danth

More pics from reddit:

Another look at the rover.

Someone found some educational sets that seem to be Space oriented and aren't listed anywhere. They were found in an actual store so I don't think this counts as a leak.

Absolutely.

Ah okay, that makes sense. 👍🏼

I think the strategy is to get all the money they can from big spenders, and from people who prefer cheaper sets but will absolutely cave and buy the big sets due to FOMO. Then they'll release cheaper sets later to get the more frugal people.

Jang did a whole video on how they sold out instantly, based on pre-order buttons being gone, and pulled numbers from some other website and did some math and concluded Lego made like $30 million in a day. But now the preorder button is back. So does that mean they never really sold out?

Wow. Well said. This is how I feel too.

Hopefully it means they will be plentiful and cheap(ish) on Bricklink for whoever misses them on PAB. Looks like that's already the case for Europe.

I think these look better than the Lego sets:

Eevee looks great. Pikachu looks kinda bad. The others are just okay. Really sad to see Lego struggling to match Mega designs.

My thoughts. Most of the sets look worse for having the smart brick. The X-Wing looks bad. They had to invent a weirdly deformed canopy for it, and there's basically a truck bed behind it to fit the smart brick. The brick in the TIE Advanced is an uncovered compartment as well. The brick wiggler mechanism in the Cantina is exposed and ugly. These are huge aesthetic compromises. The smart brick sounds are bad. They don't sound like Star Wars sounds. The X-Wing doesn't sound like an X-Wing. There's no Cantina song. Having the light on the brick itself is...primitive. Do the X-Wing guns light up? Do the engines light up? If not, that's lame. The things that might actually be cool, like the spinning R2 head, are executed poorly, with R2 requiring an ugly flat red tile on its back. The sets all are more expensive for having the brick. Basically, unless the "laser tag" aspect of this ends up being really cool and well executed, which I highly doubt, I don't see this as anything but a lose-lose. Poorer designs and higher prices, all for a lame gimmick.

So rad! Sorry for the necro but I saw this in your signature and had to come comment. It's perfect.

Very cool! Reminds me of an 80s GI Joe vehicle.

Excellent counter example. If the HP TV series gets as big as Game of Thrones, then yeah, that'll turn things around. As it is now, Wizarding World is in decline, as far as I can tell. My guess is the show won't compare well to the movies, but time will tell.

There are plenty of new TV shows not based on any existing franchise that get made... I'm not sure how to tell you this, but HBO TV series are where franchises go to die. No argument there. I think these adults are the ones buying HP Lego sets.

Huh? Audio books, plays, and theme parks don't sell toys. The Fantastic Beasts movies aren't well liked by HP fans beyond the first one. The TV series doesn't exist yet so it can't prove anything. I'm not saying Harry Potter isn't big; it's supposedly the 11th highest grossing franchise in history according to one source, but its heyday is in the past, and everyone around for its heyday are adults now.

The last Harry Potter movie came out a decade and a half ago, and kids don't read books nearly as much as they used to. There's really no way the franchise can be as popular as when the movies were coming out.

Here's an opinion. The vast majority of non-City minifigs are worthless. Like, directly to the garbage bin worthless. Here's a Ninjago set with a cool dragon. But the minifigs suck. They're all freaks. Why is one ninja yellow with horns? Why is the other bright blue with some werid dragon tail thing? Why don't they look like cool, classic ninjas? Why is one a weird green dude with a big head and tentacles? Everything is so bizarre. Here's a cool Dinobot-like mech from Dreamzzz. But again, the minifigs are all freakish. Why is the one dude a super angry blue freak with blue hair? Why are the bad guys so gruesome? Why is there a skeleton guy with a beard and tentacle eyes on his helmet? The other guy has six eyes? And their outfits are so busy. The pilot is a robot in a hoody. WTF is going on? Why is everybody so weird? None of these minifigs is remotely usable outside this set. Marvel sets are always full of freaks. Sometimes the vehicles are great, but the minifigs are, regrettably, all Marvel characters. Here's an awesome car with terrible minifigs. Who's the red freak in tights? And the black tentacled weirdo? Obviously I'm being facetious, and it's a bit silly to complain about Marvel sets containing popular superheros and villains. But as someone who finds the entire Superhero genre dumb, I only have interest in the cool car and awesome red windscreen. When I occasionally buy Marvel cars, it's only for the cars, and the minifigs go straight into a junk bin, never to be seen again.

You're right, because they aren't. At least when it comes to, say, Star Wars and Harry Potter. It's mostly adults buying those for themselves, or forcing them onto their kids. Kids are blank slates and don't care about many Lego licenses. I'm sure there are licenses kids are crazy about, and Lego surely has some of them. Minecraft was super popular with kids and probably still is. I have no idea how popular Wicked is with kids.

All preferences are valid. I'm just saying that the idea that "stickers are better because you can leave them off" falls apart a bit when you scrutinize it, for reasons I've already explained. I will admit a major exception: things that actually make sense as being optional, like race car livery or "battle damage" type stickers. I guess I am conceding your earlier point: Even then, I'd prefer swappable printed parts. Another exception is windscreens. They typically can't use stickers due to their complex shapes, and generally only exist in a few colors. So they might only exist with an unwanted print. But the vast majority of printed parts are slopes and tiles which are widely available unprinted.

Agreed. You're right. I shouldn't have said it that way. I should have just said I don't understand it, or something. Your preference is valid.

You seem to always want to make things personal with me. I'm just giving my lived experience. I was a poor kid with a limited collection. I never had the parts I wanted. And it was never because they were printed, it was because I didn't have them at all, or enough of them, or in the right colors. The few printed parts I had were treasured, and I'd use them whenever possible. I was just hoping that by pointing out how much more likely it is to have the wrong parts or the wrong colors than an unwanted print, @Parrot might be convinced that the benefits of printed parts outweigh the rare downside.

There are so few pieces that are printed that it's basically a made up problem. In a limited collection, chances are you will not have enough of the pieces you need, or none of them at all. Or have them in the wrong color. The odds of you having exactly what you want, but with an unwanted print, is so unlikely as to be contrived. And if you're buying sets to MOC with, why are you buying sets with prints that you don't want? When you can buy classic sets or bricklink what you need for MOCs? It's just silly to complain about I'll just never understand the issue of unwanted prints when they are rare and completely avoidable. However, this is an unpopular opinion thread, and yours is unpopular, so you automatically "win", IMO. Just wanted to add some perspective, since I hate stickers. See above. It's a contrived problem. I do appreciate the fact that the only people arguing in favor of stickers also don't want to use them.