Faefrost

He was the main villain of the second Christopher Reeve Superman movie. Often felt to be one of the best sequels ever made. He actually entered the common pop culture vernacular with the phrase "Kneel Before Zod!". I think they messed up using Zod for the first movie, and sort of how they used him. He was too dark a villain for the first. He would have worked much better for a second movie (as he did last time). Plus just by the nature of some of the odd plot points surrounding him and his alien invasion, it makes it much more dificult for them to do a real Braniac movie as a followup. It would just look too much the same.

Yeah but its actually too small for the UCS one, thats why they sort of pad it out with the curved slopes around it. The Eta cockpit is probably a decent option (and would probably look a lot better for a minifig scale B wing. If you do need the near side by side also look at the cockpit piece from the T6 Jedi Shuttle The cockpit area from the Avengers Quinjet could also probably be modified to seat 2. If not directly side by side that slightly offset one behind the other like is done in the MF and T6.

It looks like Netflix has added a decent number of Lego TV shows to their streaming service. I see the first two Ninjago story arcs (Skellies and Rise of the Snakes), a few Bionacle movies, a Friends shows and the Atlantis movie. Woot!

That. And maybe throw in some stuff such as the Iron Man Malibu Mansion set for some nice detail pieces and those nice big white curved slopes that can be used to add some "future styling" saucer shape highlights to the structure.

I love it! And it is far simpler yet better than anything Megabloks put out in their WoW line.

I am actually most impressed with how well the 3 Man of Steel sets match up to details in the movies. Far more so than Iron Man 3. Even something simple like Zod not having his armor or cape in the small Metropolis showdown set. That actually synchs up with the movie, and is not simply that the small set didn't get the extras. The Ship from the Smallville set is probably one of Lego's more screen accurate renditions. Far more so than I was expecting. (Still no reasonable explanation for the flick fire missile battery in the Black Zero Escape set however)

What would you have them do instead? How much business risk reasonably should be undertaken on the basis of a crowd sourced project? Really the only hope we will ever have of seeing a more expansive crowd sourced program as you dezcribe is for these early sets to vastly exceed projections. Now this is not a forlorn hope. Im betting minecraft and bttf will do that easy. But thats the only way the platform will grow. And only through growth will it get to where things like no new parts will fade. And to keep those restrictions in perspective. Do you realize that many intrnal themes such as modular buildings and winter village have zimilar restrictions? The licensed theme issue gets very very complicated. Im sure it is not simply the fact that a project is from a licensed theme but the specific nature that can cause issue. As an example in the Star Wars license I am sure lucasfilms holds a difference between things that simply exist in the SW universe vs things that were designed and created by LA and ILM and appear on screen. There is the further complication of has this design been rendered before as part of the ofcicial lego sets. A CuuSoo proposal of Dash Rendars Moldy Crow could probably go through. A CuuSoo proposal of a Tie Interceptor probably not. Its just subtlties of licensing.

You are not alone. I must be getting old, because I am really starting to miss the days when directors were limited by practical effects and tight budgets. It forced them to craft very tight, very well thought out minimalist scenes. Not one second more than necessary because every second was so expensive. Not simply cut n pasting 2 hours of explosions and buildings falling down and shaky cam. I just watched the latest Star Trek and same thing. The cgi action set pieces just went on and on and on and you quickly get numb to it. The old constraints forced them to make better movies, and often resulted in accidental brilliance. The new unrestrained CGI just lets them slap any random thought up there with little reason to self edit beyond ego. The end result is much sloppier storytelling. The harsher or more powerful the third party editor, the better the story. And old school practical effects and studio budgets were certainly harsh editors.

You are far from a minority. I am greatly looking forward to this set. Yeah fictional stuff is fun. But I knew from the moment this was first posted that it was an almost perfect Lego subject. As you say, this little guy is exploring an alien planet. For real. It doesn't get more inspirational than that.

I like the PS4. It looks like SONY learned, went back to basics and gave gamers and developers the exact product they wanted. As far as XBox One vs PS4. I strongly suggest you go read up on some of the more obnoxious elements of the XBox One before malign your decision on which to purchase. It's all over the Internet. Screaming and 4 letter words being directed at Microsoft are often involved. It's really quite spectacular. While SONY seems to have learned from past mistakes and is stepping up to mostly fix them, MS seems to be on a full blown tear o making them big time. Every day seems to be some new outrage. Personally I will not e touching an XBone and not allowing one in my house. I prefer to actually own and control my gaming products, not simply borrow them on a probationary or on parole basis.

Cost of part tooling is between $80,000 and $300,000 per new part. These costs have to be amortized over the parts planned use. A typical retail set is produced in numbers somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million. CuuSoo sets are produced in lots of 10,000 to 20,000. So while a new part may add $1-$2 to a Star Wars set, it can add $10 to $20 to the cost of a CuuSoo set. The small run numbers mean the new part alone could be 20% of the sets price to the customer. Which tends to fail as it falls outside the expected value curve. The only hope for seeing a new part in CuuSoo is if it is something that has a more general use, and the use and costs of it can be shared out with regular retail sets. This all but rules out unique new character headpieces, but may allow some structural stuff.

The fact that the Portal set is still in "testing" is interesting and unusual. Especially that they opted to give out the rest of the results. The one thing that it has me suspecting (though I may be completely wrong) is parts. The Portal set had one or two new structural type parts. Now normally this probably would have killed it... Unless the review team thinks that these might be really useful structural parts to have, and is worth doing some tests on. This might be one of he rare cass where they are actually considering a new part from a CuuSoo set. And they have said that in such cases the review would be much much longer.

Believe it or not, that existing ongoing and active SW license makes it much harder for a CuuSoo project. We have discussed this a bit over the past year, but it comes down to a number of things. - The Lego Star Wars group may already have a Sandcrawler somewhere on the production schedule. So this may conflict with that. - similarly since SW is an active and ongoing license, and this is a subject that has been done before, it may simply be held that it remains an active design subject and is simply already part of the active or available pool of sets, and would be inappropriate for CuuSoo or anything involving a third party. - there may quite simply be an issue regarding third party design royalties over interpretations of familiar Lucasfilms designs which would already be covered under the existing license arrangement. While new unique interpretations of things like described but never seen EU vehicles may be fine for CuuSoo, stuff that has been seen on screen may not be feasible once they ask the lawyers. - Lucasfilms may simply not want the set to be done via a small limited release mechanism such as CuuSoo. Or it may be an issue involving all of the above. Remember CuuSoo s setup to do one shot subjects. The LegoSW team however will revisit things. So lets look at an example of where problems pop up. Lego has made 10144 in the past. Lets say they decide to make Marshall's? This then attaches a royalty and design credit to it. What then happens if they go to make a new version a few years later? Does that design royalty prevent it, or further attach the new set? Are there any claims that could be made? PR problems? It just seems like it has the potential to get unpredictable or messy if not managed extremely carefully. I've kind of long suspected that the CuuSoo royalty mechanism might cause issues with ongoing licenses. Going to a flat fee reward for sets involving already active and existing licenses might be a better option. Now the question is would it be possible for the CuuSoo group to hand it all off to the LegoSW group, and for all to reach some sort of flat fee contract designer arrangement with Marshall in order to produce such a set under the regular LegoSW banner? It would certainly be a pleasant thought. I suspect that no matter what happens we will be seeing a new Sandcrawler within the next 24 to 36 months. But I personally would really love for it to be some variant of Marshall's, and for him to be compensated and credited. Oh and just in case anyone missed it, yeah, this probably means the Batman Tumbler is unlikely as well for many of the same reasons.

The simplest explanation could be that they already have a Sandcrawler in the production pipeline somewhere. Much like the problem they ran into with the Western Town. (Which really doubly sucks given that was Marshall's project too.) it makes me wish or hope that there could be some mechanism whereby the CuuSoo team could hand off stuff like this to the specific license team, to maybe arrange some sort of non CuuSoo contract to add something like this to the regular production lines.

One minor report from the Man of Steel, at least as it relates to Lego. Amazingly once you see the movie, all three of the sets actually come together and make a reasonable amount of sense. (except maybe the weird sideways ladder in Black Zero Escape.). Well done Lego team! The ships actually look just perfect. All of the minifigs nicely match up with the scenes their sets portray. There is even a good place to put the Jor El fig (Black Zero Escape). Overall an outstanding job that avoided all of the Iron Man type confusion.

Congrats! As much as I love the Portal set and the Sandcrawler, I gotta admit that the Mars Rover is an almost perfect CuuSoo type project. It's topical, educational, reasonably priced and sized, and was designed by one of the real rocket scientists. Its just got a little too much in the positive column for it not to have passed.

That's pretty much dead on what we expected. However there are two interesting caveats in the blog post. It looks like that the two sets that were not selected for CuuSoo might not be entirely dead, if I am reading that right. They simply said a set that they will be making, but they left the door open for the others.

That Dolphin Cruiser looks kind of interesting. But it just feels like something is missing? Where are the flick fires? How does the boat split apart to launch the villains escape hydro foil? Where are the sharks and laser beams?

The PS3 had a feature where you could install an alternate OS such as some flavors of Linux, and basically use it as a fairly inexpensive high powered Linux box. Some labs, researchers and hobbiests found it to be a cheap and easy way to daisy chain linux installed PS3's to make true supercomputers. But then SONY crippled the feature for fear that it was being used to hack the console and distribute pirated hacked games. ad possibly a Linux loaded PS3 might be able to take a run at PSN. (They were surprisingly close, it was a lost or out of direct control developer PS3 that was actually used.) The niche users have never forgiven SONY for removing that feature.

Brilliant explanation. Although in defense of some friends who work in that industry I feel the need to correct a common misconception. The US Railway system is actually one of the finest in the world. And it has vastly improved in leaps and bounds in the past few decades. It is rare that you will see any stretch of track not moving swiftly at peak capacity. But the US railway system is 99.9% a freight system. Now passenger rail in the US is horrible. And the railways fight hard to keep it that way. Passenger rail is low profit, inefficient and it clogs the freight arteries with higher priority passenger trains, slowing down the delivery of freights, fuels, raw materials and goods. Which kind of goes back to oneof the questions as to why US prices are lower than Europe. Because transport costs are cheaper. US Rails are used to deliver cargo very far very cheaply.

That's kinda dull (and may put a wrinkle in the Female Minifgures project that just hit 10k). rats. (not that I don't like a Lady Scientist) I was hoping for one similar to the old CMF concept art with the wild Einstein hair. Oh well. I'm still betting DOC uses an existing hair piece. Either Grandpa or something like the Exo Force ones.

But Smaug kinda has to look like the standard classic fantasy dragon... because he IS the original classic standard fantasy dragon. He's the font from which all the modern D&D'ish interpretations of dragons really sprang. Making him look like something else would just seem wrong. In theory that would be the only one of the elven kingdoms that they could attack at that point. Rivendell and Lothlorien were protected by the elven rings.

It would probably be safe to guess that Tarkin knew who Vader was as well. It would explain some of the interplay in episode IV.

Requirements to display the Star of Life will vary by state. Quite a few states require that the vehicle displaying it be a "state certified" Ambulance or medical response vehicle. I can't speak for other states but New York used to be very aggressive about policing this. I used to get hit by a surprise inspector 1 or 2 times a year. Also a vehicle in those states cannot be called or labelled an Ambulance without certification. Some Fire Departments at least used to label their EMS operations as "Fire Rescue" in large part to maintain their political and civil independence and keep the State at arms length. (For similar reasons Fire Trucks often don't have state license plates, the Fire Departments are government bodies that do not answer to DOH or DOT.) Similarly some states technically restrict wearing the symbol to certified personnel, EMT's, CFR's etc. although that is really impossible to enforce. I assume the "pole dancing snake" the OP asked about is actually the Rod of Asclepius (sp?) that appears in the middle of the Star of Life. I don't think Lego has ever used the Caduseus as a marking in sets, but they use the Star of Life all of the time.

Just one of those might make for an interesting low price point CuuSoo Polybag set?