Faefrost

You're probably right. I am just a tad paranoid after seeing how over the top agressive LF seems to be on this type of subject over in the plastic modeling world. I think they are both doomed for similar reasons. The Zelda set used more molds, and really only spread them over a few minifigs in a set that would have a production run measured in 10's of thousands. The problem with it was those molds would be very Zelda specific. And that each mold will run at a minimum $50,000 and in many cases far more than that. (Assuming these are just the softer less precise minifig head/hair parts or minifig accesories. Actual part molds are much more expensive), you can kinda see where the math worked against this set. Portal will be worse. Because some of those new parts would need to be made of ABS, not the more rubbery stuff, and be designed to interconnect with far more precision. While it needs fewer new parts, in at least one or two they would require far more expensive tooling ($200,000 or more?). Now that might not be bad if they were a new element that they could find a good use for in a good number of regular retail production sets going forward. But if they would be portal specific, once again the math looks very bad. Plus what is the design and validation time involved in creating a new element? I would assume a custom rubbery hairpiece might not be bad, but a real building part has got to be months or more all by itself?

That looks great. It reminds me a little bit of an official alternate build that Lego published for the Agents 8635 Mobile Command Center. (Which I always felt has a lot in common with the EDF HQ. Both are among my favorite sets).

Probably the best matches are 10223 Kingdoms Joust 7189 Mill Village Raid These two are almost perfect blends with MMV. Although pretty much any of the Kingdoms Line or the Fantasy Era Castle line can be used to make some interesting scenes with it. A few of the Hobbit and LotR sets can be used, provided you work around or are not picky about pink skinned figs. 9469 Gandalf Arrives a good little cart, horse and some details 9472 Attack on Weathertop a good little scenery piece. The crumbling ruin. plus more horses and detail pieces. May be a stretch but not bad. 9474 Helm's Deep, it's a castle. 30210 Frodo cooking corner lots of useful details and a good torso. Keg and stove. 30212 Mirkwood Elf guard. Nice details and some tree parts. Wine glass and barrel. 79003 An Unexpected Party (Bag End). How well it blends will be a matter of opinion. But the shear level of detail parts in it rivals the MMV. From non Castle themes, 10217 Diagon Alley can be blended in if you are going for a slightly more modern period or a more fantasy approach 4738 Hagrids Hut makes a really nice Witches or Woodsmans Hut or similar. 4193 The London Escape can be used, although it doesn't blend as well as you might like. It's not a full building and seems shorter than the others. 9468 Vampyre Castle This one can be really cool if you want to go for a more classic Universal Horror type setting. The MMV makes a great village below the creepy castle type setting.

I'm not going to say no licensing issues. In the case of any licensed product the licensor has absolute veto rights over sets. One of the hidden dangers with the Sandcrawler may be how CuuSoo works and it's stated reward mechanism. That 1% royalty. Lucasfilm may have an issue with that, as it is a contractual implication that the recipient has some ownership of the design. While some IP holders may be ambivalent to this (Note BTTF. They really can't complain too much as their design is a DeLorean.) Lucasfilms has always been rabid about protecting not just the core IP of Star Wars. But every single element of it. Each ship design etc. (No really the trail of C&D letters and lawyer calls is spectacular). I can easily imagine them taking a stand that the Sandcrawler design is not Lego's to assign royalties to. (Granted this is also a problem that can be worked around with a lump payment for "design services" should the CuuSoo mechanisms permit it.) Really all I am saying is don't forget there are a lot of hidden nuances that we do not always realize. Especially when dealing with the licensed subjects. It is a very strange world where the rules of normalcy do not always apply. The simple argument of "If they make it we will buy it" Will often not win the day, and at times the obscure business reasons to not make something may be stronger than those to make it. We saw a little bit of this this time. Expect more in the future. Part of the problem is we, the fans do not really appreciate what CuuSoo is. We assume that our vote is a vote for what projects we wish to see made. It isn't. What it really is is a vote for which projects will get to make a real pitch to Lego in order to sell themselves. That's all. A chance to make the presentation to the big leagues. 10k does not get you on the team. It gets you an invite to try outs.

It doesn't matter if we think it is far enough from specifics of LR. Even TLG's opinion doesn't matter. It was clearly a Western themed set. If the LR license contract precludes other Western sets, that's it. No further discussion or debate. The huge problem with the portal project is not just that it needs new molds. But that some of them would require building parts, not simply minifig accessories or hair. That type of mold requires far more precision and uses a much more expensive types of tooling. As in add another zero to the cost.

It's not a matter of Lego thinking that the MWT would or would not impact sales of LR sets. It's that by entering into the LR license it precludes them from making a competing unlicensed theme. The actual nature of he set would not come into play. Lego would actually have no control over it.

Sounds surprisingly similar to a conversation I've had this week. "Do you want the Pet Shop for Christmas?" "Ummm" "how about Bag End?" "Errrrm" " how about the Town Hall?" "Look how about you just wrap up all three of those I have hidden in the closet and we never speak of this again..."

Oh I hope the Corsairs ship is a nice big set. When they attempt to trim them down we get stuff like the Destinys Bounty set, where you have a nice front half and a blob of horrid technic girders at the rear.

The Unexpected Gathering is probably the best of the Hobbit sets, and is a really great build. It has tons of detail parts 5 of the 6 figs are exclusive to the set, and it forms a well defined solid scene. A true building. It's a great set. (Oddly the set has no clever play features, but does not need them. It has so many details to play with.) The Rancor Pit has a really cool big plastic Rancor. It stands amidst 4 dull pillars. All of he value and cost of the set is in the big honking plastic monster. If you are looking for a Lego build it is really expensive.

They have... Repeatedly. http://legocuusoo.posterous.com/cheat-sheet-how-to-pass-the-lego-review-with See #2 and #3 just as a starting point. As far as the Western Town. Lego probably did not have a choice. Many licenses carry exclusivity clauses as part of the deal. Just as Lego cannot release their in house Pirates line while PotC is active, the LR license probably precludes hem from releasing an unlicensed Western theme or set while the LR license is active. Bad timing killed the MWT. Nothing more. TLG would have had no choice in the matter. Once they signed to make LR stuff the MWT could not be made.

Is this official enough yet to consider sticky'ing?

I agree with pretty much everything you said. But this is perhaps the most salient point you made. And the one TLG really needs to take away from all of this. CuuSoo will not work ever if it remains walled in the way it is. The problem is do the licenses and contracts allow it to be otherwise? As you said the Sandcrawler will be a huge test. But I can't help wondering if there aren't far more problems there than simply the massive scale of the kit. As a long time SciFi modeler I can tell you that there are many many legendary stories involving Lucasfilms. And it has only gotten worse since Disney took over. They rabidly protect their IP. Now the Sandcrawler may run into issues, not simply because of the SW license or its size. The problem is it is a highly accurate model of a Lucas designed piece of IP. Will they take issue with design royalties being paid to a third party non Lucas or ILM individual for a representation of a Lucas IP design? They may feel they need to contest that in order to maintain their IP rights? See how quickly something like this can get very complex and very messy? The problem is that TLG cannot phrase their response in any way that either puts the onus for the rejection on the LR licensor (Disney) or technically reveals details about an unrevealed license. (Bet Disney is just thrilled by the catalog pics floating around.) Lego was between a rock and a hard place on this one. Chances are the Disney license would not allow them to do any other Western sets, but at the same time allowed them to revitalize the Western line as LR (just as they did with PotC.) it sucks for those that would really love that Western Town, but ultimately I am sure that TLG did not have any actual choice on this one.

If you are slicing and dicing parts to get the look right, the alternate option is Brickforge makes a Wizards Staff that is pretty dead on.

Looking at the next review period I think we can already see the expected outcomes, and its probably going to be 1 for 3. Curiosity Rover is the easy one. No chance of rejection. Lego has a NASA license already. It was designed by a NASA engineer. It's topical. No new parts, and it works out to an under $50 set. Thinking With Portals - Probably rejected for same reason as Zelda. New molds and parts needed vs limited expected market. Sadcrawler - As much as I love this model, there is no way they could make this thing as is. It's just too huge, to detailed and too expensive to ever make into a set. I don't think CuuSoo projects ever really cross over into the mainline themes such as a UCS Star Wars set? Do they? Theres an off chance that they may do something spectacular on the scale of the UCS MF or the Carousel or the Eiffel Tower. But more likely it will be rejected. I don't think Lego will make it's new largest set ever under the CuuSoo banner. The following review; Space Troopers - Unless Lego's lawyers have been spooked by Games Workshop in some way, I think it gets made in some form. Purdue Pete - No chance of actual production.

There are some really nice new hats and headpieces throughout this series. Very impressive.

Zoe Saldana was in the first Potc as part of Jacks crew. So the option has been there. They have made more obscure characters. There were also a few chances in the Harry Potter sets that they missed. Angelina Johnson in a Quidditch set or the Patel sisters in any school sets.

The problem isn't that the Western town conflicted with another theme. The problem is that it caused a conflict with an existing and active license. Most licenses have some degree of exclusivity to them. They don't want the licensee putting them and their competitor head to head, or the licensee to act as a direct competitor to the licensed product. It's subtle and there are a lot of nuances, and it will varry wildly by individual contract. But assume Lego Space does not really compete directly with Star Wars. There are enough differences there to distinguish them. But Lego probably could not seek a Battlestar Galactica license without having some Star Wars issues. In this case there was just no debate. The Western Town was just too close to the LR license. Space Troopers may not have any conflicts with Galaxy Squad. Lego owns GS and its IP. Galaxy Troopers may be viewed as a good complimentary product. Just as they once released the Star Justice set near or alongside Space Police III. They may still balk at how close the themes are, but it is nowhere near the issue that it was with the Western Town and LR.

I think people are over reacting on the Western Town. They say there is a license conflict, so there quite likely is. There is most likely a certain degree of exclusivity in the Disney license contracts. Ie Lego cannot release stand alone Pirate theme sets concurrently or while PotC is active. Lego would probably be precluded from releasing an "Arabian Nights" theme when PoP is active, and they cannot release straight up Western stuff while LR is active. The decision in this case was probably more Disneys then Lego's. I am very sad about it, but I can understand it. The Zelda set really never had a chance. As presented the project was more of a collectables figure pack, not a construction set, so not in their core business, and then add on a tough complicated license from a notoriously flaky licensor and yeah. No go.

I just finished building it. I absolutely love it. Easily the best of the Hobbit sets by a wide margin. And possibly giving Helms Deep a run for best Middle Earth set so far. The set itself is a marvelously complex brick build with no real cheats or shortcuts anywhere. The little details are astonishing. You could tell this one was a labor of love for the designers. from the detailed and well populated garden to the new windows, to all the astonishing details and detail parts in the house itself. All the food, all the pots pans, Bilbo's book, etc etc. It just goes on and on. The only other sets anywhere near this for this sort of detail are MMV and Joust. The figures are to die for. Aside from the repeat Gandalf all others are specific to this set. And if you liked the movie, this set has four of the best of the Dwarves. The ones that truly stand out on screen. The set itself forms a very good representation of the Hobbit hole, with a clear scene and story behind it. No scattered components like we see in other Hobbit sets. It's a keeper alright.

We have seen 5 Wizard staffs in the movies so far Gandalf's from FotR - Basically a twisted tree root. Grey Brown. tapered wood with A big spiky root blob at the top, narrowing sharply as it goes down. There was a clear white gem placed in the top for light when in Moria. Saruman's from FotR, TT, RotK - Straight grey metal staff with a crown of vertical blades at the top encircling a round milky white gem. Galdalf's from TT and RotK - Straight white wood with a carved pinecone shape at the top. Radagasts from H:TUJ - remarkably similar to Gandalf's FotR staff. tapered wood, Grey Brown. Has some sort of bluish gem or tooth stuck in the top Gandalf's from H:TUJ - Similar to his FotR staff, but the roots at the top sweep in a more pronounced direction rather than spreading. Kind of a swept back look.

I think part of it is paranoia from how upside down they ended up with Bionicle. The new approach seems to revolve around the presumed age of the target audience. Figure a 6 to 9 year old jumping on a theme when it releases will have about three years before they start to age out of it. And at that point they offer a new product as an entry point for the next batch of fans, rather than trying to grow more into an expanding story with a higher burden of entry. What they didn't expect in their plans was for Ninjago to jump the rails and become a pop culture hit with an older target group. Ones who don't age out of things quite so well. ( ie 45 year old TMNT fans). That's caused them to rethink their plans a bit.

Don't forget Harry Potter. But yeah, as everyone has said. This is one of the true classic Lego sets. Tremendous value for the price.

It always amazes me how people view obvious differences between the sexes as in some way sexist? That these perceived sexual stereotypes are simply the effect of outside influences, and that actual physical differences is senses and base human instinct play no role. Yes Lego finally figured out that girls do in fact like well made construction sets, just like boys do. That does not mean that Lego's "market research" was in fact skewed in any way. Girls actually do like different colors than boys. Guess what, human females do in fact perceive the world slightly differently then males. Have you ever noticed that your wife or girlfriend can pick up and react to the slightest smell, that you would never notice? Or that they seem to be be able to hear a muttered comment or a child's cry over a great distance, but don't hear the sound of the cars breaks deteriorating (luv ya Hun). Or how about when you cannot get your wife to believe that a piece of furniture simply will not fit somewhere, just by looking at it? These all sound like stereotypes, right? They all also happen to be true. Over thousands of years men's and women's senses have become tuned for different purposes. While the base input may be the same, the brains flag on different things. Different color or frequency ranges. Different smells, etc. it's hard wired in. In the case of girls, flagging for bright colors such as pink is part of it. Barbie isn't in pink packaging because girls are trained to think pink is girls. Barbie is in pink packaging because girls heads turn to look at it when they see it in their peripheral vision.

Dusts off magic crystal ball... ahem. My predictions Western Town - Yes, but scaled down a bit. This is probably the only slam dunk in this grouping. It's gorgeous. It's hugely popular. and would probably work as a complimentary feeder to the Lone Ranger line. (No one buying LR stuff would buy this instead. Anyone buying this will buy ALL of the LR stuff to go with it.) Eve, Rifter - Yes, but may be a more exclusive set or a smaller run. It has a very specific niche target audience. Probably good enough for a good faith CuuSoo run. BttF deLorean - Probably. It will all depend on the costs and terms of any license. But Universal is normally not bad to work with regarding older properties. So long as their isn't a licensing conflict this will probably go. I think TLG really likes this set, it seems to be exactly the size and sort of thing they are gunning for with CuuSoo. Zelda - I'm gonna guess no on this one. Nintendo is just way too weird to work with in most cases. Nintendo can barely get third party game developers to work with them because of the weirdness. (Remember in the case of Lego City Undercover, it is actually going the other way. Nintendo is making use of the Lego licenses. The only Nintendo licensing involved is Tt paying the developer license, dev kit and game certification costs. And there are no negotiations there. That's simply write Nintendo the check.)

I could be wrong on this, it's been so many years, but I vaguely remember that he didn't wear goggles in his first appearances. The 1960's Adam West TV show. I think he was just heavy silver stage makeup inside a fishbowl.