AmperZand

In the case of 6599 Shark Attack, for example, I got the set for the sharks but managed to obtain them separately at about the same time. So there was no need to open Shark Attack anymore. In the case of CMFs, I already have opened ones, so the sealed ones are just for parts should I need them. Likewise for the Fantasy Era/Kingdoms impulse boxes and lots of sealed polybags.

If the set takes its visual cue from the film, I wonder how the bishops will be portrayed. LEGO has a general policy against religious subject matter but the bishops in the movie are pretty ecclesiastical. I realise there is some flex in that policy: there are Christian buildings in the Venice Skyline set for example. Could be tricky though. A fudge may be required.

Here’s some mood music to go with this wonderful creation: Baba Yaga / The Hut on Fowls’ Legs from Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky with orchestration by Ravel.

Wow! Only one of two known has to be up there among the rarest possible LEGO. I was in that situation with another hobby (tabletop gaming, not LEGO). I had one of only two of an item known to exist and mine is by far in the better condition. Pictures of mine were featured in a book. If they are still mint in factory sealed boxes, then they would be pretty rare.

You can also factor in the time in transit. So if they were in the post for 2 days, you would only need to wait 3-5 days to be certain that the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 was too low to infect you. Washing with soap and water - as already suggested in this thread - is a very good way of killing SARS-CoV-2. The coat of the virus is particularly susceptible to soap. I have used alcohol-based sanitiser gels to clean bricks before and it doesn’t do them any harm.

There’s a red wizard hat up for auction on Ebay in the UK. It’s not in perfect condition but given how rare they are - they were never included in any sets and were probably test pieces for LEGO’s moulds - it may still be of interest.

Do you know if the head is a BAM exclusive? The face printing is great!

Despite the fact that I have been an AFOL since 1993, I don't have many LEGO or LEGO-related rarities and the ones I do have are not that uncommon. @Peppermint_M, you can put your tape measure away! Of course, if I grabbed a handful of random pieces and assembled them in some weird way, the odds of someone having done exactly the same - even with the huge numbers of people who own LEGO - is vanishingly small. So in that sense, it's not hard to have something made of LEGO that is rare. I have some MOCs and mods that no-one has seen but me. Chances are, at least some of those are unique. The difficulty is that as soon as you attempted to test the rarity of what you had made, someone would copy you out of spite. In terms of rare LEGO products as sold... I have a couple of the wizard's hats in red (one is pictured on the left in my photo below). Although they are LEGO, they were never officially included in any set and were probably test pieces for LEGO's moulds. I also have 6599 Shark Attack (stock picture below that) mint in its sealed box which I bought by accident. I have a couple of System goats that were only available in one set for about six months: one in my display collection and one in reserve. I have a few unopened Series 1, 2 and later CMFs that I got for spares. I have one of the 2011 Ninjago blister packs that I never opened. I think I have some Fantasy Era and/or Kingdoms impulse (small format) sets mint in sealed boxes - but I'm not sure! I have a mis-moulded hair/beard part that somehow slipped through LEGO's quality control. At first glance, it doesn't appear mis-cast. It's only when you look closely that you realise there are bits missing. I got it directly from LEGO so know it wasn't damaged by someone else. I think I have a LEGO catalogue in Japanese from a few years ago but I'm not sure where I put it. I have a System mountain lion that isn't rare at all but I got it in error a few months before it appeared in any set or indeed in any picture. So it was pretty rare at the time.

Until well into the 18th century various governments allowed privateers to operate against foreign navies and merchant navies. While in theory there were differences between that and piracy, in reality the line was blurred. Some privateer companies even had uniforms. So the minifigures of Sabre Island could well have been privateers - pirates by a different name.

From as far back as I can remember I had a huge box of assorted used LEGO parts that I had received from my family. The first set that I can recall that I got new and therefore that was definitely complete was 372 Texas Rangers. It’s funny how unsophisticated LEGO was compared to today’s offering. Sadly, I don’t still have 372 or any of my LEGO from that time. My mother eventually donated it to a family that couldn’t afford LEGO.

@SerenityInFire, Love your skeleton chef @Shroffy123, Your massed ranks are really impressive! How can one not appreciate camel-riding gladiators? My camel-riding Tuareg warrior seems banal in comparison.

It's true, I don't have access to LEGO's market research or anyone else's. It's just speculation on my part. But the pattern of when HP sets are released in years when fantasy-themed Castle is not, suggests it. I also speculated that Castle would have an occasional bone thrown its way with the odd set, but not a full-blown line. Since saying that, LEGO Design Manager Sam Johnson seems to have confirmed it. My bad: I meant not true fantasy Castle, the area of Castle most likely to clash with the fantasy aspects of HP. Kingdoms (2010 - 2012) was mostly pseudo-historical (knights, castles etc). HP was mostly fantasy or modern during that time, not pseudo-historical. Kingdoms' biggest year in terms of releases was 2010 with all but one very small set, 7955 Wizard, being pseudo-historical, not fantasy. In 2010, almost all of the HP sets released that year were either fantasy or modern (a train and car that are more similar to City than Castle). The only castle was Hogwarts 4842 and that was micro-scale. 2011 saw four Castle sets released, all of them pretty much pseudo-historical, and 2012 saw just one more non-fantasy set. In 2011, HP had one castle released, Hogwarts 4867, but was otherwise either fantasy or modern (a bus, a train, various buildings including a bank), not pseudo-historical. So Hogwarts 4867 is the only real HP clash with Kingdoms. I maintain that the lack of co-occurrence between Castle - especially the fantasy kind - and HP is intentional by LEGO because the company knows that if a Castle line is heavily fantasy, it will cannibalise HP's sales. And that for strategic and licensing reasons, HP is the priority.

None of the above. The one that hurts most when you step on it is the System goat. When you step on one and you hear it crack, that causes more pain than you can possibly imagine!

What @Lyichir said. It would not surprise me if some of the participating kids are the children of LEGO employees which would help to keep the lid on any disclosure. Not that it makes any difference to the disclosure aspect, but I believe that LEGO uses observation studies, not just focus groups, which may be what you are talking about. The two are not the same. In the former, a single child (or sometimes two kids who already know each other such as friends or siblings) is observed interacting with a prototype product. In the latter, a small group of kids of the same age or year group are asked about or given a number of tasks (disguised as games) relating to one or more prototypes or actual products.

@Lego David, Those involved either as participants or organisers are most likely under strict NDAs (non-disclosure agreements), so cannot reveal anything.

At the time when Tolkien and Castle lines coincided (mostly 2013), the latter was particularly junior-orientated indicating that there was some age segment differentiation. That bodes well for big ticket Castle sets aimed at adults because, obviously, the age spread is even greater between kids and adults than it is between age bands of kids. That doesn’t, however, necessarily mean a whole Castle line with various set sizes and price points. LEGO may be able to scratch that adult consumer itch with occasional Castle sets. As for HP, the last true Castle line - Fantasy Era - was around 2007 to 2009 when there were very few new HP sets which supports my theory that the two occupy the same mental space for kids. LEGO will have conducted market research on hundreds, maybe thousands, of kids of different ages and across regions. Your ten-year-old is a sample size of 1.

I suspect we’ll get sets sporadically: Ideas, Creator and other lines that borrow from Castle. If you mean a full blown Castle theme, not as long as LEGO has the HP licence. I suspect that LEGO has done cluster analysis market research showing that kids - LEGO’s main demographic - lump HP and Castle together in the same headspace. Sadly, doing a Castle theme would cannibalise LEGO’s own sales.

Better than expected: Benny’s Space Squad. Initially, we only knew the number of parts and $ price, but not the contents. When the actual set was revealed, I did a happy dance around the room! For someone as phlegmatic as me, that’s really saying something. Worse than expected: the entire Elves line. There was a rumour that it might be the hinted-at continuance of Fantasy Era with an Elf sub-theme. I was gutted when it turned out not to be. That’s not a reflection on the Elves line per se. It just wasn’t what I and lots of AFOLs were hoping it would be.

I was thinking the same thing . If the figure in the middle of the picture in my post above is not too difficult/expensive to obtain as a minifigure, I will add it to the fantasy thalassic zone of my display collection. The association between tridents and the sea is an ancient one. It likely stems from spear fishing as it's easier to catch fish with a multi-tined hunting weapon than a single-pronged one. After passing through ancient Greek culture, the concept of the trident-using sea warrior was firmly established by the Romans who armed retiarius gladiators - who were meant to represent fishermen - with a tridens, a kind of battle trident.

@MAB, Indeed. The lower body might be this piece from Disney’s Hades CMF. Not sure if it’s a re-use of the swamp monster’s headwear mould or not. Could be. It’s hard to tell.

Artwork for the forthcoming Ninjago Series 15 cartoon has been released by LEGO and the antagonists, especially the main one in the middle in the picture below, look pretty good as fantasy aquatic monsters. Of course, this is just art. But Ninjago's art tends to indicate closely what actual minifigures will look like. I hope we get dual-moulded tridents with tines coloured differently as shown in the picture.

If you had told me in 1981 that in 2021 most adults in the advanced industrialised world would be walking around with a telephone the size of a calculator on which they could make video calls, take a near infinite number of high quality pictures, listen to music, watch films/TV programmes, access information from all over the world, and shop for things that would be delivered the same day or next, I would have laughed with incredulity. A lot can happen in tech in 40 years. I would not be so fast to assume that 3D printing won't improve in 40 years to the point where LEGO or LEGO-like parts can't be produced on demand at home or by small businesses. People have a taste for 3D printing. I don't see that going away or with people being satisfied with the status quo.

3D printing will be such that LEGO’s business model will have changed. You will have a choice of buying the set as you do now or downloading the design and a licence to produce one copy for personal use, much like some PDF books now. You can then produce the set at home or get a specialist firm to do it for you (again, like some PDF books now). In addition to production companies, there will be a whole ecosystem of custom designers from whom you’ll be able to get compatible parts and colours LEGO doesn’t produce. With people living longer and having more free time, there will probably be ranges aimed at ‘seniors’. Never mind ‘18+’, there will likely be ‘65+’ sets though I doubt they’ll be so crudely branded. Culturally and thematically, the look and feel of LEGO sets will have shifted from Europe/North America-centric to a more balanced Europe/NA/China/India orientation. @Alexandrina, You’re correct that in 1981, FOLs failed to predict what the hobby would be like in 2021 - at least, I did. I never imagined back then that there would be SW, DC or Marvel lines, or film tie-ins for any franchise. If FOLs 40 years hence wish to laugh at my predictions from 2021, they can do in the near certainty that I won’t care because I’ll be dead by then!

@Shroffy123, I’m liking what I see! More pictures, please I also count Murt from Ninjago among my orcs (though I changed mine a bit). I reckon Ninjago’s designers were thinking ‘orcs’ when they came up with the munce species of ‘green brutes’.

I honestly don’t mean to be provocative, but if the ladybug tiles don’t count, then why would the bee tiles? If anything, a ladybug is more nearly shaped like a (round) tile than a bee is.