1974

It's light grey, but not LEGO light grey

This has been debated hot(h)ly in the scale building world for years, if not decades. You have to consider three things : 1 : What colour was the actual studio models? 2 : How they look through all that filmstudio processing, artificial lightning etc. Also different versions of the actual movies 4 : Lucas made MANY different MFs, X-wings etc in various sizes - and colours 3 : The colours available to us in LEGO form The answer is ... That none of them are white and very light grey is the colour that's closest, but you can only get a very limited variety of those bricks http://www.therpf.co...ad.php?t=110132 You'll also see a lot of scale model builders using a very light tan for the MF, none such colour exists in the LEGO world though http://smg.photobuck...n103-1.jpg.html Cheers, Ole

While it is true that a LEGO model should be LEGO'ish and not always true to scale (all the MFs 'cept the 10179 are too small, heck even the ACTUAL MF is not to scale with it self!) it does not mean that TLG designers can't do better. In fact they did do quite good with the MF prototype (which contains parts never released), just compare that to one actually released ;) This one : Compared to this one : Nah, blame the beam counters It should be yellowed old white if you look at the studio models (that is PRE 2004 LEGO parts, not that new thing TLG is spitting out, that ages too well) I'll be selling my sundammaged white trash perfect MF white parts in my BL shop very soon, hehe (not!) Cheers, Ole

It is (with the pony ears and the loosely stacked plates it would be given thumbs down at TLG HQ today though) allthough when I was a kid I thought it was quite odd for a motorbike to have rocket engines on it

It was part of TLG's great dumbing down plan The old pins also works much better with the tech figs hands, btw I've got a few thousand of the old ones and I use them when the strength is needed Once bought a really used 8865 (for less than 10EUR) and I guess it was probably assembled back when it was new and had never been taken apart. It had a bit of sun damage so I maybe had been heated by the sun also The pins were like fused to the beams, it was near impossbile to take apart and some bricks did get damaged in the process Cheers, Ole

I understand that. But this is not a castle theme. This is Action/Ninjago/Chima territory. Castle thmes have their own section in "Historical" on EB .. Oh wait *SNAP*

I'm late to this discussion, but boy does those prelim pics look like crappola. I've seen many prelim pics of TLG themes (a load of them never posted online) and I've presented those pics to my Ninjago/Chima/SW loving son and he thinks they looks like : qoute " something a small child may have made with no imagination" They do really look like something TLG may have made in those bad bad years around 2000 (+/- 5 years). I mean, I did not like Ninjago when I first saw it but I could see the potential (and it grew into an awesome theme with very nice builds) and now I'm a huge fan. Chima, not so much Anyway, that space/castle is old hat, we did that in '85 Cheers, Ole

Exellent! It's evident (once again) that it's not possible to judge a set's price solely by the amount of bricks/weight of bricks, but that we have to remember the huge amount of work that goes into special designers/pics/graphics/boxes for certain themes The current 40% LucasDisney "tax" does not go all the way to America so it seems Interesting that Advance/that dude is letting all this out now though ... I cannot tell more tales puplicly now, sorry, but I can say that the SW thing was a VERY big thing in TLG HQ around '99/00. Funny they put out such crap sets that was miles behind say Johnny Thunder/Adventures (but of course much better than the City/Town sets of that era) .. took quite some years before they got their act together .. imho that is Cheers, Ole

The OP mentioned LUGBULK and allthough the first rule of LUGBULK is not to talk about prices, I can say without getting the fear of black choppers outside my house, that the plastic solution will be a LOT cheaper than these fancy non-LEGO metal parts Also the metal parts are a good deal heavier which will stress the completed model quite a bit If you can't build it with proper LEGO parts I really don't see why one should bother at all. You might just go all metal and get rid of those pesky plastic bricks all together Cheers, Ole

Yeah? I saw that manager too and he told me that Disney would retcon those ewoks back Kermit as well You can get free stickers/parts for SW sets this way. I know as I got stickers/messed up parts for the last MF So yeah, those numbers should not be online ..

You should ask at the BL forum. A pic will then be uploaded so everyone in the future can enjoy it

That is not the RockRAIDERS cockpit, it's a prototype part. The Rockraiders part look like this : Anyway, I just had a chat with someone in the know (from back then), here's what he has to say : " .. yes that MF .. I've seen many versions of it, but not that particular one. The cockpit is an early version (looks a bit weird and overdimensioned) and as you have spotted, there are bricks not commonly available. Quite often prototype parts were used in early moc-ups and if they were usefull they would get approved for commercial sale, but usually one used common parts in the design stage. Anyway, you would get the message from 'upstairs' that's it was expensive anyways and get asked to do 'the same' with half the bricks - and that's not easy! But I clearly remember there was a lot of fussing about with the big quarter plates, especially if they we're to be painted/needed stickers and there was a gentleman in my team named XXXX that had a couple of those MFs on his table. He was very involved in that model There was a LOT of secrecy regarding those early SW sets. The designers had their own little 'cave' where they could watch unrelased clips from the movies because it all had to be ready for the movie I do not have pictures, sorry, as we we're not allowed to take them inside the building, but I can tell you that LEGO spend as much money on the set as they did on the box" (I've redacted out names and other markers as it's not important) 'Back then' is of course around '98-99 and the movie is TPM. TLG works differently today I'm sure, but I do find it quite interesting that the designers had a load of prototype parts to use when making moc-ups Parts are - or where - expensive to make (not today with 3D printing), but still TLG turned out loads of parts never to be seen in any sets back then As you can gather from the Faber blog, TLG have had a very special connection with Lucas' empire (now the same 'special relationship' can hopefully continue with Disney) since day one and I'm sure we're in for a massive treat in the future! Cheers, Ole

You haven't slept for 4 days straight mate, chill While I haven't actually seen pics I do have information from my various probe droids roaming the galaxy and I can tell you that you'll get a wee bit surprised and also somewhat dissapointed regarding the expensive sets, but all in due time. i've promised to keep my mouth shut this time But as you have all noticed, leaks are far and few this year (across all themes) There's a reason for that so better get used to it Cheers, Ole I knew you're gonna say that

Knock yerself out : http://www.blacktronite.com/odd.htm

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. New sets on fire off the hand of TLG. I watched technic-beams glitter in the dark near the Billund gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to go to sleep ..

Very interesting! Looks like they got the mandibles right on this one ... If the burger got flattened a bit and the large panels got some studs I think I'd prefer this one to the newer version actually I can also spot several of my protoype parts

Not allowed, but why the funk do you post this on EB and not on BL?

On the back of the box she's standing on a modified plate with a cheese on it. Laziest design ever, TLG

Like this : Cheers, Ole

I was talking about the revenue. It will be much bigger with the december month where the majority of toy sales are

Yes, it's around x-mas they make the big money, this is just a warmup

COMPLETE NONSENSE! In fact some dude named Jørgen just showed me the books : Revenue is up another +23% to a staggering 14.142 BILLION DKR (2.138.000.000USD!) with these four main sellers ; City, Crator, Starwars AND Technic So no, those pesky liftarms are going nowhere folks .. And now back to your regluar speculation (which may or may not be somewhat off the mark, hehe) Cheers, Ole

.. came to this thread to see that picture, does not leave dissapointed .. I got in a bunch of trouble with my parents because I destroyed all the ballpens in the house back then A spring by itself can be used to make shooting LEGO. Big nono back then