Archer

My thoughts: sets look great except for the Duel on Mandalore. it looks alright, but compered to all the other 20$ duel sets they really skimped on this build. the figures are are pure "chef's kiss" Except for the completely inaccurate Cara Dune, why Lego? you just made a better hairpiece in the Vidiyo line, use it! I have nearly every "most updated" version of every star wars minifigure. I'm literally missing 4 figs (Chrome Vader, Shadow ARF, Chrome C-3PO, and the teal GONK if anyone feels charitable ) My criteria for what goes in my display is simple, "Is it representing something unique" So while the rebels TIE Pilot, the TIE Defender Planets Set Pilot are in my display, the 2021 TIE pilot is not because he's just a lesser version of 2015's TIE Pilot who had the arm printing. Why am I saying this? because I don't think I've seen a wave with this many new, unique and interesting figs since TFA sets were released. Only 6 repeat figs (stormie x2, Grogu, Beskar Mando, Cara, Ahsoka) only 1 remake (Mandolorian/ Death Watch), and 16! brand new figures!? Or 15 is you don't recognize the GONK as a unique GONK.

Does Amazon usually have sets go up at the same time as Lego 12pm or is that hit or miss?

In the age of leaks and early review copies, I find it incredible that the are 0 images or videos of the Harry and Hermoine Set or the chess set beyond the product images, with less than two days to go. This doesn't happen often in licensed themes. (There were like 3 pics of a fawkes set on IG thought not a full review of that either)

In my opinion golden quirrel is a very strange outlier until we get golden dumbledore (probably the d2c) and golden draco. At least quirrel is the 1st movies “villain” but having goldemort means they aren’t strictly going year one gold figs. Technically Hagrid is more important as well, but I see a gold hagrid as very unlikely

So my wizard's chess set shipped from Target yesterday, weirdly my Fawkes (or what are they calling the set Europe's Top Wizarding School's Headmaster Dumbledore's Phoenix Fawkes set) did not ship at the same time., maybe they have more orders for the ol' FireBird.

I just took a tour of BrinkLink and bought most of the villains and spider-persons that aren't in this set. What i learned is that prices are not as predictable as one might think. Kraven is ridiculously overpriced in the US for example, but not so bad in Europe. I'd stake my money on Punisher and DareDevil being the most expensive at 25-30$ apiece while the set is available. Those prices will go up though. You never know when future sets might bring a figs price down. Scorpion is less than Kraven because he was available in 2 sets. You can bet Punisher will remain exclusive though.

So this may have been answered eons ago, but do we know if all three of the pre-order HP sets are target exclusives in the US or is the jury out?

Well, it doesn't appear that the Bugle is selling out quite as fast as certain Star Wars D2C's have. Now that the stress of ordering my copy is done I'm interested to see how long it takes for this to go into backorder, it's not like there's a wealth of Marvel D2C's to compare it to. Someone will have to report on what the Lego Stores are like today,

They had to make up for what they did to Europe

Well, less than 24 hours till the Bugle drops. I'm interested to see how a Marvel D2C compares to the Star Wars releases that go on backorder within minutes. The last two sets I've managed to snag at the Lego Store on release day only to see them immediately go on constant backorder were Mos Eisley and of all things the Flower Bouquet. I definitely feel like the Bugle won't make it for more than a few hours, before going on backorder.

on the subject of pink hair pieces, I totally forgot that the dimensions version of Starfire has the pop star hair in magenta, I've got that fig in storage, I'm going tho have to check out that hair for miss Nymphadora.

So, now that I have the set, the one thing that irks me is the choose one of three stickers situation they did for the whiteboard on Joey and Chandler's door. Lego is no stranger to doing this (the early 2000s football bus team sets being the worst offender) but in this case much like the duck in this case I wish they had gone a step further and included two extra doors or just not bothered. Multiple references is cool, but am I just supposed to keep the extra stickers in the instruction manual for all time? And obviously if you were to switch out stickers, say goodbye to the one you remove. Two extra doors isn't a big ask in a set that already contains 9 of them. Also it appears that dark tan is. anew color for this piece.

the basic female ponytail that originated in the CMF series came in magenta in the ultra-agents line

I just want to hear the Lego Star Wars team genuinely answer the question of how in 16 years has (movie)Cody not made it into a single set. There is a 0% chance his popularity is unknown. Maybe an ambassador can pose this question in a mature way that doesn't just sound like a whiney fan (I feel like a lot of youtubers etc. sound more whiney and entitled, then simply baffled about his absence.) I think TLG tends to answer questions like this with non-answers instead of with any substantial reasons.

Agreed, to me go all the way or just don't do it, there is already so much in the set why try to get away with this one. One more silly thing, as far as I can see from the two live build videos on youtube, Monica's secret coset has 2-3 studs of depth and a back wall, but they didn't put any sort of sticker/ print or build to represent the mess in there. One more weird thing where they went 75% of the way to a great reference. despite those nitpicks, its an amazing set beyond anything I expected.

theres a video on youtube with the sticker sheet, there seem to be three options, and at the end of the build video the sticker sheet appears to be spent. I have no idea where the extra two stickers go, back of the bedroom or bathroom doors maybe?

Wow, the pic of that monstrosity is all over instagram, I didn't connect the two ! I must have burned Gladys out of my memory!

So there appears to be half a minifig sticking out of a little build against the entrance to joey and chandler's apartment. I'm pretty versed in friends, but i have no idea what this might be. any ideas?

The 2001 Camel had stickers covering the whole tail, and the circular target patterns on the body made it so you couldn't dismantle the majority of it. Somewhere along the line TLG made it "illegal" for designs to have these kinds of stickers.

As an owner of the original Sopwith camel, please, no. Might be the worst STAMP they ever did. the only other one of note in my collection is the orange tank from Exo-Force. After seeing the moc-up of what to stickers would look like, you king of see why either choice has its flaws. if they went for the double sticker approach we'd all be here complaining about Vader's toothy grin.

While I'm very confused about the grill being too small, I will say that the head-on image makes the face look worse than it is. You can see there is more depth if you look at the profile picture, its almost like an optical illusion in the head-on pic making if face look flat.

I'm sure its been said enough already, but I still don't get the choice to go with so few figs in the shuttle with all three being very available in the last few years' sets. the two less expensive "scaled down sets" threw in new or rare figs to spice up the offering so why not the 70$. A new imp Officer or Death Star Astromech would have sold at least some amount of additional sets and required no new molds. Since about 2012 I've had enough funds to purchase nearly every Star Wars Lego set, and it does not take much to convince me to purchase a slightly better version of a set. Example i bought the 2019 AT-AP even though I own the 2014 model because the feet were correct. I bought the recent TIE even though I own the 2012 and 2018 TIEs because the Black droid had slightly different printing than the one from the Death Star. If you have the 2015 Shuttle and the figs this set offers nothing, which is rare for Lego if you stretch the meaning of what offering something new entails.

Building for 30 years and until about two years ago I’d have also claimed only one missing piece (big half dome in my at-dp) but in the last two years I have had quite a few missing pieces missing sticker sheets and misprinted parts/ sticker sheets.

At least in the TIE's case that piece is color locked. I agree though that lego often seems to have a requirement to include at least X number of different colors in a model. I'm all for the rainbow on the insides approach, but there always tends to be too many gray or sometimes tan accents on the outside of models.

That's why Obi-Wan's Starfighter w/ Hyper Ring was nice, there was a compartment in the ship specifically for R4's headless body. I agree that the whole droid should be included, It's why we don't have a full R4-G9 minifigure.