Ruthin Road

Maybe if it's a Lego exclusive sett like LKC Not that I think LKC had a low budget with a new part, lots of prints and lots of retired parts brought back. An ideal Castle set have lots of new printed parts (like minifigs, shields, barding etc), generous amounts of minifigs and animals (recolours) and new parts like animals, weapon’s etc, which is hard to make on a low budget I think that the Viking Village demonstrates that you can have a "premium"-looking historic set while staying vaguely affordable, by good design and efficient use of pieces. It was on sale for £100 at one point in the UK, and could potentially be reduced further as it approaches retirement.

While "sales failure" could be considered relative given Lego's current profits, the fact that it was on sale for less than 18 months, was retired 2 years early, and still discounted prior to retirement, all suggests that sales were significantly less than expected.

The set would have had to be huge and expensive to do justice to all the buildings and trades included. I would have preferred a focus on one building, for example the inn, creating a set which is both more detailed and more affordable. With the sales failure of Eldorado Fortress as well, Lego can conclude that remakes of old sets are not a sure fire success. I hope they also conclude that this was due to the cost and flaws of the sets rather than a lack of interest in the subject matter. It is much easier to find reasons not to buy a set when it costs £200.

With regards to the Formula 1 sets, is this the first time that there has been a wave of licensed sets within the City theme? It seems a shame to introduce licensed products into such a core theme for children especially given that Lego have been quite happily producing non-licensed Lego Town/ City racing cars for over 30 years. Mind you, I suppose you could argue the Shell petrol stations and vehicles were a licensed theme although they were much more spread out and infrequent.

I see the retirement date for this set appears to have been brought forward two years, to the end of this year. While I felt it tried to fit in too much in one set, I was slightly surprised that it seems to have been such a sales failure. I suspect this may not bode well for the prospects of future civilian Castle sets, or that they will now be confined to the Bricklink Designer Programme.

Yes, I wonder whether they ran out of budget and had to simplify the top floor, a bit like what happened with Medieval Town Square.

The modular galactic spaceship looks OK and happily should be relatively affordable when discounted. I would have preferred something more elegantly proportioned and I think the cockpit is slightly ugly, but I recognise it is supposed to be a mothership. I still prefer my 6986! I think the small and medium sized city space sets (interstellar spaceship, explorer rover, science lab) have been excellent in this wave. However I think the larger sets have suffered from having to integrate the interlocking modules into the design, which has adversely affected their appearance.

Tudor Corner a good set and has much more life to it than the museum. I suspect the designer has done well to bring it in budget. The pub building exterior doesn't feel cohesive to me - three unintegrated floors of different styles of architecture. As often with the modular buildings, the proportions seem a bit off with the timbered section too small and the middle floor too big. The facade of the top two floors feels slightly too flat. A pub was a good choice for a corner building. However the squared off corner could have been made more of a feature rather than having a drain pipe. I would have liked to have seen the top two floors done in the timbered style and with more detailing, for example oriel/bay/mullioned windows, more prominent jettying, and more elaborate timbering. For a building called Tudor Corner, it is not very Tudor! The top floor flat seems to have a flat roof? I am not sure if the interior of the timbered section of building has been used? I will be interested to see more pictures in due course.

Indeed. The Cutty Sark and the Mary Rose are well-known in Britain but perhaps not worldwide. The Cutty Sark would at least be relatively unproblematic as a merchant ship but Lego might baulk at giving us 32 sails! The Mary Celeste is well known and the (non-Pirates of the Caribbean) Flying Dutchman would provide plenty of creative opportunities. However, what I would really like is a Lego version of the Hispaniola from Treasure Island! Yes, good shout. While it is not pirates, I am excited to see a sailing ship from a very different era in a very different setting, and with a more scientific background. Hopefully it will find an audience.

I saw the films in the cinema when they were released and read the book over 20 years ago therefore my knowledge is much less than most others here and I am not really the target audience. However my recollection is that we never saw or had a description of the interior of Barad Dur and that Sauron did not have a fixed physical form, so the interiors and minifigures seem a bit jarring to me. I am not sure what I was expecting, but I do not think it was a canteen with tongue in cheek in-jokes and a study for Sauron to put his feet up! I guess unrelenting grimness doesn't really fit the Lego aesthetic and would not be very commercially viable in terms of sitting in the corner of the average living room. Nonetheless a smaller display model without interiors would seem truer to the source material, fix the problems with proportion and be significantly more affordable.

It is exciting to see Lego cover a different period of history. I would not have thought that the Endurance was sufficiently established within popular culture to be honoured with a Lego set, and potentially with its own GWP as well. I keep on thinking there has been some confusion and there must be a Stars Wars or Marvel spaceship called Endurance as well. I suspect it will be a display set also. The Endurance is most famous for being trapped in ice therefore that has to be included, which would then lend itself to be a static model for display. Nonetheless the rumoured piece count is large albeit with a wide margin of error, so it could have both sailing and icebound options. I think the lack of widely recognisable expedition members will also make it less likely to have many, if any, minifigures. Shackleton would be the only name that would have any significant recognition, and even then I suspect the vast majority of people would not know what he looks like. Up there with Notre Dame as being the most unexpected Lego set this year. The rumoured price is also less than might be expected, albeit still way beyond my budget.

I think it looks like a thoughful and polished set that is evocative of the medieval period but still feels like a Lego set. The main issue is that it feels like at least 3 separate sets: a farmhouse, a fortified tower and a townhouse/inn. Subsequently there is a slight lack of refinement on the building exteriors and an incoherence to some of the interiors as the designer tries to fit everything in and on budget. I suspect the designer did as well as possible given the brief. I dislike the preponderance of big expensive sets in recent years although I suspect I should actually be thanking Lego for making it easy for me to decide against buying! I agree all the stickers are an issue especially given the price. It looks like a good set to MOD. Equally it is sufficiently simple that even a limited builder like me could create something vaguely comparable with my current bricks. There seems to be reasonably versatile selection of parts. However I think the set would need a fairly comprehensive rebuild to seem pirate-ty.

The Imperial Sloop Neptune would definitely be my choice. A clean, elegant and affordable design that is not too big. It is a shame that the flag from the Eldorado Fortress could not have been reused.

I suppose the price is indirectly the biggest flaw in that I would be much more forgiving of a similar set that was half the price. In addition the set feels padded out in order to inflate the price. While the ship is absolutely fine in itself, a merchant ship still feels incongruous as part of a military fort set. I would have preferred that the ship had been saved for a future civilian port set and the price of the fort correspondingly decreased.

Thank you for the poll. I agree with @Horation above. I think the main flaw of the set is that it is ugly, both in comparison to the original and especially on its own terms, which limits its wider appeal. While the base is well done albeit a bit part heavy, the fort towers manage to be bulky and overbuilt while simultaneously lacking in detail. The gun loops are less elegant than the original set. The use of red bricks is scattergun. The modular feature is a good idea but takes too many liberties with the appearance of the main model. I like the idea of having the remake as a pure playset but it would then have to be about half the price. I think this would have been possible by omitting the ship and streamlining the overall build. If it was cheaper I think we would have been more forgiving of its flaws and been better able to appreciate its play features. It's such a shame. If could have had one old set remade it would have been Eldorado Fortress (or Fort Sabre as I knew it in the UK!) However I can't bring myself to buy it. While a Caribbean fort will never have as broad appeal as a castle or a spaceship, I think a better set would have created more than sufficient interest to justify its existance. Sadly its failure will have sunk the possibility of future Imperial sets. I find this quite funny albeit it is probably indicative of an overall lack of care over the set. If nothing else, it contributes to the nostalgic feel by continuing the well-established slapdash Lego approach to its "lore"!