mirkwoodspiders

Any day now for a leak, right? UCS AT-AT was the big Black Friday set last year and the first picture leaked November 9th. I'm anxious to see this thing and find out if I can save $680 or if I need to seismically shift my budget around.

So, I was able to get a look at the Hulkbuster at my local LEGO store. The size is staggering and really neat. To be honest, the only thing that would bother me about its appearance if I didn't have any familiarity with the source material would be the height of the shoulders relative to the head. I'm really tempted to get it and modify. I don't mind tinkering with certain sets, and this would be a good challenge. It would look sensational if a few things were changed. I get this shouldn't be something we have to do to a set, but it's close enough that some fixes would get it pretty close to the source material. Once double or triple VIP points comes around, I may pull the trigger.

What Mandalorian Knight said: "No, dude, he's talking about getting more sets for the show, not the show itself continuing." Maybe read through it a couple of times before jumping to a conclusion lol.

I'm on episode 8 of Andor and really like the show. I'm going to pick up Ambush on Ferrix primarily to support the show (it's not a bad little set either, and I really like the figs), and I'd be tempted to buy Luthen's starship if they ended up making one.

No worries at all. That makes sense. My plan is to take some of the Phase 1 clone character packs and stock the AT-TE with them, possibly sell Cody to recoup some of the cost. Super frustrating that LEGO.com only allows 5 clone packs per customer.

I get the frustration, but I most certainly was not one of the ones whining about Cody. I like that he now exists but go back and read any of my posts here - you'll find I had zero part in advocating for him on this site (and any other forums or social media). Did Promobricks or someone actually say the Cody lobbying resulted in a change from AOTC to ROTS for the AT-TE? I hadn't heard that. And, I still have to believe AOTC will have its day, just further down the road than I'd hoped.

I'm going to avoid them just out of spite for the rotten treatment AOTC got for its 20th year. Half joking, half serious...

That would be interesting. I wonder if it'd be like one of the HP big-figs, or something more real-to-life? Either way, I hope it's not a buildable figure.

Yeah, I'm half venting, half serious I guess. You're right, though, there have been some massive hits for D2Cs the last few years and it'd be wrong to ignore those. I'm dealing with recency bias I guess with the reveals we've gotten this last month/summer.

To whom it may apply... please stop wishing for a Minas Tirith set. I say this out of concern. It makes the most sense in our minds, which means it is almost certainly not going to be what LEGO chooses. If you've payed attention to LEGO's D2C choices in the past three years across all their themes, you should be expecting something somewhat ridiculous and over-priced. I would absolutely love to be proven wrong, but I don't think it's a good idea to even hope for Minas Tirith at this point...

This is a good point. Unless the designers wanted it to be "playable" (which it isn't, really), the figure doesn't do much of anything. I wouldn't display the Hulkbuster with the head open, since the whole point of making it to this scale is, I assume, to show off the Hulkbuster, not a figure inside.

Here's a theory I've been mulling: LEGO has seen record profits the last few years. In response, LEGO decides to make a variety of large/questionable sets with a limited production run in case they aren't well received. In this category are Black Panther Bust, Humongous-buster, etc., which are experimental to test a market demographic. If the sets tank: "Oh well; we have the capital to eat the loss fairly easily and we've explored some ideas that help inform future product choices." If they sell well: "Oh boy! A potential new-market has been discovered." I don't know how far in advance LEGO needs to decide to produce enormous/iffy sets and how that coincides with financials. But, I think the theory has some plausibility.

After so many strange and/or disappointing D2C choices across themes over the last few years, I hope fans have adjusted their expectations accordingly as they speculate over news of a forthcoming LOTR D2C. Minas Tirith, Edoras, Helm's Deep, Lothlorien, even Bag End would all be phenomenal, but I don't expect any of them, and if we do get one, I assume it'll be disappointing. There - LEGO can't disappoint me this time!

Hopefully the outcry over this set communicates to LEGO how much fans value accuracy and realism over features if there is ever a choice between the two (I'm generalizing, but I think most here would agree). Even without the comparisons to the movie character, it seems like people still think the model looks bad, which says a lot about how off it is.

My thoughts: 1. Fitting Iron Man inside is cool. 2. I don't have Iron Man, so it's less cool because I don't wan't to get him just for this set. 3. Making Iron Man fit inside essentially raises the price $40 to $590, as the main feature is fitting him in, and is the only way LEGO can justify the terrible proportions. 4. I can't imagine it'll be too difficult to modify this to make it more movie-accurate. 5. I wish LEGO would just make an accurate model I don't have to modify.

Oh man... my bad. Thanks for the correction. Apologies for the confusion.

For real? Also, I love how everyone just glossed over your post and moved on with complaining about the price lol. $350 would be MUCH easier for me to stomach if you are correct.

I think it looks really good, but I still wish they'd used the slot and price-point for something else. This feels like a "see it in person before deciding whether or not to purchase" sort of model because of its imposing size. Absolutely enormous.

Just picked up the Razor Crest today, too. It was on display at my local LEGO store and it is gargantuan. I always under-estimate the size of these models. Double VIP was nice!

Yeah, they have their pluses too for sure. Cool that you find multiple uses for them. I could also see younger kids getting a kick out of peeling and placing stickers, even if adults rarely do lol.

This is my approach - wait and see. I made the mistake of thinking HP Icons would be silly, then it turned out to be what I consider a great set. I can't wait to see this one. It honestly doesn't come down to quality these days as much as money. Sets I'm interested in at the moment for 2022: $550 Hulkbuster, $500 Hogwarts Express, $600 Razor Crest, $270 Bowser, $670 Eiffel Tower, $120 The Office. Sets I can afford - maybe one or two of the above. That's $2,710 of LEGO total just in that list. I'm already trying to budget for Indiana Jones and LOTR next year... it's just too much, too fast, for too much money, LEGO. I think they need to spread some of these releases out, honestly.

Personally, it takes away from the overall aesthetic. Stickers tend to be slightly off from the color shade of the bricks on which they're placed; this is the case with the yellow stripes on the RC. Otherwise, you have the frustration of trying to place stickers correctly, as well as the issue of stickers peeling over time. Printed pieces are more expensive, and some pieces can't be printed, but I quite prefer prints to stickers even if they do cost more.

My thoughts as well. You could argue, I suppose, the popularity of this model at this scale may not match the level of the Falcon, AT-AT and Star Destroyer, but I still think it will sell well. I'll definitely be picking it up with an eventual double points promo.

I think it does and we'll get all of that. It'd be strange to do an interior for a ship at this scale and not flesh out the full interior. The Falcon couldn't have it for structural reasons, and I guess that might be a limiting factor here. Can't wait to see!

October 3 for VIPs, and October 8 for everyone else.