strangely

He has a standard torso, it leaked a few days ago. Hopefully they at least give him some sort of armor piece that goes over top of it. It is kind of disappointing that they didn't go the Axl route, but given how many new pieces are being introduced, it's not too surprising. Maybe, if they do more waves, they could correct that in the future. On the other hand, maybe because of the wildly differing sizes of the characters, they just decided to go standard minifigure and make them all uniform in size. Which isn't the worst idea considering how all over the place the sizes are.

I think you might be right. The pattern just doesn't look like something that occurs in nature. My initial reaction to the picture was "why does that raptor have blue lightning bolts on it?" Being a TLM2 design would make way more sense.

Widowmaker leaked. She looks pretty good. Can't wait to see what else they have in store for us.

Juniors just means it's a simpler build style, it doesn't mean the set has to be lesser in quality in general. There's no reason they can't use named characters to fit into the same role as the randoms they use. It's just lazy not too. Again that dock worker could have easily been Jefferson Davis (and as others pointed out, this would have been a great tie-in to the animated movie coming out). As for the diamonds, I get that it's easy shorthand, but it's been done to death. Just because it's a Juniors set doesn't mean it has to be unoriginal. The new Goblin set is a Juniors set and it gave us an awesome new Goblin variant and a Spider vehicle that actually existed in the comics. It's a simple build sure, but it shows a good deal of thought went into the creation of the set. Even if it's a Juniors set I think it should be just as engaging and clever as any other Lego set.

Dock worker? I'm a little surprised they didn't make him Jefferson Davis, they could have just thrown a police uniform on him and it would've been almost a tie in set to the recent game. Kind of a missed opportunity as it would have been easy to do. I don't like when these Spider-Man sets throw in random unnamed characters. There are plenty of named characters that they could use instead that would fill nearly an identical role. As plain as Captain Stacy was in the one set he's appeared in, at least it was a named character and not just a random nobody. Also, the robberies in these sets are getting increasingly strange. A large shipping container full of diamonds? Why not computers or tech of some sort? They even could have just had the container say Oscorp and that would have been great. But okay, diamonds, just a ton of diamonds rolling around in a shipping container with no security of any sort. Gotcha.

This new Goblin is actually my favorite variant now, the colors are better. I agree about the legs. While I don't think they needed to be dual molded necessarily, they did at least need side printing. I can live with it though, I've gotten used to designs suddenly stopping and not continuing onto the side. And who knows, maybe they'll give us better legs in the future. I'm happy that we finally got the spider buggy. It's a little bit more watered down than I'd hoped, but still pleasing. Goblin's glider is odd. It's funny, it's like they want to use the game design, but just can't quite use it. So close and yet so far...

I don't mind getting repeats of characters. What bothers me though, is that Spider-Man lives in New York and instead of getting buildings we keep getting spider vehicles. I would take facades over yet another blue and red monstrosity. It's sad that the only set that includes a building/location of any kind is the juniors set...

A few of these I could see making it into a set, but based on past history with these games, the majority of the new designs will just be game only. Really, I actually kind of dislike these games just because I keep thinking about what could be...

I am really surprised how few leaks we've had for this theme. I'm amazed that Lego managed to keep this one so under wraps, usually something at least leaks from the factory by this point.

I'm actually glad to get another Green Goblin. While we've had several over the years, I only actually thought the movie version and the classic version were any good. So I'm more than happy to get another variation. Hopefully it's a darker/creepier version this time. I'm hoping we get a few more civilian characters this wave. I don't really need another Aunt May. A regular version of Gwen would be awesome (Come on Lego, just do it already), even getting MJ again would be better than another Aunt May.

Yeah, I wouldn't say a designs inclusion in a book means it's a preview or confirmation of what's to come, but I suppose it is possible (if ever unlikely). Ginny's design I could believe is real, Gildroy I think is questionable. His design seems updated from the old version, it does fit with the current Lego style. What seems wrong to me is the lack of detail and texture, he seems oddly plain.

While I think Overwatch is decently popular, I just don't see a CMF without a movie or TV show to tie it to. Even the Harry Potter CMF is timed to a new movie release (even though it really didn't need to be). Plus, Overwatch skins don't quite work as a CMF to me. Many of them are themed to holidays and events, the skins would be better suited to seasonal sets or polybags.

Yeah, Malcolm's skin tone is interesting. It's definitely too dark for daylight scenes, but it matches how he appears in night scenes perfectly. Really, there's no winning in this case, Jeff Goldblum is kind of olive skinned, so depending on the lighting of any given scene it's going to look different. I'm glad they picked the darker shade for the minifigure, more of the movie is spent in the dark than the daylight. He could have used better hair though, though that's easily remedied. The rest of the pack is amazingly plain and uninteresting. I didn't really need to add another baby Blue to the baby Velociraptor pile. Owen and Claire's new face prints are kind of nice, but overall I didn't really need either of these variations. Too, with the inclusion of Malcolm it seems less and less likely we'll get anymore Jurassic Park sets (Unless that set includes muddied/damaged versions of the five minifigures we've already gotten).

Any ideas on what time to expect anything from gamescom?

I was really hoping they'd do the Nexo knights torso for Reinhardt, at the same time I'm not surprised they went this route, they probably didn't want to do a new mold for that given all the other new molds they're already doing. I can't help but wonder if the maps in the Twitter video are hinting at what the sets will be based on.

Earlier this year I had decided that I was finished with this theme, but here I am again, drawn into the madness that is Lego Star Wars. I love the Slave 1 design. I have hated pretty much all of the previous versions, I always felt they were too big and not very swooshable, but this new one seems perfectly scaled for my wants. That new Leia variation is pretty cool as well. Han's pants are great. I actually like most of the set. My only real complaint is they still haven't dual molded C3PO's leg...

In the picture you can see the white of the wall through some of the windows, which points to these being facades for the most part (assuming these are anywhere near final that is). I would expect inside detail to be similar to the Sanctum or Lockwood Estate, so some nice props and a few good mini builds. That suits me, but others will be left wanting I'm sure. Honestly, there was never a chance that we'd get all of Diagon Alley, each one as detailed as a modular. So this is a good compromise I think, it at least gives us more than the last version. I think the debate is less about scales and more about people passing off opinions as fact, at least that's my read on it.

The impression from the picture I get is that it's just somewhat scaled down, but still System scale. And really, that's the best way to do it. Giving us slightly underscaled facades means we get more of Diagon Alley than we would have otherwise, so I can live with that. I'm hoping they at least spring for a new window piece to represent some of the curved window panes.

None of the Target's near me (50 mile radius around central Ohio) had them in stock according to brickseek, but I did manage to order the great hall through lego.com, so I'll have that in a couple days. I'm guessing they weren't prepared for the release, which makes sense given that they scrambled to do this in the first place. Maybe these problems in the US will make everyone else a little less salty (though this pendulum swings both ways all the time, so we'll all be venting again next summer when Europe gets a Spider-Man set first, I'm looking at you web warriors bridge).

It's exclusive to Target and the Lego store for July.

All the Walmart's in my area have the sets discounted. The only ones not on sale is Lockwood estate and the T-rex Transport. The others are ranging from $5 to $15 off.

It's a modified version of Lockwood Manor. Same door. They swapped the first floor windows with the stickered display cases and swapped the white railing for the brown.

The leg/foot printing is strange. It almost looks like it was designed for dual molded legs and then last minute they switched to regular legs. It looks like she's wearing black sandals with pink socks... The lack of a normal facial expression is perplexing as well. There's a lot of weird design decisions to unpack here. The torso and hair looks good though, at least we have those.

Overwatch has a lot going on in it. You can expect anything ranging from castles, a moon base, dropships, ancient ruins, futuristic cities, mech's, transforming robots and more. There's a little of everything in there. It'll be exciting to see what all we get.

I'm excited, I've bought a few cheap customs/bootlegs, but it'll be sweet to have official sets.