brickbride

No way are they going to finish this things within three years (where we're already in year two) if each year's biggest set is a single location and we've spent slots on things that aren't even part of the castle proper like the Boathouse and Owlery. Either the cycle will be longer or this is going to end up a very incomplete castle.

What makes you think LEGO are still for kids? Half the new sets these days are 18+ and as for the others, do you really think many kids will buy a EUR 200 Hogwarts Great Hall? Though the dichotomy concerning video games is kind of funny to me. On the one hand, pretty much the only reason I can think of for adults to shell out EUR 200 for their kids' Great Hall (or Nocturnia Castle) is that at least they'll spend some time away from the screen. On the other hand, the theme of the latest Dreamzzz season and its corresponding sets is video games, and then there's all the Super Mario, Minecraft, Animal Crossing etc. sets.

Wow, that looks bad, and the list price is ... something. They should have just foregone making a set and put all the figs in a battlepack or something. Sure, then it would have been hard to justify that kind of list price, but I honestly don't see 600+ parts here and even if I did, EUR 100 would be too much. (Well, actually, given the mech and the portals I can sort of see them. But mechs are EUR 15 at list price even with two minifigs now. The portal was EUR 4 in a polybag with Doctor Strange. So a bunch of portals, a mech, and some rubble for the base can in no way can account for the price.) I guess they're going by the old rule of thumb "1 minifig per EUR 10 list price" and if you just go by that, the set is actually a good deal. But I cannot ignore the smallish number of parts and the lack of a build. And apart from all the inaccurate figs, where is the infinity gauntlet? You know, the one that plays a huge part in this scene? If you call the entire thing "Endgame Final Battle" instead of "Marvel Heroes Mashup" or something, at the very least it should reflect its name.

Honestly, I cannot see either Gryffindor Tower or the Astronomy Courtyard. I'm assuming we'll get the latter eventually in the "most detailed" castle system, so that'd be a waste of a D2C. As for Gryffindor Tower, it's not that iconic or interesting. It's not like the Friends apartments where like 90% of the show's action takes place! And frankly it's even less interesting than all the other Common Rooms would be, if only because everyone who's only marginally into HP would have a ton of Harrys, Rons, and Hermiones already. Hogsmeade, again, could be viable. If they're smart they'll do it in the style of Diagon Alley so you can add onto your Diagon Alleys if you want to.

Rule of thumb: if you have to go into this much detail justifying the possible minifig selection, then no, the location itself isn't iconic enough. Would people have bought the Avengers Tower, or for that matter Diagon Alley, even without the figs? Sure, because of the fun building experience and how the finished product looks on your shelf. But stacking up four identical (apart from the colours) towers isn't that much fun and apart from that you basically have grass and some goal hoops. I'm not ruling out a smaller, Burrow-size D2C. But EUR 400-500? That's a lot of Quidditch torsos and capes you could buy instead.

I mostly agree but there's still some overlap I'd say. The D&D set and CMF series were especially well-received not only because of the D&D IP but also because they could double as generic medieval fantasy which many AFOLs would like more of. The Cullen House works not only for Twilight fans but for those who would like LEGO to give us modulars in a more modern style. So I do think that the overlap here with, say, horror is intended to broaden the target group towards non-Spiderverse fans.

I didn't mean casual movie fans, I meant CMF collectors who aren't into those particular movies. Like you can want a Werewolf Spiderman either because you know who that is or because you have a general idea of who Spiderman is and werewolves are fun and the design just looks appealing.

I called this when the series was first announced and got shouted down. LEGO cannot afford to make a CMF series just for superfans, it has to have wider appeal. Which means fun and visually appealing designs trump plot relevance. Like Ballerina and Lobster-Lovin' Batman.

I wouldn't get my hopes up for the Leaky Cauldron, since it's a pub and LEGO avoid doing those. Yes they did the Three Broomsticks but I'm not sure if they know that butterbeer is supposed to be alcoholic, they didn't do the Hog's Head either. And the problem with a DA expansion is that the old DA is set to retire soon, so anything new would have to be able to stand on its own. What else in Knockturn Alley (apart from B&B) would even be iconic or well-known enough to count? Hogsmeade in the same style as DA would make more sense to me since it would stand on its own yet be able to be displayed together. Well the most dramatic games usually end up being those houses up against each other so it makes sense. For me the 2018 set with all the stands was as definitive as it needs to get. Sure the players were still Gryffindor against Slytherin, but even a D2C version would be unlikely to feature all four houses playing each other simultaneously, that just doesn't make sense. Army-building Quidditch players even from other houses isn't that hard thanks to the Cho polybag, the book with Cedric, and the house banners. Certainly cheaper, I'd guess, than a D2C! So I'm not sure if enough demand would really be there.

That's pretty optimistic! The big DA is four half baseplates and already costs EUR 450, so even with three I wouldn't expect much below EUR 400. 😞 It's worth noting that most of the playscale Hogsmeade (except the station) went EOL last year. As did the UCS Hogwarts Express so maybe we are due a new one (this time what most everyone wanted, i.e. a motorized version that runs on rails with King's Cross)? Though with the way things have been going lately, I agree with @BrickBob Studpants that buildable objects (or Merlin forbid, giant buildable creatures) sound likely. Could be, but then the D2C isn't listed either, so I am curious. By the way, I think we have confirmation now that HP is getting an AC (since 76456 can't really be anything else IMO).

Also if the leak is true then there are two set numbers, 76455 and 76456, still unaccounted for. 76456 has to be the AC since Brickmerge features it as an HP set, 7+, 278 pieces, with a September release date but also a 2025 EOL date. Any ideas for 76455?

According to a story on instagram, there will be a HP D2C with a set number of 76457, no rumours as to the set name yet. What do you think, a smaller D2C like the Burrow or another massive one? Youtuber JJ Mly (not the leaker of the set number) did a vid a month ago pedicting five likely topics (Quidditch Pitch, Hogsmeade, Azkaban, Horcruxes, MoM) but that seems to me to just be guesswork. I cannot see a large enough target group for either Azkaban (way too bleak), Horcruxes (the same), or MoM (a fairly dark location and the only previous set wasn't well-received). Hogsmeade maybe - I do think the playsets have covered all that LEGO is going to cover but it's a theme park location which might make it more popular. As for a Quidditch Pitch, it would still have to be minifig scale so would that not basically be just a ton of green plates? If anything I could rather see a Quidditch Icons set with Harry's Firebolt, James Potter's Seeker trophy, and a Snitch or something.

According to the post that mentioned the size and stickers, the saucer section can be removed.

Honestly I wasn't even kidding. To me those were indeed his most memorable moments. Falcon as an Avenger was always pretty inoffensive, Cap's good friend, but in a team setting he just blended into the background up to and including Endgame. We didn't know anything much about his life story and he didn't have anything much in the way of a personality. I've seen both TWS and Ant-Man 1 and he only stood out to me in that one scene in Ant-Man 1 (and not in a good way). When Cap handed him the shield at the end of Endgame I was like "Huh. Well, I guess he is the most decent person Steve knows that's still alive, so sure, why not." The gesture didn't pack a punch or anything. I didn't even like Steve Rogers much but you can't deny he was a strong personality, someone who'd fought very hard to get where he was and who'd made the identity of Captain America (originally just a marketing gag) all his own - a fitting counterpart to Tony Stark's Iron Man. Falcon was never like that. And neither was War Machine, hence my comment about Armor Wars being cancelled. I'd be like making Happy Hogan the new Captain America or Iron Man - he's a perfectly fine supporting character but not someone with a personality you can really root for. And that's the problem right now - with most of the old Avengers dead or retired, we have a roster comprised almost exclusively of perfectly fine supporting characters but nothing more. Tony Stark dying got people up in arms because it was a monumental injustice after seeing him struggle for so hard and so long, and that's exactly why it worked. We need characters like this again. Honestly I don't think team movies like Thunderbolts or FF will be the solution either, even though apparently that's the best Marvel can do right now. Those, too, would need at least one breakout character - like the Guardians would never have worked without Star-Lord. Otherwise you just end up with something like Eternals, a bunch of mostly inoffensive characters but not someone whose fate you'd lose sleep over. The only truly interesting and conflicted ones were Druig and Ikaris, and what did Marvel do - relegate Druig into the background and kill Ikaris off! The current concept of dragging B- and C-listers into the spotlight doesn't work because just because we've seen these people before doesn't mean we will get invested (like Falcon has proven). Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was a much better effort than most in that regard, in that it introduced a whole new character with his own backstory and conflicts and made us root for him, but then he was barely in the same continuity as the rest of the MCU and they haven't done anything with him since 2021. Right now the only characters left who I think could carry a movie on their own are Captain Marvel (and it seems like I'm in the minority here, plus as of The Marvels she's semi-retired anyway) and Dr Strange. (Also Loki and Agatha Harkness but there's no chance of that.) If they go through with replacing them with Kamala and America there'll be no-one left at all. I don't even dislike Kamala but I'm not invested in her, either, and it's high time we got some leads we could get invested in again.

You mean people won't be rooting for RDJ if the only alternative are characters like Yelena? Not likely IMO. Well, I mean his most memorable moments before were getting beaten up by Ant-Man and contributing to War Machine's crippling injury, so it's not like he was doing great then either. But I agree - the extended Disney+ Trailer for BNW makes it look like Harrison Ford is the main character, and to add insult to injury the CGI wings on both Falconcap and Falcon look hilariously fake.

Well using the same for both, even due to cost, would finally be a step in the right direction if you ask me. I'm very tired of LEGO going "curvy waist and lipstick, look it's a girl!" for any female characters from princesses to barbarian warriors.

Let me help you there. Have you seen a movie where all the personnel of Fury's space station were eaten by flerkittens to a soundtrack of "Memory" from Cats? 'Cause that alone has to rank among the MCU's top ten moments EVER. So - not very as it turns out? Thanos: I AM INEVITABLE. Tony: Nope not on my watch.

I haven't seen the Hulk solo movie but Thor The Dark World, while not great, was still way, way better than Thor 4. Ant-Man and the Wasp was actually the best Ant-Man movie by a large margin (which admittedly isn't saying much). Like @Mandalorianknight is saying, the MCU has lost its consistent seal of quality. I'd also argue that it has lost its tonal consistency. Before Infinity War you knew that with a MCU movie you'd get fast-paced comic hero action with witty and flippant dialogue. These days you might end up with anything from horror influences (Dr Strange 2, which I agree was still one of the better entries) to slow and introspective (Eternals) to cringe comedy (Thor 4) to pretty much standard action movies with hardly any superpowers (Thunderbolts). So it's not really surprising that a lot of those movies are more divisive and/or don't meet the majority of the target group's tastes. Plus, cohesiveness. Some movies like Shang-Chi (which I liked) or Eternals (which could have been better written but again had aspects I liked) are so far removed from the others in terms of setting, mythology, and characters that they don't really feel like MCU movies at all. I think it was the same with some of the more established MCU characters initially - the Guardians especially came out of nowhere -, but now the timing no longer works. Eternals and Shang-Chi both came out in 2021 and both teased a sequel that would presumably tie them into the larger continuity but nothing has manifested, not even a mini-series or crossover to another project. The MCU pre-Endgame had the occasional ignored plot hook but didn't drop its characters left and right. At the same time the scope keeps expanding. Previously we had a core group of six Avengers that only gradually expanded, and were mostly based in North America (or space). Now we have movies set all over the world but whose heroes for the most part don't interact or even know of each other. And Marvel keeps bringing in large groups! Previously, the largest group of characters were the Guardians with five or six members and very distinctive personalities and designs. Now Eternals alone had ten main characters (not even counting the non-Eternals), there's the FF, there's the X-Men, and because of the Multiverse there's in some cases multiple versions of a single character! Are we supposed to care about all of them? Basically, the MCU these days just looks like a disjointed mess where everyone (both on the production and on the character side) does their own thing, continuity issues are ignored (say, The Marvels following Secret Invasion), and we don't even have any real idea who the new Avengers should be or who'd lead them. So it's not surprise to me that people would go from "I'll watch all the movies" to "I'll pick and choose the few that sound decent on their own".

The Gum Gum fruit I expect we'll get. Since Yoru probably already needs a new sword mould I"m less sure about Mihawk's knife. And pretty much the only way they could do a Transponder snail is with a stickered or printed tile, I'd think, in which case they might as well not bother as far as I'm concerned.

YMMV. To me War Machine is more like knock-off Iron Man without the personality. I think a surprisingly large part of the audience care more about charismatic leads than about robot suits, and were rooting for Tony Stark but would not root for Rhodey. How forgettable is his personality? Well apparently he'd been replaced by a Skrull for the last couple of movies and Marvel doesn't act like that's a big deal! Screentime maybe, but like someone has said, his entire brand was being friends with Iron Man and even then we never got any fallout from, say, Tony's death. It would be as if Hawkeye were only in the MCU as Natasha's best buddy and Scarlet Witch were only in it as Vision's girlfriend. They were always more complex characters than him.

The Armor Wars movie is apparently dead according to recent leaks, good riddance. Maybe Marvel are finally wising up about every B- and C-lister from the Infinity Saga getting their own movie or series? In other news, catching up on my missing MCU movies I've finally found one worse than Quantumania: Thor Love & Thunder. Yikes that thing is unwatchable, I didn't even get halfway through, just stared at the screen like WTF am I seeing here? And who thought this would be funny and/or in good taste? The Guardians who are barely in it are awfully written, I felt embarrassed for Chris Pratt whose unhappiness with the material and/or direction radiated from the screen. How that thing made money while The Marvels (a cinematic masterpiece in comparison, despite its problems) flopped I'll never understand. I guess it mostly benefitted from its 2022 release at a time when the future of the MCU still looked brighter and people were more worried about missing out on individual entries? At least it gave us a decent LEGO set in the Goat Boat. Ah, the times when MCU movies still got an automatic wave of several sets.

Honestly I am not surprised on both counts. The Morgan and Buggy episodes feature the same Straw Hat trio but the Buggy one wins out by having a more visually appealing setting and a flashier villain (who appears in more episodes, too). And while prosthetics for minifigs are a recent LEGO thing, an axe for a hand is hardly kid-friendly and might well look silly in minifig form. Syrup Village has, again, the least visually interesting setting compared to say the Baratie or Arlong Park. And it’s the darkest and least kid-friendly arc; not that the others are necessarily less violent but all the poisoning and stalking people through secret passageways screams thriller more than swashbuckling adventure. Plus Sham and Buchi seem to be one-off characters with no further plot relevance and if Kuro shows up again later they can always include him in a set then.

CALLED IT! The ONLY thing I got wrong was switching Merry and Arlong Park around. ;-) Found in the usual place: 75636 Partys Bar 301 pieces EUR 30 - Figs would include Shanks, young Luffy, and possibly Makino or the bandit (I don't really expect more than three figs at the most, possibly only two given that both Shanks and Luffy would have to be exclusive). This would also be the setting where Shanks hands over the hat so that's presumably what the leaked hat piece is for. 75637 Buggy's Circus 537 pieces EUR 50 - anyone else expect a spinning wheel? I sure do! - Figs would be Buggy, Luffy, Zoro, Nami, and possibly Cabuji. Zoro's and Nami's outfits in that episode are the same as in the duel with Mihawk/the final scene of episode 8, so they might be repurposed here and on the Baratie/Going Merry. (At least I think Zoro's outfit is the same - the shirt looks green rather than blue in the circus tent but that might be the lighting.) 75638 Arlong Park 926 pieces EUR 80 - I cannot see this giving us more than 8 figs at the very most, so that's the Straw Hats (5) + Arlong (1) + one or two fishmen for them to fight? Luffy wears the same outfit in this scene as in the final episode of episode 8, the red vest that's already been leaked (and the stretched arms would make sense here). It's noteworthy that Nami is wearing Luffy's hat throughout that scene, I'm not sure how LEGO's going to solve this. 75639 Going Merry 1376 pieces EUR 130 75640 Baratie 18+ 3402 pieces EUR 300 Also it's said that we get "at least" 6 more sets in 2026. Presumably these will be based off season 2.

For the Merry I'd expect the main cast in the outfits from the end of episode 8: Luffy - straw Hat with black hair (as per leak), red vest torso (as per leak though probably without the stretched arms which should belong to the Arlong Park set), blue cut-off pants. (He wears the same thing at Shells Town but I don't think we'll get a set of that.) Zoro - green hair and no bandana, white shirt, green striped haramaki sash, black boots and pants. (He also wears the same thing in the Marine Base fight though he puts on the bandana during it.) Nami - white-and-blue shirt, orange skirt (the same skirt as on the Baratie, I think, so they could repurpose it). Usopp - brown dungarees, no shirt, red bandana hair piece (as per leak - the same bandana as on the Baratie) Sanji - black suit (so the entire outfit could be repurposed, too)

Assuming that the Baratie set will include the duel with Mihawk, this would give us at the very least the following characters and outfits: Mihawk (presumably exclusive to this set) with dashing feathered hat, open black-and-red coat, and no shirt wielding sword Yoru (and small knife? The standard LEGO knife is a different shape but they might well include it. Or they might just print the knife on Mihawk's torso I guess.) Zoro in duel outfit (dark pants and boots, dark red striped haramaki sash, dark blue shirt, black bandana) with all three swords (and some way to carry Wado in his mouth, i.e. a trans-clear neck brace or something) Luffy in Baratie outfit (red shirt with green dungarees or possibly the blue-white shirt from the Arlong fight but I'd expect the former, and of course the leaked straw hat/black hair piece) Usopp in dark red coat with no shirt and then either the dark red tricorn hat from the first day or the red bandana hairpiece that's already leaked from the second day, I'd expect the latter Nami in Baratie outfit (pink shirt, short orange skirt) Zeff (presumably exclusive to this set) with peg leg in chef's outfit with towering hat (he doesn't always wear it and at one point he wears a red-and-white striped shirt, but the chef's whites and towering hat are too much fun to leave them out) Sanji (black suit, striped shirt, black tie - though he doesn't always wear the suit jacket so it might be missing) Other than that, there's some cooks or pirates (say, the two whose fight in the dining room Sanji breaks up), the fishman host, Gin the shipwrecked pirate, or of course Arlong harrassing some fancily-dressed diners to chose from. Another option might be the visit by the marines in episode 7 (Garp, Kody, Helmeppo).