RichardGoring

Looks amazing. I love the angle at the front of the pub. Is the chimney sweep mixed up? He has the detailed printed legs that match with the jacket torso on the mannequin. The mannequin has plain black legs. Just seems odd to have coat tails on the legs without a coat.

It looks great! And surprisingly spacious inside. Looks like it's the clockmaker's apartment upstairs. Although access to the apartment is somewhat limited, as it's only a small flat area that is removable, not the entire roof, so I hope it's not trick photography making it look so good inside there. I like the cat-related things too. The stinky fish, the vacuum, the cat climbing tree, and the ball. Only a small cutout in the rear corner too, so maximizing the area on the baseplate, which is good.

Well, colour me embarrassed. In sorting out to get Christmas decorations out, I found a second copy that I don't remember buying. So now I have three. The only thing I can say is that the resulting fort will be magnificent!

As do I, although at $120, if they are doing solid sides for the book nook, then a lot of the piece count will be in the structure, and it can't be too big as it will require a larger structure. If they do a cutaway wall on both sides, it frees up a lot more budget for it to be bigger.

The nose on this looks a lot nicer. The air intake and engine cover look better on the Ferrari. Neither is a significantly different step up from the McLaren to make me think it's worth getting. But maybe, if they go on a crazy sale one day. And it would likely be the Ferrari, because as much as they are technically good, Red Bull's attitude is somewhat irritating.

A book nook is a great idea for this! I was very tempted to make Diagon Alley into a book nook, which would involve knocking through a wall, but it would be doable. It could work really well, although there's a chance that the Balrog will only be 2.5D if they do it like this (in that some of it could be in the flat background and only partially projecting out). The $120 price point seems like it could be a decent sized model, although if it's fully enclosed, it may suffer from the same size : expense ratio as the Batcave shadowbox.

The cat I like in particular. And great alternate builds too.

I thought the same thing! First thought was, wow, a lobster! Second was that I don't remember a lobster anywhere. Third was that it might be to maintain the mould. They also had lobsters in BAM a few years ago though. Maybe 2021? I wonder if that also impacts mould preservation?

Why do you think this? There aren't any special Simpsons things happening around now, are there? Like Lord of the Rings, this seems more like doing something that's generally popular, especially with lots of adult fans and they're really leaning into the 18+ stuff. That's not to say it won't be a one off, but there are several potentially popular sets they could do that would sell well.

Historically it's meant that it's exclusive to LEGO for at least three months, and then available at just one or a small selection of retail partners. They keep changing it though, so now it's just generally a halo/large/expensive product.

How big is that going to be?!

Straight to jail!

With you on this. I would prefer the sets they release to be of high quality and timeless, so that when/if they do re-releases, it feels OK to say no.

I looked at both of those too when deciding whether to get a second copy during the Insider's weekend sale. I was convinced that either looked good, so bought it. Looking forward to hearing opinions and playing around with them.

Oops, yes! That one. I don't think it was ever explicitly said, but it's something license related. The suspicion is that the license is for LotR and he's not named in the film, so can't be named in the set. There was an interview with the designers where the name was mentioned by the interviewer and they all jumped on it pretty quickly to say that it was 'just a random dwarf', so they clearly didn't want to publicly say who it was.

At the risk of this becoming the LEGO Pick a Brick shipping date thread, my October 14 standard order hasn't shipped yet. A genuine curiosity though. In looking at ways to make a statue for the Bricklink Lost City set, using the D&D Lady of Pain mask, I was looking for sand green coloured minifigure parts and was surprised to see the State of Liberty CMF head on Pick a Brick. 6139545/25433. But compared to all the other printed heads that are $0.28-$0.33, this one is $2.57! Any idea why?

It's a fair point. But the problem when a toy becomes a collectable is that you then have two polar opposite views on stuff like this. And the thing is, neither are wrong. Ultimately, I hope they do a decent job of the new set. And more the people they make happy, the better it will sell, the more we will get in the future.

Ha! We wrote something similar at about the same time. This story is crazy though! I understand it can be frustrating when things become expensive, but it's a non-essential rare item, so, as you say, people can charge what they like. I don't personally value these kinds of things to anything like that extent, and so would do without, but to accuse a seller like this is pretty awful.

The secondary market price for old sets and the length of time since sets were last available are both factors that LEGO will take into account, but so is current market demand. Indiana Jones sets were last available a long time ago and prices on the secondary market are really high. They released some good sets - one of which was truly excellent - and all at a decent price and range of price points. And it flopped. The market demand isn't there and LEGO would probably make a lot more money with something that is currently popular and is new, so they have a larger target market of everyone, rather than the smaller (but still decently sized) subset of people who don't have it from when it was first released. On the other hand, Star Wars and Harry Potter keep getting the same things released year after year which seem to sell in vulgar numbers and make billions for LEGO, all while older sets are still priced incredibly high, but also boatloads of them are available for cheap on Craigslist as people clear out old toys they no longer use. History suggests that LEGO don't like to release the same thing again for some themes. History suggests that LEGO churn out the same thing year after year for other themes. My point is, it's a cyclical argument where both things can be true, depending your view point. Wish lists are nice, but logic can be hard to apply. Let alone the more complex nuances like licensing agreements (Bombur not being a named character in Rivendell, for example), parts budgets, logistics, opportunity cost, and lots of other stuff.

I suspect you're right on this. Which is sort of a shame, because I think if they went down a LotR route with minimal major characters, they could do Bilbo's birthday and it would be a great build with some of the party stuff and the fireworks dragon. But the full complement of dwarves will probably be more appealing.

I saw this on Reddit and was meaning to look for it. Thanks for posting! Bentobrick, it really is a wonderful MOD. I wasn't planning on getting the set, but with these MODs and the new tyres, I will be.

I think it's just that it's the most recently produced modular. I suspect it's a cropped image of all the available modulars.

Whether you buy the old ones or wait for a new set from LEGO, I'm pretty sure you'll end up paying $300. Albeit with any new set your get loads of bricks too! We can dream of lower priced sets, but I suspect it will be a dream. LEGO knows how to make money far too well.

But it wasn't a last-minute switch. They said an early concept was a newspaper place, but it didn't sound like it was anything other than ideas and sketches. They had a decent schedule to work on the jazz club.

I really don't understand. The CMF cars don't really look satisfying, and it's generic helmets, with very poor quality cars. They look like Happy Meal toys. And it's not like they don't also have a $10 price point F1 car for most teams in City and a $27 price point cars for all teams with Speed Champions. Both of which look a lot better than these. A lot a lot. Even the Duplo ones, which are also for every team, look better! I'd believe you if you told me none of the design teams communicated and they were all surprised that other teams can't up with the same thing. If they needed to do a CMF, I cannot understand why they didn't use actual drivers. Maybe current teams, and two heads and helmets per box. Or past champions/greats. Or even mini helmet builds. They would all have been more interesting. I suppose individual licensing would have been an issue at that point. Oh well.