Faefrost

I was watching some of the bonus materials from the TUJ EE disks last night. One thing that struck me is Jackson is using so much in the way of digital effects that the actual soundstage sets are almost unrecognizable from the scenes they are in. Case in point. The MEA set probably is based on the river gate scene. It just looks too much like that piece of wall. But Lego was working off set designs and production stills. It is likely that the river and river gate portion of it was not in those pictures. So it just would have looked like elves and orcs fighting on the wall. Watching some of the production video gives a rather good idea of how confusing it must be to be an outside licencee or contractor trying to make sense of it all, while it's till in production. Nothing looks like it will. Jackson changes things around daily on the fly, etc.

I think a good portion of the Barrel Chase was added in late in the production process. It was all stuff they had to go back and reshoot or shoot more of after the decision to go from 2 movies to 3 was made. They had to send the principle cast back to NZ, and they were having trouble tracking down all of the local people who played elf characters. They were really scrounging for elves. One of the production videos talks about it. Chances are any Lego sets are based on scenes and art much earlier than those re shoots. The same with the DGA set. Also don't forget Lego isn't simply making these things up as they go. All licensed sets get reviewed and approved by the license holder. And because of the contentious relationship with the Tolkien estate it can probably be safely assumed that anything Lego makes corresponds in some way to either things appearing on screen or clearly documented production designs. Remember the license is very narrow in some regards. So people will be checking.

I'll give the designer a little credit. It looks to be an almost, but not quite, interesting take on what is arguably one of the least interesting SW movie ship. But no matter how many made up new play features you throw at it, you can't get past the simple fact that it is a PT droid fighter.

Lego routinely uses selective compression to communicate the feel of an item or play set. They aren't giving us actual scale models. They aren't going to make a Smaug that is half the length of an actual car requires 5000 pieces and needs 3 people to lift. Remember Helm's Deep was nicely compressed and still came off as communicating the scene. Black Gate was ...compressed... And still sorta looks like Aragorn and Gandalf knocking on the door. The main requirements for Smaug seem to be he will need to be small enough and sturdy enough to be swoosh able. But large enough to be towering over the Dwarf Minifigs. I think something around the Size of Dragonbolt is where we will find TLG's design and playability sweet spot.

Why wouldn't kids love these? Can you think of a better designed mechanism for firing a 1x1 stud 4 inches up a nostril? Kids really go for that sort of thing.

Umm? They do use lower quality shorter life span molds for unique character heads. Those are some of the lower cost molds described above. That make the softer headpieces that feel like old chewing gum. Of course those costs doesn't include special painting. They are generally used for very unusual or shorter run retail set distribution such as a limited number of Star Wars sets. (PLO Kool and Kit Fisto are probably good examples.) CuuSoo is still outside the ballpark to amortize those costs. They would still need predictable distribution and amortization through several hundred thousand sets to be viable. And that more than anything is the kicker. Predictability. CuuSoo is designed for crowd sourced experimental projects. So the ability to predict volumes is very limited and more akin to ouija than actual data analysis. And without clean predictability they (nor really any sane company) will not invest in new tooling.

My gut instinct tells me that unless the retailers grossly under ordered this year, Lego will have quite a good Christmas. The Lego aisles at all the major retailers around me have been poth packed with customers, and by all looks have been effectively looted or seem to be looted as soon as they restock. The $20 - $60 price point items in particular seem to be doing very strongly.

Be careful how you phrase that. It's there is a reasonable chance of seeing existing parts in colors that they have not been made in before. I don't think TLG will ever entertain a CuuSoo project adding to or expanding the actual available color pallet. That's even more complicated than a new part.

Bwahahaha! Oh boy, it is always entertaining to see a new variant of such a classic scam. First up, no it probably is not coming from Bricklink. It's just some mail sniffer bot somehow identified it as a Korean Construction Company, and so that is what the scammer is masking himself as. It's not where the mail is coming from. Just who the scammer claims to be. This new variant is probably because Bricklink just transferred ownership and became a Korean owned "Construction Toy" related company. Print it out and frame it. It's a classic in the style of Nigerian Prince's. You just don't see scam humor of that quality anymore. These days its all incomprehensible badly autotranslated gibberish.

I think it comes down to taking those pictures is almost as complicated as building the MOC itself. You pretty much have to set out to plan and document every step. It requires a lot of time and effort. Whereas simply free form MOC building is what a lot do for recreation and relaxation. Besides most of the builders do it once they can either do it again or do it better without resorting to their photos or notes. Photo documenting something once finished is easy. But during the build or breakdown is hard.

Existing parts in new colors is a much less onerous task. But one that, for business control and sanity reasons, Lego does place some artificial restrictions on. Existing parts in new colors does have some costs. Basically they require factory run time and storage and handling. And factory run time is a very limited and precious commodity. It's obviously cheaper where possible to use parts already in the warehouse stockpiled than it is to create a new part SKU and schedule factory time. Not to mention figuring out which factory currently has the needed molds (they move around) vs where the set needing them is being made, etc. so new colored parts involve a lot more logistics and logistical and production expenses. But not the huge capital expenses that outright new parts require. After the business craziness that culminated in 2003's near bankruptcy TLG also took steps to maintain better process control. Part of this is by limiting the overall sizes of the part color pallet and the current active part library at any given time. So new colors will add to a designers development budget and force them to assess how much something is really needed etc. we as MOC'ers have an advantage over TLG set designers. We have access and use of any part ever made. They are restricted to that active library of parts and colors. And often for something to be added to that, something else must be retired or removed. The exception to all of this is if the new color has restrictions involving the type of plastic. So not every mold can handle trans clear polycarbonates and such. It would have needed to be designed for it. Or parts intended for chrome require specialized molds as the parts are a hair smaller to allow for the addition of the chrome (yes the precision and the tolerances are that tight.)

The rules changed because CuuSoo is still an evolving "beta" experiment. After a number of very large and in depth project reviews they now have a far better concept of what is reasonably possible via CuuSoo, and what will never be possible. Remember most decisions in business come from data and research. The past few review cycles have allowed TLG to put a very broad swath of project types under very deep business case reviews. Moreso than they likely ever imagined when they set up CuuSoo. They have had a number of projects that have forced them to look at new part or tooling feasibility from a number of angles. They have had cause to examine a number of unexpected licensing situations. And they have also discovered that a sizable portion of their fan base simply does not listen unless you hit them over the head with a stick (ie "no really we do in fact mean single project proposals and no themes or series proposals. We're not joking about this, honest"). They now have several thousand hours of review data with which to refine the system. One of the most basic refinements they have discovered is pretty obvious. It is better to disallow truly and obviously impossible projects initially than to do so at the review stage after they have garnered widespread fan appeal, and corresponding fan outrage. For most of the rule changes they simply took the stuff that they already told us would likely never pass review, and shifted that failure point to the beginning of the process instead of the end. They did the same thing with R rated subjects, violent video game subjects, modern warfare subjects, and impossible licenses in the past. There is nothing in what they did that is unreasonable, unexpected, petty, vindictive or inappropriate. Some of it may be disappointing. But a few minutes thought one can easily see the economies at work behind each change.

I think you are being a little too critical. I saw the movie, and things did seem to mostly match up for me.

Something around the size of the Hero Factory Dragon Bolt Constraction figure, just a bit more fleshed out and filled in with brickwork would probably be a reasonable compromise. Assuming they use sail cloth or Mylar plastic to fill in the wings. It's about twice the size of the Ninjago dragons. Big enough to swallow a Dwarf minifig, but not so big as to be unreasonable. I think when we do see a Smaug set it will be an attack on Laketown set. Centered on that prominent Laketown archers tower. It will probably use that new spring missile from the newer SW sets for the black arrow.

There is a world of difference between home made resin casting and creating injection mold tooling for the worlds largest Injection Plastic company. Your molds probably last for about 100-200 shots before product quality starts to deteriorate. But since your molds themselves are simply negative castings, you can simply remake them from the masters. If you were to ramp up to a more formalized "garage kit" business using pressure vessels to cast and professionally done molds from your masters you might be looking at $1000 to $5000 investment in molds or tooling per several thousand pieces of product. Most of those "limited run resin kits" you see, where they only make 2000 pieces. That's because that is how many good shots they expect to get off of their molds. How much do you think a custom milled engine block for a professional race car costs? Not a standard cast or forged engine block that they then modify or mill out. But rather the high end prototypes that are milled from a block of steel? Lego molds are closely akin to that. They are often made of the hardest most durable steel. With complicated custom engineered heating and cooling systems. Specialized gating and release mechanisms. Etc. If you have ever seen a Lego mold, they are about the size, shape and weight of a car engine. The molds are in fact the complicated and expensive part of the Injection Molding machines. But it isn't a big deal. It's all economies of scale. Spending $300,000 on new tooling is fine if you are anticipating using it to make 10's or 100's of millions of pieces of product with it. That is in fact Lego's core business model. (And remember not all new tooling is new parts. They are also constantly replacing older tooling as it wears out.) Spending $50,000 on a more specialized mold is fine if you see a clear path to needing hundreds of thousands of parts. But $50,000+ for 20,000 parts is a no go.

It depends on if they are talking about the costs of new tooling or costs of new parts. The second would include any needed testing etc. but is the more minimal expense... Unless electronics are involved in which case it becomes astronomical. (Ever notice the first page of the instructions in any set containing a light brick or sound brick? Yeah it's that crazy.)

I suspect that when PJ releases the inevitable Extended Edition of this movie we will find it in particular has some major additions to Beorn's scenes and Thranduil's. Probably even a flashback sequence involving Thranduil and dragons. I think the original planned run time for this one was probably at or over 3 hours, but it got sliced back after all the pushback about how long TUJ was in theaters.

Stupid question, but what does Taskmasters shield look like in the TV show that the set is based on? Is there some reason from the episode that they might prefer to use the studded shield? Either because of some episode related peculiarity (ie TM using some sort of AIM gizmo shield with a red thingy in it?) or some play feature that needs a connection point? The minifig is obviously not quite the classic comic version, which is fine. Falcon is obviously the cartoon version as well. The same thing with The specific properties of Thor's Hammer. Let's be honest with ourselves. Even in the comics those have been wildly inconsistent over the years and have more served individual specific story needs than any overarching set of detailed rules. AIM somehow stealing the Hammer to power a super weapon seems like a perfectly typical comic book plot. And one well within the nature of AIM.

Just saw it. I loved it. Yeah there were a ton of changes from the book. But astonishingly pretty much all of those were to flesh out characters that were at best poorly described in the book itself. The actual story follows the book dead on. I love the original book. I learned to read from it. But what I saw tonight was perfectly reasonable to bring the book to screen. It improved on TUJ in every way possible. It wasn't the mess of conflicting tones of the first. It clicked in fully 100% in that Middle Earth LotR type tone, feel and sense of action and adventure. And it delivered. If you were on the fence after TUJ. Take a risk and go see this. It is wonderful. It isn't just Tolkien. Above and beyond the root Tolkien source this channels every Dungeons and Dragons game or dream we ever had, and a host of derivative works. I wouldn't be surprised to see Dr'izzt Du'orden show up at some point. It's a fun swords and spells and fantasy adventure. One of the best ever put before an audience.

http://www.bricksetforum.com/discussion/3869/why-no-more-monorail/p2 Poke around in that thread. Realize that "LegoNabil" is Mark Stafford, and yeah he is laying out very very clearly why the Monorail parts will not be remade in the forseeable future. Short answer, they never made any money.

That is complicated, but not that unusual these days. It requires a complex mechanism, but not as high a degree of precision as some of the other parts. It's just a more modern molding mechanism. That second injection of rubber just needs to void fill. Not have multipoint connections. If you want to see some wild high tech Injection Molding tech take a look at Bandai of Japan. Their ability to cast multiple colors is astonishing.

There seems to be some vague and almost random nature to S@H's tags such as Sold Out, Out of Stock, Retiring Soon, etc. I suspect that Out of Stock means that they know there is a new batch in the production chain. Sold Out means they do not yet know or have confirmation when or if they will be getting more.

So my thoughts on these new sets. - What's with all of the Spider vehicles? Part of the charm of Spider-Man is he is clueless New Yorker that lacks even a drivers license. - Electro is a cool looking figure, that looks far more like Iceman then Electro? I understand it is the movie version. But still kinda unrecognizable. - is it just me, or does the Green Goblin look far more like the Abomination than like any interpretation of the GG ever presented? - Why would Spider-Man need or want a helicopter? He can't even drive a car? What next, the Daredevil Action Tank? - Mary Jane is great, one of the best figs of this wave. - best take on Doc Oc yet. But why does the bank truck seem to have 1 trans green window? - I like the Cap set. Wish it had a Winter Soldier. But everything it does have seems great. A decent comics take on Cap. A great Red Skull and a classic Hydra goon. - the Hulk lab escape has some of the best parts, and some strange inclusions and exclusions. MODOK, Taskmaster and Falcon. Absolute perfection. Fantastic figures, and they make perfect sense together. You can see this story. Hulk, ok he kinda can fit in there, and at least he has purple pants. Besides he is a sales leader. Then we come to Thor? Thor in an AIM/MODOK set? Really? They just don't go together. It's like having Thor fight Daredevil's Mafia thugs or Wolverines Ninja. It just doesn't work. On the level of scale and power it's having Thor punch out a big headed quadropalegic in a wheelchair. I'm thinking this scenario isn't much of a nail biter? And really Thor adds nothing to the set. They couldn't give us an AIM Beekeeper instead?

That was a fairly small run unusual product. And it has been out for about 2 months now. So it is possible that it did sell better than expected, and sold out the initial factory run, or has sold out at some stores or the warehouse. I think my Lego store still had one or two of them as of last week.

Racism? Really? I was pointing out that a friend's daughter would really like a mini fig that looks like her and racism comes into it? As far as all mini figs are yellow. You might notice that above and beyond the yellow they are quite good at communicating cultural or ethnic characteristics through design. Particularly in the cmf line. There are a number of yellow figs that communicate or at least acceptably self represent black males. There are Asian men and women. A few that lean or are obviously latin. But nowhere is there anything that roughly represents a typical black girl. The main thing is the hair. It's even worse over with the flesh toned license figures where the only dark toned female figs representing black actresses have non human hair pieces.