Faefrost

Medeivel Market Village makes a great add on or setting for Hogsmead or Diagonal Alley. As others have said any of the Winter Village sets for the same. The Modular Pet shop can be a good starting point for 12Grimauld Place Mines of Moria just has a nice subterrainian Hogwarts feel to it. Between the Walls, that big door arch and the new cave troll it should be workable. Or maybe as a Gringots MOC. The PotC Black Pearl makes a nice Durmstrag ship. The PotC Whitecap Bay has lots to be incorporated into HP, including the rowboats and mermaids One of the Ninjago Dragons could probably work for a Gringots Dragon. The Hobbit Barrel Escape can be converted to. hogsmeade tavern interior. Arkham Assylum works as Malfoys, Azkaban Vampyes Castle would make for a passable Azkaban as well. And while expensive London Bridge makes a great broom flyby backdrop, ala OotP. Wolverines Chopper Showdown has an older style Motorcycle for Hagrid. You just need to MOC a sidecar. One of the Indiana Jones sets has the cycle and side car.

How can you not view Mr. ChickyLicky as an Army builder? I can't think of anything that would liven up any MOC more than an army of chicken suit guys marching though it. Just think about it. Helms Deep, with ChHICKENS! The only downside is they can't hold weapons.

I believe some one had also translated the writing on the Window Inserts to read "Ninja"

Norton was a work for hire lead designer commissioned to put an updated spin on somebody else's designs. This is not his original IP. He is not the licencor nor is he the agent of the licencor. WB is the IP holder, and WB has a longstanding relationship with TLG. The two sides may have done some preliminary work towards making a Thundercats Lego line. For whatever reason the deal did not go through. My guess is asking price vs applicable ratings meant one of both sides did not see a clear path to profitability. (They may take a different view today after the rampant hit of TMNT line. But before that some caution over the ressurection of a slightly more obscure 80's cartoon property may not have seemed worth the cost after analysis.) Now as part of these discussions and preliminary development Lego most likely did some design work. They experimented with molds and designs to see if they could Legoify the Thundercats. Once the deal fell through any of this design work is theirs to do with as they please, they can recycle it or redevelop those designs into new themes and new ideas, just so long as they are not using actual Thundercats IP. This is part of the two edged sword with licensing. If you are not confident enough in your show or IP's success in driving a licensed product you must be careful. Because any of the new original actual design materials developed by the licensee remain their property. If you screw this up you can turn someone seeking to license your property into your biggest competitor. (As others have noted Games Workshop seems particularly adept at this particular trick. Their turning down a licensor late in development in a fit of some sort of pique resulted in that licensor recycling the development into what later became one of the most successful video games of all time, and a literal money factory. And when GW complained about it they were laughed out of court.) And no this is NOT stealing Mr. Norton's ideas or designs. This is a well known part of the process. Who owns what and who walks away with what is or at least should be well known to a "Lead Designer". Especially one who is doing design work for someone else's IP in the first place. Norton is bitter because his employer had him provide some of his T Cats design work to Lego in order for them to develop the initial Thundercats concept. Once that deal fell through The materials developed became the property of Lego, and they most likely recycled some of their design elements into Chima. The provided designs were never in fact the property of Mr. Norton to begin with. Once again, he is not the rights holder on Thundercats so anything he would have done would have been work for hire. Any challenge over what design elements did or did not use for Chima is WB's to make. WB is the rights holder on Thundercats. They are also the owners of Cartoon Network. As such they stand to be getting a decent chunk of Chima related income. Probably more so then they calculated they would get back from the anime version of Thundercats. Mr. Norton provided design work into the projects, for which he was paid by his employer. His employer than owned the designs. His employer used those designs to do some preliminary work with one of their licensee's, Lego. Lego then paid to develop the requested designs within their licensed and identifiable format (ie minifigs, etc). These designs are not identical to Mr. Nortons. When one or both sides decided not to proceed with this license, then both sides went home with the design work that they each paid for, which they could re-incorporate into other projects as they saw fit. Just so long as none of the clearly licensed materials were used. This is common practice between businesses. Nortons rantings on the Internet however are not normal practices. They are grossly un professional and way out of line. I would not be surprised if he didn't get a less than polite call from WB's lawyers telling him now would be a good time to shut the pluck up.

The Fire Temple is a fantastic set. Possibly the single best all around set of the Ninjago line. The Temple itself is an awesome display piece and it has one of the better dragons. Samurai Mech is a wonderful mech if that is your thing and Sonic Raider is probably the best vehicle of the line. Of these Fire Temple will quickly become the hardest to find and most expansive to Bricklink, etc.

You do realize, when they say Lego is a "building and construction toy" You are supposed to open the boxes and build with what you find inside? Not simply use the boxes as foundation to build yourself a little Castle?

I just wanted to remind everyone. Not everything we see in that room picture has or ever will make it into production. (How many of you will be lining up for a full life sized bust of Watto?). Some of what is on the shelves there is simply experimental sketch models. That one set may be the bridge and scribes chair from Goblin King, It may be an early Orc Forge. It may be a siege set or an early version of the Uruk Hai Attack set. Unless someone pulls it out in a Designer Video some day we will probably never know.

I still love this set. Such a nice distinct little project. Not too large, with a broad range of time possibilities. And so well presented. I hope it makes it to 10k. Good luck.

That actually sounds like a nice little army builder set. I kinda like the dog instead of a horse. I need more doggies.

It wouldn't be the first time that some test shots ended up accidentally filed in a regular parts been and put in sets. It's rare but we have seen it pop up occasionally.

Sadly the MOC archives are not back up. That at least gives a visual starting point. What sort of castle are you seeking to make? Is it deeply historical? Is it a fantasy? What is the story you wish it to tell? Do you want s small MOC to tell a scene or story? Do you want something deeper or more involved. How big will you want it. Also what parts of a project are what you enjoy?walls, towns, people, etc

Apparently not. Although we were treated to a few pics of "Menquiteobviouslynotwearingtights" a few pages back.

2 packs of 75001. I just can't get me enough of them Sith Troopers!

I thought both the Chima cape and the Shredder cape have the single hole, like Darth Malgus, because they have the complicated shoulder armor?

I wish for a budget they would release 1 or 2 16x32 half footprint ones. Such as small stores similar to each of the buildings in Pet Shop, as individual sets.

Yay! Just got my first 6. Some of my favorites out of any series so far. For Star Wars fans, it strikes me that with his distinctive helmet, flaired shoulders, knee pads and rocket backpack, the "Battle Mech" makes quite an acceptable SW:TOR era Bounty Hunter. His armor would not look out of place in that game. I just wish it was more red than orange.

Vulturing may be too strong aterm and I apologize for it. But the fact is that he himself is a work for hire type brought in to work off of someone else's IP and designs. All of his stuff is derivative of the original 80's stuff. Granted that's what he was hired to do. But he tends to lose me in his arguments when he complains that Lego lifted his background world with the floating rocks... Which mysteriously looks exactly like a dozen other SciFi tropes over the past 30 years, with Cameron's Avatar being the most obvious. Chima probably did start from some rough design work begun as part of a Thundercats project. That really doesn't matter. This is the two edged nature of licensing. Once you begin the process you had best see it through, because if it falls through the licensor owns the work they created, and may rework, recolor, re IP, and re market it as they see fit. Lego doesn't have to abandon all of their design work if the deal falls through. Those parts that were not directly and clearly that's IP may be used however without conflict, without shame, and certainly without criticism.

I'm very very on the fence with this set. I was staring at the built up one in the Lego tore the other day. It's gorgeous, with such great figs and so many details. While at the same time the main build seems so much smaller than expected and so flat? At that price I was hoping for something more like the Haunted House with Batman!

There are two things going on with the fading. UV rays and their effect on plastic is one. And yes lots of direct UV exposure will bleach and deteriorate plastics. But avoiding that will not always prevent color shifts. Some bricks, especially whites will discolor over time. It comes from the fire retardant that is mixed into the plastics. Newer plastics have gotten a lot better about this, but it will still vary over time how bad it is. I'm lucky my office / man cave gets no direct sunlight. And all of my Lego has been banished errrr... Restricted to that room.

The VW will probably have the highest aftermarket price after a few years. Just because it is one of those stranger little sets that wasn't as commonly picked up. There won't be as many out there so scarcity will drive the price up. But demand will be limited to the more specialized sort. Remember the other half of speculating is actually being able to find someone who will pay you the price you want. It doesn't tater what the last one sold for on e-bay if no one is buying yours. I don't think Fire Brigade will command as high a price vs purchase cost, but it is a set that people and newly returned AFOLs will be looking for for a long time. It is a center point of any modular town or display or collection, and newer Modulars will feed interest back to it. But that will be tempered with the simple fact that there are a lot of hem out there, and a lot of investors stocked up when they thought it was being retired last year. No one expected it to be restocked again (another testament to its lasting popularity.) Pet shop will probably fall between the two. It will get a good return if you wait on it long enough. But it probably will have a hard sealing as to how much collectors will be willing to pay for it. UCS Millennium Falcon or Carousel it isn't.

The sad thing is there is plenty of room for more family friendly westerns. Just look at one of the key subjects of this post. The BttF set. The third BttF movie was essentially a fun western adventure. There is room for more of that. Heck Zorro has done reasonably well in modern times using the same concept. Somewhere between Heavens Gate and Unforgiven the entire Western genre took a sharp turn into that deconstructionist darkness. The sort of place that even Batman fears to tread. I am hoping the LR movie can bring it back out into a fun place. Not unlike they did with PotC.

I'm almost thinking that the posters may be dual sided printing. That they are printed on the front and the back of the same window insert panel. Add my vote to this as one of the most needed pieces.

This would carry a lot more weight he himself wasn't already vulturing somebody else's work. This is also far from the first time that when licensing talks broke down a company took their preliminary work and salvaged it to convert it into its own stand alone concept. "World of Warcraft" anyone? (I bet Games Workshop still spends nights drunkenly ranting at the sky over that one.)

I mostly like the set. A lot of the little details are charming. But I will agree with those who wish they had tiled the floor instead of giving us the car. The floor makes the interior feel incomplete. I will further go out on a limb and say the Theater should not have been done as a corner. The shape and abundance of windows just doesn't jive as well in a corner configuration. I think a straight up middle building would have better allowed for a main seating area, plus a balcony and separate projection room.

So let me see if I understand how this works? 1. We see an actual official photo of the new Modular set. Clear enough to show all the markings and colors and details. Everyone goes nuts tearing it apart and being all hyper critical over insane points. 2. We get fairly clear pictures showing at least preliminary box fronts of the new unexpected Castle line. Once again people go nuts because... I dunno? It isn't the exact design or theme they had in their heads that is so much better? 3. We get a completely un verified (I hesitate to call it) picture of a rumor that is nothing more than a pixelated black blob. It is at best a Rorschach test. And yet everyone has leapt to the conclusion that this is the best set ever, and is arguing the Minifigs and weird details and whether it is bigger and better than the Death Star. This is why TLG as a whole doesn't pay a tremendous amount of attention to AFOLs. We as a group seem to be completely and utterly insane.