Faefrost

The only thing kind of weird with that set, we get the landing pad, we get Dooku's pilot droid... But we don't get a ship? I mean I guess the pad can kind of be paired with the Gunship (in a horrific, everybody but our heroes dies like a pack of red shirts kind of way), but the pilot just makes no sense without Dooku's little ship? I mean he doesn't even have legs? I'm the same way. I know in theory the angles are more accurate on this one, but it just doesn't look quite right. The old one with the smoother bow and fatter profile just captured the feel of the hulking sail barge so much better... But those figs... Sadly I am betting that none of these will be out on May 4, to spend my $75 Hoth Han limit on.

Great review, thanks! I'm looking forward to this fig. And the more I think on it, the more I think it is actually not bad as a May 4th poly. The May 4th and similar bonus figs after seem to be unusual variants. Stuff like a chrome trooper, or TC14. Given the debate over the color of Hans Hoth costume over the years, this seems like a reasonable variant. Maybe not as sexy as a whole new rare character, but still within the boundaries. I love the printing in the fig. The goggles face reminds me of the Anakin Skywalker cold weather fig from the 8085 Freeco Speeder. I really like it. More so than the standard slightly dull Han smirk.

Wow! Those are jut incredible. I never would have imagined having any interest in or even looking at anything Duplo related... But those are just irresistible. Drop that set on CuuSoo. It would be a crime if it never gets made.

Heck forget the movies...Disney has an example of "Red's Business" in their classic Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Including a bit where the Pirates are auctioning off women. They will handle it the way Westerns have been doing for 80 years. Putting it out in the open and otherwise ignoring it and calling no attention to it.

I thought that Disney simply said that anything not in the movies might or would not be viewed as cannon? The Lucasfilms archives on Star Wars cannon were an integral element that sold the deal to Disney. The main thing that will probably not survive the new movies is the post RotJ EU novels and comics. Anything we will have some different aesthetics, which is normal (The PT clashes horribly aesthetically with the OT in many places. Especially anything having to do with Naboo.) I confess that Aesthetics of the new movies are what worry me the most. J J Abrams has not earned the respect of many SciFi and Starship fans in this regard. What he did to Star Trek remains unpopular. Here's hoping that he learned that lesson, or lets the Lucas ILM folks do their jobs. I don't know hat Disney can simply kill SWTOR at this point. All they can do is not renew the license when it comes up for renewal. (Probably at the 5 year mark) Killing off SWTOR will be almost purely an EA action otherwise. My gut suspicion is that Disney does not have a lot of feeling regarding the TOR era stuff one way or another. They are just a line of video games. Not part of the A list primary product. If anything they will keep SWTOR around as a model of how they want to do SW games now. Licensed out to a third party and not in house like they did with Lucasarts. The OT is not going anywhere. This is Disney. They never throw anything away. The OT may be de emphasized in media and marketing as they run up to the next trilogy. But that will not effect stuff like Lego sets. We will see fewer OT sets as the marketing push shifts, but hey probably will not vanish. Now TCW based sets may disappear. Cartoon based toys don't sell as well if the show is not airing.

Sigh! And still no look at the Jedi Defender? I hope that set wasn't scrubbed somewhere in the production phase. Overall I am loving most of these sets. (Ok maybe not the Spider Droids.) Is it just me, or does it seem like it has been some time since the actual Empire has put in an appearance? (Well ok we got 2 snow troopers last time).

I can't imagine that CuuSoo would have pulled the project for any reason so either the creator locked it, or they may have blocked comments etc while they move it from the voting pool to an under review project.

You're not alone. There were a few more stories I would have liked to see. A few more questions answered. But as someone said, the last episode of season 5 was a good ending. This shows story and character arc has centered more on Asoka than on anyone else. She was the character with the growth throughout, and through her we watched Anakin and his arc, and the overall arc of the Jedi themselves. When Asoka walked away, you just felt that the Jedi had failed their last test, and had just cast out their last chance at redemption. You know what is coming next. And that was the one problem with the show, that we knew going in. It had to be finite. We knew the start and the end. We watched Asoka mature from an 11 or 12 year old headstrong girl to a 14 year old. We knew the end, just because of the narrative constraints had to be fast approaching. And in some ways it was starting to get a little discomforting. Look at the somewhat maligned Young Jedi story arc. Yeah annoying. Cutesy kids with light sabers... Until you realize that these kids probably had a bare handful of weeks left to live. The clock was ticking. And the Birth of Darth Vader was fast approaching. I am eager to see what Disney will be bringing to SW next. Both for do VII and for the rumored animated show. I hope that they do keep and use much of the good stuff from TCW. It would be nice to see Asoka, or Cad Bane, or Ventriss show up again down the road in some unexpected way. Rumor has it Dave Piloni may be working on a new project, so there is hope.

They are real Lego pieces that have been chromed by a third party service.

They also sometimes do large events and displays in the malls when they open a new store. When they opened the Alpharetta Georgia one last year that had a huge R2D2 that they built on site and displayed for a few days. The ISD may not be taking up retail real estate in the store itself. It may be a more short term mall display.

Sketching it out in a program like LDD first will also let you get a parts list, and experiment a bit before dumping money into parts.

With projects like this, or the Sandcrawler I often wonder how closely TLG's design and marketing teams are watching to gauge not just specific ideas, but rather more general feel for some types of sets being sought? Like this project as proposed may not be practical because of all the licenses involved, but a secondary takeaway in its 10k support might be seen to be that there is a strong interest in not just cars and trucks, but new City buildings and businesses.

I think we are due for a new Tie Interceptor or a Darth Vader Tie advanced. if we do get the Ewok set than we may see one or two smaller 2014 sets to compliment it. Maybe a nice ATST? Or an Imperial Shuttle with Han, Luke Leia etc in Endor gear? And of course a set with yet more Imperial Speeder bikes, cause we just never get enough of those. I think TLG runs a little bit into a wall when dealing with the Imperial centric sets. The vehicles and characters are a slightly limiting factor. Imperial vehicles and troops are seen in vast uniform quantity. So you don't see different configurations or paint schemes on a Tie Fighter. You don't get the colorful trims and personalizations you see with the Clones. And in the entire OT I think there are only 6 or so named Imperial characters. And aside from Vader and the emperor most of them are kinda look alike dull. And yes I know all of this is what makes the Empire fantastic for an Army builder. But it does cut into some of the set variety and inventiveness sometimes.

I don't know that it is so much a decrease in SW MOC'ers so much it is as an evolution. While I can't speak for everyone, I know part of the joy of designing a MOC for me is to create something that matches with my existing fleet, but that no one else has really. I like adding unique pieces to my collections. (I'm weirdly that way with Plastic modeling and model railroading as well). And part of the problem is I am having to go further afield to find good subjects that have not already been offered in modern, wonderful, well designed official Lego sets. So my tendancies are getting split. On one hand I am getting great new ships from Lego that are just what I wanted, and better than I would have done, such as the Sith Fury and the Z29, On the other its getting harder to pick a subject to go with them. (Currently working on an Imperial Sith Fighter to go with the Fury) But to find good inspiration I am having to dig out books and look through games. I think the best spot to look now is the SWTOR Video game.

Ok that is just adorable. You never know. But hey at least the nature of the licensed projects seems to be diversifying it a bit. Still a little Video game heavy, but starting to break up a bit.

Agreed. I don't quite grasp some of the hate on some of the YouTube review shows? Yeah Brickshow can be cheesy stupid and annoying at times. But they do do a fairly good job of giving a good look at the sets before purchase. As do many of the others video reviewers. And really that's all I ask. It's not like anyone is in any way obligated to click the link to watch anything. They are all simply hobbyists like the rest of us. People have fun in different ways. I am really glad that fig is fakes. That weird spiky look is just awful. I'm hoping the new stuff has a nice clean Asian themed look to the figs. Not some weird anime abomination.

The same could be said of the Hobbit movies.

It looks fantastic. The yellow plates seem to be a reasonable compromise for the vast windows of the ship. I suspect that you are going to encounter the one huge lesson that everyone learns when they go to build an LDD design in the brick. The law of Gravity. (Which thinking on it, seems strangely ironic given the subject). LDD is a great design tool. But it does not simulate real world stresses, such as weight or gravity, on the model. And this lack tends to pop up while building in un expected ways.

It pretty closely matches Falcon's look in the Marvel Ultimate books. I am taking a wait and see view on it. Much like Iron Man the design may start out drab and militaristic but evolve to a brighter look as the characters become more public super heroes.

I'm sure that it is "the set number". It's just not a retail set. We as consumers fail to appreciate exactly what the set numbers are. They don't correspond to a box product so much as they refer to a final deliverable production design. Delivery does not necessarily mean retail box set. There are also internal products and product designs. As we speculate, things like display pieces, theme park statues etc. anything that they design, validate, and keep a formal record on so they can build again will get a number. That is most likely what that set number is. That life size Bag End that they made a video about not to long ago probably has its own set number as well. And it is highly unlikely that it is a big box full of ISD sets. That type of crate is what you use to ship museum pieces, displays, statues, etc. not retail product.

That looks like a box used to ship display pieces, such as those used at the parks, stores or Lego Discovery centers. The box markings make me think it may be an element for some sort of traveling display. That's normally the only time that a company will so clearly mark crates in such a plain language way. The marketing people have to assemble crates in the booth in a specific way, and its best not to confuse them with exotic markings. I would speculate that what it contains is all or part of a very large scale Star Destroyer model, glued and probably reinforced with a steel frame so it can survive traveling. The "set" number is just that. It's an internal model which the model department has record of and plans for so they can make as many of them as are required for displays, trade shows etc. Sadly this does not mean we will be seeing such a set on retail store shelves.

He's had somewhere around 7 movies 4 live action TV shows, 7 or 8 animated shows? It's not like he's been ignored. I think a lot of the fears stem from the combination of WB not being able to get a firm grasp on or produce a decent movie around their properties ( the last Superman movie, Green Lantern, etc) mixed with concerns surrounding some of Zachary Snyder. He's done some good stuff. He's also done some really bad. And his one trick of dark overly color corrected movies with slo mo action sequences is quite frankly starting to wear thin. People are kinda sick of seeing washed out blue movies. And if you look at Snyders body of work, it honestly starts to make us yearn for Shumachers Bat Nipples. I don't know that he consciously does it but all of it is either bordering on gay porn (300, Watchmen (note the big blue bobbing thingy), and Superduperman (really have you seen the costume? What's the first thing you notice? The second? Note how hard it is to look anywhere else.) Those movies that don't seem quite so Shumacheresque tend to lean more into extreme fetish tastes. (SinCity and (Ugh!) Suckerpunch). The story might be interesting (granted I really wish Hollywood would discover a real Superman villain like Braniac or Richard Pryor) but I am kinda worried.

I think the 3d releases would have ended up stopping at RotS. The prequels were shot digitally and can be fairly easily manipulated. The OT was shot on film, the masters of which have not weathered the years well. Doing a 3d conversion of them would be a much more massive undertaking. Granted some of the work was done when they did the Special Editions, but those are still early 90's film conversion for the most part. I think it is also mostly a resource and focus thing. Converting for a 3d re release was all well and good when that was a principle mechanism for keeping the merchandising juggernaut going. But once someone made the decision for a new movie trilogy the 3d stuff became pointless and needlessly expensive for a far lesser return.

Since I suspect more and more that 2014 will bring a swing towards OT Lego sets, here is my speculation in the betting pool. New Darth Vader Tie - Something in the same style design and solid construction as 9492. He alternate to this would be a new Tie Interceptor. But I bet we will see one of them. Mos Eisley Cantina - Lego seems to be moving away from their ban on fantasy taverns. We have seen a few in Castle and Pirates now, so we may finally see this iconic scene. Minifig Scale B Wing - once again its been awhile since we have seen a full minifig equipped B Wing. Sandcrawler - figure we are do for another massive set. Cloud City - Sadly I don't think we will get a huge Death Star scale set. But a nice mid range CC play set. RotJ Millennium Falcon - How to get away with re releasing a new MF? Do a RotJ one with Lando and Nien Numb etc. Imperial Throne Room - Have we ever actually had a play set of the RotJ finale? Palpatine in his chair, Vader and Luke dueling, Red Imp guards? That big window behind them? Twin Pod Cloud Car - another subject we have not seen since the days of the yellow heads. Dagobah - we know there is a nice shiny new movie style Yoda head. They're not gonna waste that. And there is only one place he shows up in the OT. Figure Yoda, R2, Hot n Sweaty Swamp Luke, and Vader with Luke's head. Yoda's hut, Luke's Camp and the dark cave. Another Snowspeeder, same design - just because it seems to be an annual requirement. This one will come packed with 2 speederbike s.

The licensor always ok's ALL released sets. So nothing new there. TLG has said that set choice is a mixed bag. Normally Lego and the designers do most of the set selection, but Lucasfilms always have a few requests or requirements that they desire to coincide with current projects. Figure it's an 80/20 or 70/30 split. I don't think that this will particularly change. If anything Disney/Lucas may give Lego carte Blanche for the 2014 releases and then shift the required subjects more to 2015 movie tie ins. What will kill off TCW sets is not so much the lack of new episodes, as the lack of a network airing any of the episodes. I don't think Disney particularly cares if Lego makes more TCW sets, or Ep II sets. They trust Lego to know and make what will sell. I do think by the back half of 2014 we will see Lego shift to more OT sets to get ready for the new movies.