Faefrost

The Blurry catalog pics we saw seemed to imply June for the retail sets. (So figure May - July depending on where you are). Absolutely no word on the Orthanc set which is a D2C.

The Troll Warship alone normally costs much more than Joust. I would go with the Fantay sets just for that alone. But the Kingdoms Joust is probably the single best set of all of those if viewed individually. Personally I would go with the Fantasy sets, just because it is rare to get them at a good price.

You pay what they are asking, no auctions. As for pricing, the price asked is what the individual seller is willing to part with the set for. Market forces apply. One thing that may account for some price differential is geographic location. How rare is the set in the country or region it is being offered? Etc.

I think my favorite is the Sith Fury. Just a great looking Star Wars ship. Fantastic build, and some really really good figures. It only suffered from a somewhat obscene price.

looking at the figs up close, I don't hate the new heraldry. In fact the blue lion knights actually look pretty good. I don't think the dragon knights are overly fantasy ish evil or vampires. It looks like more they made an attempt to make the faces look a bit evil unkempt and mangy. Closer to what they did with Kingdoms Green Dragons. Unshaven, missing teeth, scars and scowls.

That's the weird thing with Ninjago. I can think of a ton of specific Minifigs I would like to see. But there aren't a lot of sets of vehicles or locations that they haven't covered yet. Dereth/Brown Ninja, Evil Nya, Misaki, Tea Lady, Mail Man, Ed and Edna, Good Garmadon, Pink Ninja Zane, Mother Doomsday (comic shop guy) As far as sets, only a few come to mind. And I think they are more AFOL (us) type things. Not as good for the direct conflict stuff of normal Ninjago. Ed and Edna's Jallopy - just a great Lego vehicle. But a bit problematic. As someone else pointed out it is well outside the normal Ninjago color pallets and design aesthetics. But even worse, while the Jallopy does appear to be essentially a brick designed vehicle, it pulls its aesthetic from the use of very very old parts. Things like the classic red spoked wheels and those chromed body parts. Still a cool car. A good set for it would be the Snakes chasing it and Ed and Edna with dual sided heads, one side having them turning into snakes. Dereth's Mojo Dojo - not particularly exciting, but would give a reason to add a Dereth fig. Maybe a good way to also give a Young Lloyd fig. (Although that's easy enough to do yourself. Just swap the legs from the CMF Small clown or leprechaun.) not much room for conflict with it. Maybe have the stone warriors attacking? Doomsday Comix - possibly a nice fight scene. Mother Doomsday and child versions of Kai, Zane, Jay and Cole. Brick built Grundle. (To keep the aesthetic with the dragons, mechs etc). Ninja ball run - while the USR is already a set, would be a good chance to do some other small vehicles from the show. The snake bus, the mail man, etc. the downside is it would mainly be B tier vehicles sine the main combatants would be in other sets (USR, Skull Truck, Destinys Bounty, Ultra Dragon) The Museum - a 4 armed Stone warrior vs Wu, Misaki, etc. Darklings School for Bad Boys - evil red eyed ninjas, Darkling students, creepy goth type Arkham Assylum like set. What more could you want?

Hey, we got TMNT and almost got Thundercats. So you never know. The biggest issue with He Man and some similar IP's is doesn't a competing toy company outright own part of the IP?

I think that it is more that they did not plan on going back to the Ninjago well, so they do not have anything ready yet. We won't hear anything on more Ninjago until much later in the year. I don't think we will see a 10xxx Ninjago exclusive. Those are normally sets more targeted at the AFOL crowd or parents (and more often than not $100+ price tags). Ninjago lives and thrives on retail merchant shelves and lower cost sets. It's not like Castle or Pirates that can leverage the nostalgia market a bit for big showpiece sets like Imperial Flagship or Joust. At least not yet.

The one good sign for TCW is supposedly Production has not stopped and the staff are working away on Season 6. So I think the betting currently is on it moving to Disney XD.

Crazy question, based on this picture from the show Is it just a trick of the lighting? It almost looks like the base color fo these is light tan? Which if so looks really good with the browns and blues, and almost harkens back to the old classic yellow castle. Now after looking at this I will be disappointed if it does turn out to be bley.

I love the Coast Guard sets, especially the ship. It's one of the best they have done. It looks a lot like the classic US Coast Guard markings and colors from the 70's and 80's.

The Princess is a prisoner to be rescued in Dragon Mountain. They seem to be sticking pretty close to classics. And yes the old horse headgear will not fit on the new horses. The ears are wider. And keep in mind with these new Castle sets. We're GETTING NEW CASTLE SETS!! And ok maybe not as detailed as Kingdoms, they still look really good comparred to just about everything else. They have a very classic Castle look and feel. Yes they are kid friendly, but that doesn't mean they are bad sets. Look at our poor friends over on the Pirate forum. They are sitting there beating their heads against the wall. LotR's gets a nice boat. Chima gets a boat. Friends gets a gorgeous boat. And for them. Nada!

The problem wasn't't that Bionacle was unsuccessful. The problem was that Lego failed to recognize when it was on a down slope and at the end it started costing more Than it was bringing in. The extended story was a barrier to entry, but it was the rapid evolution of parts molds and elements that the theme required that was a huge part of the drain.

OK those pics look much netter to my eye than the preliminaries. The blue actually pops nicely on the Castle. Not crazy about the heraldry, but still better than some of the old stuff (KKII). And honestly if you want to swing it over to a Kingdoms style, by a Chess set to populate it and replace the blue wedges with red ones.

So better than PoP and PotC but probably not quite as well as HP and nowhere near as well as SW (not that anyone realistically expected it to hit SW levels. Be honest.) and to be frank I think the fact that we are even having this conversation backs up that thought. We all know what a run away success looks like. Note how quickly new Ninjago sets clear the store shelves. We all know what a complete failure of a line looks like. (Super Heroes Constraction figures? Possibly Cars?) LotR And Hobbit are clearly somewhere in the middle at best.

I think it's a "no photos allowed" type show. They don't let the public take photos until New York.

Think of it this way. At 5000, its about double the number out there of each of the ComicCon figs. Just distributed in a way that members of the general public have some chance at seeing one. Besides finding one lets you take the super magical tour of the Lego factory... Where you will be eaten by Oompa Loompas

I wish I could find a picture of it, but in Lego Club magazine a few months back there was an ad for DC Superheroes that was centered around a 3 story corner modular version of the Bank from the 6864 Batmobile Two Face Chase set. It looked gorgeous, and would be a good inspirational starting point for doing the same with the Daily Bugle. PS a word of warning. Remember to always search for "Lego Club Magazine" attempting the search without the "Lego" yields some surprisingly inappropriate results.

Superb MOC. I love everything about it. Great details, a clear and humorous little story. Perfect. I'm just curious about the name? I'm not sure what Dorp means?

Personally I much prefer the Republic Trooper pack, just because it is 4 really good figures instead of two figures and two brick built droid thingies. I can never bring myself to count them as figs. But I played SWTOR and loved the designs from it.

I think rights now Disney wants and needs TCW to keep generating interest in the property, at least until noise about the new movies hits. With the cancelation of the 3d remakes, TCW is the centerpiece for going forward in he near term. The fact that it is going to be used as a centerpiece on Disney XD is also of interest. That channel is mainly targeted at the upper range Of Disney's age spread. Junior and high school kids, and college kids creeping on Selena Gomez, etc. so they're not trying to lump it in with the more kiddy oriented shows. It remains to be seen how well some of TCWs darker content will mesh with Disneys sensibilities.

"The General Secretary of the Turkish Cultural Community" oh my doesn't that sound official and important? You assume that this person is in some way a representative of said community. We're they in some way elected? Is this some official government posting? I rather strongly suspect that you will find a very small fringe group of under 20 people seeking to make some sort of political name for themselves. They mean nothing, they represent nothing, they are as always self appointed leaders of the community in order to further their own agendas. I bet if you were to poll actual Austrian Turks they would admit that this sort of community leadership is sort of what they left Turkey to get away from.

I don't think we will see anything too specific regarding Dul Guldur. Simply because of the production lead time. For Dul Guldur Lego can't cheat a little bit and use the book as a starting point. Everything is exclusive to the movie. And depending on when designs were finalized and edits occur they may or may not have had good access to information on the setting. It's bad enough they got burned with the barrels, the spiders and Azog/Yazneg. I'm thinking they will play it a little more cautiously with the next batch.

It's not outside the realm of possibilities, given how much the show jumps around in time, that TCW could leapfrog over or around RotS and do a story arc or two from right the Emperors rise.

Thoses pics look still very preliminary. note Gandalf and Sarumans with blatantly wrong hair, etc. I think the crystal balls are just a standard trans clear with a yellow 1x1 round, like they do most lights. The staff looks like a 3bar with a Lightsaber hilt with one of those clear bulb pieces on the end.(no idea what they are called). The Palantir in that pic is a clear crystal ball with red 1x1 round. But those who saw it at they toy fairs describe it as a Printed minifig head.