Faefrost

Now that's a fair evaluation. I'm actually kind of curious now. I love Agents. One of my all time favorite themes. I can take or leave world racers. A little too zany at times. So something that threads between them and incorporates a Space theme could be cool. (I think that's what AC tried to do.) hopefully they stear clear of the wacky Bionicle leftover weaponry like giant ball guns.

I think where we get confused is the term "power armor". "full armor" or "ballistic armor" might be a better description for the TDKR suit. Power armor brings to mind something bulkier like the power suit from the Lego Batman 2 game, or the armor from Frank Millers Dark Knight Returns series.

And I think that pretty much says it all right there. Besides the entire concept is sort of badly misplaced. We as AFOL's tend to forget. Lego is a toy company first and foremost. And honestly, there really isn't a huge WW2 toy market out there. There is a fairly substantial adult collectors market. But that's a different matter entirely. and I am not sure how profitable it would be for a product like Lego to delve into. Certainly not the same as being able to put toy merchandise on the shelves at Walmart. Kids today do not play WW2. (And honestly, if they do they probably need help). They like modern Military when they play war. They like stuff they see in movies and they like the more imaginative stuff. WW2 as a subject matter opens Lego up to far too many issues (see above Lego Concentration Camp) while giving far to few returns to compensate. Unless they can attach a very controlled narrative to it (ie Indiana Jones) they will not be creating many if any sets related to 20th Century warfare. if or when they do it will most likely be things like the Sopwith Camel. Adult targeted sets of a less direct nature. I could see them doing a very nice P-51 Mustang or a Spitfire. (An ME 109 less so because of the markings). But I would not expect to ever see a Panzer, or ground troop minifigs, or scenes of war.

Yeah I am sorry to say that it is to soon. Just look at some of the rhetoric coming from Greece these days regarding Germany. The wounds are still to fresh, and playing them up still drives modern conflicts. Notice that Lego's aversion to conflicts of this nature is also not limited to simply WW2 or even "modern conflicts". As an example Lego easily has all the pieces it needs in place for an American Civil War era theme. The Blue and the Grey. Visually very striking. They have done sets that dance around the whole subject (Fort Legorado anyone? A post civil war opening of the west.) But the actual subject of the war itself is still not appropriate to their goals. And we can respect that.

I was trying to figure out a way to put not just a facade there, but some sort of detailed scene? My shelves will put everything right at that model railroad eye level viewing height. My one thought is to design two 16x32 buildings with side facing windows and fire escapes to sit on either side of a semi fenced in 32x32 abandoned lot scene, that has facades of tenement windows on the two outer sides facing in. So this way you still get the unbroken city eyeline, but there would be a street level more open scene in the middle of it. Sigh! Probably too complex for my skills.

To be fair, the guy calling it childish and colorful also said that it isn't serious and mature like Space Police... You know, the Theme with the purple suited Space Pimp? So I am kinda treating that particular evaluation with just a minor degree of skepticism.

Market street was actually part of the fan created Lego Factory line, where Lego used to make sets from some of the best sets created using their digital tools and you could design and order a custom set. http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Factory They ended that program awhile back. It's been theoretically replaced by CuuSoo. So that's where we will see any further fan designed Modulars come from. Assuming we can ever get one to 10k.

OK crazy question (maybe). Looking at how to display my growing collection of Modular's I am going to end up using an L shaped bookshelf that sits over my corner desk. I would like to have the buildings sort of wrap around like a panorama. But to do this I need to come up with something for the Inside Corner. (The opposite of the standard corner modular, where the two "front" facing walls are what connect to the adjacent buildings and the building sits on the outer arc of the street bend). Has anyone ever made anything like this? I am looking for ideas on how to approach it. Thanks

That is fantastic! The scale is just mind blowing. I showed the pictures to my wife... Her first words were "Divorce Court if you ever try it".

The CuuSoo admins actually had a post up on the project about it over the weekend, warning that they were aware it was going on, and not to be surprised when vote totals changed. That message is gone now. And about 500 votes removed. It was obvious someone was using a bot of some sort. Those names are exactly the same sort of randomness that a gold spammer uses to spam advertisements in an MMO such as World of Warcraft. I'm sure it was easy to detect, the bot was probably using the same script in the comments field.

Approval of one set has nothing to do with the others. It isn't that they only approve one per quarter, it's that the production rate is one per quarter, so any that are approved will queue up. One has no bearing on the others. And even the order of production is wholly at the discretion of TLG. Say they were to approve the Western Town and the Zelda project from this review. They could turn around and approve the Curiosity project from the next, bump it to the head of the line because it is easy to produce and topical, tuck Zelda in second to maximize the next game release or match a Nintendo requirement, and put the WT third because it is the most complex to make. My personal suspicion on the unlicensed Western Town project? TLG probably wants 30 days of sales data from the Haunted House to help gauge the AFOL Market for the Western Town, and to estimate how big they can go with the set and how expensive. I'm not saying that any of this is what will happen. Only trying to illustrate that they are not at this point competing head to head, quarter to quarter. Rather once they hit 10k they are each reviewed individually. If they pass all stages of that review they will be slotted into the one a quarter production schedule based on needs and production efficiencies. The order of production list has little to do with the review calendar, beyond sets that pass review get scheduled somewhere. As far as licensing. It's not that companies are dragging their feet. IP licensing is a big huge deal. It takes months in most cases. We got spoiled by Minecraft. We forget the IP holder in that case was 1 guy. Notch. He was free to say yes or no at will. He had no pre existing deals, or regional issues nor a team of lawyers to deal with all of this. Nintendo will take months to evaluate it all. Universal probably the same. CCP is probably small enough to only take a few weeks. And NASA will be a fairly quick turn around as they already have existing agreements there. The rover may be easy to add to them or already be covered under them.

Well at least the character designs look fairly unchanged... but dear gods where in the sewers did they dredge up the bad CGI animation? It looks like it was done by a local marketing firm making commercials for used car dealerships circa 1998?

Lego actually has three banks on store shelves right now. 3661 Bank and Money Transfer (a City set), 6864 Batmobile and Two Face Chase (which features a small city type bank branch), and 10217 Diagon Alley (Harry Potter set, of which Gringots Bank is the central structure.) Wasn't Market Street actually part of a different line, and is slightly out of scale to the rest of the modular's? So it isn't so much one of the planned phases, as a forerunner to all of them?

Wouldn't this also be somewhat maddened by the simple fact that at least back then, Lego did not isolate different variations of productions runs of similar parts? Once a 1x2 brick was made it went into the same hopper as the others, regardless of mold lines, Lego lettering, pat pending etc. So the parts were not necessarily isolated between sets or even used in a first in first out manner. The best you can really do is catalog production variations over a given time period, and indicate that these particular variants might be applicable to a set of a given vintage. (so you would never find a 1990 brick in a new 1980 set. But you could find almost any variation from 1980 and earlier in that box.)

Thanks for the great review Whitefang. I admit this is probably my least favorite of the PotC sets. It has some great minifigs, and the carts are sort of interesting. But honestly the barely 1/3 of a building is ultimately just awful. (the style and signage is great to go in with the MMV, but one of the first things you will notice is that the 4193 building, besides being incomplete, is grossly under scale. Particularly the second floor. It's a good starting point on a tavern, but needs some work to fit in with the others.) If you can get the set at a good discount it is well worth it for figs, parts, horses and carriages and a good starting point for a tavern. But at the normal list price... bleah!

Did the van ever actually appear in the media? or was it limited to the Playmates toy line? Who actually created or has rights to that classic Green and Yellow turtle van design?

I am mainly Lego. I am also a long time world of Warcraft player, and have been somewhat tempted by the Megabloks WoW sets, but so far have not succumbed. Just the minifigs seem so Blah! No charm, no character. Just badly done tiny action figures. The fact that only the big expensive set seems to have anything resembling a building or structure from the world... and then it's completely wrong! is also turning me off rather harshly.

I think most of the primary building parts are mainly produced in Bilund still (and possibly Mexico). It is mainly some of the specialty parts that are made in the outlying factories. Anything you see bagged by itself pretty much came from China. Many minifig parts or special mold creatures. Some of the recent changes we notice in the feel of the plastic supposedly stem from changes in the dye process that they are now using. previously the system involved using pre-colored plastic pellets to make the pieces in a given color. In the new system, everything starts with a neutral colored plastic pellet and the dye is injected in when it is melted and processed for a batch of parts. I suspect that they are still working the kinks out of the system as the various dye colors sometimes seem to result in slightly different feels to parts (such as the slight translucency in some MF blue parts that was talked about a few weeks ago). As far as changes to clutch. I think that is by design. They have said that they have slightly reduced clutch on some newer parts. Their goal seems to be to achieve the minimal clutch needed to do the job well, but that can still be easily separated by a small child.

If it helps any, I think the "Hammer Time" truck is some sort of hellishly converted farm tractor. Like something Mr T would build in the last 15 minutes of an old A Team episode.

The Rebel Transport is really a rough set to do in a medium like Lego. Heck the Plastic modelers still haven't quite figured out how to do it well as a kit. What few people realize, unless they have seen good pictures of the studio model, the ship is not solid. It is just that bowed and complexly curved thin top plate. With hundreds of cargo containers hanging underneath it. It's real hard to get the shape and structure right. TLG may have played around with it and decided they could not pull it off acceptably in an affordable kit.

Space is one of their "Evergreen" Themes. Like Castle and Pirates. These are overarching recurring themes that they always try to keep a few of at least one of them on the shelves. These are their big ongoing projects that have a long steady history of sales. Arctic is not a Theme itself, nor is it an Evergreen concept. It is an environment that they have used in other themes to good effect. (City, Alpha Team, and the licensed SW subjects). It will be nice to see them use it again somewhere. But chances are it will not supersede one of their classic themes. They may do another Ice Planet sub theme (which would be kind of cool). They may do a more modern City Arctic Explorer type run (which would be more likely given their shift towards better looking vehicles in recent years.) They may do an adventurers offshoot such as an Agents or Ninjago type action fight in the ice. But chances are whatever they do will be a small, single release, pack of a couple of small sets. There is only so much you can do with that much white that doesn't have Star Wars attached to it.

well played

It's not like either of those scenes are secret or surprises or spoilers for the movies. There really is no reason for Lego to hold them back.

I doubt that. The Space Marine CuuSoo was in part inspired by the Galaxy Patrol CMF armor. Which they obviously made a mold for for a reason. We've been talking about insect enemies almost since we first saw them, thinking back to classic Heinlein.

Wasn't there originally a rumor that the museum set might be related to the Batman line? (although it would be really sweet to see some new and more complex sets for the City Police to go along with "Grand Theft Lego" errrr, I mean Lego Undercover. (a museum set does just sort of scream a Batman / Catwoman set or a Spiderman / Black Cat one.)