Faefrost

Is the OP looking for the fonts used in the packaging and marketing materials? Or is he looking for the fonts used in the set markings and stickers?

Agreed. We saw the new CMF space helmets before they were used extensively in AC. Also the new ray guns. Plus both the Galaxy Patrol Armor and the Hazmat guys appeared in the concept art for the next wave of AC. It's a fairly safe bet that any new molds that were created with that theme in mind will show up in whatever the next space theme is.

That's a dangerous road to go dowgn, and one I assume TLG is going to great lengths to try and avoid. The whole structure of CuuSoo is to attempt to avoid any accusations of "they stole my idea". This comment about the Space Marines project illustrates just how bad even attempting his can be. Purpleparadox, most likely unintentionally, implied that Lego saw the Space Marines project and responded to it with the new Galaxy Squad line. The problem is people on the Internet tend to believe this sort of thing, regardless of truth or evidence, and respond with Internet outrage. In the case of the Space Marine project, the CuuSoo project was inspired by the Series 7 Galaxy Patrol minifig. Mainly the figs unique chest piece. Lego created that piece for a purpose beyond that single minifig, and it is obvious it was planned for their next Space theme. Just as the new space helmets were used in Alien Conquest. So now they face a claim of copying something from CuuSoo that they have probably had in development for 1 to 2 years. That more than anything else may be what eventually drives them to abandon CuuSoo.

If nothing else the Minifigs will have some interesting moc potential.

We probably won't see that as they already included the key items and figs for it in the more recent Grievous Syarfighter set. That one has the repair chair, the general himself, his droid repair doc and Nahdar Vebb. Granted a more detailed set would be a great play set, but it isn't so iconic that I think they will go back to it.

Wonderful little design. brilliantly done. He's 10 you say? Wow! I think you have an architect there.

Just so long as it includes a brick built Shelby Cobra to crash land on!

They all sort of look the same. NRG Kay is his standard blue plastic, even a blue head and hands, with metal is silver markings. NRZg Zane is a pale blue body head and hands with darker metallic blue and silver markings.

I think the one piece or simplified molded shells are to support what is basically a vertically mounted Ninjago spinner inside. The "Speedorz" will be less like a normal Lego build, and more like a customizable gaming piece. So the shell is the overall support. Your "build" play is from tricking out the flywheel inside and maybe the weaponry. The single piece chassis prevents the exploding car feature, where it disintegrates and loses half it's pieces under the fridge the first time you crash it. At least that's mt impression of what little I have been able to work out from the few colored blotches that claim to be pictures.

Yes, that would be the mansion from the first 2 IM movies (in theory). But here is one other interesting twist to that. (If you want to be a really really optimistic nerdling). Lego has not just the Marvel movie license, they also have the license for the full breadth of the comics. Tony Stark's Malibu Mansion is also sort of famous in the comics for being the home base for the Avengers West Coast team. So even if the actual set is limited to the movie, if it is a decent enough sized set, well the MOC possibilities will be awesome! If nothing else here's hoping that the set offers up the much desired War Machine minifig Sadly I see one horrible early mistake by Marvel movies that will prevent us from seeing a classic Avengers mansion set. I speak of Edwin Jarvis. For the Iron Man movie, before they had fully realized the idea of putting the full Marvel universe on film, they made the decision to change Jarvis from Tony's loyal butler to his computer valet. In large part to differentiate him from Batman's Alfred. It was an understandable decision from that perspective, but in some ways as the Avengers comes together it causes an issue as it eliminates one of the core characters. And without Jarvis any Avengers Mansion set is just a creator house.

Harness em up! Gidyap! /cracks the whip

Sadly it really doesn't. Searching by tags on almost any site tends to be a clunky mess that most users will simply ignore. Tags are more of a power users tool. Necesary and powerful, but not the domain of the typical web surfer. They want a nice clean ability to browse categories. Not some mashed up list or guessing game in a search box. Here's the difference. CuuSoo should be presenting the new projects to the users in a clean easily browsable format. The problem with search by tags is it still means the users have to go looking for stuff, which defeats the entire purpose of the site concept. It's a subtle thing, but it is key to this sort of site functioning well or not.

I saw the signs for it at a TRU in McDonaugh Georgia yesterday. The 3 for 2 lasts until Saturday and excludes Ninjago, Friends and Technics. But amazingly did not exclude Star Wars or LotR.

It's in stores too.

It's not a series. It's a one shot along the lines of The Padawan Menace. But it does look good, and more fun than the forthcoming Seth Green CGI spoof "Star Wars: Detours".

There can be any number of reasons. The biggest being terms and requirements of the license. Typically in cases where Lego does not seem to be offering straight up "Battlepacks" it will come back to an issue in the license. Lego licenses for construction sets. If a competing company holds a license for "action figures" it greatly limits their ability to create minifig exclusive sets. Now with that said, They normally do manage to create a few 4 fig sets with a small construction piece that come in at a lower price point than uruk Hai Army. They tried to do two different things with that set. Both be an army builder and be an expansion set for Helms Deep. I'm not sure it was a complete success as such. lego's license is for the Peter Jackson movies as source only. They cannot use subjects as described in or exclusive to the books. The Tolkien estate is notorious for going after anyone and everyone that goes anywhere near that license. The same with Video Games. They would need a seperate license for each game / publisher, and then have to deal with the Tolkien estate regarding the source for the games license. (As an example Turbine's "Lord of the Rings Online" MMO is licensed from the Tolkien estate, not the movies. Any sets based on that game would require a license from the estate.) They have obviously thought about them. In the picture of the design room that has been posted all over EB in the past few weeks you can see what looks like a large impressive prototype or "sketch model" of one of the towers on a shelf in the back. It is also likely that a Rivendell set is destined to better capitalize on the Hobbit movies. It plays a prominent role in both series, and would get a stronger marketing boost by corresponding to a new movie release. We may or may not see elf armies. It will be a factor of cost to produce (complicated printed head piece, etc) vs perceived sales. Personally I agree with you that they would do well. I am betting that we will see more of the elves corresponding to the second Hobbit movie. Also keep this in mind... In stretching out the single book The Hobbit to three full movies, Peter Jackson has added in a whole secondary side story that was never in the original book. It has been strongly indicated that this story will include many of the characters previously seen in LotR who did not appear in The Hobbit book (Legolas, Aragorn, Rivendell elves in battle against the Necromancer, etc). Lego has some access to the production designs and has a far better idea of what is coming then we do. They will be selecting sets to correspond and gain benefit from the upcoming movies. Civilian Hobbits? I am not sure that there is that deep a clamoring for sets based around "My old Gaffer"? As much as we AFOL's love the civilian figures and obscure characters, they really don't tend to be a huge driving force in the realm of Lego sales. The best example of this is the wonderful 7189 Mill Village Raid set, which while almost everything we AFOL's claim we really want in a Castle set, was not a great seller compared to most others. In the case of peasants and civilians it seems that a little goes a long way. Now on the positive side, Of all the possible subjects in lotR and The Hobbit, civilian Hobbits are probably the absolute easiest to MOC up yourself. Short legs + pretty much any period torso + pink head and hands + almost any hair + pitchfork or beer = Hobbit.

For most of the core SW original trilogy characters the best set is probably the 7965 Milenium Falcon. It's still around $100 USD. But it is the smallest current set with Darth Vader. And would be a thrilling play set for him, without hitting the shear craziness of the Death Star. It has all the main original characters except the Droids. They can be gotten from the Droid Escape set. CW Anakin is easier and cheaper to get. 7957 Sith Nightspeeder has him, plus Ventriss and Savage Opress. So 1 Jedi, 2 Sith. In a pretty cheap set.

Am I alone in hoping that he Cinema is called the "Monarch Theater" and has signage for a Zorro movie?

We haven't seen any "official" pictures on anything yet. Just some bad tiny grainy bootlegs of one or two Chima set boxes.

Oh dear, I learned that lesson the hard way. Never ever watch an episode of Ninjago while waiting for an Ambien to kick in before bed. I only ever watched the one episode. Had no Ninjago sets, etc. when I regained my senses the next day I had that theme song echoing in my head and. Full set of plastic multicolor Ninja's. Whatever the heck a spinner is. And my neighbors kid keeps trying to mooch my green Ninja. Scary! I only wish I would have space dreams like this. Nod off in chemical induced oblivion and wake up to find a Galactic Enforcer. ( wait I actually did that... That's how I got my Milenium Falcon... And my wife to take away my credit cards after dark.)

I swore I wasn't going to get these. I now have picked up everything except the Castle and Mansion (getting those in Oct) plus all of the matching CMF minifigs, and I went back and got an Igor and old school mad scientist from the studio line on Bricklink. It's just to delightfully twisted of a theme. You can get away with doing awful things to minifigs.

If you look carefully at everything that TLG has said, then no they are not treating this as an overall license like they did with SW or HP. They treat it as two semi separate trilogies as far as the Marketing is concerned. LotR has different art and graphics and marketing than Hobbit. They are separate categories on Lego.com. The new sets will show up as The Hobbit in the catalogs, etc. depending on how The Hobbit does we may not see them spend a lot of time going back to LotR. I suspect that the Hobbit has a ton more kid friendly and toy friendly possibilities than the full trilogy. Heck the book does, I can't see the movies changing that. The LotR trilogy (or really big novel) was written to be an artificial epic myth. An experiment with classic forms. The Hobbit was written to be a smaller tighter rousing good adventure yarn. A classic of a different sort. And as a final thought on LotR. Remember that interview was earlier in the year, as LotR was releasing. My suspicion, just from watching store shelves a bit, is LotR did very very well on initial release, but then waned a bit. It is deeply loved by the AFOLs and those who love the subject matter. But you aren't seeing as big a growth over time in interest from the younger customers. They walk down the aisle and want Ninjago, or MOnster Fighters, maybe even Batman. I think LotR started strong, but both MF ans Friends blew the doors off of it as time went on. We have long noted that the licensed LotR suffers from a similar problem as PotC and PoP (although not quite that bad). It has a greatly reduced charm factor compared to what came before it. Helm's Deep is a Spectacular set. But it is also very dull earth tones with minifigs that while cool, just lack the charm of many of the Fantasy Era castle stuff. Set a child age 8 to 11 down in a Lego store and put Helms Deep and the Kingdoms Joust set in front of him. Which will he choose every time? Why?

Sadly Ernest Borgnine is going to be a tough one to replace I would love to see a few more Spongebob sets. Maybe a marching band set? Now that would be cool! /e queues up 80's hair band power ballad.

I suspect that we are getting confused by how TLG has split LotR and The Hobbit. It is extremely likely that we will not be seeing more LotR sets precisely because of the three Hobbit movies. The LotR slots on the shelves will be filled by Hobbit themed sets that can fully capitalize on the current movies. And think about it. Lego has already released the full Fellowship. Yes there are a few key figs missing, mainly Saruman, Galadriel, Wormtongue, Faramir, Denethor, Eowyn and Arwen. Of those several are known to be a part of Jackson's Hobbit films, so they can just as easily factor in to those sets. For sets and settings, we lack the Third book, so no Gondor or Mordor sets. While they would be great to have, I am not sure that they are a huge marketing priority? Neither subject is something that will work well as an affordable Lego set. (yes clever design could prove me wrong.) overall I suspect TLG may be more than a bit more comfortable designing and marketing for The Hobbit. There is a bit more individual action, and far more of a whimsical feel to the story than the darker and bleaker last half of LotR.

Fabuland hasn't always been like that? Oh dear I think I've been playing with it wrong.