Faefrost

There is a new Jango in the next release wave. Set 75015 the Corporate Alliance Tank Droid. Probably due out in May/June. And he looks great. Same level of detail as the current Boba. I'd love to see a Nien Nunb to go with the General Calrissian fig from the Home 1 set.

I'm leaning towards fake. The white outline screams photoshop trick. The face looks familiar (PotC coachman maybe?) the bag seems to be missing a ton of usual identifiers, and I think an actual Jor El fig would show a few more differences in its printing. As someone said, in the movie Jor El is seen wearing the blue suit under his outer clothes and robes. Lego would in fact make that as a fig. With some sort of outer garment at least printed in part to clearly differentiate the fig. It looks to be a promotional giveaway minifig polybag, not a retail polybag set. They are normally pretty generous with the printing on those. We would see something more distinctive the a maybe slight color change at the shoulders. If it is real than it is an in store giveaway of some sort. The lack of any product number on the front screams that. Preorder bonuses have set numbers. It still seems like a strange character choice and look?

The color effect is awesome. I love the very dynamic feeling of action and movement conveyed. I'm not quite sure what the gear thing is, but it does a good job of conveying menace. Very well done.

The main reason someone asks that sort of question is because they are still looking at Lego through the filter of "it's a toy". If you had begun painting as a child and still liked to paint would you question that? How about sculpting in clay? Building accurate models or miniatures? Lego is simply a hobby that functions as a creative outlet. It is the medium through which you express your desire to doodle and create as a hobby. It is further buffered by a slight collector hobby that can come with the retail products.

This is the only story where I can see the inclusion of Bishop as almost being good. If they do it right Bishop should be a teenager branded and trapped in the mutant internment camps of the future. Not the mullet wearing steroid fueled absurdity that most defines the character since he was created. Hopefully they show teenage Bishop in the future, and then leave him there. Besides, it could be worse... They could be trying to shoehorn Cable in /shudder and gag!

That is a great MOC. Do you have any more detailed pics of it up on Flickr or similar? Is it just me, or does the recent movie seem to get much better if you start picturing it as a Wolverine origin story? I mean just look at it, Jean Valjean is super strong, amazing endurance, seemingly can't be killed, and appears to get progressively younger and stronger and more buff as the film goes on? I'd swear I heard a SNIKT in there somewhere?

Sadly no. I think they are backed up 3 review periods at the moment.

There are a lot of really cool, strange, useful or hard to find parts in that thing for such a small set! Very nice review. Thank you.

Chima and Ninjago board games never seemed like a strong design choice to me? The problem was the themes have a built in "tabletop game" element, that made a self contained boxed board game kind of a red headed step child. The board games end up competing just as much with the regular themes sets as they do other games in the game aisle.

The costs will depend on exactly what they are trying to do. Just as some examples; Printing; - The costs for new prints on minifigures will be fairly negligable. Just part of the normal set design process. The minifigs are a uniform design and they have machines designed that print directly on the torso's and heads. At this point they probably do not need any special setup or printing masks. The machinery will print right on the figs much like an inkjet printer. The only complexities will be things like metalics or non torso/head fig parts such as legs arms or special head accesories and hair. Other than that the only real costs are the art and design time and validation tests. (keep in mind I am sure each set has a given budget of "artist time". Reusing figs allows them to make better use of that time budget in other ways for a set. ie using the same orc gives us a better and nicer new Saruman, who is more the focus of the set.) - Printing on other parts will often involve creating printing masks or a specialy printing pad. Which probably cost several grand per print design, but will vary based on the shape needed. (Straight flat masks aren't bad, complex curves such as horse or cow body prints need more design work. This is much cheaper than a new part, but does have some costs associated with it. Parts; - New mold tooling costs between $80,000 and $300,000 USD. The low end will be shorter life span molds designed for the softer rubbery plastic, and for parts with a lot less required precision, such as minifig hair or tools. (Things that do not have multiple connection points) The higher end costs are for the true precision molds that make up the bricks and building elements. These molds tend to have a much longer lifespan and are designed for hotter plastic that is under higher pressure. Wherever possible they will seek to amortize the high costs of new tooling across multiple sets or product lines. The more they can spread the use of the part around, the less it costs per set.

Is it just me, or does the legged version make him look like he is a Wedding DJ from New Jersey to anybody else? Or the base player for the Holiday Inn's house band?

I'll concede that the ship was probably an incredible plaything in its time. But it's not something that I would keep out on the display shelves these days. A little too crude and blocky. But yes a classic in its own way, kinda like an 8 bit game sprite. The Boba Fett minifig and the frozen Han Solo brick however stand the test of time much better. While not as detailed as the new versions the Fett fig is very sharp, clean and distinctive. And avoids the whole lemonheads vs pinky debate. Don't forget 1999's 7130 Snowspeeder, which is very close in design to the last three snow speeders released, including the one from this year. The original basic design was nicely accurate, well shaped, and has held the test of time with very minor improvements.

It's just a cute play on one of the throwaway lines from the movie. Nowhere in lore is it implied that Saruman has the staves or keys.

I don't think they normally do sales or discounts for the May 4 promotion. It's normally the promotional minifig, plus a new SW set release. I can't remember if they even do double or bonus VIP points?

I'm thinking of delving into my first "UCS" type Star Wars set for my May 4 spending binge. I normally don't go for sets that expensive, but I have enough VIP points banked to make it reasonable. So my big question is which of the three sets looks to be the best starter UCS set for a newcomer. If you were just to get one for displaying which is preferred? R2D2, The B Wing or the new Red 5 X Wing?

Lots and lots and lots of black slopes? I kid. It's a neat looking set. Although I suspect that the instructions will be a major source of eye strain.

I think the comparison was more to the SW UCS sets like the SSD and the Imperial Shuttle, both of which were also mixed display/play sets and only had around a half dozen figs. Arkham Asylum would be another good example at around that price point.

I've messed with MOCPages. The main problem for me isn't an issue of Comunity. It's one of site performance. It always just seems slow and very cumbersome to navigate.

Interesting! That's one of the mystery figs from the Jekk Stealth Fighter set? It's a nice looking figure. Plus it gives us a clue on how Lego may opt to do Some non standard roguish helmets to good effect. Things like that Helmet that the teenaged Boba Fett wore in the TCW episode "Bounty" or the Obi Wan wore when impersonating Rako Hardeen. Not to mention any number of Bounty Hunter like variants. I hadn't realized how adaptable the fairly flat and blank front of the new Mandalorian helmet really is. You can do a lot with it just by changing printing. That helmet with different printing would also work well in a few other themes. Such as a fairly decent Iron Man Mk1, or any number of Marvel or DC characters.

I thought Loki was imprisoned in Asgard. So that was probably just some dude in Asgardian Armor. We have seen pics of the movie Ant Man suit, and it would stand out. It looks a bit like a snug fitting flight suit in black and red. The markings are almost dead on for the Scott Lang costume during the Avengers period. The Helmet is a greeblied up version of the classic Hank Pym one, but in a dark gunmetal color. Guardians of the Galaxy is pretty much old school space opera. If they follow the initial modern books, it will probably be a sort of "Dirty Dozen in Space" thing. In the books there was only a very brief earth related scene of 3 or 4 panels. Otherwise they were well away from the normal earth super heroics. Mainly fighting space wars against Borg like cyborgs, swarms of Zerg like insects, the Xmens old foes the Shi'ar, etc. if done right in tone it should come off as somewhere between the aforementioned Dirty Dozen with a healthy dose of the Star Wars Cantina and Firefly type feel. The only thing that worries me about it is the announcement that someone has been cast to play Yando (sp?), who s one of the old 70's-80's era Guardians, and not from the modern incarnation. That's troubling because it implies a time travel story, and those rarely if ever turn out good.

I've see the Black Zero Escape set on the shelves at Walmart as of last night. No sign of the other two yet.

Not wanting to get too far off target, but I believe in the US boats covered by the Coast Guard (open water) allow for solo operation of boats under 20' or so by a 14 year old with a safety certificate and class, or under the supervision of an adult (who apparently needs no safety class or certificate and is allowed to be a complete clod.) protected waterways such as lakes and rivers are covered by the states and will vary wildly.

We're talking comic book movies here. Forget the Gods and Aliens, they routinely miss the little things that would drastically change the world. - Tony Stark invented a palm sized fusion reactor. He built it from second hand missiles. It generates enough power to run at a minimum a city block. It is capable of supporting easily controlled tight maneuvering man portable flight. Just think about it. - Tony Stark also invented perfect prosthetics. Neuro responsive exo suits and hardware. Just think of the things possible with that? - Peter Parker while a teenager invented an aerosolized super elastic fabric. The industrialized uses for which area staggering. (And honestly this has always been the point where the whole poor starving Peter Parker from the movies and comics fals apart completely. The Amazing thing about Spider-Man wasn't Spider-Man, it was the web fluid. The patent of which would have made ol' Peter a billionaire on par with Bruce Wayne.) - Reed Richards, the worlds most brilliant man, who generates technologies daily that could feed and cloth the world. One of his earliest inventions of "unstable molecule fabric" if publicly marketed would have endless possibilities. Fireproof fire fighters. Bullet proof police and soldiers. Clothes that never wear out. Perfect shoes. This is before we get into the anti gravity cars, rooftop launched BALISTIC planes, and super medical imaging devices. - Captain America is walking around with a cast off slug of metal that can absorb or deflect kinetic energy and not pass it through to the other side. Forget the obvious military uses for this, just think on it from a small scale engineering point of view. What would such a material do if used in things like engines or generators? How about buildings? Medical uses? And this is just the small minor stuff. Forget the Gods Aliens and Mutants. The real absurdity here comes in in the tech and super science, and it always has.

Before you get to worked up, don't forget that there is a strong chance that the next such set reveal might not be a Star Wars set. There is a long reported yet sofar unannounced Lord of the Rings Orthanc set in the pipeline that may be sitting in that release window. The alternative is it might be the Endor set as a replacement to the Death Star.

Using Timbuktu in a set these days becomes problematic. Aside from the modern religious overtones, it's currently a war zone, with one side seeking to specifically destroy those cultural wonders that you mention. Overall it's kind of messy to put in a children's toy set meant to be distributed internationally and cross culturally. And that kind of sums up much of the problems in seeking to do sets based on sub Saharan Africa. Too conflicted.