thought the X-wing mech was the best one as it wasn't just a reverse funko pop and actually mech-like rather than an extension to the character's body, but at the same time I didn't like it enough to buy it. If there's a figure that I feel makes the $18 parts pack worth it, I'd get the mech, but otherwise not. Deadpool and Wolverine. I'm not talking about the character, you know that. Had they released a TIE Silencer with Kylo and Rey I think it would have had more of a chance. This is like if in 2020 they said (not that prequel sets ever left) "we're going to explore the potential for clone sets", and then released an extremely simple midi-scale Nu class shuttle along with a Rex helmet that had all of the blue details and the visor stickered on. It's setting them up for failure. I don't know if sequel sets would do all that well, but I think they at least deserved a real chance with a minifig set, especially since the demo most likely to be interested is kids. Whatever your opinion on them- and remember, I despise TLJ and don't think TROS was all that good either- it's not Acolyte or Tales or a random episode of visions. It's a literal third of the skywalker saga and it's weird that we haven't had a big chunk of the core characters availible for over half a decade. I didn't realize they hadn't all been revealed yet- as funny as it is, Duckbricks works closely with Lego, I hope he doesn't get in trouble with them over this- I like his designer interviews That last sentence is extremely ominous. I knew Boss Nass was the Sith Lord all along.

I get the joke, but this is just another issue I have with the RDDoom casting. Doom's mask is supposed to be literally grafted to his face, but we all know RDDoom's gonna spend half the film with that thing off. I can't imagine marvel would send down an edict like that- wouldn't they want the more visually interesting versions of the characters availible? Also from a lego perspective, what kid is more excited to play with a flame-off Johnny Storm than Human Torch? If they just did a single 6-pack of them next year as an Icons set I think it'd do fairly well. The big issue is the masks, but I think at construction figure scale you could come up with reasonable brick-built/partially printed facsimiles

Excellent Analysis- let me know what you end up doing for the flamed-on torch as I'll use that. Currently I'm thinking the Infearno fire "hair" with a normal pumpkin head to get those Kirby vertical face lines, but not sure about the torso and legs. Probably a Kai out there somewhere that works. The multiverse is a concept about which we know frighteningly little. If RDJ had the same facial hair rules as Pedro, they'd do it. I'd be interested to see how it looks- wouldn't save the figure for me since he should be flamed on, but it'd be something.

Apologies, my comment was a joke as well, sorry if it came across as serious. I wouldn't mind Pre-Mor multiples either, just to stuff a couple more in the Andor gunship, but I agree it's not happening. I believe it just started filming, the director headed out right after celebration a week or two ago. It'll follow on from those to a film presumably also featuring night troopers- we know the second season is next year, so the set will 100% still be on shelves by then. What it comes down to is whether or not little kids who saw the movies are going to be attached to the characters. Right now, most people online who saw the movies did so when they were old enough to be exposed to the internet's opinions. Little Jimmy and Jessica who's parents showed them the saga on disney+ five years ago, and who are going to eventually go online with a love for those movies already set, are going to start influencing the public opinion and, more importantly, buying the sets. I don't disagree on that- the 33/33/33 strategy I've been extolling here includes the sequels alongside mando and many of the other spinoffs as that last 33% of sets rather than the other two trilogies, which generally get thirds to themselves- but I do think it's fair to say that kids deserve having generic Rey/Kylo/Finn/Poe/BB-8 figures on shelves as much as adults deserve Shmi or Boss Nass- because I promise you, there are zero children out there looking for Shmi Skywalker minifigs (Boss Nass might have some support among kids- I wouldn't say much since he's not the most well known and a noncombatant, but he does look and talk funny). I've heard about that- it used to be pretty consistent for star wars. Even the first novelization came out before the movie. And Marvel's ROTJ adaption was pulled from shelves for being released before the film as well. Ha! I like the alliteration. Regardless of what you think the perceived demand is, I think we can all agree the two sets they chose are possibly the worst way to go about it.

I still have to finish this arc- in my defense I've been busy, but still, it's not really Andor's fault, I've just been burned out by disney. Putting Andor S2 literally a week after a show that was also following on from a critically acclaimed series commonly seen as the best in it's franchise, but in it's case ended up completely dropping the ball, doesn't help. Definitely use it for the bugle if you win- that might be the best marvel set ever made. Actually, no- it is unequivocally the best marvel set ever made and perfectly encapsulates what the theme should be. I'd get two U-wings to make a big one, and since it's lego's money I'd be spending, an absurd amount of Night Trooper BPs and give away a ton of Nightdeath troopers. The laatle is my version of the Coruscant Lamppost from the Kelleran Beq set. I should write the designer a fan letter. That's a good way of putting it. I'm not sure how I'd put it for me. In terms of money spent- definitely a lego fan over star wars. Aside from a disney+ subscription I still mooch from my parents and the occasional movie ticket or secondhand novel, I don't buy much star wars merch that isn't lego, but lego used to comprise 90% of my nonessential, non-saved income. The percentage has gone down as they don't produce as many sets I want and space fills up, but it's still the lion's share of the merch money I spend. And I spend a lot of time designing my own sets. But on the other hand, I'm into lego purely as a product and as a designing method, not as a story product. Almost all of my lego purchases are for licensed themes. I have some affinity for stuff like Classic Space, but the only lego story I ever cared about was bionicle, and I wouldn't at all be disappointed if bionicle was instead a separate IP that lego just adapted into sets. 5 figs in the set would have been really nice, and I would have gotten a financially irresponsible amount even at $23 if it had 4 night troopers and a death trooper in one copy of the set. I'd have a swarm of laatles. I've made my opinion on Acolyte and how lego did some Neo-level bullet dodging clear, but in 2029 I wouldn't at all mind a Master Sol figure being one of the anniversary ones (alongside Mara Jade, of course). He looks cool, I didn't mind him much, and importantly, he's a good way to get generic HR robes out there. (That said, to that latter point I think I'd prefer Dagan Gera) You can't give Tanalor! It's Mine!

I get that it's not the same situation but it is funny to see what is, essentially, the argument that night troopers are too obscure to deserve their set, immediately followed by requesting more Pre-Mor security. The thing about the night troopers is they've been set up to be a major part of the mandoverse era- we know they'll be back for Ahsoka S2, and likely feature in the Filoni movie as well. Right now they're only in one show, but they'll be a major force to be reckoned with. Now that's not to say we shouldn't ALSO be getting a BP with normal death troopers soon- some mix of stormies, death troopers, and shoretroopers would be awesome- just that the night troopers definitely deserve their spot as a battle pack. Thanks for letting us know! They really bury the lead with this one- my first thought was "this is kind of an odd assortment for a giveaway", but no, it comes with a $500 gift card for more sets. Goes from relatively uninteresting to free august wave in a second.

It can always be worse- the sets we go get still have a budget for the figures, unlike marvel. And we still get more than like 3 sets a year, unlike DC. They're trying to capture- at this point- essentially a plurality adult market, but at the same time squeezing to a lower and lower quality and PPP- the aforementioned Kylo's shuttle, for example. We're also reaching a point where stuff just stops feeling like it captures the spirit of lego whatsoever- almost all the detail on the Kylo Helmet beyond the basic shape is represented by stickers/prints. It's essentially a blob that they drew Kylo Ren's face on with a sharpie. And they consistently learn the wrong lessons from sales data- with the kylo sets, for example, I'm sure they're going to come to the conclusion that the issue is they're sequel sets. And however well you think sequel sets in general would do now, I think everyone can admit this is not a fair shot for the era.

Lego makes sets that generally mainly adults would be interested in, but not one that maturity wise are only for adults. Jaws was PG- definitely stretching the limits of what could be considered PG, but PG nontheless, and now viewed as sort of a classic. I think if it came out today, we probably wouldn't have gotten a set for it. I assume you're just saying you think kids wouldn't be as interested in the Eiffel tower because I'm struggling to think of a way in which it's content unsuitable for children. At the end of the day, while it isn't TV-MA and therefore seems like under lego's rules it's still technically able to get a set, I just don't see lego going out of their way to do so now that the edginess/maturity of Andor has gone up a notch when there's so much content around these days to cover. The avenger isn't the most well known tie and will fade from sight once Andor's done- why would they go out of their way to make it despite Andor's content when we've never had a Reaper, or it's been 15 years since the last defender? Yeah I'd hope bringing the mold back means they have a plan to bring the standard DTs back. They're forgetting that they're a toy brand, and that most lego star wars fans are here for lego star wars sets, not legoized versions of other star wars merchandise.

Honestly, I do think the white arms would help here, at least to disguise the fact that they all use the same torso print. They're definitely some sort of Azure, I'm not sure which shade exactly. And a Paul Rudd minifig, and a Joseph Quinn minifig, and a Tom Holland minifig... But I mean at that point, why continue to go with him? Why did they so desperately need Pedro Pascal for this role that they wouldn't even have him look the part? Mr. Fantastic's usually either clean-shaven or has a full beard. The prominent mustache with a stubbly beard isn't really a way Reed's ever looked- while inaccurate to the movie, arguably the lego head is more accurate to how he should look.

I had assumed they'd known pretty much since the start and were just keeping him around because aside from being an alt account he wasn't doing anything wrong, but it doesn't look like he said or did anything in his final posts that was ban worthy or even particularly telling that it was turtle, so I guess it just took them awhile to figure it out. While this is true, Rancors don't have much experience with turtles either. I could see him going unrecognized and just getting "hey, stop posting vaguely related videos here" at first. Shifting which themes he was into was a nice touch, kept him around longer. I guess his best bet is heading to the pirates or technic forum as technic doesn't have much member crossover and pirates is kind of it's own thing.

They finally got him- I mean, they got new member @imposter. How many innocent users must be banned before the mods realize that truly, we are all turtle? Eagerly await seeing The Pretender, a big Star Wars fan, show up and start posting Ashnflash star wars reviews and asking who the mandalorian is.

I actually like the ship- obviously it doesn't work for the canon size, but there weren't really better options besides a rubble pile or making stuff up. I also think it looks fun and it's impressive that they've managed to get a battle pack build to hold 5 figures, one of which is fully enclosed by a cockpit. Same here on that last bit- I'll be waiting for a discount, though I'll probably end up getting a few since I do like the mini Laatles. I think his view makes more sense for this specific set. Thrawn only had 2 death troopers at that point in the timeline. He had plenty of night troopers. I think in general the people who are trying to collect the accurate number of death troopers probably also want more than two standard night troopers- 2 and 2 is optimizing it for a group I think is vanishingly small- people who want both night death troopers but don't want many night troopers at all. I'll be buying 2-3 copies on discount, primarily because I love the little beetle LAATles they came up with. The DT parts will be used for custom scavengers and I guess zombies of some form.

We know that the 18+ market doesn't translate to "we can make sets with a maturity level for only adults", it's more of a marketing gimmick. There's some leeway- we know from the Daily Bugle spider-man set designer that they could make the comic versions of characters associated with adult television such as Daredevil or Punisher, but the issue with Andor is it's not like Syril and Dedra are popping up in kids' cartoons alongside the more mature content. I think all the droids turned evil and tried to take over the galaxy, which is funny because a lot of the same characters involved in that story are involved in a novel that takes place later with basically the same plot and nobody ever mentions that this happened like five years earlier (because the novel came out first). It's sad that star wars comics fell into the marvel "EVERY YEAR NEEDS A BILLION MASSIVE EVENTS ADVERTISED AS FOREVER CHANGING THE STATUS QUO (they'll be reverted to normal within a year)" trope. Fair- I give the advents a little more slack since it's not a normal set so I can get why they'd be christmas themed, but I do dislike the OC characters from the RTG/Freemaker/Yoda Chronicles sets. At the very least I think the new prints created for them should work for other characters- slap Dash Rendar's jacket on the RTG kid, or give him a Cal poncho or something. There's just no way it's good at this point, though. It has so few pieces that it either is using massive underdetailed parts and ends up looking like a 4+ turbo tank, or it's a consistent level of detail for LSW2025 and looks like a $100 set being sold for $150-160. GAR engineering at it's finest- remember, if someone says something is military-grade, that is NOT a compliment to it's quality. It would be a nice way to get legends characters out there and add some desirability for fans who aren't interested in christmas sweater characters. I hate that part of me unironically thinks this would be a fun meta display to show off the collector's disguise in my collection. My issue is that I don't think "it's already been ruined" is a good reason to just give up and do whatever. People thought SW was ruined after the prequels, and then TCW 2008 carried that (at the time) half of the entire franchise on it's back and got a lot of people to turn around on the era. Everything is salvageable. As I've said before I think we need something radically different once stuff like TMAG and Starfighter bring back public goodwill, but I don't mean radically different in terms of edgy or ultraviolent or horror. I mean a different setting with different characters, not just retreading what the GA's seen three times now. I mean, of course, Kotor. Full-scale armies of jedi and sith. All the bells and whistles.

To be fair his is the most different in terms of uniform- there's no white on it at the top at all- but it's not even so much the uniforms as the pretending three quarters of the 4 look the same torso wise, which again loops back around to Thing just being a normal minifigure with a funny hat and hulk hands. It doesn't work. Construction figure is the type of thing fake lego puts into their titles to show up on ebay or amazon when looking for real legos, I wonder if it's something to do with that, but at the same time like you say nobody's searching "construction figure" so I don't know how that even helps. I mean we don't even have to guess- a standard construction figure goes for $30. It's been pretty commonly stated that the value added of a lego minifigure seems to be about $3 average for a licensed theme in lego's eyes, and these are hardly average quality for licensed minifigures. We end up with $42, generously, and maybe lego charges $45 to round up, though I'd say even that is somewhat overpriced considering how little effort went into these figures. If they went all out on the figs and gave us a bigfig thing, flamed on johnny, unique torso prints for every F4 member (how are we now at the point where it's not even leg printing, but TORSO PRINTING that lego's skimping on), dual-molded boots, and stretchy arms Reed, $50 works to me as that'd be $30 for the fig plus $5 per fig, which is how much CMF figs go for. But it's $10 more than that with what I'd consider actively below the bare minimum detailing needed for the F4. Unless this movie does DP&W/NWH numbers, I don't think this set sells well at all. And honestly the figures are so lackluster I'm not even on "I'll wait for it to hit 40% off and buy it", I'll just pick up an ebay or bricklink listing for a new figless galactus for like $20. These just aren't the F4 to me- I'd say they put Doom in charge of production, but clown shoes aside, Reed turned out the best, and Ben, who doom often sees as just Reed's victim, turned out worst. I mean yeah they're using the same torso for 3/4ths of the four. I've said this a few times now but there are different body types for human male, human female, and guy made of rocks, but even beyond that, their uniform designs aren't the same. Sue has the classic white cowl collar whereas Ben and Johnny have some sort of horizontal white stripe across the top of their torsos (that extends to the arms, but we were never getting that). Maybe you could re-use Johnny's torso for Thing if you put the Paz Vizla armor over it to bulk him up, but using one torso for 3/4ths of the four just doesn't work.

The movie fantasticar pales in comparison to the flying bathtub. That's a concise way of putting it if ever I've heard it. Probably the only time I've ever wanted a marvel set for the build but couldn't care less about the figs. I hate this search engine/ai algorithm optimization naming convention. I know that, as with other situations where a set name is inaccurate or bad, people are gonna say it doesn't impact the set itself, but it's still dumb. I refuse to believe that naming this set something like "The Fantastic Four: Coming of Galactus" would impact sales on a statistically significant level. I noticed that too! I wonder why. Yup. I've been burned so many times. Even for the stuff that's just bringing back old beloved characters, like NWH and DP&W, I'm getting burned with Daredevil now. Which hurt the most because Netflix Daredevil is my favorite onscreen marvel content. I'm on the Thunderbolts hype train, but if that fails me, I don't even think I'll go watch F4, I think i'll just be done with the MCU as a whole. Honestly I don't know who I'd consider the least bad as they're all bad in different ways. I might give points to sue for being the most generally usable for both her movie and main comic version, but even then the figure required so little to be passable- just a new torso print- and yet they couldn't even do that and she's a The Thing/Human Torch (who again don't share body types with eachother OR sue) figure with a generic female head plopped on. I get by generic male head you just mean a generic head lying around to use for the comic version, but when I hear "generic Male head" I think of that stupid brown eyebrow resistance trooper head they've been using on Hawkeye recently and something about that head on Mr. Fantastic just feels cursed to me. Personally I'll be trying to get a new copy of the set with the figs removed for ~$20, which I think I have a good chance of. These guys just aren't the F4 to me, but that's a great Galactus.

They need to sit down! (I never understood this- there are plenty of times where lego throws a "2x2 tile, modified with studs on edge" on the floor of a vehicle with no backing and goes "behold, a seat". No reason not to actually use that with figs who wear backpacks- people take off their backpacks to sit down in real life, and backless seats on military vehicles exist in real life...) Yeah, there's a non-zero chance the tank itself (minus the wheels) ends up being ~600 pieces, which is just not enough. We might be getting the rumored Tiny Tank after all, just at triple the price. I thought I'd seen some interview or something where they explicitly said they're redoing the meeting, but I might have been wrong. Either way it irks me a bit, but I've come to understand that we are back to tiered canon, so at this point I'm OK with it. Especially because there's a LOT of stuff in comics and novels I'm not a fan of, such as how they've fit like five massive galaxy-threatening events in the year gap between ESB and ROTJ which is just laughable to me. The thing (haha) is I don't think we need Star Wars alien or thing when we have Alien or thing. I don't mind novels like Red Harvest or Death Troopers as I think that the novels and comics aren't to the same standard as the onscreen media. I'd also be ok with something like the Screaming Citadel arc in the first run of canon Marvel SW comics, where it has spooky/gothic themes but is still primarily a Star Wars story rather than a horror story set in the star wars universe. I also think that marvel is different- it as a universe is much more varied. It's universe first rather than story first, and it also has hundreds of different universes of characters, which can vary wildly in tone and characterization. It's how you can have a Logan (2017) about a character kids used to watch in X-men cartoons. This is also where I get into stuff like the marvelization of star wars- that's often used to just mean "quippy and lots of crossover" but in my case here I mean it as treating star wars as a universe in which any level of story or tone can be dropped in. This is personal preference but I prefer my star wars to feel like star wars, and to be within a rough range of tone and story type. This isn't to say I want it to all be homogenized- I think Clone Wars is a great example of the variety of tones you can get that all feel like star wars- but there's a limit to what I think should be allowed in star wars. I don't think star wars should have full on R-rated horror, or sexual content, or R-rated levels of graphic violence. That's not to say I'm against them in media in general- two of my favorite shows are Invincible and Netflix's Daredevil, which are both known for graphic violence and contain more explicitly sexual content than I'd want to see in star wars- they just don't fit what I think Star Wars should mean as a story. Honestly I'm not generally a fan of them using the print budget for the ACs on sweaters- I'd prefer either non-holiday exclusives or the santas- but something about the idea of Han and Lando being sweater bros is a lot of fun to me. Especially if Lando's sweater inexplicably has a knitted cape on it. Yeah any excitement I had for that set was gone, and I'm back to the only 2025 SW sets I'll be buying as two copies of the battle pack. And maybe that GWP if I end up getting the Ghost for the May 4th event. If that isn't just a perfect example of how lego sees the theme "eh, who cares about minfigs of han and leia. the 50 year old men, the demographic comprising the only OT fans of course, prefer having model ships on their desk over normal lego sets. That's why they're buying our lego model ships, rather than normal model spaceships." I mean, from a certain point of view, the novelization did release first, in which case from a certain interpretation the true canon would only be that novelization and Splinter of the Mind's Eye. (I was going to make a joke about how messed up Splinter of the Mind's Eye ends up being in legends, but in this version of the canon ROTJ wouldn't be true canon, so I guess it's fine) But yeah of course, the official canon is, as of now, the original saga, TCW 2008, and anything published by disney... except for parts of the Ahsoka novel... the Kanan comic.... the Cassian and K2 comic... assumably the Son of Dathomir comic will be overwritten... ( I agree in general- it's all up to interpretation what any person wants to consider canon, but officially the current canon includes all the disney stuff and the legends canon is the old tiered system, but it is funny that the new disney canon also has fallen into the tiered system it was set up to avoid.) Yeah, exactly. Not everything needs to be in star wars. It doesn't intrinsically benefit from having shocking/edgy/horror/graphically violent content.

That's all fair- I think we largely agree, the biggest difference for me is that I just would draw the line in where we cross over from variety to too far before some of the andor s2 stuff, not after. I assume most people wouldn't want, say, a straight-up sex scene in star wars, or nudity. I know there are some calls for it (and rumors it's in development) but I personally would never want them to make a full on R-rated star wars horror movie, either. (Also as a super minor nitpick to an otherwise very well put together statement, a lot of critics LOVED TLJ precisely for those "we've made the heroes depressed and not heroic" expectation subversion) I'm still thinking one of the Peridea exclusives shows up, but beyond that I don't know. Honestly for better or worse this is still clearly true- Filoni's overwritten books and novels, and the same assumably is happening in Andor S2, there's no way they just adapt the comic showing him and K2 meeting. I owe @Darth_Bane13 an apology (I think it was him? Whoever I was saying this tank wouldn't necessarily be that much smaller to). I was wrong to assume lego was capable of pulling anything quality off with a set like this anymore. Make sure to add a bare minimum of 21 more pieces for the figures (Assuming only 4 figures, no droids, no backpacks and single-piece guns for the troopers)

We're lucky it wasn't "The Fantastic Four^tm featuring Mr. Fantastic^tm, The Invisible Woman^tm, The non-flaming Human Torch^tm, and The Thing^tm vs Galactus^tm Construction Figure^tm"

Yup. We're reaching long enough since the reboot failed that it should be ok to start testing the waters again. A Fire Robot creator set would be nice, and I'm shocked they haven't been giving us CMF figures of the main Toa every now and again. Take that back. Yup: In order for me: Reed is the only one that I think works for the movie version, but even then it's lazy to not give him the stretchy arms. None of him really works for the comic version- I suppose the torso's better than nothing, but it's got the weird vertical lines and a much lighter blue than the comic F4 usually are. Add in no temples for the hair... the head is fine for Pedro but seeing as we have the mando one a weird choice for a new print in a set that desperately needed every print in the budget. Movie 7/10, comic usability 3/10. Thing isn't terrible for the movie version, but lego's so unbelievably lazy that they can't throw a different color hands on it, so he's wearing gloves under his weird rock hands (and the rock hands don't work at all, same with the head attachment. They do weird things for his proportions.) Because the hand issue can be solved in a purist manner I'll give him points for the movie version, but none of this is even remotely usable for comic thing. Wearing a shirt, he's not orange, and I still think he shouldn't be a normal minifigure. Movie 6/10, comic usability 1/10. Sue is the one that should be simplest, but they somehow managed to skip just the tiny amount of effort she needs and make her re-use the "generic woman" head and the THING torso? Sue and Johnny's torsos don't look the same, much less Sue (or Johnny) and a guy made of rocks. The head is excusable given the current state of the theme and since it at least generally fits Vanessa Kirby. The torso was the bare minimum of effort and is a complete write-off of the figure's viability- it's literally entirely comprised of parts from other figs. Movie 6/10, comic usability 0/10. Johnny is a tough one as re-used head aside, he fits the movie version pretty well. That said, it's the movie version's NON FLAMED FORM. It'd be like if the avengers sets in 2012 only came with Tony Stark and not Iron Man. We're not here for Johnny Firecracker, we're here for the Human Torch. Johnny also suffers from the genericized torso. A normal man does not look the same in a superhero suit as a rock man. Movie technical 8/10, realistically 0/10, comic 1/10 (Hair is perfect for a comic non flamed Johnny but again, come on, nobody was begging for specifically non-flamed Johnny) A bit, but I agree that overall he looks incredible. I look forward to getting my hands on the build. I'm worried about this part- for this set to succeed, the movie needs to do really well, because the figures aren't faithful to the comics, and parents aren't going to look at this and think the 4 little guys make it worth double the price of the spider man and green goblin next to it. Now the movie could definitely do well- I think regardless of quality, it'll at least ride on some Thunderbolts hype because I have some confidence that Thunderbolts will have some insane legs and shock the box office- but if it doesn't, I think lego goes "oh, even fewer MCU tie ins, no lego fantastic four" and we never get comic versions.

Same here! I hope so- it'd be nice if they segmented the sets by teams, so say something like: X-jet with the Fox X-men The Tower Formerly Known as Avengers with the Thunderbolts* IDK some car or big mech with the Lame Avengers^TM But I think we'll probably end up getting a small number of sets with the teams mixed throughout so that you have to buy them all to complete any one team. In which case, I'll likely get whichever one includes John and Yelena and that's it. You can see the future. There is an easy solution here, lego, bring bionicle back properly next time. Very torn on the set- I thought it'd be a crappy Galactus build with some good figs, but it's entirely the other way around. Galactus looks great, and I'll be trolling bricklink for "new, no figures" listings for the set to snag one cheap. But the figs... the figs are awful and the lowest effort I've ever seen: Thing, Johnny, and Sue should not all be using the same torso print- that's absolutely ridiculous. Inexcusable that Sue didn't get her own torso print. The re-used faces for Sue and Johnny I can at least understand, but Sue needed her own torso. More importantly, Thing and Johnny don't work AT ALL. Johnny should be flamed on- you had the budget to give Pedro a new face when he already had a perfectly good one, but you can't make Flamed-on Johnny? Thing is also ridiculous- the hands aren't bad because you can just take them off, except for some reason he's wearing gloves UNDER his hands? (Again, a bit of a nitpick, but a microcasm for how stupid these figures are.) Just so we're clear, this entire set contains 4 new minifigure prints, and one new mold. Too low for the first family's first time in lego, but even then, used horribly. At the very least, Reed's head print should have been used for Sue's torso, but ideally a set like this shouldn't be restricted to 4 prints so we could get a flame-on Johnny. (And even more ideally, it's a comic set so they don't have weird vertical lines on their suits and we get an accurate Thing, but that's not on lego) I like the F4, Thing in particular, but the only part of this set that interests me at all is Galactus. I hope we get a comic set down the line at some point.

I can't respond to the first part here without getting into more spoilery territory for the episode, but I'll shoot you a PM on why I think lego would consider it a different case. This is where it comes down to personal preference, but I honestly would vastly prefer star wars shoot for a skeleton crew approach, even if I think most of Andor S2 is better than skeleton crew. Skeleton Crew has the star wars spirit, and even though I felt the ending wasn't as satisfying as I was expecting it to be, I think it's a good star wars story for kids. I loved Andor S1, but I did understand the complaints that it didn't feel as much like star wars, and I think Season 2 exacerbates that significantly. Whether it's Tony Gilroy or some exec at disney, I think between seasons 1 and 2 the goalpost shifted from "let's make good star wars" to "Oh, shoot, critics like this one, we might be able to get some emmys". I despise award culture in media in general, I think it's full of pseudointellectuals who pretend that a movie being depressing, shocking, or covering hot-button issues makes it automatically a good story (I'll add that I think TLJ was in part an attempt at this with all the "subverting expectations"), and while Andor's so far still a good story, it's also falling into those award culture tropes, and usually that gets worse over time, not better. I hope I'll be proven wrong- I loved season 1 and season 2 is still, as you say, miles better than something like Acolyte. At the end of the day I just think that onscreen star wars should strive for being generally family-friendly and keeping a slightly consistent tone. It's not that I dislike media in general covering certain things- I love Invincible, which in short order will be much more depressing, shocking, and explicitly paralleling of real-world issues than Andor- but at the end of the day I think when star wars tries for the emmy-bait strategy, it stops feeling as much like star wars. They won't. This is a nearly $0.2 PPP, even before any increases were added, that we now know isn't containing 10 giant wheel pieces, and seems to include a small number of figures. I look forewords to picking it up for $56 like the skeleton crew set. Of course, the clickbaity leakers who, say, drag out a tiny bit of information over a multi-hour podcast, or the ones who just completely make stuff up are a real annoyance. All the Palpatine stuff is great, like the phone call from vader after the death star gets destroyed. It is nice to get more set-like GWPs again. I didn't mind stuff like the mini death star or Beru's kitchen, and to be honest I didn't hate the microbuilds, but minifigures are nice to get. Honestly? At this point, if I thought lego would learn the right lesson from this, I would want them to be bad so lego realized they can't price sets like this. But the lesson they'd learn is probably something like "Oh, this is too many minifigures in the set", or just swinging the pendulum around and not making any clone sets at all for half a decade. I can feel the off-topic warning coming, so all I'll say is that while I think your interpretation is a valid one, it's A: Just an interpretation. It's a fine way to view the franchise, but not the only one or the "true" one, and B: in your interpretation, most of the EU, including the excellent game your own profile picture is from, wouldn't have ever been canon.

This is becoming a hotter and hotter take but I actually think Dave is the one who "gets it" most. He certainly shows favor to his favorite characters, and I don't like his tendency to overwrite books and comics when it suits him, but Ahsoka felt the most like classic star wars to me out of anything in the disney era. Faverau's good too, but Mando S3 dropped the ball. Chow did well on Mando but I don't think Kenobi worked even as a concept- I wouldn't mind seeing her return as a director, but I also wouldn't put her at the level of the former two. It seems like Gilroy is pushing hard on the emmy-bait, which IMO should never be the goal of star wars, although it'd be extremely hard to derail Andor to the extend it becomes a bad show. Obviously there's no risk of the Acolyte showrunners returning to lucasfilm, so I don't even need to speak on that. But yeah, it does seem like the mandoverse shows are culminating in the assembling of the space avengers. All people remember about the death star is that Mas and Sly knew it existed. Really, any vehicle in star wars can best be described by how closely related those two are to it, right? I guess it makes sense that the list is in turmoil- we know there were official-in-lego lists for the spider-man daily bugle with almost three times the final amount of figures, so it makes sense things would be in flux for an even larger set- but unfortunate if it was another situation where fake leakers just tried to generate buzz. Always a fun one. One of my favorite quotes is when the construction is interrupting his monologue, and when he suggests they stop the worker is like "Look, I don't tell you how to threaten your little blonde kid or whatever, don't tell me how to do my job." I used to do them annually just because I wanted enough of the march/may sets that I'd hit the threshold anyway, but I didn't get any last year, and depending on whether or not I pull the trigger on the ghost, I won't this year either. Dude my local walmart had them for $56 each. I've got two in my apartment right now- since the figures sell for more than that online, it's essentially free parts- and all my friends each grabbed a copy. I can PM you if you want but it's broken into non-star wars news sites at this point, you'll probably see it soon anyway. That's the last I'll say on it.