AmperZand

Or maybe the pink one was a red one and a white one that got merged in a transporter accident like Tuvix in Star Trek: Voyager.

Completely agree. I replaced it with a light bley piece. That’s just one of a number of tweaks I’ve made.

I also bought the set today from a LEGO store. Looking forwards to assembling/modding it in the next few day.

I would vote for yours if I could but unfortunately LEGO won’t let me. I can’t participate in Ideas in any way. I could create a separate Ideas account with a new e-mail address, but that would be more trouble than it’s worth. More importantly, it feels like I would be acquiescing to LEGO’s unfair treatment of me and I’m unwilling to compromise as a matter of principle.

The classic helmet in blue without the simulated damage has been available for a while. It was re-issued in the Ninjago Gamer’s Market set and has been available through PAB (when it was called Bricks & Pieces) though I don’t know if it still is.

@R0Sch, By convention, threads that cover the same topic are combined. Otherwise, the discussion becomes messy, duplicated and hard to follow. An alternative would be to have the discussion here, but not in the other thread. I wouldn’t have a problem with that as long as there isn’t more than one thread about 10497.

I don’t mean to be a backseat mod, but there’s already a Eurobricks discussion of the new Galaxy Explorer here. Can a friendly mod please merge the two? By the way, it’s worth getting out a tape measure as I did this evening to get a firm idea of what 52 x 32cm really means. It’s huge, dwarfing the original!

I’m at once thrilled by and anxious at this news. 497 was the cornerstone of my extensive CS collection back in the day. Sadly, its parts went to charity decades ago. I’m worried that 10497 is too modernised with rounded edges, overly greebled surfaces and excessive SNOTwork. The version in the pic posted by @TheKingPorg above doesn’t thrill me. To my mind, it lacks charm. I very much hope 10497 captures the spirit of the original. I realise not everyone will agree.

It's partly a matter of whether there is sufficient demand and partly a matter of whether LEGO's market research shows that a generic or branded/licensed fantasy theme wouldn't cannibalise sales of other lines (e.g. HP, Ninjago). It may even be that a generic fantasy set or line would cannibalise, but a branded/licensed theme would not. If that's true, that increases the odds of a D&D line or set and would explain why we haven't had much of a generic fantasy offering such as Fantasy Era for a long time. That said, it seems like Classic Space fans are to get a neo-CS Galaxy Explorer/Space Cruiser & Moonbase later this year. So maybe there's hope for generic fantasy after all.

@Toastie, At Legoland Billund, the bricks in the models are glued together. There are good reasons why they are, but just because LEGO does something doesn’t mean we should too!

Very nice! I’m not a big fan of the newer style of helmets for the green, light bley and purple spacemen or the black tanks for the purple astronaut but realise that the ‘right’ parts aren’t available in those colours. I hope that LEGO does an Everyone is Awesome set someday but with classic spacemen with yellow smiley heads and little CS builds. That would be fantastic.

@Alexandrina, While I would prefer a series of D&D LEGO sets (possibly including gameplay features), more realistically I see this as a one-off set that can be a display piece for the 18+ segment and a play set for kids. I imagine a scene with a D&D-style red dragon, various iconic D&D monsters (mind flayer, kobold, umber hulk, drow/drider), a party of adventurers (human barbarian, elf wizard with magical effects, dwarf fighter, halfling rogue with a treasure map), and a cavern setting with appropriate terrain (stream of lava, stalagmites, trap, hidden chamber with treasure) designed in such a way that the monsters and characters can be placed in many different configurations. Does an assembly of a dragon, mind flayer and drow/drider make sense? No, but that never stopped D&D and is arguably in keeping with the lack of plausibility of D&D's genre of fantasy. I disagree that D&D doesn't have brand recognition by itself, i.e. without named characters or specific scenes. In the Big Bang Theory, for example, the writers felt it necessary to explain to the audience what bitcoin was but not D&D. Admittedly, the BBT audience is predisposed to knowing what D&D is, but even so - you could say the same of bitcoin. Another example is Stranger Things. I haven't seen it but apparently D&D is featured in that too. D&D has become ubiquitous in pop culture thanks in no small part to the internet (including streams). Unfortunately, I don't have any data to support my position and suspect you don't have any to support yours, so we're unlikely to resolve the question of D&D's brand value. All we can do is speculate. Hasbro and LEGO, on the other hand, could determine the degree of recognition of D&D's brand. It may come down to their market research whether we ever see D&D LEGO.

You’re not accounting for the pull of a brand. Why do an Adidas trainer when LEGO could have done a generic tennis shoe? Why do Camp Nou stadium when LEGO could have done a generic stadium? Why do James Bond’s Aston Martin when LEGO could have done an unidentified 1960s-style sports car? Why do Star Wars when LEGO could have stuck with an in-house sci-fi theme? You get the idea. From our perspective as fantasy loving AFOLs, you’re right: a D&D licence might not bring much and would add to the cost of any product(s). But from a business perspective - LEGO’s point of view - it makes a big difference. It’s the lure, publicity and appeal that draws in non-FOL fantasy and gaming fans. That’s hugely valuable to LEGO.

Not that it makes any difference, but the warhammer head company was called Custom Crazy. It was Malaysian, not Singaporean, though its parts may have been available in Singapore. You’re correct that the company no longer exists. It disappeared some years ago. It also made custom hafts, hilts and chest pieces. I would post a picture of one of its more interesting hilts, but EB is stopping me from posting the picture. I faced the same problem as you and came up with a similar solution when creating a knight’s lance. I would post a picture, but again, EB isn’t letting me.

Without LEGO’s designers divulging their inspirations, I suspect the chain of influence may be: D&D -> WoW -> LEGO Moon Warrior But that’s just a guess on my part. I don’t have any inside information about that.

Probably. While there may be other sources of inspiration, moon elves are a race in the Forgotten Realms, one of the main settings in D&D. Their skin tone tends more towards shades of lavender but their hair colour can - and often is - the same at the Moon Warrior’s. Also, in D&D, moon elf warriors are usually female, like LEGO’s Moon Warrior CMF. Males aren’t generally warriors; they tend to be druids.

@Poco Lypso, D&D is more popular now than it has ever been since its release in 1974. It’s estimated that 50 million people have played the game of which approximately 15 million are active currently. Forty per cent of players these days are 25 and under. The game is recommended for ages 12 and up, though back in the ‘80s, there was a D&D cartoon and action figures aimed at kids. So the age range is very wide. The game and its settings are not particularly adult-orientated the way that, say, Game of Thrones was. In that sense, D&D is similar to Star Wars.

During the last few years, LEGO has sought to attract those interested in other hobbies, so D&D could fit in that strategy. And among role-playing games, there’s no bigger or better-known brand than D&D. So while LEGO could create their own in-house fantasy theme, they wouldn’t reach nearly as far into D&D’s fandom. For a similar reason, LEGO is doing Optimus Prime, not a generic transforming robot.

Issue 49 of Blocks Magazine a few years ago had an article on D&D as the inspiration for LEGO MOCs. So the idea of a crossover has been touched on by the AFOL press before. In my own creations, I have made use of LEGO, Kre-O and third party pieces to generate D&D characters and monsters. I have also been purist in my LEGO/D&D builds such as this beholder: All this is to say that I reckon there is a large untapped market for official D&D LEGO… if LEGO and Hasbro can work out a deal.

According to Promobricks, a reliable source of information, LEGO will be releasing an Optimus Prime Transformer. It was previously thought impossible that LEGO would ever do Optimus Prime as the Transformers are IP belonging to Hasbro, one of LEGO’s main rivals. But it looks like LEGO and Hasbro have put their competitive differences aside. If so, could we also see LEGO Dungeons & Dragons, the latter being another IP of Hasbro’s? Would LEGO minifigures and sets based on D&D interest you? Hasbro has tried something similar before in the form of Kre-O and it wasn’t a huge commercial success, but maybe LEGO can do a better job. What do you think?

Your creation is not as big and heavy as I feared. If you use the approach in the first minute of this video to fill the void in the baseplate, you should be fine.

Depends how you intend to cover it and what you’re building on top. You want to avoid small plates across stacked bricks that only span a few columns. They can move too easily. Larger plates provide greater stability. If you can anchor the plates to the perimeter wall, even better.

@Rospokadu, Duplo bricks are exactly twice the size of System bricks, so if the space to be filled is seven System bricks high, you’ll need three Duplo layers plus a layer of System.

If the inside of the base won’t be seen, you can fill it cheaply and strongly with Duplo bricks. You can get them second hand on Ebay and elsewhere for not much money. Just make sure you wash and dry them thoroughly first. You can build on top of them using System bricks. The two are compatible.

The ‘sharks’ are meant as decorations for a stunt ride, so not supposed to represent real animals and therefore they may not have eyes. I’m not into Friends animals but the giraffe could just about pass for a System one. Friends animals have big eyes and eyelashes but that’s true of giraffes in real life, so this giraffe doesn’t look as cutesy as most Friends creatures.