Faefrost

Sat through the Yoda Chronicles Twice tonight. I'm a little disappointed that we only got the briefest of glimpses of the actual Jek 14 stealth fighter in this episode of the Yoda Chronicles. I hadn't realized that it was part 1 of 3. With the next two parts to be aired later in the summer. Bummer. I was hoping to get some better all around looks at the ships design. Also while we did get a better idea on the central minifig in the set, Jek 14 the other three remain a mystery. (Although I did notice that the blue Stormtrooper with the Shield seems pretty close to some early Ralph McQuarrie concept art for the Stormtroopers.) Overall I didn't pick up on much in the way of potential new sets from the show. Well unless you want a Jedi School Bus or a Disco Lit Millennium Falcon. (OK OK I admit it. I want a gold chained 70's afro'd disco king Lando's Father fig. Just because!)

I can't help but think that DC and WB, if they want to start moving towards that same sort of shared universe that Marvel is doing, really needs to start smaller. Something a little more obscure, that lets them go a little darker or play off personalities rather than character archetypes. Marvel succeeded in part because they were able to begin the whole thing with Iron Man. A character who was well known to comics fans, and visually recognize able to the general audience, but they really didn't have any preconceptions of him. I do think the Marvel universe roll out would have worked as well starting with Spider-Man or Wolverine. And with Man of Steel, DC is making a huge tactical error. They are seeking to open their world franchise with their top A list all powerful demigod character. That doesn't leave much room to grow the world or ramp things up. I mean once Superman is on the table, what is even the point of some of he others? Where can you go with their stories? I almost think they would have been better off starting with something a little more out there. Say Doom Patrol. And give the whole thing to an unexpected director. Something like challenge Taratino to make a movie with no cursing. Although this does sort of highlight part of the problem DC faces. When you get outside the world of existing fans, and start talking to normal people, Marvel only has a small number of A list pop culture icons. Spider-Man, maybe Wolverine and the Hulk. But they have a metric crap ton of B list types. Well known popular characters that the public can identify, but isn't really that familiar with their stories. DC has more A listers. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman. But other than Flash and the extended Batman cast they have virtually no B listers. After the A's it drops immediately to C, D and lower. Almost no non fan recognition. It's problematic. It's also why they dusted off General Zod for this movie rather than using more classic Superman villains. Because the only Supes villains the paying public knows are Lex Luthor and Zod. Braniac? Who's that? Darkseid? Who?

Oo! Speaking of Mirialan's a non Nun dressed one would be cool. Say SWTOR's lore character, the smuggler Hylo Visz? http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hylo_Visz She would work well in Lego. Her second ship, the Vanguard was a stolen Jedi Defender.

My thoughts as well. There is going to have to be something pretty spectacular in this set to justify that price tag. I would have much preferred a Cloud city or a Mos Eisley or a Yavin temple set.

You know, based on your pictures if you combine this with 7947 you actually end up with one nicely ruined evil tower complex. You would just have to swap out the heraldry.

I think it may be more serious than that. If I recall correctly the Fox X men license includes all of the main mutants, but specifically excluded Quicksilver and The Scarlett Witch as they were considered part of the Avengers license. This is why while Toad was used for the Brotherhood in Bryan Singers first X Men movie, the twins were not. The fact that Marvel is just finding out about this now reasonably would wind them up. It could go either way. Marvel may flex lawyer muscles, which would probably see Quicksilver magically change into Northstar in DOFP. Or if it is a minor appearance, the scene simply gets cut. Robert Downey also appears at the very end of the Hulk film. It is technically the 2nd film in what is considered Phase 1.

Probably Comic con. I can't see them announcing either the Sydney Opera house or the Winter Village set there. And with no big Super Hero set on the horizon the Ewoks will probably be Lego's big nerd bait reveal there.

Those two sets are great inexpensive sets. Of the two I think he Skiff has the better figs, all truly integral to the scene. While the A Wing is the better build and more swoosh able ship.

LOL no no, sorry I didn't mean to scold you. I meant it is an Apples and Oranges type comparison. Beyond using plastic they really are not quite the same thing with regard to the engineering and tooling. A closer example to Lego's tooling would be that used by the scale plastic model industry. Particularly vendors such as Ban Dai and Tamiya (who make use of precision ABS parts in some lines.) Action figures use plastics that are designed for much lower temperatures and injection pressure. Often they make heavy use of vinyl. And the molds they use are not designed for longevity. If you ever get an action figure that has arms etc that seem a little more bent than normal, etc, it means that the mold is starting to go. But the QC standard for such is a lot lower than for any Lego part, so they can run the tooling out pretty much to the point of destruction.. Even a simple Lego hairpiece has to attach to every Lego head ever made, every time. Lego does use some of the softer plastics and shorter term tooling for limited use head and hairpieces. But even with that they need to maintain that higher precision standard. And even with the most minimal cheapest tooling for that, it would still eat up 20% + of a CuuSoo sets budget. BTTF will probably make heavy use of fairly new existing molds and clever printing. Most likely some combination of CMF headpieces and the newer Lone Ranger western hats. As an example, should they choose to make a Clara fig from BTTF 3, they would probably use a recolor of the LR Red's hairpiece. Not perfect but close enough. Doc will probably use some clever printing on the CMF Grandpa hair or the forthcoming series 11 Scientist hair, which is suspected to be an Einstein type fig. Marty will just be the normal classic side parted male hair. And so on.

Given that Zane's story is basically already the same as Data's? Which in turn is pretty much Pinochio? But yeah, I commented before, between the last two seasons of Ninjago we can see some background hints towards this type of story. When Zane finds his fathers old workshop, and discovers he is a Nindroid, he discovers his own blueprints. But later, in the next season, when they rescue his father from the island, seen around the fathers workshop are more Nindroid blueprints. Probably not of Zane.

We've had this discussion before (I think even in this thread). It isn't the technical difficulty of making new parts. It is the costs vs the anticipated volume of product. CuuSoo is a small run line, with typical production runs being in lots of 10,000. Tooling will run anywhere from $80,000 to $350,000+. And they must have a clear and reasonable plan to amortize the costs of this new tooling over a specific or planned block of set production. In the case of CuuSoo, doing something like 1 Zelda hair piece, for a CuuSoo set would mean that that single piece would add $8 to the planned cost of each set. That blows he set design budget right there, puts the part to price ratio too low, and instantly fails the business case. There is no way around it. The problem is not new molds, it is new molds specific to the CuuSoo small production line. CMF's are the opposite end of the spectrum. They have a high production volume. And have some of the highest margins vs shelf space for any Lego product. They can easily go into the planning stages assuming that $1 per or 25% of the costs of at least some of the figs can be spent on new parts. Plus about half of those new parts can have costs shared with other ongoing themes. It's not ease of making tooling. It is cost of tooling / anticipated production run. That is where CuuSoo fails. Also do not compare other toy types or manufacturers. Things like Action figures do not use entirely the same math. Because of Lego's system, new parts must have at least 1 precision attachment point that will universally fit into their system. That increases the needed precision. Hasbro's Star Wars action figures really do not have that. They use tooling for softer lower temperature plastics, less precise tooling. Less longevity tooling, etc. and even with that they have been bleeding money in recent years.

It looks like this winters exclusives will be the SW Ewok Village, the Winter Village Market and a new huge Architectural set the Sidney Opera house. This according to Grogall over in the Lego General Discussion board. http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=53130&st=225#entry1603908 So most likely no big Superhero set this year.

Target seems to have Galaxy Squad and City sets on a BOGO 50% deal this week. The only catch is both sets have to be from the same theme. So 2 GS or 2 city.

Cheaper to buy the real one. And no delivery charges ;p

I don't think we would ever see such a project up on CuuSoo, at least not for more than a few hours. CuuSoo is specifically for new ideas. They very quickly delete any projects that center around the phrase "bring back". CuuSoo is not a forum to petition for re releases of older or retired sets or parts. Oh and a new announcement post on CuuSoo today. http://blog.lego.cuusoo.com/2013/05/28/qualify-summer-lego-review/ Nothing overly sexy. Just a 6 day warning for the end of the review period. We did get a little bit of commentary on why the fall review is taking so long (all three involve third party licenses.) and an answer to why they announce each review period at once, rather than as the sets are approved or fail. Apparently it is because they can have multiple discussions ongoing with different license holders, they do not want one announcement to have an impact on the other licensing discussions. So they will not announce the group until all such discussions and negotiations are complete.

I don't think we will be seeing much of the B Wing in Rebels. Wasn't it the brand new fighter, developed after Endor, when the Mon Cal joined up? At best we may see an earlier type ship that has a few similar design elements. I don't think they will skip the OT with the newer waves. Even with the movies coming out, hey always keep up support for the classics.

Pointing the kids to the horribly expensive stuff is truly cruel to the poor parents, with little actual emotional reward for you. What works much better is to point the kids at something affordable, fun, and that makes lots and lots of noise. Preferably something that plays cloyingly annoying repetitive tracks over and over. This way everybody has fun.

One of the weird dichotomy s of The Clone Wars series is it always showed the heroic victories of the individual Jedi or main characters, but if you actually watch the show with an eye towards the broader war, it is apparent that the Republic was having their butts handed to them throughout. Heck in the opening of Episode III Dooku's Confederacy has launched an all out assault on the Republic Capital and has captured the Chancellor. Not typically the attack plan of the losing side. I kind of hope the new show does a better job at communicating just how bad things are for the heroes.

Not exactly. The set was announced 2 months after reaching 2k. But I don't think they showed us the final set until much much closer to release. When they showed off the box art etc. the Minecraft set is kind of a hard one to gauge this with however. It's design really didn't seem to change that much, at least to the casual eye, between the proposal and release. So we probably did not notice the difference when they switched from showing us the project pictures, to showing us the actual production set pics.

And that is the source of my fears. The trailers look totally awesome. Nothing to find fault with besides the normal Zachary Snyder color washed dirty blue tone, which I hate. But Zach Snyder always gives great trailers. It's the execution of his movies that are mixed at best. I mean go back and look at how amazing the trailers for SuckerPunch were. Then try and watch the actual movie without feeling dirty or wanting to kill yourself. He is the best in the business at making teaser trailers. His movies however can go either way. Good stuff like 300 and Watchmen, and really really bad like Suckerpunch.

I'm sure there is a whole host of marketing and technical research that goes into each individual decision whether or not to do a licensed theme for a given movie. What is the movies target audience? How well does it mesh with Lego's? What is the anticipated take of a movie at release? How much budget is the studio putting behind it? How have similar properties performed? Etc. Lego seems to mostly go for the Disney Bruckheimer action adventure swashbucklers, as they are a good fit. But even then PotC and LR were perfect fits for them. PoP was so so. They skipped John Carter, either because the subject was a little to hard to approach for their target audience, or they sensed trouble brewing. They also skipped Oz. that decision seems weirder, although Oz is generally viewed as a "Girls Adventure Story" and isn't a good fit for TLG's primary system. Which is a shame. Some Oz sets would be fantastic. I assume we didn't see any Wreck it Ralph stuff because it was an animated movie from a non Pixar branch of Disney, that no one expected to hit the numbers needed. Also the sets themselves would be a strange mix for Lego. While some of the characters are very much their normal "boy toy" target. Some would by nature stray over the line into violent FPS shooters (Hero's Duty) while others would float more towards Strawberry Shortcake'ish Sugar Rush vehicles. Not a lot of target audience cohesion to be found. Plus some of the sub licensing would have become a nightmare if hey wanted to use the classic game references like Qbert.

In theory the hounds Tooth, like Slave 1, is in use from the Clone Wars up through the OT era, so it may also appear in SW Rebels. Figure Rebels will include some Bounty Hunter love. If for no other reason than to finish off Boba's arc and get him into the armor.

His book is being released next month. 6/23. Amazon is taking preorders for those interested.

In a strangely positive review of 79006 The Council of Elrond, I got it the other day and assembled it Friday Night. I hadn't worked out where to fit it in on my LotR shelf in my office yet, so it was sitting on my desk. Then the wife comes in and spots it... - "When did you get this one!?!" - "Oh it's the Fellowship" (This truly impressed me. My Wife is not a Tolkien fan and saw the movie once 10 years ago when she was sick. I never would have believed that she would remember the scene or recognize it this well. But Apparently Lego did a superb job of communicating the key elements. A non fan was immediately able to pick out the Ring on the stone table, Gimli gearing up tpo hit it etc) She looks at it a little more - "This really is a nice looking little set." (OK unusual statement from her. She tolerates my hobby more or less, and loves the Modulars, but rarely noticed the fantasy or SW stuff.) Looks at it a little more - "These colors really are gorgeous". - " You can put this one downstairs in the living room where people can see it" (Say what!?!?!?!) So my Elrond set has been confiscated for display in the living room... I'm not quite sure how I feel about this?

Don't forget the Harrower class Sith Battlecruisers. We could use one of those.