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Faefrost

Eurobricks Grand Dukes
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Everything posted by Faefrost

  1. Faefrost
    Hmmm?
  2. Faefrost
    First thoughts on Episode 80. Whoever is doing the fight choreography this season deserves a raise.
  3. Faefrost
    I honestly think the Modular type model of one really nice, large D2C collectors set per year would likely be the only real way to go for a few of the Classic themes. The Pirate fans are the easiest. Give them a new ship each year and they would die happy. They’ve also gotten a lot of unintentional offerings recently including a candidate for Best Lego ship in the newer Ninjago Destiny’s Bounty. So they are kind of conditioned for a one a year experience. Similarly you could appease Space fans with one nice flagship ship per year in a $100-200 price range. Something along the lines of Benny’s ship. Do Blacktron next year. Then an Mtron ship etc. castle becomes a bit harder to hit a nice larger scale collectors set at a collector price point. You’re not going to get a $20 D2C set one year, $40 the next. You’re going to get one nice Castle one year. A different Castle (with entirely different coloring, tone, them, design, etc) the next. Maybe something like the Ewok village with forrestmen another year, etc. it probably makes for a less cohesive collector theme, sadly. (Although I do wish Lego would try.) I suspect part of the problem is it takes more in the way of parts and included stuff to make a Castle look impressive. You can get away with 3-5 minifigs in a Space Ship. 4-5 on a Pirate ship. But a Castle needs 10-12 minifigs plus at least 2 horses before it feels complete and populated. We keep looking at Lego and asking why they won’t throw us a bone. We miss the important third party in the equation, the retailers. We forget that one of the most beloved AFOL sets, Helms Deep, is the reason that Walmart and Target didn’t want anymore sets over $99 that weren’t Star Wars or the annual City Police or Fire station, for several years. Walmart blew out Helms Deep at around 60% off. And Lego largely will only do a full Theme for regular retail.
  4. Faefrost
    That’s the one.
  5. Faefrost
    Oh man, I so wish I could find this picture. Lego themselves or the group that produces the Lego Club Magazine took the little Bank in the Batman 2 Face Chase set and expanded it to create a Modular Daily Planet building, complete with Clark Kent's apartment. For a 1 page DC Super Heroes ad in the magazine, a number of years ago. It looked gorgeous. I have never been able to find a copy of the picture online.
  6. Faefrost
    There is some indication that Harumi, or someone with similar coloring appears in the Throne Room Showdown set. That set also appears to contain Samurai X and Skylar and a pair of bad guys. Edit; Don't for get that they do sometimes hold a key set from the finale back to the next wave. Remember we didn't get the Lighthouse set until Day of the Dead, even though it was a Sky Pirates set. just to help avoid spoiling the end of the season.
  7. Faefrost
    They’ve explained it a bit in the past. Part of the review is if they can do things like reduce the piece count/parts budget without severely altering in diminishing the core concept of what the participants are voting for? For example with Ship in a Bottle the core concept is the ship in a bottle, not so much the scale of it. Whereas something like a modular building it is harder to reduce to a production profile beyondscaling back detailing such as fully tiled floors. It’s a judgement call at Review for each project.
  8. Faefrost
    It’s not that the movie had no redeeming qualities. Just that virtually none of the redeeming qualities can be found in the story, characters, character arcs and character interpretation and performance, in the movie. (Ok I’ll give you Movie Garmadon was kind of fun.) It was visually stunning and the music was fantastic. As for “diversity of Voice cast”? The movie had a greater breadth of voice cast. Which is normal. A tv show tends to rely on a dependable pool of contract actors each doing multiple roles. Movies can afford to cast each spoken part individually. But diversity? I’m not sure that that’s the right word for it. I mean yeah they brought in Jackie Chan to play Wu (I will admit I love Jackie Chan but largely hated his mean spirited take on Wu.) But they replaced the Asian Voice actor who voices the one clearly identifiable Asian Main character, Kai, with the annoying comic relief Mexican guy from Ant Man... because diversity?
  9. Faefrost
    I think it's been pretty clear that S8 and S9 are strongly interconnected. Just going by their appearances such as skin color and markings it looks like Ultra Violet and Killow are from the same people as the S9 villains. Dragon Hunters?
  10. Faefrost
    The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie is simply dull, stupid and plotless. However the Alan Moore comics that it is based on, while being excellent comic stories bordering on must read, are very much a Hard R bordering on NC-17. That's where the fetish porn lies. (Not joking about that. One of the volumes, the Black Dossier I believe is pretty much wall to wall nothing but fetish porn. Intentionally so.)
  11. Faefrost
    I find the "Amazon Discounts List" over on Brickset to be a fairly decent low level rough gauge for how a set did. (yes yes, it is not a real predictor, different factors can alter impressions etc... but it is a good quick look) Anything at 20% discount or less is typically in it's normal lifecycle or reaching its end and is performing likely as expected sales wise. Anything above that probably failed to hit desired sales numbers and is being blown out of inventory. Minecraft Crafting Box 2.0 a 2017 set is at 36% discount. I leave everyone to reach their own conclusions.
  12. Faefrost
    They have found that “Literary” Type themes seem to attract an older consumer and audience then they intend. Harry Potter, LotR etc. Sherlock Holmes would similarly do so unless attached to some modern kid friendly media incarnation. The age appropriateness of the classic myths is less an issue thanks to the Zdisneyfication of everything. But anything involving time or genre hopping would be a mess. Remember Time Cruisers? And anything that gets close to League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen in tone and mash up risks pointing to that source material. Which other than the horrid movie is wildly not kid friendly. Horrifically so. Bordering on fetish porn in places. And let’s be honest with ourselves. As much as we here want a theme that has Sherlock Holmes hunting down the bad guy knifing hookers in Victorian England, I’m thinking it might not play as well with the kids or parents. Right up there with the Les Miserables Theme. We may see some opening for a return of Johnny Thunder style Adventurers for a bit. The Rock movies like Jumanji are doing well. The biggest question would be where to send him that doesn’t trigger the outrage brigade shrieking about colonialism, racism and cultural oppression? (“In our latest action theme, Johnny Thunder in Boise Idaho!” See the fun as he rides a tractor into adventure!”) I think the younger guy was a sort of fun homage to Ash from the Evil Dead movies.
  13. Faefrost
    I think there is going to be some sort of twist towards the back half of the season. The SOG motives still seem unsure. The “Bwahahaha! They want to bring back Garmadon!” is that really what’s going on there? They actually seem rather well behaved for an evil biker gang cult. No casualties and minimal property damage outside of a rowdy karaoke night. Just some light targeted theft. Most other villains have been a bit more villainous. Or am I missing something? That. Plus it can be reasonably inferred from the trophies and things in Gordon’s house that he was likely the prior Master of Shape. The Man of a Thousand faces if you will. Jay inherited his Mother’s power. Which raises some interesting questions about Chamile , no?
  14. Faefrost
    /sigh. For those thinking with what they sit upon. The Jurassic Park pretty clearly carries a "No Dinosaurs" non compete clause. They made that absolutely clear back in the day. That Dinosaur you mentioned was originally a JP project that got taken down when Lego got the JP license. Then changed to a non JP project (by removing the gate). Some themes or Licenses have fairly strict no compete clauses. Some are more open. For example Lord of the Rings did not preclude Castle (although it probably did preclude a return of "Fantasy Era" while active). Lone Ranger had a strict "no Western Theme" non compete. Similarly we know Pirates of the Caribean similarly does not allow Lego's in house Pirates them while active. The Star Wars license has never prevented traditional Lego Space themes. Generally Lucasfilms non competes prevent you from taking on a competitors IP. So no Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica while you have Star Wars. Even that may have softened in recent years. (George used to really HATE Battlestar Galactica with a passion. And Lawyers). I don't think I could ever begin to explain just how complex and granular the license contracts can be, here on a forum. When we say non compete, it often isn't that cut and dry. They go into great detail on what you can and cannot do as part of the contract. So for example the Jurassic Park/World license will preclude any in house or third party Dinosaur theme, although there may be certain exceptions carved out for things that are not felt to be too close. So that 3 in 1 Creator Dino set would likely not trigger the contract rules. They would write around that. Similarly if there was a needed dino subcomponent for another licensed theme it would often allow it. Such as the giant T rex animatronic in the classic Batcave. (I know I am not describing this very well as I'm getting a little fuzzy from cold meds.) But for something like Ideas they would have to renegotiate the contract, Which will generally not happen. Add to this confusion, some IP holders, who had kept their properties isolated via non competes, are suddenly seeing surging profits from letting them mingle. Marvel and DC Heroes for example. So yeah every contract is distinct, and different, and often insane.
  15. Faefrost
    It's actually not that hard to do now. Design your Modular in LDD. Export a parts list. Upload it to Bricklink and use it to create a specific want list. Then just use it to sort and search to get the parts you need.
  16. Faefrost
    Fire Brigade. It was a gift from my Wife. My first Modular. Because I used to be a Fire Fighter. I was stunned at how right they got everything.
  17. Faefrost
    It conflicted with a Licensed theme.
  18. Faefrost
    Probably because Space POlice dances a little too close to the Batman stuff with the strange villains.
  19. Faefrost
    I thought the only new printed figure was Zane? The Samurai X and the henchmen are just stock head, torso and leg reuses with some new hats.
  20. Faefrost
    I can't fault the Robot or the Falcon, but BB-8 seems an odd choice?
  21. Faefrost
    This is wildly untrue. The only break in SPace from Star Wars was right at the begining for about a year and a half. While things settled in. Since then Lego has never had an issue creating Space themes that do not conflict with Star Wars. The closest they came to Star Wars space wise was probably Galaxy Squad. Which had some Clone Wars vibes to it. But generally they can easily keep the two lines apart. Space generally tagets a slightly younger audience that SW anyway. Here are a few concepts that I can see Lego going with for Space themes in the not too distant future. While most major themes would out of necessity be some sort of conflict play, I could see a few possible exploration subjects. - A near future'ish Mars or Planetary explorer theme. A small likely limited 5 set theme with a touch more real space then we typically get. Remember it takes a few years for even a small them to be designed and produced. Not to long ago The Martian was topping the box office. Also note the competition "Mega Construx" has a Mars explorer set out in their Pro (their UCS) line. I could see that as a City offshoot as well. - Space Police IV. We seem overdue for this. Probably because of the Lego Batman movie or Lego movies. Although I could also see something like this being a huge element of TLM2. "The Super Sekrit Space Police" this go round? - Space Pirates. Yeah you know how Nexo Knights was basically a Castle Space hybrid. Well there is lots of kid fare involving spacegoing pirate sailing ships with lasers and race cars etc. Heck several seasons of Power Rangers feature it. I'm amazed they have gone down that path yet. 5 named main characters engaging in a gather the Macguffins quest while the Galactic Government chases them. - A nice adult themed D2C Space set along the same lines as teh TLM Benny set. Maybe a new massive Blacktron ship updated to modern standards. Or a big wheeled Mtron transport base. Much the same way that we saw some nice D2C and large adult targeted sets from TLM, TLBM and TLNinjago, there is a very good chance we will see one of two from TLM2. Probably in the $100-$200 range.
  22. Faefrost
    It's a nice little set for the price. I bought it largely as I wanted the civilian Ray and the Rickshaw to add to the "Ninjatown" portion of my modular city. I quite like the Rickshaw. With some very minor tweaking you can also use it to recreate the scene from the original Ninjago Pilot where Wu tells his students "we will take the Horse Carriage!". The Piranha Mech is a well executed delight, and possibly my favorite villain vehicle from the movie sets. It's nicely compact but does what it needs to and has a good mix of believability and absurdity. At $19.99 this would be a must have set... except for that godawful Lady Iron Dragon fig. The fig is so bad it knocks a star off the set. There was no excuse for that head in todays age. Heck if you just replace the black head with movie misako's head it looks much much better. The figure in no way benefits from the black sides to the head. Note they used a recolor of that same hairpiece for Harumi in the season 8 sets, with a yellow head and it looks fantastic.
  23. Faefrost
    I never understood why some themes always seem to shy away from structures? Some of the arguably best and well selling Ninjago sets are the various Temples. Chima's Structures such as the Lion Castle are viewed as teh series best and were adored by kids. City thrives on its yearly Police Station and Fire Stations. Which give the vehicles something to do. Nexo Knights was a SciFi Castle theme, that had almost nothing resembling Castles. The other problem with Nexo Knights is there was nothing that even vaguely qualified as civilians save the one little girl. Nobody and nothing was actually being threatened in any of the sets.
  24. Faefrost
    They may yet. They often release blister pack Army Builders right at the end of certain lines in order to burn off excess minifigs that are unique to that theme. For example the Ninjago Sky Pirates army builder set that is on shelves now. It has 2 generic Pirate thugs, Zane and Nya as Samurai X. 3 of those are clearly overstock figures. The third was a version of Zane that was easy to cobble together to make the pack desireable
  25. Faefrost
    There are some leaked preliminary catalog photos floating around out there, which we obviously can't post here. I think the Strombringer is the only one they showed off in the brick.
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