Faefrost

I'm kind of surprised that they don't have some Lego store presence in Japan? It honestly may be as basic as cost of real estate vs working with existing partners for distribution. China I can easily see why they do not have a huge retail footprint. Doing that kind of business in China can be a nightmare.

Keep in mind the Death Star was also set up where it could serve as the ultimate swan song for Lego's Star Wars lines. The original license was nearing its 10 year end at that point. Much like they on a smaller scale with Diagonal Alley for HP. Don't assume that anything produced for LotR will be quite that spectacular yet. He lines doesn't have 10 years of sales baked in.

Um guys? Is it just me or is this pic actually pixelated like an old Nintendo game? I think someone maybe blew up that teeny tiny picture of the sketch model Orthanc in the developer room, so much that it looked like an 8 bit video game , then pasted it onto a scroll backdrop.

The problem is "we" the more dedicated AFOLs who will buy such multiples are, while dedicated, a very small niche. They make their money off of he kiddies and their parents. Not off the collectors. So smaller less expensive self contained sets is the current target market.

From early on in the MWT Lego had said that it would be too big to do all of it. The fans had voted on which building took priority, so it would have been the Saloon. So size was not really the issue. The contract conflict most likely means just that. No directly competing products while the contract is in active production. We can be reasonably certain that the conflict was with a Disney contract. We know Disney as a rule prefers a certain amount of exclusivity with licensees. And just by eyeballing it, we can clearly see that no Lego Pirates sets have been produced during the run of PotC. So it all reasonably adds up that the presence of the LR license precluded them from the MWT. As far as waiting until the conflict is over? At this stage I don't believe that CuuSoo has any mechanism for that. Lego would have to license the set from the creator and then bury it for several years. The creator would have to simply walk away from it for an extended period? Would he be paid in some manner above and beyond the contracted CuuSoo royalties? At what point does it step outside of the walled garden of CuuSoo and become some sort of Lego sub contractor arrangement? While a fantastic set, I suspect that any response other than rejecting it raises a ton of questions that The CuuSoo project is not prepared to deal with at this time.

I like it. And I kind of like that all of the contrasts are in subtle texture and architecture, not color. A little color might not be bad. But I would keep it very minimal and subtle.

Thank you. I don't quite grasp all of the complaints that it doesn't blend in with the others? As it is the only place you would find all of these buildings attached is the back lots of Universal Studios. And hey! Wouldn't this thing blend in there? PS am I the only one who, after seeing the Western coloring and styling, and those faux Chinese horns on the tower, can't help but think of this thing as the "Cow Palace" Theater?

It would be interesting to see if the numbers and ratios changed substantially when Lego shifted to their newer color injection system. In the old days Lego bought colored plastic pellets. These days they buy a single neutral color pellet and inject the color into the molten plastic as it is processed.

How well do the PoP Minifigs, particularly the Hassasim work for Haradrim? Maybe with some of the PotC zombies thrown in?

The catalogs are mainly just showcasing the new stuff. Things that are carryovers from this Summer aren't always shown, but will have a good stretch of shelf life left. We have long known (or at least suspected) that MF was planned as a one shot theme. Here's hoping that if it sold well it will be a recurring October surprise in some way.

Colby City and the train also look to have a nice selection of green parts as well. I'm thinking Modular Irish Pub! (Not he real kind. The tacky American Boston type ;) ) The more I look at the sets for next year, the more this theme really seems to stand out. The colors just pop without seeming to cartoony. The sets seem fairly complex and detailed. Here's hoping the movie is as good as the sets.

If you don't have it yet, I would strongly recommend you get your hands on a copy of 10193 Medieval Market Village. It is being retired as we speak. It is viewed as one of the better sets Lego has ever created. And it can be used nicely with either Harry Potter or LotR. If you are a working adult with lots of disposable income, and like big gorgeous builds that are still minifig scale, then the Modular buildings are what you are looking for. There are 4 readily available now with a 5th due in March. The two earlier retired ones may be a bit steep price wise these days. Be very very very careful with E-bay sales that seem to good to be true, involving products that are still available from Lego S@H, Toys R Us or Walmart.com. Often they are part of what is known as a drop ship scam. You pay the seller using your CC or Paypal. He then turns around and orders the product from Lego Shop @ Home and has it drop shipped to you using a stolen credit card number.

Word fail me. That is just amazing.

I can't escape the fear that those two sets were probably a tad to expensive for a general retail release. If nothing else Helms Deep probably would have been better off as a Lego exclusive. The positive side now is we can find fairly inexpensive sets. The downside is they may be more cautious about releasing such big sets going forward.

FB is less a NYC prototype as it is one applicable to any of the smaller red brick industrial cities that stretch across the Northeast US from NYC through to Cincinati or Cleveland. Most of the Modulars aren't so much "small town" as they are " small industrial era city". Sitting right on that boundry between "urban" and early "suburban". If you are not sure what I mean drop in the movie "A Christmas Story" and just look at the background settings. They work fine if you want to picture them as NYC or London or similar. but they also keep the feel of a smaller more localized city. The FB is actually about a third too wide for a typical NYC fire house of the era. (Or if it was that wide the front windowed side would be a second truck bay.)

I think you may still see some very small amounts of lead in some clear plastics. I am not sure if it applies to Lego though. If I remember correctly, traditionally white, bright yellow and very bright reds are the colors that rely most on things like lead and cadmium, while blues and greens use less and may be more organic in composition. Always helpful information when trying to ascertain what paint not to eat.

You are probably reading off of the color dye that is injected into the plastic to give the piece its color. Some lead and cadmium is common in white pigmentation (there's a reason they actually named a color "Cadmium White"). The key question is how much of the overall percentage of the brick is the dye? I would suspect that it is substantially less than 1%?

Have we heard any substantiated reports on how the LotR and Hobbit lines have been selling? How they are in relation to say PotC or HP, which would be the closest licensed analogs?

There was a supposed Lego product number list floating around a week or so ago that purported to have a bunch of set names. The TOR Jedi Defender was on the list. Now whether the list is real or accurate is any bodies guess. (Although I do find it intriguing that the Striker and in particular the Sith Fury seem to have sold better than the Gungans sub at roughly the same price point. The week after Christmas and the only things left on store shelves are Bongo's.)

The new movie is live action. Along the same sort of modern Disney lines as Pirates of the Caribbean and Prince of Persia. The more classically remembered versions have been the live radio program, the live action TV show and one or two live action movies from the TV show. There was also a live action reboot movie in the 80's that went nowhere and at least one early 80's Saturday morning type cartoon.

Ah, but therein lies the biggest conundrum we AFOL's face over TDSS. While we, the adult fans despise the stickers and can't understand why Lego keeps using more and more of them. One of the reasons is the young target audience prefers stickers, and Lego's market research backs up that the kids view the application of the stickers as a key fun element of the sets.

The problem is the world view being put forth here is very one sided. I know in the US the theme you propose could easily be seen as having a "Greedy Right Wing Republican Corporations are Evil" vibe going with it. And there are a lot of subtle queues to that in the designs. And also remember there is a fine line between education and indoctrination. This theme seems to be dancing a bit over it.

Actually I am betting that this set would have a higher buy through than most. As in most of the people that voted would in fact buy the set. The problem is that no one else would. It's a very fixed focused niche product. They could easily move 10k units through the school itself. But that's the only place they could. Would it be worthwhile for Lego to make small run custom niche products like this? While I don't think it would lose money, it might not be the best use of resources. (And would probably rapidily devolve into a horrendous mission creep as every school or sports team wants one.) Of course if they are in fact picking only one project per review period, then I think Space Troopers probably has the edge, having broad based appeal and some incredible design work.

It would run completely counter to some of the purposes of CuuSoo. Part of the goal of the project is to interest other fan bases in Lego. By coming in to support their niche project they look around and get a renewed interest in Lego itself. CuuSoo isn't simply a wish list for AFOLs. It is a marketing tool (albeit a rough and incomplete one still under development.)

Why reuse the Lion heraldry? Simple economics. Lego has molds specific to the Lions head. They invested in tooling of the lion piece. http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=30274 So they will recycle the general concept of lions or lion based heraldry periodically in order to use the pieces and mold. Now here's hoping that the exact styling of the heraldry and markings are a little better. As others have pointed out the set designs shown in the preliminary pics are probably the real deal. But history has shown us that the Minifigs and printing used in these sorts of box mock ups is often pretty rough and of a temporary nature. Just look at the first pics we saw of the SW Sith Fury, and how improved the figures were by the time we saw the release shots. I'm betting while we are getting a Lion faction, the printing will be all new and not in any way recycled.