Faefrost

No. The only actual information we have is A. Azog was handed out with a new mold at SDCC B. The logical conclusion that they do not make new molds just for small run exclusive give aways. Since there is a new Azog specific mold, the mold will be used in an upcoming set. That is pretty much the total of the real or safe information that we have. Everything else is rumor, speculation, wishful thinking, and if you look back over the last few pages, some rather clear wild @zzed lies and trolling.

I'm thinking the safe assumption is if we get a Scott Lang Ant Man then Cassie will be as originally presented. A fairly young child. If I remember correctly he originally took the Ant Man gear to use it to protect her or rescue her or something similar. They didn't present her as a teenager with his powers until much much later.

Is it a full moon rising over Middle Earth today?

My gut tells me that for almost any licensed property to be worthwhile for Lego it ideally needs an installed minimal fan base of around 10 million. It's why most licenses are movie related and fewer are TV, and games are even rarer. 100 million viewers for a movie worldwide is not uncommon. TV harder to gauge but in general nowhere near a movies numbers. (Some cable channels bounce around in hundreds of thousands.) Video Games will almost never come close to this.

Nono! The Restaurant needs brick built Cheeseburgers!

And there we have it! The final payout of the tweenaged troll. As expected.

Honestly? because this is mainly a board of AFOL's. We're not for the most part fools. And many many years on the internet have taught us the warning signs.

See, what a lot of people often miss is that Comics do not always equal Movies. And characters or basic stories that often seem B or C list in their original source material, often convert to a movie much better than some of the better known A listers. The first Iron Man was a great example of this. Look at 2 forthcoming Marvel movies. Ant Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. If you just look at them as comics they are barely known bit players. Nothing spectacular. Ho hum. But the underlying stories beneath them are the types of things that Hollywood has a history of doing very very well. GotG is at heart a Dirty Dozen or Magnificent 7 type story told as Space Opera instead of a War, Western (or Samurai flick if you prefer.) it's a pack of rejects on a suicide mission. Just with Star Wars trappings instead of Nazi's. this is he sort of baseline that directors like Spielberg love starting from. It may end up sucking. Especially if too much baggage gets piled on. But at its core is the potential for a very good and very clean movie. Something other than guys in capes hitting each other. Ant Man has a 1950's ish SciFi adventure vibe all over it. Just the whole size change gimmick is some thing that movie makers have long used reasonably well. Throw in a Mission Impossible type vibe with it, and there is good potential for some fun. As for villains, it will depend on which Ant Man they go for. If Hank Pym they are almost stuck with (ugh!) Egghead, as they will have already used Ultron. Granted Egghead does have a kinda creepy 1950's mad scientist vibe, I think it is best avoided, or left dead and buried with Vincent Price. Whereas if they go with the Scott Lang ex-con Ant Man, then that most likely would give us Taskmaster as the villain. Which could be awesome.

On a related side note, am I the only one that has ever wondered about the number of companies that fall over themselves pouring product placement money into movies, in order to show their businesses and name brands being blown up, destroyed, leveled, attacked by serial killers, or subjected to song and dance numbers by disturbingly creepy aliens? I mean really, what was the decision path that led Sears and IHop to give WB money? I'm guessing "a safe place to shop" was not the intended message?

It's a stock reply to politely tell you that, "no, like every other company in the world, we will not tell you about unannounced products just because you e-mailed us." What should we think about this? Should we be outraged that they politely declined to divulge their next years product catalog, but thanked you for you interest? Just from looking at the reply it almost seems to be somewhat in context with your request, as they discuss Batman and Xmen sets. So you even scored a reply from a real human being (or a really really clever AI, which might be superior) Bonus! You win.

Actually they had pretty much indicated that the MWT would be trimmed to just the Saloon, long before it hit 10k. You have some great designs here, and some wonderful ideas. These are fantastic MOCs. But you should really narrow yourself down. The themes are kind of all over the place. Pick one really good set. One project. One story or myth. Polish it and present it as a product. Something that would readily be bought off the store shelves. My suggestion would be to do something more out of Mythology rather than straight up history, as that would probably have greater play value. It needs to be flashy enough to attract votes, yet reasonable enough to hit around a $50 - $60 price point in order to pass a business case review. (And before you pull out the "who says that, they can make it cost whatever they want" counter argument. The writing is pretty clearly on the wall on this one. The further afield from a proven profitable base subject and embedded audience you go, the less risk they will permit in the set at review time. The other big reason to reduce your project to one or two refined sets is to avoid overkill. You get to where you start competing with yourself. Your project is no longer distinct. It does not stand out on CuuSoo because there are 7 or 8 that at a glance look just like it. Except they are all yours. Show me something distinct and unique that no one else is offering. Not some multi project loosely tied together theme with some sort of Modular heading.

This. They would have to essentially release an entirely new set, that just happens to be somewhat similar to the old. New product numbers, etc. and they would need to pull back any remaining old to avoid confusion. It is far easier to simply put the new figure in a new set. This isn't the same as adjusting the build on the fire helicopter. This would be radically changing the sets major features. I am highly skeptical of any Azog piece ending up in any AUJ sets. It just doesn't make a lot of sense that such a part would have been available to be accidentally mis sorted into the box at the time the AUJ sets were made.

The hardest or most expensive to replace will probably be the classic spacemen. There is a huge market of classic space collectors. (Plus the yellow and white figs did not always weather the years that well so ones in good condition are much sought after.) The firemen can go either way depending on whether you are looking to recreate the exact set, or just give him some firemen to play with. You can easily get figure packs of moder police and firemen. The classic homemaker figs can be found at a reasonable cost. Because of their odd "transitiona" nature there isn't a huge collectors market sucking them up. As far as the classic Minifigs and homemaker children. Once again it will depend on if you want 100% correct replacements, or acceptable ones. Many many of those old fig designs were recreated as part of a series of 4 Toys R Us promotional packs last year. http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=5000437-1 http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=5000438-1 http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=5000439-1 http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=5000440-1 So many of those should be available singly on Bricklink or EBay at reasonable prices.

I was just going to say, Beorn will probably take 2 new molds. His human form probably ala Hagrid and his Bear form which would need to be larger than the Worgs, so easily 2x the size of the City bear.

I think we will see a UCS Tie Bomber before a Slave One sadly. The Tie B is probably a great candidate for UCS, whereas I think that Slave One may have too many complex curves to pull off well in a larger scale set, at least at this time.

In the main Marvel comic line Hank Pym is a bit more complex than that. At heart Hank Pym is brilliant, well meaning, but more than a bit flawed erratic and occasionally unbalanced. It's a shame that that all gets boiled down into "he hit his wife". It is kind of surprising that Wheedon would not use him as he seems to be almost tailor made for Joss's type of stories.

We will probably get some Thanos backstory in GotG, even if he is not the main bad guy. he is core to the background of Zoe Saldanna's Garonna, Karen Gillam's Nebula and Dave Batista's Drax the Destroyer.

I think the brick requirements vary with the given licenses or contracts. Disney seems most open to figure packs. WB seems least. Don't forget that the licensor has a large amount of input into set selection. At this stage with movies still in active production the licensor may prefer to maintain a focus on named characters and heroes in the sets. Which tends to work against Battle Packs.

Just in case you have never stumbled on this set http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=7251-1 but it is pretty much what you were describing save for Palpatine.

I think FTL is a neat little project. Nice little builds, cute little ships, and fairly good brand fit. I suspect it will face a few major hurdles in review. 1. See above and the discussions on the problems that video game properties face. At its heart it will come down to A. How big is FTL's already embedded market? And B. what is the potential for this project to spread or grow outside that market? 2. I'll trust GB's analysis on this more than my own, but just from my crude eyeballing it looks to me like there is a very good chance that FTL and Poptropica could hit 10k close enough together to put them in the same review period. Assuming that our suspicions are correct, and there is only one produced set per review period, this may be a very tough review. Going head to head the business case for the sets would be near identicle. Independent video games, with probably close enough player bases as to be too close to call. Strong enthusiastic player bases. And fairly tight clearly defined projects. Bonus points to FTL for being a smaller more minimalist project that puts it into a lower price point. But while larger, Poptropica isn't that much larger, and comes packed with greater play value and a much greater potential for crossover interest. (As someone who knows very little about either game I will confess that humorous Bunny Mecha with Mad Scientist in a bunny suit" grabs my interest more than "more mini ships", but that may just be me.) 3. How have Miniships done as sets in recent times? Star Wars planets? Polybags? Is there a drawback to not having distinct or identifiable characters or a readily recognizable story built into the project? Is that something that works for or against it as a CuuSoo review project? Just my idle (and probably completely wrong) speculation. It will be interesting to see how the next few reviews shake out. What they have to say about the League of Legends project will probably give us a much better idea on what they are looking at for video game properties. ( and the Space Troopers will give us a better feel for non licensed properties and how they interact with Lego's in house sub themes. The Landrover may give a feel for what is viewed as allowable set size. Etc.)

Probably some main character variant from the OT. Something that might be hard to mix into a regular set (but that doesn't need new parts). My money would be on Lando wearing Han's clothing from the end of ESB, or maybe if we get really lucky an Obi Wan force ghost (not transclear, but done similarly to the Ninjago NRG figs. Besides if you really look he isn't that see through in the movie. he's just glowing.)

It's Lego. They make playsets. Not scale models. If or when we get it it will be a selectively compressed playset designed to comunicate the idea of all or part of the scene, and not the shear scale and majesty of it. Just as we have seen with every other LotR release. And honestly, no most LotR fans will not be deeply turned off by this nor will they be in any way upset. They just want a nice set that tells the story. Preferably in a form and size that they can build, play with, and actually fit inside the house. I think part of the problem with a Lothlorian set is it's a gorgeous but very static location in the films. It's a place of talking and not really action or conflict. So it has somewhat limited play potential. (Where oh where would they put the flick fires?!?!?!?!) Granted we did get the Council of Elrond set which has similar issues, so you never know?

They are very very good Western sets, above and beyond the fact that they are licensed. The Silver Mine is an absolute classic play set, just for the shear volume of fun stuff going on.

I think the system does that automatically when they hit 10k to prevent the system from being overwhelmed. It seems to be that When projects hit 10k they disappear until the next business day when a human operator can manually change the status to "in review". There was some back end issue awhile back caused when a project hit 10k but voting was not locked. There were strange display issues like the vote count starting over again and outraged fans demanding to know where 9900 votes went, etc. I think auto locking a project at 10k was their workaround.

I bet Luis is so happy to see his original art on E-bay?