Graysmith

Nice review, can't wait to get my dirty paws on these LOTR sets. By the way, the "armoured hook shooter" is a Ballista.

It also translated into merchant, so personally I'm far more inclined to think that it'll be something like a medieval shopkeeper. Plus, why on earth would LEGO ever make a stock trader? Let's not forget, they make these primarily for kids after all. Not to mention there's not much of anything you could give a stock trader as an accessory. Surely LEGO would see that there's zero interest in a stock trader as far as kids go.

Ojik, would you mind giving us the link to where these were found? Even if it's in Czech.

It could just be a medieval shop keeper kind of "trader", but I'm really, really, really hoping it'll be a Fur Trader/hunter kind of "Trader" with a Davy Crockett hat.

I'm skeptical.. Why would they be releasing yet another vampire, especially right now? You had the male one in Series 2, and in the new Monster Fighters theme there's a new male vampire and a female vampire. What more could they possibly do as far as a vampire goes, without it just having different printing? I certainly don't mind seeing yet another (different-looking) vampire, but it just seems like a bit of overkill to do it right now. Plus, if you have a much cheaper vampire in the CMF, isn't there a risk that it's going to compete with sales of the Monster Fighters sets? Even if they are different vampires, some might feel like just getting the CMF vampire is enough to satisfy their vampire minifigure needs, and then skip the pricier Monster Fighters sets. I'm rambling.. Sounds like another great series if that list is true!

Damn. I just checked the Swedish price which is 1999 SEK, same as the significantly larger (700 pieces more!) Town Hall set cost. I can buy nearly the entire first wave of LOTR sets for that kind of money. So long Haunted House, would've loved to have owned ya.

I read about it on Brickset. No idea if it's been confirmed.

Well LEGO put together that Friends 2012 Advent Calendar, designed the box, photographed it and all that and then they (apparently) cancelled it so I wouldn't say it's out of the question.

I guess some people aren't going to shut up about it until LEGO folds and cancels this set. I don't really see what other purpose there is for natesroom to keep "fueling the fire".

No one’s done the Winter Village Post Office?! I checked and double-checked in the index but found nothing. 10222 - Winter Village Post Office - Theme: Creator/Seasonal Errors: — The angled roofs above the door and side window are correctly positioned but not attached correctly to the building because the 1x1 brick with 4 knobs can’t attach to the hole of the 1x2 technic brick. Even trying to fake-position them together caused a collision error that crashed LDD every single time so for now there’s a 1x1 brick with 1 knob there instead as a placeholder. — Missing stickers. — Torso on blonde female not the correct one, replaced with the closest one I could find. — Printing on the dog isn’t the exact same. LXF file

The books that introduced Dracula and Frankenstein are in the public domain and can freely be used by anyone. Universal has no claim on that. EDIT: They would probably have more of a case with the "Lurch"-esque butler, even though it's not officially called that by LEGO. That's certainly far more close to something that may be copyrighted and all that jazz. But I imagine LEGO cleared this with Universal before release and got their okay. LEGO has after all done sets for intellectual properties owned by Universal in the past (Jurassic Park III) and with the CUUSOO Shaun of the Dead and Back to the Future sets I would think they have good connections between the two companies.

Even though Playmobil is clearly following in LEGOs footsteps on this, it's not like LEGO invented blind-bagged collectable figures. I see no problem with this.

Maybe LEGO ought to start selling their products pre-built and glued to prevent anyone from building custom models that may one day resemble things LEGO wants to release. You know, just as a precaution against future lawsuits and such. If no one can MOC, no one can sue! I mean, considering all the Modular Building MOCs people have been making over the years, LEGO may just as well cancel the series so they don't risk angering some AFOL who already built a library, or a movie theater, or a restaurant, etc. That's not to say that the creator of that sand green haunted house doesn't have a legitimate grievance with LEGO about this, but that's up to him/her and only him/her.

I have a question.. Does anyone know if the Toy Shop has been permanently retired or if it will be (yet again) brought back into production at the end of the year? Has LEGO said anything about that? To tie this into the thread, would anyone care to predict the likelyhood of the Toy Shop returning?

Looking at the pictures again I'm a bit puzzled by the fact that in some photos, the ghosts have regular white legs while in others they have brickbuilt "legs". I wonder what the final product will include. Real legs would be preferable, in my book. And of course there's the mystery of the photo with three ghosts even though there are only two in the set. Some speculate it's the extra ghost from that Grandfather Clock polybag that's supposed to come out (which looks like a perfect fit for this set).

The video doesn't work, by the way. Please fix!

Did you hear that? The sound of my mind getting blown. I'm a bit surprised it's being themed as a Monster Fighters set (since it really doesn't have anything to do with the theme), but I certainly don't mind at all!

Our Rodney Rathbone is most certainly named after Basil Rathbone though, who famously played Sherlock Holmes in the 1930s and 40s and is still considered to be THE Sherlock Holmes of the silver screen. Most of those films were also released by Universal, who as you know made all those classic monster movies.

That's a great-looking cabin! And PHEW! I've been working on a log cabin myself recently (just in LDD for now) and I'm so glad yours looks different!

That's a great point about those new Geonosian wings. I'd be shocked if LEGO didn't use those to make a fairy for CMF. Might not be in Series 8, but it'd surely be sooner rather than later. Plus they already have that magic wand accessory so there's really nothing new they'd have to do to make a fairy save for the printing. They could also use the wizard's hat and voilà they'd have a classic fairy a la Sleeping Beauty.

I was thinking of placing an order from Valuebrick.at and I was just wondering if anyone's ordered from them before and if they could share their shopping experience. Just don't want to jump into it blindly since it's a smaller shop, and I couldn't find any thread about this site either.

Unless LEGO's plan is to release all the summer sets in the UK after the Olympics you'd think England would be the one country where they'd want to get these sets out early, before the Olympic fever really hits in about a month, month and a half. Even if sports and children's toys are such a wildly different things, the Olympics will no doubt be taking over as far as media, publicity and whatnot. It'd be idiotic of LEGO to release them early July through mid-August.

Yeah, I doubt we'll see another mascot in Series 8. It may not be a conscious decision by LEGO to do one every other series (i.e. I wouldn't bet that it's 100% certain there'll be one in Series 9), but I can imagine that they make sure not to do them in consecutive series.

December 1st certainly makes the most sense since they'd want to get them out in stores just before the movie hits. The real question is though, seeing as there is a movie coming out, will The Hobbit sets actually get released everywhere in early December? It'd be odd if only North America got them before the movie, and the rest of us had to wait a month or two after the movie has come out to get the sets. That'd be pretty lousy from a marketing standpoint. Then again, they did manage to get the Marvel sets out in most places before the movie was released, so maybe there is hope after all.

Leave it. Not your problem.