Faefrost

I thought they standardized it to the little Lego Store models?

That's because you already have the spectacularly good art deco theater sitting on your shelf Everyone else was hoping they would be getting one like it. I agree with you, once everyone sees the actual set I think there will be less controversy. Most of the grumbling is because it isn't quite what they were expecting. It doesn't conform to their pre conceived mental image. There's a similar bit of hand wringing going on over in the Historic forums over the new Castle sets.

Looking at the pictures again, it looks like we may be wrong about the big chunky siege weapon wheels? The ones in the Gatehouse Attack picture look to be more like those used in the Ballista in the Uruk Hai set. A round 4x4 tile with a 2x2 tile in the center.

The opaque and clear stickers have different properties, so when they are used will depend on he need. The inks that stickers (or any inkjet printer for that matter) are printed with are somewhat translucent. So the color backing the ink matters. Dark underlying colors will cause color shifts. With the opaque stickers they are printing onto a white base so they can control it and print brightens colors onto darker ones. If the ink is darker than the piece it is to be applied to ( such as the wood grain stickers in Hobbit sets) clear stickers work well. When the piece is darker than the printing the white ones are needed.

Actually the Portal project that made it to 10k is the one that was initially rejected for being an FPS. Lego was mistaken as to the nature of the game. Once that were convinced that it was a non violent puzzle game that simply looked like an FPS they let it proceed. As far as numbers. Most video games are considered a rousing success at somewhere around 1 to 2 million sales. Very very few ever exceed that. Mainly things from very big name houses such as Bioware Blizzard or Bethesda. Or things like CoD or Madden. The number of game franchises that do this is probably less than 24. Now the problem for Lego is fan conversion. Contrast video games, where except for a narrow (and often violent) handful, few may hit 10 million fans or users, with Lego's other licenses. LotR's has an established fan base of 150 million from the books alone. 200 million from the movies. Harry Potter is well over 100 million, as is PotC. And Star Wars? The pre existing fan base approaches a half a billion at least. It's easy to get a few million units sold if that is the starting level of interest.

It all comes down to audience numbers and the speed of change. In order for a licensed product to be viable for Lego it really needs a built in audience of several million. Say in excess of 2-3 million at an absolute minimum, preferably 5 million plus. While gaming populations are strong and very vocal, in truth very few video games hit these numbers. For those the do hey can be further subdivided by those that are inappropriate under Legos brand guidelines (ie Call of Duty). As you point out Megabloks has a World of Warcraft license. This is one of the most popular games in the world, but still the sets have been so so sellers. Lego has dipped its toes into video game sets. They have made 4 sets based on Star Wars video games, with a rumored 5th in the works. The Minecraft set was a great seller for CuuSoo. But I don't think the audience penetration is there yet for the full blown themes that you want. Your list perfectly illustrates a huge part of the problem. Not one game on that list would pass Lego's brand fit review. Maybe Portal? Everything else is way outside the violence or content guidelines that Lego maintains to protect the Lego brand name.

What if any indications do we have that the MF sets will be disappearing at midnite? They aren't listed as retiring soon, only one set shows out of stock on s@h and it has an expected ship date of Jan 26, implying that there are more in the pipeline? I don't think you will have any trouble finding them next week.

Wonderfully detailed MOC. Well done. But it does kinda really hammer home that fact that we desperately need some Elvish women folk... cause without them it kinda looks suspiciously like a San Francisco night club on margarita night

My biggest concern with this level of speculators is the ultimate harm they do to the hobby and the companies they are speculating on, when the artificially padded market that they create crashes. In the 90's the crazy buying for investment nearly buried most of the comic book publishers when the numbers finally rebalanced around their actual consumer base, and not the crazy get rich quick artists. How many of Lego's accountants are planning for a future production that isn't inflated by a 20% boost in purchasers who just happen to be trying to make a quick buck because of a USA Today article? This sort of speculation pushes companies to increase production capacity beyond actual productive demand. In the end it burns them when the bottom drops out of the market, and all the speculated product rushes back into the open market to compete with new.

There was a throwaway reference in FotR about Gandalf and Aragorn trying to find Golem, but Mordor finding him first. But that should be a substantial amount of time after the Hobbit. Gandalf doesn't begin to suspect what ring Bilbo has until he sees that he hasn't aged at his 111 Birthday. The search with Aragorn should be in that period between Bilbo's party, and When Gandalf shows up at Bag End asking if it is secret and safe? It seems to be a bit distant from even the end of the Hobbit.

I was looking more at the number of colors used. Typically the Lego Pad printing doesn't seem to use more than 3 colors plus the base color on printed pieces that often. (although there are exceptions.) they seem a little free'er with the color palette for stickers. Plus factor in that those movie posters would need to be printed on trans clear windows, like the Ninjago Fire Temple printed pieces, with the White printed as well, and I just don't think they will take it that far. ( assuming the poster frames are windows, the glass inserts would need to be trans clear acrylic. I don't think Lego has ever produced that part in opaque plastic, which would be ABS and require a lot of validation to use in the same molds.)

Some great set ideas, although I fear your pricing estimates run well past the realm of optimism and into the land where Hobbits dwell. Although it is a nice dream. The biggest problem is the Three Trolls set. Look at any set we see where we have one of those large custom figures. The Hulk, the Goblin King, Mines of Moria, any of the Dino sets etc. if we look at the piece counts vs the price it quickly becomes clear that each large custom figurine adds about $10 US to the price of the set (at a minimum). Yes there is some variation, but overall that seems to be about where it falls. And it is good enough to illustrate where the problem lies with the troll scene. The trolls alone would price the set at $30, before they added a brick or yet another Bilbo Baggins. Now remember Lego is licensed as a construction toy company for this line. The focus must be on the bricks. So they need to hit some rough numbers of building vs figs. They can't just release a $30 set of trolls and a handful of parts. Their normal set design budgeting seems to fall somewhere between 75 and 150 parts per minifig. At 10 to 12 cents per part. Even if you don't count the trolls in the fig/part rationing, at 30 standard Minifigs you are at a 300 part $30 set before you add the trolls, and with no ponies. With the trolls and a pony or two? Probably a $79 set. The same as Moria. And we would go BALISTIC over paying $80 for a 300 piece set. See the problem? (Please note my rough napkin calculations probably do not accurately reflect actual Lego calculations. They are just an estimate based on observable factors to be used for this little mental exercise. There are a lot of assumptions used, but I would bet they aren't that far off. At least in the mid to upper priced sets. The formulas and part calculations for the smaller impulse sets may differ.)

The MOC is great... The message and underlying story... Ummm how to put this delicately. It falls much too far into the political spectrum. Its trying to take a very complex issue of modern times. Human advancement and progress vs use of natural resources and preservation of the environment, boil it down to my side is good their side is bad, and force feed it to children as educational play. "Who could have a problem with that?" Honestly I don't think TLG really wants the backlash it would get from the more conservative press over something like this.

Right now I think the biggest pitfall to the project is whether Lego was spooked by Games Workshops lawyers over the whole Space Marines name thing. They will be looking much closer now to make sure there is nothing else that could stir up the Warhammer Legal team.

Because we are not quite the target market. They have to include the "main characters" more often in order to keep the play factor of the sets reasonable for kids who are not buying the full line. So you will get multiples of the hero characters. LotR is actually not as bad for this. And Hobbit is downright refreshing as each Dwarf only appears once. Go ask a Harry Potter fan how many Harry's they have? And let's not forget Jack Sparrow. Also note in your counting, while Frodo and Bilbo appear multiple times, there are different versions of the fig. So the 4x Frodo is 2x Shire dressed Plain shirt Frodo, 1x traveling/adventuring Frodo with his green hobbit cloak and 1x adventuring Frodo with his grey elven cloak. There is a subtle difference between re using a main character and reusing the complete fig. Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn probably suffer the worst for this as they are the main action heroes, but have the fewest outfit changes.

This is a store / merchants catalog, yes? Chances are that next page are the older sets that have not been discontinued yet. Stuff we are already familiar with like Weathertop and Moria. The person who took the pictures seemed to skip around a bit just picking out some of the new and unknown stuff. With that said, I wouldn't complete rule out a long shot chance of a store exclusive set, such as this years Orc forge. I don't think those normally show up in the general merchant catalog, and they are more often than not in the middle price range that we seem to feel is lacking here. Maybe the rumored Treebeard or Balrog sets?

For skirts they use a simple sloped 1x2x2 brick printed on the flat side. It uses normal studs and does come off far more easily than normal leg pieces. I am sort of surprised that they would use a sloped skirt for Arwen, as it precludes her ability to ride a horse in order to rescue Frodo.

Isn't this the same company that you were trying to get your local Lego store to buy minifigs from last week?

The physical Oaken Shield was most likely something that Lego did not know about until the movie released. It isn't an element of Thorin's backstory from the books and does not appear in the concept art or production materials. It is a character detail that Richard Armitage, the actor playing Thorin came up with as part of his characterization, and was not revealed until very close to the movies release. As far as how to do an oaken shield. Hmmm? Has the loud hailer / old SW blaster ever been produced in brown?

And construction has begun. As suspected I am having to alter some colors and make a great deal of modifications. And thank you to whoever commented on the height of the ground floor. It absolutely needs to be boosted a level or two, And those blue bottom windows need to go, both for color and height. I think I have worked out a better way to add a splash of window from color there, while not making it look too m uch like the GE windows. (P.S. Willing to trade wife and wife's cat for a better mechanism to validate parts from design to Bricklink wanted list. Will even leave off the cat if its a really good solution.)

The movie posters look a little too colorful to be printed bricks. At least on the pics Grogal has shown us. I suspect that they at least will be stickers. Which is fine. It worked well in the 2008 Town Plan, and lets be honest, that is pretty much what movie posters are. Heck a little peeling, cracking or lopsidedness is all in character. I suspect that the marque signage will be a sticker as well, just because it looks similar in style to the Town Plan. But you never know there.

Sting doesn't have a name yet in The Hobbit. Balin explains to Bilbo that great swords earn their names, and The sword that will later be known as Sting "really is more of a letter opener." There is a specific point in the book where Sting gets its name, and the movies haven't gotten there yet. (Although Lego sort of did.) I agree that using the short little hobbit sword for Orcrist is my biggest disappointment. ( I finally violated my normal purist tendencies and got an acceptable replacement from Brickforge. I just couldn't stand Thorin without it.) I would absolutely love it they made Sting, Orcrist and Glamdring in that new Monster Fighters glow in the dark plastic, just for one set, so we could get them glowing around orcs and goblins.

I hate to say it, but didn't we live through this exact stupidity with comic books in the 90's?

For Aragorn give him a green cape and the green hood from a Mirkwood Elf and you have a Prancing Pony version. Frodo's torso is actually nicely generic and can be used in a broad range of themes. It would make for a nice modern teacher or professor. The only limitation is the pink at the neck. If you are wanting to reuse it in LotR, then swap around a head legs, cloak and hair and call him Fatty Bolger. The Hobbit who got left behind (and left out of the movie).

That also seems to answer the 1 per review period question.