Faefrost

Things are not looking all that great for Funcom right now. They just announced that they are going ahead with a major restructuring and reorganization. No word on details, but rumor is a hefty round of layoffs and studio closing s is imminent. While going FTP has boosted The Secret World some, chances are its nowhere near enough. Right now the Lego MMO might be the best thing they have in the pipeline. But not if they end up stripping resources from it through budget cuts.

Power Ranger is pretty close to what you are supposed to think. It's supposed to sort of be a generic anime or Kaiju style "mecha". Something along the lines of a Gundam or a robot Superhero. As far as Power Rangers being rubbish. Well yeah! But once you realize what it actually is, it becomes a sort of fascinating cheese. (Just so long as you turn the sound off to skip the dialogue.) what many don't realize is Power Rangers was not one show. They took a bunch of different Japanese live action Kaiju and Superhero shows, chopped them up and spliced them into scenes with American actors. It's like intermixing a Godzilla movie with Saved by the Bell. It's truly awful and yet strangely hilarious.

Did anyone catch that PeterReid's Exosuit hit 10k yesterday? Congrats to him. My early guess on this one? It will be hotly debated in TLG but will fail on the actual design review. It is such a wonderful looking MOC, with so much detailed greenling, but there seem to be an awful lot of major structural points that are working off a single tiny pin connection. Pneumatic T connectors are well and good, and I confess that I don't have a lot of experience with Lego mech building. But those T connectors through the legs just seem shaky. Yet I am worried that they would be hesitant to grossly re-engineer those sections using Bionacle/HF type parts as that would greatly change the character of the model. The other albeit lesser issue I foresee it bumping into is the age factor. His looks like a delightfully complex build. Very very advanced. Which is what the folks around here want, but imagine someone picking this up cold? Add to that that it might not be that stable for even mildly robust child play and the review could go either way. I'm just saying, and I really hope I am wrong. I would love to have one of these on my shelf.

I'm sure the car itself is being pretty much completely rebuilt by Legos designers.

Apparently PotC 5 is looking to be a go, and today's Variety just announced a new scriptwriter for it. No word on release date yet.

I think Lego indicated that they would be offering this series in half size boxes of 30. And I think a 30 pack will only have 1 complete set plus some doubles of others. They seem to have increased the distribution on what are perceived to be common army builders (knight, space Orc, battle mech) and there will typically be multiple singles.

Watching how they built it, it's obvious that it is intended as some sort of traveling display. Have we heard any reports of where it may actually be putting in an appearance? One of the cons? Or maybe a traveling mall show? I would love to see the thing.

It looks great. The only suggestion I would offer is to try and find a way to do some representation of that push bar assembly on the front of the truck. It's really the thing that differentiates a nice clean city streets type fire truck from one designed to go fight the types of brush fires you are experiencing. It's a simple little detail that changes the nature of the truck.

/sigh! Don't you hate when you get rolling good, only to discover that one critical envelope of parts hasn't arrived yet?

<--- Proper modding of any Unimog must include a "to scale" Thor plastered to the front grill.

Ok that is just fantastic! I am in love. It gets everything just right. You've managed to combine Star Wars and giant Japanese Gundam robots. The Otaku will be lining up outside your door just for a glimpse of it.

Lets talk about the elephant in the room. If we are talking about a push into Asia ultimately for a company Legos size that means one thing. China. Japan Korea and Taiwan are easily penetrated as a specialty import market. As you point out Lego has local licensees fulfills the role of the Lego branded store fronts in at least Japan. While they could bring those in house, there probably is not a huge driving reason to mess with something that is working. Other Asian areas such as Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia as business ventures would typically spawn from penetration into China. Their markets are good enough alone for sales, but for any push to be worth it probably need to be tied to a push into China. And China is the problem. In order to make such a big push into China, it is a given that one of the requirements will be that everything gets manufactured via a split Chinese owned partner company or subsidiary. As many companies have discovered, 5 years later this Chinese company is suddenly heir biggest competitor, and is using their own tooling against them. It's one thing to be fighting IP theft and copycat clone brands. It's quite another when the price of doing business is you hand them the molds that form the core of that business.

That seems to be the big issue with them. The first series had some for the time slightly unusual Minifigs. Ones that were not unique, but it was an affordable way to get them. But some of the later series seem to be some very plain, very common figs. Things that were available last year in battle packs and such. If these had some harder to find figs they would sell better. How about a Jawa in one? Things like that? Not "oh joy another tie pilot or imperial guy with hat".

Another set I am very mixed on. I have it. I like it. But as the big showpiece set of the release it lacks something. The central Goblin King throne is fantastic, and by itself it is a marvelous display piece. (Bags 2 and 3). The left hand section of the build with the bridge is somewhat interesting and has some decent play features. The Right hand armo of the set is completely and utterly pointless and worthless (all of bag one). It could have been left out and no one would bemoan its absence at almost a $20 cost reduction. The set suffers horribly from the feeling that nothing actually connects. The Minifigs are still great as is the Goiter King, err Goblin King.

Thanks all. Sadly the comic shop entrance is one of the areas that I am still tinkering with. That and the third floor corner windows. I'm not happy with the gaps and the offset connections still feel a little fragile.

Ummm? Release date? No no this is a purely teach myself to do this and sit in the shelf kind of MOC. If anyone wishes the LDD files to try and make or adapt it just ask. All I request is that they are personal use only.

Warwick Davis has a few characters turned into minifigs doesn't he? Professor Flit (any number of HP sets) The Goblin Griphook (newer 10217 Diagon Alley set) Generic Gobln from Sorcerors Stone (may or may not be the later named Griphook) 4717 Gringotts Bank Wicket the Ewok (Battle of Endor) Waid (Anakins Rhodian friend on Tatooine) (7862 Anakin and Sebulba's Podracers) I think at 5 known figs (with some actual variants) Mr. Davis is the man to beat.

The problem wasn't whether the ideas were good or bad. Nor was it whether technological advancement had made them viable. The problem was that they expanded in so many directions at once, and tried to go so many places, that they lost control. Luckily they just barely managed to regain it. But since then they have followed a much more conservative approach to expanding into new areas. Smaller steps, with much better feedback and evaluation at each stage. Asian expansion is a great example. They dove into a ton of projects in the 90's and got badly burned almost without realizing it. So now they are going slower. Opening up direct marketing channels and stores more cautiously.

One other concern to keep in mind in wishing for a new unlicensed Pirates theme. Look over at the new Castle sets. The rumored target for them is younger than expected. Reports are that Lego is looking to use them as more of a bridge up into the full scale Lego from he Duplo crowd. They assume the Hobbit and LotR stuff is feeding the AFOLs. The new Castle sets skew younger. Now apply this thought to Pirates. Where is most of the non PotC toy related pirate activity going on right now? It's going young. Things like Disney properties such as Jake and the Pirates, or Fisher Prices Pirate lines. So if TLG were to release a in house Pirate line right now, what would it look like? Who would it be targeted at? What sort of price points would we be looking at for this group, and as a result what sort of set sizes? I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that a new variant of 10210 is not what we would expect?

Hey, ya never know? At this time last year who would have predicted that we would have an Iron Fist or Nova minifig? I don't think either would e in any bodies to 100 guesses. Heck last year also saw the release of a Rocket Racoon (and Groot!) action figure from one of the figure companies.

The problem is they did all of this. Every single one of them. Individually they were great ideas. Collectively, they lost control of them all and nearly bankrupted the company in 2003. If you have never seen this lecture, it is an utterly fascinating look at Lego As a business, and how they nearly went bankrupt, and managed to avoid it back in 2003. http://vimeo.com/34924096

Lego plans and schedules themes 3+ years out. Even if the lockout is 18 to 24 months past the movies release. They would still probably hold the theme an extra year. If they know a new movie is coming out in 2015, but the lock releases in mid 2013 or 2014, chances are they will still wait for the movie for any new sets. It's just way to strong of a free marketing push. We have seen a very blurry pic of the Corsairs Ship's box front. It's the big set of the next LotR wave. From what we see of the blurry pics it looks decent. Much like the movie it is a black narrow profile ship with triangular scalloped sails. My first thought was kind of halfway between the Black Pearl and the Ninjago Destiny's Bounty. (But without the Bounties horrid technic rear end).

The color choices and blending and details on that second building are just jaw dropping. Well done.

/Sigh Construction is going slower than expected. The LDD to Bricklink parts list seems to have missed quite a few core elements, so the convoy of small padded envelopes has continued nonstop for the past week or more. The good news is I think I finally have all of the correct and the corrected parts, so building should occur next week. In the meantime here are the LDD reworks and renders on the improvements to the ground floor comic shop. The full LDD impression And a quick render to get a feel for how it will look in the brick If I can figure out how to upload an LDD file to the forums I will put it up fpr anyone who wishes to mess with it. The final stages will be to add in appropriate signage and product in the stores. I was worried about how I was going to create some nice Lego type comic book covers for display in this thing, when a miracle happened. You all, our friends at EB have answered my prayers with that nice Comic Cover Contest. So please I beg your permission and forgiveness to use reduced pictures of some of your comic cover mocs as actual displayed comic books in this comic store MOC. Anyway thank you for suffering through my assort ravings as I teach myself how to do all of this. As I said this was my first LD MOC, My first attempt to convert something from LD to real brick, My first attempts to custom order the specific parts that I needed from Bricklink. It's been quite the magical learning experience. Thank you all! Next Update will be a mostly finished building and starting work on the subtler details such as the Dentists office and clientele. Thank you for reading.

As it stands the TMNT sets by me barely last a few days on the shelves before being wiped out. Except the Shellraiser for some reason?