RichardGoring

Mickey looks great, but can't say I'm impressed with the other two. I think it's mostly their faces. Cruella's expression doesn't feel right, but as others have said, maybe an alternative face will help, as would accessories. The queen's face opacity looks poor, and far to washed out for printing on a dark head. Hopefully they look better in decent lighting and with their full complement of accessories.

I don't think it will fall flat like the Queer Eye set. The BTS fan base is HUGE and it will be snapped up. Personally it looks a bit bland and not nearly as interesting as the Queer Eye set. I've not seen the music video, but I assume that it's stylistically simple and that the set reflects that, hence the lack of detail. A shame for me and many AFOLs, but I suspect it will bring a lot of joy to many others. Hope the building experience is fun for them.

Another vote for red looking better. Also helps differentiate from Black Falcons.

It seems very likely that it's Rings of Power that has reignited the media interest in LOTR, giving us Rivendell, and I'm sure they wouldn't have mentioned ROP on the site if they hadn't discussed it with Amazon first. Although interestingly they haven't used a Copyright or Trademark symbol for Rings of Power (although Amazon doesn't in its own press releases either). Despite the polarized reviews, there are still many, many people who really like it (I've not watched it (yet) so have no opinion on the content), and most of those are exactly the target market for LEGO adult sets.

Well, I decided to try it and went down to LEGO Land Florida to see the Factory Store. It was somewhat disappointing. Admittedly it was about 3x larger than a store PAB wall, but very little in the way of interesting things. No animals, no plants, and not even a huge range of bricks. I left with slightly less than a PAB cup worth, which cost me $20 compared to the standard $16. I was hoping it would have been a suitcase full of useful parts. They did have some pieces in colors I've never seen before. A grey white and a light orange, which was unusual. Also some plates in the old dark grey. One day I'll see if I can make it to the German one.

The house definitely looks good. How much is the train again? For the right price it would be ok, but I suspect it's going to be too expensive for what it is. Claim on Reddit is that it will be revealed tomorrow. I wonder if they'll do the entire Disney 100 range, or bits and pieces.

It would be amazing if they made this into a 2in1. The variety of pieces feels like it's there and it would be a lovely way of creating more of a town to accompany the castle. If not, I'm sure the talented folks who post to Rebrickable will help.

I'd love it if more happened, but it will all be about sales and potential. If they don't get what they want from it, they're not afraid to cancel things, despite large investments in it. But agreed, it's a good sign. Why do two of each of the unique weapons? Is it just to provide extras as these are more likely to break, or is there a more specific reason related to parts that come as a collection/pack?

I'll give it a go. I also don't care for boxes.

Are you finding these on eBay, locally, or somewhere else? I might need first refusal on anything you pass up on these prices!

Has anyone been to LEGOland in Florida that can tell me about the factory store? I've watched a few videos and know it's done by weight, rather than in cups, like an in-store PAB. Is the one in Florida good? It looks like one in Germany had LOADS of elements to choose from, but I can't find much on the selection in Florida and whether it's worth going. I'll be in Orlando tomorrow, and considering going down for an hour before my flight out.

I think the Eiffel Tower may break this somewhat... And yet Titanic is fine. Indeed, it is beautiful. Edit: Ninja'd. Haha!

Nicely done. One trick for images on Eurobricks is to right-click on the image on Reddit, choose Copy Image Link, and then paste that here:

True, but they do it all the time. It's either, as you say, that they're a bit incompetent, or, and I suspect that this is the case for most things, they don't care. They're not intending to reveal it 'officially'. It's just a thing that happens, and if a retail partner puts something out early and there isn't a planned launch of it, then they probably don't care. At this point, it's a few days, maybe weeks ahead of it releasing everywhere, so none of the competitor clones or sensitive movie plot points matter. Unlike the recent batch of leaks where we're now seeing pretty much every one of those big concepts being cloned with (pretty terrible) versions popping up all over the place. That will annoy them a lot. As you say, anti-climax on this. But hopefully some of the others deliver on the promise that the big batch of leaks last week promised!

Interesting news on Reddit that they're working on allowing CSV or XML parts list imports into PAB, which is great news. The reply by Tohaker says it's being worked on, and they've previously said they work on the PAB dev team. Very promising.

LEGO has a habit of not revealing things. They're just posted on the website with no press release. Especially for these kinds of sets that likely won't generate any kind of meaningful buzz in the press. It's only a huge anticlimax to us, who have been following every leak and rumour for months, which is a pretty small proportion of the buyers of these sets.

And the CMF24 space baby with the helmet and air tanks at the back.

True. Although they might just print it on the back. Hopefully not, but I wouldn't put it past them.

Well there you are. There's expected behaviour and observed behaviour, and in this case, clearly different. On the other hand, I've held off placing orders at all and will just wait until it's more stable. Will that mean I lose enthusiasm for done if it and they lose the sale? Hmmm...

Is there a chance they'll use the baby minifigure body and a specially moulded head though, given that he's a minifigure body as an adult?

Could well just be down to market expectations and what they can get away with. People in Europe are used to everything closing on a Sunday, for example. This is a pretty niche service, so they can probably get away with it. No one in Europe is too vocal about it. In the US everything is available all the time. It's so alien to shut things down like that. And there are a load of influencers who could start making noise about it. So just keep it 'open', but delay things. No idea why they can't do that with Europe though, although maybe they are trying to encourage people to make fewer, larger orders, so it's easier for them logistically. Clearly all guesses. And no idea at all why they wouldn't make parts universally available once released. If anything, that feels like it just complicates their logistics as they need to maintain multiple systems.

It would not surprise me. And I think we've all seen what AI did to the leaked Indiana Jones temple run set...

Please don't start! We've had years of UCS Dobby's Sock in the Harry Potter threads and they're actually going to do one this year! (along with the rest of Dobby). Went into my local LEGO Store this evening (Burlington, MA) and they were building Rivendell at the front of the store. It really is impressively large. Looking forward to getting it, but I'll wait for double VIP, a decent GWP, or a cashback site to go bananas.

Agreed. There is very little that is genuinely rare nowadays. Just expensive. It irks me every so slightly when people claim to have found a rare item, when they usually just mean "I paid a stupid amount of money for this thing." Sadly, they don't show the level of joy I would expect, with some (but my no means all) clearly doing it for the social media impact. Next week: old man yells at cloud (again) While a nice idea, I suspect that it would be less successful for LEGO. Yes, $500 prices out a lot of people from buying this set. But there are a load of hard core LOTR fans who are not (yet) into LEGO that will something as big, bold, and impressive as this, and happily drop $500 on it, in a way that they probably wouldn't if you had to combine all the sets. When the 2021 wave of Harry Potter launched, the Hogwarts stuff was panned, in part because most of the castle builds were small little segments. It was only after people started combining sets of the new style (probably into year 2, maybe even only this year) that you can see just how impressive they can be. The non-LEGO, LOTR fans likely wouldn't buy into it as much. But as we've discussed, there is a lot of potential for great adult-focused sets that are small and neat and less expensive. And I hope that they release some of them.

So they are, thanks. I don't follow so the figures in Harry Potter so much, so hadn't noticed them before.