strangely

Sabe and the handmaidens from Episode 1 would be great. And I would really like to see a Padme variation from the last fight scene in Episode 1. Boss Nass is high up on my list too and perhaps another Gungan (Different printing or something). An episode 1 Palpatine would certainly be interesting as well. Also we really need an episode 3 variation of Padme. Also we need Bespin variations of Leia and Lando. And honestly I wouldn't mind a broken variation of C3PO (With some sort of battle damage). Most importantly to me is variations of C3PO for Episode 1 and 2 (It just feels incomplete to me to not have those versions).

It's not really about the sex, though that does contribute to it sure. The Simpsons is controversial for a myriad of reasons. First off it's portrayal of the average American family was a hot button issue in the 90's, even then President Bush SR had a few things to say about that. Then you have to factor in the Simpsons portrayal of things like religion and political issues. Next factor in episodes that deal with issues like drinking, body image and parenting. Factor in some violence (Albeit cartoon violence). Then finally factor in the sex related issues. The Simpsons world, like our own, isn't black and white, and the fact is that when you delve into those issues you manage to offend somebody. The Simpsons is considered more adult because at the end of the day their problems are more similar to real world problems, it's social commentary on America essentially and that's more likely to create controversy. Things like Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter end up being different. They don't deal with controversial issues, they focus on very black and white good versus evil stories. And often the violence is overlooked because of the fantasy setting. A lot of parents groups seem to be more upset with violence that is easy to imitate, and it's sort of hard to cast spells or force strangle a person in real life, so more often than not parents let it slide. Really it is a double standard, but it is what it is. And yes we are pretty desensitized to violence. But at the end of the day the Simpsons gets more flack because it handles issues that matter to us, while these other movies are mostly low impact adventure films with overly fake effects. The marketing for the Simpsons has always been a bit odd. But rarely are those toys for kids (Except maybe the restaurant toys that are made every once in a while). Usually Simpsons toys are figurines that can be displayed in an environment. Usually they lack articulation except maybe a swiveling head and arm and the plastic environments are very basic with some sort of simple function that imitates a scene from the show. Having a few as child I can say they weren't that fun and didn't do much, which being designed as display items they wouldn't be to begin with. And as a kid I never saw any Simpsons toys in a store like Walmart, only Toysrus and hobby stores. The clothing and lunch boxes are a fair point, but honestly I see so few of them. While they may exist, the rarity of seeing them sort of indicates that the market isn't big for them. As far as I can tell the marketing may indeed swing towards kids some of the time, but often its more pointed towards the teen and adult crowd. Even the video games are generally not E rated.

That's highly dependent on sales. With any theme Lego has if it sells well it's expanded. So it is possible that if the Simpsons does well we might see Lego do more adult oriented sets in the future.

Yes, I would only assume they'd do the same thing they did for Lego Batman 2 and make a movie based around Lego Marvel. Which that's a sort of why not type thing as the Batman movie was made by the same company who made the game, so with Lego Marvel they could do the same thing. And on the plus side the exclusive figures they almost always include end up being pretty awesome. The youtube videos were pretty good. I definitely get the impression that Thor, Falcon and Red Skull are the ones we're supposed to see next year.

Well she was actually going to be a part of the Disney Princess line when the movie came out. However they decided not to as they would have had to buy Amy Adams likeness. So really the win for her was being too expensive even for Disney.

That may be true, but there are instances where other characters have been featured. Both Alice and Meg have been featured at various points, so there is always the possibility of other characters appearing (But not before the main line-up are featured). I see no problem in seeing it as a possibility. At the end of the day Disney is a money driven company, if there was a surge in interest for those characters then they will merchandise them. So while the possibility isn't great now it could be at a later time. After all with a sequel to Alice in Wonderland in the works Disney could always decide to capitalize on that.

It is a stretch for Kairi yes, but Alice is definitely possible. After all she already appears with the Disney princesses from time to time (Along with other non princesses Pocahontas and Mulan). And as for anything Kingdom Hearts I will say the possibility would go up if Disney ever adapted it (Which you never know, they're relationship with the video game industry is constantly changing).

No news for a few days and the board becomes a bad comedy routine... I'm not a fan of Penguins duck boat, I think it would have looked much better had it been a bit bigger. Personally I think Batman's little jet ski is pretty pointless and the parts should have gone to making the duck boat a bit smoother in design. I also feel like they should have done something to portray Penguin's hair, maybe printing like they did for Alfred. Penguin just doesn't look quite right to me without it. But I suppose that will be added when Lego makes a fourth variation of him.

I am hoping we get a few sets based on the more obscure princesses. Kairi and Alice comes to mind, who are both princesses in the Kingdom Hearts game (Also Alice sometimes appears in the Disney Princess marketing anyway). It would be nice even if at some point the line extends to a fuller range of Disney characters other than princesses, which I feel if this line is popular than that's always a possibility.

It's weird how they reused Stephanie's head for Merida, then again looking through the prelims they all sort of look like they use Stephanie's head... Hopefully that isn't the case in the final sets (Though I do get the impression they'll reuse heads from the Friends theme for all the characters). It makes me wonder if there was some weird licensing stuff going on behind the scenes causing this. It just seems odd that both Lego and Disney would let such sloppy likeness slide, especially on a new product where the first year is generally make or break. That alone sort of makes me think this may not be completely final. I suppose it's possible that we really haven't seen the final version yet. I mean the box art from brickset looks pretty official, but I think there is some possibility it's still one step away from being final. And even though the figure is being sold on Ebay that doesn't exactly prove the head is final, as with the other leaked minifigures it could simply have a wrong head (I mean it is stolen from the factory, so it's not as if they can stop to ask if it has the correct pieces). Granted that's all speculation. But until I see an official Lego announcement I will hold out some hope that the final figures will look much closer to the source material.

I'm a little foggy on why this would make a good cigar. https://www.thedailybrick.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/700x700/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/l/e/lego_plate_1_x_2_with_handle__open_ends___2540__lego-black-plate-1-x-2-with-handle-open-ends-2540-30-916041-38.png

It's a black detonator. As I said before Lego would not, could not put a cigar in a set. They would be in so much trouble for doing that. I mean we live in an era where if there's smoking in a movie it's mentioned in the rating. I mean you would have people protest if Lego did that. It would never happen.

I don't like how similar all the faces look, but I can't blame Lego completely. Disney Princesses all manage to look pretty similar in the face. They often share similar eyes and mouths, which being the only features of a minidoll face means there's going to be a lot of similarities. I honestly feel like Lego should have created a couple of new head shapes just to have more diversity. Really I feel like so far there's been a real lack of diversity in how they look, they sort of fall into the Barbie mold where everyone looks the same in the minidoll world. With minifigures Lego actually had it pretty easy because they could just print cheek bones or such to change the shape of the face, on the torso they could print lines to imply different bodies and such. The minidolls on the other hand can't do that. All of these characters are literally stuck in the same mold, they all have the same head and torso shapes and that really limits what they can really look like. And if Lego is going to continue to utilize minidolls then they're going to have to create a better variety of parts. Which hopefully Lego will realize this before too much longer.

I'm betting we'll see them in the actual sets. We have two waves of Lego sets based on the movie, so odds are we'll see them somewhere in there.

In his left hand is the device he uses to control the penguins. If Lego put a cigar in one of their sets they would be in so much trouble, it would literally make the news if they did that.

Well, you're right that the sets are basically just to sell minifigures. Also they're not in the Arctic, they're in the Gotham harbor, you can even see Gotham in the box art. Also the Arctic Batman suit I believe is from the comics, I think it's supposed to protect him from the cold (He's has a rainbow filled closet of bat suits, so it's not as if it came out of nowhere). As for Aquaman I can't help but notice they're on the ocean, so reasonably the oceans savior should probably lend a hand before Mr. Freeze freezes it solid. And the vehicle is the bat boat with skis added so that it can traverse both water and ice. I'm not thrilled with the amount of vehicles we get either, but admittedly there's source material there for pretty much all of them. Even Spider-man's trike was in the comics. And it's not up to Lego to chose what's in a set. DC and Marvel choose how their characters are represented in toy form and the excessive vehicles can be found in the action figure section of their merchandising too. Admittedly it's a lot easier to hand a kid a car and say "Batman rides around in this." With locations you have to rely on them knowing what it represents, which is why when we do get location based stuff it's a lot of the time overly generic. These products are after all designed for kid's with a basic knowledge of Batman so in the end the concept for the sets we get are streamlined and easy to understand.

Just because they did sets for the first one doesn't mean they have the rights to the second. Megablocks also had the rights to Iron Man 2 and Pirates of the Carribean, but not anymore. Just because they did sets for one movie doesn't mean they have rights to the whole franchise, they more than likely have to get rights for each movie. Disney having merchandising rights means they should be able to choose which building block company to handle it and after this years Comic-con exclusive (An ASM2 variation of Spider-man with matching colors, unique spider emblem and eye shapes) I think it's pretty safe to say that Megablocks isn't in control of that license any longer.

Actually Disney bought the merchandising rights from Sony, so there could be Lego sets if Disney wanted. And they could always surprise us I suppose and put one out unexpectedly in the summer.

I don't see how it's Taskmaster at all. I mean the description states he's wearing orange and purple, but when I look at Taskmaster from the game I'm seeing a blue and white guy with some orange on the shield. Also in the description it's stated he's wearing a black robe which is completely the opposite of the white robe of Taskmaster. But I don't think it's Zola either since he's not wearing robes at all. At this point I really don't think there's enough information to make a definite statement of who it is.

Very interesting. It looks like we're getting a new Spider-man variation in the Doc-Ock set (I'm assuming blank torso's indicate new printing as these prelims seem to be utilizing only existing printed elements). Also the blue is darker on Spider-man, hoping it looks like the Comic-con one. Also it seems as if we're getting Mary-Jane. I'm definitely excited we're seeing two variations of Robin. I've been trying to hunt down a classic Robin for a while and this seems to fill my need. Also has anyone noticed how similar the cockpit is on both the Batcopter and Batwing? It literally looks like they just took the rotor off and added wings to make the Batwing. Despite that this is probably my favorite line up of vehicles in a while. Even the lesser vehicles are at least made up of useful and interesting parts.

I assumed that it was more based off the cartoon as the colors used on the minifigures appeared much brighter to me than they did in the comics (Professor X's bright green suit comes to mind). But I suppose that really they could be overly bright versions of the comic book costumes. I know there are other variations for Wolverine and Cyclops and so on, but I'm looking at the variations used in story mode which when lined up pretty much pull their source material from one time and place. Storm just feels out of place design wise. And I find it weird that no white suit variation made it in there while the other X-men get alternate suits.

After thinking about it some more I suspect we'll see the Marvel game's version of Storm in a set next year (We are rumored to get an X-men set I recall). After Aquaman this year we know that if Lego has made that minifigure for real then the actual design sometimes ends up in the game (Scarecrow, Penguin and Mr. Freeze show it doesn't always happen, so take that for what it is). And after looking at Storm she seems like the most likely X-men character from the game that could make a practical figure. First off she has printing that could actually be printed on a minifigure unlike Gambit, Cyclops and many others who utilize crazy amounts of detail including leg printing and arm printing that reach all around. Storm has leg and arm printing, but unlike the others it's pretty simple and we've seen printing like that on actual minifigures (It seems like she was actually designed by TLG, while many of the others seem very much like they were designed by the game company). Second, it suddenly hit me that she is really the only X-men character in the game that doesn't use the 90's cartoon as inspiration (At least as far as I can tell). Why on Earth would all of the games X-men characters be based around the TV series but out of nowhere Storm is not? She stands out as different, so that suggests to me we might see her as an actual minifigure. Really it could be coincidence as well, but I thought I might as well put the thought out there and see if anyone else thinks it's possible. If anything I'm at least curious on people's thoughts as to why Storm's look would be pulled from a source different than the rest of the X-men minifigures.

Yes, they made it up. Again, I was trying to point out that the Batmobile and Batman variant featured in the Riddler Chase are based on BTB and that I'm glad that it's likely the only BTB inspired content we'll ever see in set form. I never said the Riddler dragster was in the show. I just said the set featured elements from the show (The Batmobile and Batman variant). I will change my initial post to clarify that.

When I said "Riddler Dragster" I was referring to the set 76012 because I couldn't remember the actual name of the set, I should have been more clear. I'm referring to the Batmobile and Batman variant in the set, which are indeed BTB.

Well I'm glad it's cancelled. Didn't like that awful animation or that writing. Hopefully this means that the Riddler chase and it's crappy BTB Batmobile and Batman variant will be the only set to feature elements inspired from the show. *Edited to clarify that I was referring to the Batmobile and Batman, not the Dragster itself.