Kit Figsto

I assume the "Free" space on the BINGO card is something about P2 Commander Cody?

It should, for sure. The Cloud Car pilot is like a $3-4 figure despite only being available in a $350 set and the Advent Calendar. The Scout Trooper might end up even a little bit cheaper, since it's already available in two sets (technically it's a separate figure, but they look more or less the same) and both are somewhat affordable, or at least cheaper than Cloud City was.

I was thinking about this and did have a similar query, the one thing I'm not sure about is that there was an $800 price point set on several leak lists going back to...January(?), I think. I know those price points aren't always totally accurate, and I know in the past there's been ones where the "leaked" price point for a set number is $500 and it ends up being $350 or whatever, but I feel like it'd be really difficult to just gloss over an $800 price point, even if the set was actually $600 or something. I mean, by my count, we've had two sets come in at a price that expensive - the Falcon and Super Star Destroyer, the only other one even close was the Death Star. Assuming there was any credence whatsoever to that rumored price point, I feel like it'd be really unusual that a set of that scale could just disappear.

A large number, but that doesn't necessarily indicate a majority. AFOLs are unquestionably a larger market than they were fifteen, ten, or even five years ago, but that increase could very well be from 4% to 16%. Until they decide to put out exact numbers (likely never), we can't know for sure. I agree completely that certain themes, such as SW, Technic, Marvel, or Creator are more likely to have a greater portion of sales go to adults as compared to, say City, Ninjago, Friends, or whatever else, for various reasons (either complexity of the model, the general target audience of the set, or the property being depicted). You cited SW having UCS sets, but those are a small portion of their offering at once. There's typically two, maybe three sets that are $250+ on shelves at once, and those are ONLY at Lego stores and, from what I gather, are produced in smaller quantities by quite a bit (I remember an interview with a designer talking about costs in large sets versus, say, a $30 set and they mentioned a huge disparity in quantity of sets produced, I don't know where to find this, though, sorry). And yes, they do have ways of finding that data, but you have to remember that they only get that specific data when they sell sets on their website. In store, if the person isn't a VIP, they wouldn't have the data on who the set is for, and at stores like Target/Walmart/whatever else, they also don't get that data. They may be able to tell who is doing the purchasing, but whether or not the stores share that data is one matter, and again, regardless of who the set is for, it's very likely going to be an adult doing the actual purchasing. This is conjecture, but I would gather that the majority of their sets worldwide are sold through big-box retailers or non-Lego brand stores/sites, due to either convenience or, often, stores having sales/better deals than Lego. Even still, like I said, I would have a lot of faith in their market research department being very highly capable and understanding who their consumers are. In regards to your point about the X-Wing/Landspeeder, those who are AFOLs may feel that way, but you have to look at the big picture. I've been a LSW fan for 15+ years now, and in that time, not counting UCS/microscale sets, I think I've seen 6 or more X-Wings and about 4 Landspeeders that were released outside of the Cantina. So, essentially every 1.5 years, there's been a new version of one of these sets. To someone that's been around a while, that might seem redundant and like a lot, especially when I already have a Landspeeder. I'm not buying the new one, so why do they keep releasing it? But, you have to remember, not every customer/buyer of Lego is going to stick around that long. If a 7 year old gets into Lego, they haven't had a chance to buy the previous X-Wing, so then when they release one, the kid gets it, plays with it for a few years, and stops being interested in Lego around age 11/12. Heck, even if the person does stick with Lego for a very long time, it still makes a lot of sense for Lego as a company to keep sets like the X-Wing, the Millenium Falcon, or a Snowspeeder on shelves, because they're pretty popular regardless of age, they contain main characters, and people are always going to want them. If they waited 5 years to put out a new X-Wing, they'd lose out on a lot of potential customers of it in that time period. And one more thing, to your point about the 501st set, I think that's more indicative of the demand for it rather than Lego. A lot of people were hoarding those, plus the supply chain of a lot of goods was backed up due to COVID, I don't think that was really a Lego-specific issue.

I think you're severely overestimating Lego's adult demographic. AFOLs as a subset is definitely larger than it has been in the past, but every time you go into a Lego store or are in the Lego aisle at your local retailer, I can promise you there are more kids shopping for sets than adults in probably 99% of cases (or at the very least, if it's young kids, it's clearly a situation where their parent is buying it for them, not for themselves). I have no idea what their actual breakdown of sales in terms of AFOLs vs. KFOLs is (and I think it'd be nearly impossible to really gauge, because adults probably do most of the actual purchasing of Lego regardless of whether it's for them or purchasing it for a kid) but I would be extremely surprised if AFOLs made up a segment of their market larger than 15-20%. Being a multi-billion dollar company, I'd be confident that their market research team is very good at what they do in terms of determining which types of customers to target and who their fanbase is. Plus, I think they've done a lot in terms of prequel stuff the past couple of years. Last year we had three TCW/prequel sets, one of which contained the first Ahsoka figure in a while (plus an exclusive 332nd trooper), another of which was entirely fan demand-driven. We've also got a prequel UCS coming that was done by a fan vote, as well as two more TCW sets including Bo-Katan, who was probably one of the most requested TCW figures, and we're getting the Bad Batch set, which I feel is pretty closely related to TCW. The wave being Mandalorian-focused, to me, isn't terribly surprising, because that's probably the hottest SW property right now, and it makes sense to capitalize on that now. In regards to the new set reveals, I can definitely cross off Boba's ship from my want-list, as it looks almost identical in size to the Cloud City version. It's a nice model, but there's no reason for me to spend $50 when basically the only difference is the figures, cargo sled, and the space for a carbonite block. The Marauder looks pretty nice and I love how many figures it can fit. I might get it if the price were to drop closer to $30 at some point. Beyond that, I'm excited for the Mandalorian Forge reveal, if nothing else just to see the minifigures.

In regards to the plot, I'm pretty hopeful considering James Mangold is directing. Logan won an Academy Award for the Screenplay and Ford v. Ferrari had a very strong plot/writing, in my opinion. I looked at one of the plot leaks but it sounds too far fetched (I feel like I might know where the speculation/leak is coming from in that one, see below), haven't looked at the others.

While my interest in the two sets when they first were leaked and unveiled was initially sort of mild, every time I'd see both the X-Wing and TIE at Target/Walmart, I'd become more and more drawn to them, but have been waiting for a price drop before pulling the trigger. I happened to be in Walmart for something unrelated and took a spin through the LEGO aisle, where the X-Wing was on sale for $40 USD. That seemed like a good signal to buy it, so I did and built it yesterday. Plus, I decided I probably won't be buying the Slave 1, so I could allocate that money to something else! Super happy with the set, it's actually my first X-Wing Fighter (I've now got a Y-Wing, A-Wing, U-Wing, and V-Wing, so the only alphabet fighter I'm missing is a B-Wing), and I also didn't have an ANH Leia prior to this, as I've never owned a Falcon/X-Wing/Tantive and didn't buy the Death Star swing set. The figures are great, the wing functionality is awesome, and I think the scale of the model and level of detail are pretty perfect for a system-scale set. My only real complaint is with the landing gear - the ones on the wings are easy enough to remove, but the front landing gear is both loose and yet also kind of tricky to get off, since the Technic pin holding it in place can kind of get stuck. Other than that, no complaints with it, really like the set.

The Slave 1 looks good, but I was definitely expecting it to be a bit bigger. The 2006-2010 versions of the sets were around $50, if I recall, but seemed a lot larger than this. Based on the piece used for the cockpit, it looks like this is almost the exact same size as the Cloud City/2000 versions of the set. I was going to get the set, assuming it was closer in scale to that 2006 one, but I will now be saving $50 as I already have both the Cloud City and original versions of the set. The Mandalorian Fighter is definitely a must-buy for me, the scale is fine in my opinion, the figures are great, and my only real complaint is the lack of front landing gear. While I really like this wave, that and the forge will probably be the only must-buys for me.

This seems to be the general pattern for TV shows. Maybe there's still aversion because of how the Rebels wave was kinda botched, but it seems like one set with the launch of the show, then more after that if the show has a positive reception has been what they've done with Bad Batch, Mandalorian, and now Book of Boba Fett. Honestly, I kind of like it, because it does seem like they're now more open to doing stuff based on TV shows, and this way we get a preview before the show comes out. Part of the thing when the sequels were coming out is that I didn't really pay attention to the sets until after I'd seen the movie, since I wanted to avoid spoilers. With this method of releasing, it's pretty spoiler-free.

What would people think about LEGO adding in a limit on the number of projects that you can vote for? What if you got, say, ten votes per month? I feel like the user base has gotten so big and reviews are now getting ridiculously huge at times, so there are some legitimately very good projects getting passed on because they can only fit 2-3 per review cycle in a product line at any given time. I also feel like there's some projects people vote for but would have zero intention of actually buying if it were made, which is kind of against the point of Ideas. Like, I've seen some that are really amazing builds, but they would never, ever become a set, because they're just way too big and complex to ever be on shelves, people just voted for it because it's a cool MOC. I'm not discounting the builders, because there's no harm in submitting a project, but my thought is that putting in a limit on votes might make people really think "Hm...is this something that I would really want to see on shelves, and I would buy if so?"

Oh man, never mind then! I couldn’t see it on the picture and I saw someone talking about it. My bad! You would think I would’ve realized that before giving this idea, but nope! Ignore that suggestion, then, I’m wrong on two counts there.

On the subject of Hunter (not the helmet, don't worry ), I've got some Exo-Force magnets in my room and was looking at them the other day. Interestingly, Ryo (the orange suit guy) has a red headband printed on his face and a face print that...wouldn't be that outlandish to use for Hunter. Stylistically it's a little bit different, as the face itself is a little bit wider and the eyes are more detailed than most other figures, but it wouldn't actually be that awful. I know some people were lamenting the lack of a headband, so it IS an alternative, even if it isn't perfect.

We did get the Venice canal chase and plane chase, in addition to the motorcycle chase (which I assume you're referring to), but I agree that both the Circus Train and Grail Temple would've been amazing sets. I wonder if they felt the Grail Temple was too similar to the Raiders temple set? I was thinking of this and initially deemed it too unrealistic, but then I remembered that Toy Story 3 did get the train chase set, which wasn't really that major of a scene in that film, whereas I think the circus train both had more of a role in Indy and could have a TON of cool playability. They could do maybe 4-5 cars, with the locomotive/tender, the car with the snakes and alligator in them, the car with a lion in it, and then the caboose with the magic tricks and stuff in it. That'd be a pretty awesome $100-120 set.

Man, these were some strange release schedules. Two waves that were 4 and 2 sets each (I guess at the time of the January 2009 wave, there would've still been all of the stuff from 2008 on shelves, though) and then two fairly sizeable waves.

Note: this is all just me speculating, no rumors in here. I'm now curious how the original sets were handled so I looked it up. Turns out, were split into three waves. Wave 1 was January of 2008 and contained the Motorcycle Chase, Well of Souls, Truck Chase, and Temple Escape. Wave 2 was in May of 2008 and contained all of the KoTCS sets except Peril in Peru, which was a July release and I believe was a Toys R Us exclusive in the US, and the Cemetery Battle, which was a 2009 release. Wave 3 wasn't until over a year later, in June of 2009, when we got all of the ToD sets, Cemetery Battle, Plane Chase, Boat Chase, Cairo Market, and Flying Wing. I think the question is, assuming we do get a re-boot of the theme, how many waves will we get? I think if they want to do stuff from the first four films, it'll be at least two, because they would have to do a wave heavily dedicated to the new film (similar to Wave 2 in 2008). Three would be great, but I don't think much from KoTCS is really going to even be in consideration for a remake, if we did get any set I could see either some adaptation of the jungle chase (maybe the amphibious car plus a Jeep) or the car chase around Marshall College near the start of the movie. I would say most everything from the original 3 films has been covered, too. The biggest things are the Grail Temple, maybe the Map Room, the Bridge Battle from ToD, the plane from ToD, and that's about it. The Tank Chase is pretty much out of question, which is why I didn't even include it, and while the Circus Train would be awesome, I don't know if it's realistic either. I'd say of the sets that were previously made, the Truck Chase, Temple Escape, Temple of Doom, and probably Motorcycle Chase are most crucial to remake, just in terms of minifigures included (I think you could probably put Sallah and Marion in the Truck Chase even if they weren't technically part of it). Then, 6-8 sets from the new film, maybe the Grail Temple, and one or two more remakes/new stuff, and that would be a really solid pair of waves.

It looks like shooting has officially begun as of last week, so the film will be coming for sure! I've heard either a summer 2022 release, apparently July. If that were the case, I would assume spring 2022 would be when we could see sets at the earliest, maybe a wave in the spring and a wave in the summer, if we're lucky? No idea if we'd get an official announcement, but if we did, I wouldn't be surprised if we got a teaser in the winter/spring. I could for sure see a silhouette of an Indy figure, or maybe a closeup of a minifigure hand holding a brown fedora being a social media post as a way to tease the release of the theme.

I think the market on straight up re-issuing older sets is narrower than people might think. I would love a chance to get some older sets, but there's a few problems with a lot of them. The big thing is that a lot of sets from the past, in terms of playability, frankly aren't anywhere close to the modern standards. I really like a lot of older sets, but when you look at the functionality and playability of them compared with, say, a modern City or Ninjago set, it's not even a contest for most any set. On top of that, the level of detail is a lot weaker (again, not every set is like this, but many are a lot less detailed than a modern set). For those reasons, I feel like these re-issues would only really work in terms of appealing to current AFOLs or maybe people that aren't currently fans of Lego, but remember the sets as kids. Most people under the age of, say, 25, unless they're already a huge Lego fan, would have no interest in them, especially kids, who would probably be much more enticed by new City or Ninjago stuff. Their techniques and building styles advance so much, even in this modern era of Lego (say, the last 10-15 years) where things have become a lot more refined and detailed, that anything old being re-issued would just not be up to the same standard. Look at the UCS R2-D2, for example. If I'm not mistaken, the original one was put out in 2012, and collectors seemed to really enjoy that set. There was quite a bit of discussion about how the re-issue in May probably wouldn't be too much different, and yet, it still managed to impress people by adding some more functions and changing up the dome a little bit to make it a little bit less blocky. That's just one example, but that was barely ten years ago and things already changed that much. I'd bet we'll see something similar when they put out the UCS Tumbler this fall, even though the original one was only put out 7(?) years ago. For all of the grief people give Lego about certain themes being uninspired or a lack of dual molded arms on this figure, their builds truly do constantly improve over time, even when you think "Okay, they can't really go much more detailed than this." I apologize for getting a bit ramble-y, my overall point is just that AFOLs are a relatively small segment of the Lego market, and such re-issues would likely only appeal to them, making it probably not worth the cost and time to put something like that together. The difference, to me, between a straight up re-issue and some of their newer products targeted at adults is that a re-issue would be essentially a kid-centric toy (say, a castle or space ship) that they want adults to buy, whereas their newer mosaics, helmet busts, or Ideas sets are adult-centric that some older kids may also have an interest in. Them being licensed and often very good display pieces also means they may attract people who aren't necessarily Lego diehards, but think that a mosaic of Marilyn Monroe made of Lego pieces would be cool to hang in their living room. Now, I think there are some sets from the 80s or 90s that could be both iconic enough and have enough play/display appeal to make them attractive as a re-issue not just to the AFOL crowd, but again, I just don't see it working, as much as I'd love a re-issue of some older sets that I've never been able to afford.

I think these are factory leaks. Someone apparently got their hands on the Bad Batch Shuttle early (or at least the instructions plus Crosshair's head), but I don't think it'd be in a store, otherwise there would be several copies floating around (and probably some on eBay priced at hundreds of dollars, considering the set isn't due for another two months or something).

I honestly was kind of disappointed that they didn't do something "Lego-y" for the 150th Brickhead. Like, I get they wanted the fans to vote, but two of the licenses were pre-existing ones and two were new (Jaws is new, Stitch had one CMF figure and that was literally it). Personally, I would've been most interested in either Jaws or Stitch, but I feel like they should've either gone with all four being new licenses, or do no licensed ones at all and have the vote be between something like a Classic Spaceman, Mr. Gold, Pepper Roni, and Johnny Thunder, or just some collection of classic Lego characters. That feels more celebratory of 150 Brickheadz to me than just a random licensed character who doesn't really have anything to do with Lego as a company. That said, I hope that isn't what the reveal is, and I also hope it's not Jar Jar, because that's not really very celebration-y at all to me.

Agree, also with Mando acting as a soft pilot of sorts for the show, it's way less risky. In addition to Boba being a popular character, people have already been introduced to Fennec Shan and seem to like her as a character, and people have been mostly satisfied (from what I've seen, at least) with Boba Fett being brought back and the way that he's been handled. Even last year, it was also kind of screwed up, we thought the X-Wing was only Luke and R2-D2, we ended up getting two more figures, and the placeholder image for the TIE showed the silhouettes of the figures from Luke's Landspeeder, prompting a huge discussion about what figure could possibly be included in the set that featured short legs (evidently that was a picture of a Jawa). I think it's possible that the info was either wrong or it had placeholder silhouettes for two figures and someone made an assumption that the non-Boba figure was just Han (since obviously you know one of the figures is confirmed as Boba Fett).

Now I’m wondering how they’ll do this with his cape. Easiest solution would be to just remove it, but I think they could get away with just using the Boba Fett shoulder cape if they really wanted to, since Mando’s cape is kind of small anyway. I can’t really see them doing a new fabric piece, just because I truly don’t know how else they could make it work with a jetpack other than using the Boba shoulder cape (like, there doesn’t seem like any possible way to make a piece that accurately reflects Mando’s cape and also fits the jetpack underneath/next to it).

I find this quite ironic, considering people on here were complaining nonstop about the fact that we maybe wouldn't be getting him in the Trouble on Tatooine set (before official details leaked, people were just assuming they'd re-use the version from the AT-ST and Razor Crest), now that we're getting him in four sets, it's apparently a huge issue. Also, it's possible that the Lego Con reveal, if not the Gunship, could still be the AT-AT. Not saying that's the case, but it's also a huge, marquee set, and they've revealed some other sets super early to drum up hype over the past year or so (Razor Crest was revealed like 6 months in advance, both the 501st and AT-AT last summer were revealed between 2-3 months early, Bad Batch shuttle was revealed early, etc), so I could see them trying to push it soon, since it's a massive set.

Historically I believe it used to be quite common for licensed stuff to show up at Build a Minifig in brand stores, but this was back when stores were much, much less common. I truly think Build a Minifig used to just be "Here's a bunch of random extra minifig parts we have laying around, let's send them to stores" because there wasn't really any consistency between stores, and I found some very, very interesting stuff in them. I know that back in the day, I made two figures that had springy legs from the NBA sets, one with a torso and head from the NBA sets (not the licensed ones, just the street basketball ones, so it wasn't flesh tone), and a yellow Jabba's Palace Leia body and legs (also, a Dr. Killroy head, but that wasn't licensed). A few odd things here, this was circa 2006, I want to say, which was at least 3-4 years after these figures had come out in sets. Perhaps even stranger, at the time, I had no idea what parts went together with what, I was literally just making random figures and happened to put together some of the NBA parts and, perhaps even more amazingly, happened to put together the Leia torso and legs. Anyway, I digress, but I don't know if I've seen licensed stuff in Build a Minifigure since that time.

Definitely a mockup.

I'd love to see some of those D2Cs too, but I feel most of them are just too niche. The Grail Temple, Temple of Doom, or Temple from the Raiders intro could all work and have enough going on to be a D2C, while also being iconic enough, but stuff like Warehouse 51 or Club Obi-Wan just don't have enough features or screen time to justify a $200+ set. And as far as a CMF, I'd love one too. Characters like Monkey Man, Katanga, Brody, Walter Donovan, the British accent guy who is the prince's assistant in ToD (forgot his name), and so on might not appear in sets but would be really good to get in a CMF set, as well as alternate outfits of Indy, Marion, Elsa, Short Round, Henry Sr., Belloq, and so on. Of course, we need Sallah too, but we also need him in a set!