Faefrost

Am I the only one surprised the we are not seeing a Bare Chested Darth Maul mounted on a set of "Spyclops" legs this go round? I just figured that since he was so prominent in CW season 4 and is planned heavily for 5, and since we see him so prominently on the boxes and in marketing materials, that something would feature him?

Wow! I called this one, and it was way faster than I expected. This one is a slam dunk for review. Fairly simple model, designed by a NASA JPL engineer that worked on the rover. Newsworthy and topical. It's just hitting all the buttons. CONGRATS!!!

They just released a set with the elf? The VIP minifigures exclusive set had the CMF mummy, the elf, the fisherman, the gorilla suit guy and the evil space guy. It was out a month or two ago.

Just got this one. It is a macabre delight. The crypt has just the right touches of detailing. The monsters rising from the grave looks great. (here's a hint, stage your wedding party standing and stock the coffins with skellies if you have any. This little set will be moved down to the public spaces for Halloween in my house. Something that is just not done.

Wow! You managed to dye ABS? I'm impressed. It came out looking really good.

They are probably part of the winter 2014 release calendar, which means we will see them late in 2013, typically a bit before Christmas.

I'm betting it's China. Didn't they say it takes about 5 years to develop and produce a new theme? So on that basis we would have had these initial ideas pop up or start development at about 4 years ago. Hmmm? What was exactly 4 years ago that might have triggered some brainstorming? Beijing Olympics maybe?

Speedorz just sounds like the next evolution of their long standing Racers theme. Kinda like World Racers. Legend of Chima sounds like it might be that much chattered about Ninjago replacement. Figure some sort of game/collectable/evolving story elements.

At what point does TLG say the heck with CuuSoo projects and just hire Marshall outright?

Think of the minifig question this way. The choices for minifigs are no different then the choices Kenner has made in making action figures over the years. At this point they have covered virtually every major named character and some such as Luke and Han have been in production in one form or another almost continuously since 1978. In Legos case they don't sell specific characters. They sell scenes. So if ever they do a Full scale Mos Eisley Cantina we may see a Dr Evazan. If ever they redo Watto's Junkyard we may see a Shmi. If ever they do a Jedi Temple Library we will see a Jocasta Nu fig. As you say they seem to like mixing up the common and expected hero minifigs with some more obscure characters.

It looks like the Sandcrawler hit 10k. At least I assume so. It needed about 50 votes last night, and seems to have scrolled off the main page. Congrats!

Lord of the Rings base source material is found in pretty much every junior high school library in the world. I don't know about anyone else, but I read it at 9. I know I am not alone in that. Remember Lego keeps a separation between real world violence and make believe world violence. Context means a lot in this. Kids often learn of historic battles and wars. They grow up on greek and roman mythology. Samurai tales etc. this is different then showing them Goodfellas. It's obvious you love Firefly. I understand your support and desire to see a set made. But let's be honest with ourselves. Firefly deals in some very adult themes. It is "PG13" at best. The main differences between Firefly and LotR is not necessarily the violence. Although Firefly dances much closer to that real world line than TLG would really go for. The problem is the violence plus the sexuality. "Space Hooker" is one of the main characters. One of the episodes involves an almost Taratino'esque gunfight defending a brothel, where an underaged teenage girl first displays some rather graphic killing skills. Think of it his way. When a parent pre screens LotR's before letting a younger child watch it, they are mainly concerned with "will this be too scary for the child". When they watch Firefly or Serenity they are generating a list of questions that they are not yet ready to deal with yet. It doesn't make Firefly any less brilliant than the LotR movies. It just means that it is very clearly targeted at an older audience, one above where Lego targets.

Amazingly we will actually see a Cemetery and a Loony Bin sets this year. Just not in the City line.(safe to say we will never see them in the city line. Mental illness is never funny unless a green haired mass murdering clown and a large man dressed as a Bat are involved. I don't know why this is.) Anyway we have a funeral/wedding and a hearse over in Monster Fighters. And in Super Heroes we will be greeting Arkham Asylum in the next wave. I'm gonna go out on a limb and speculate that anything involving illegal immigrants, trailer trash rednecks and biker gangs is probably a no go. Just a guess. Based on where you seem to be going with the theme, you can probably take strip bar off your growing list of "Americana" as well. Compliment it with a nice new "City Motors" auto dealership as a larger set, to build a car sub theme around. And an auto transport truck, and a roadside service truck or tow truck. You could easily stretch that into a nice mid year theme ala mining.

It's actually not as bad going the other way, Europe to US. It's mainly just shipping costs, taxes and fees going Euro to US aren't that bad, and individual packages normally aren't held up too long in customs. I've had stuff from Amazon UK arrive faster and in some cases cheaper than stuff from straight up Amazon.com. It's just not normally cost effective and norm softly only do it for rare or hard to find stuff. It's America. We tend to make it strikingly easy for people to sell us stuff. (which kinda explains why the prices are cheaper to begin with.)

My impression is the sets go something like this White Batman, Aquaman and Mr Freeze are part of a smaller water based set. Probably a bat boat or similar. This will be the low cost Batman set. Nolan Batman, movie Bane and Comissioner Gordon are part of a TDKR set. Possibly some other figures such as a regular cop. Figure a Bane Tumbler and maybe a Batpod. Maybe the Bat if we are lucky. This will be the mid price set. Wing Suit Black Batman, Red Robin, civilian Harly Quinn, prison jumpsuit Joker, Scarecrow, possibly Penguin and the guard are the Arkham Asylum set. Expected to be a big set, about the same size as the Monster Fighters Vampire Castle.

That one strikes me as the perfect example of a great CuuSoo project. It is a commonly known and recognize able pop culture item. It is an interesting looking build. It was done with a not outrageous amount of pieces, and it is really well presented on CuuSoo as a project OT set, and not simply to show off someone's MOC. It deserves the attention it's getting. I predict the next big one to take off will be a nice well detailed but reasonably sized model of the Curiousity Rover. It just screams "make me in Lego".

Ok watching you guys do the Lego Archaeology is both scary and fascinating at the same time.

Is it completely and utterly evil of me for thinking in the back of my head, that one of the things that would add a great deal of truly twisted entertainment would be a "vote hell no" button? If just so we could toss tomatoes at any project with the word "Batman" in it's description?

As tempting as the UCS MF would be, I think I would go for the history and a 928 Galaxy Explorer.

Yes and no. Didn't they outright say somewhere that they consider the more generalized Dinosaur line as one of heir evergreen themes? Much like Castle, Space, Pirates and Divers. Themes that they never fully retire, but revisit and revise every so often. The story and aesthetic will change each time, but the basic subject returns. So even if this years Dino is a one and done, we will see Dino's again.

I'm betting we won't see a Falcon from the cartoon. The character has already been announced and cast for Captain America : The Winter Soldier, so we will most likely see him and (hopefully) a Winter Soldier fig designed for the movie costume. Ant Man will probably be the same as his movie releases in 2014. (Way to long a wait ) Am I alone in really hoping we see a Rocket Raccoon minifig with a brick built Groot?

In the "Ultimate" Marvel universe Beetle ( the red suit version) is an employee/ minion / agent of Dr Doom and Latveria. The Beetle suit is Doomtech. Of course seeing the Ultimate Beetle just wants me crave a classic Beetle. Or better yet. A full Thunderbolts set.

When was the last time we saw any themed baseplates?

I'm suspecting that the Star Trek license fell to Kreo for a song because nobody else wanted it. I know we all love trek, but the sad truth is the license has not done that great in the toy market in decades. Mego made good money from them in the 70's and Playmates in the 80's. But anything after that has been painful. Every toy maker that had a license for the last J J Abrams StR Trek reboot movie lost money hand over fist, with almost record speed. Nobody wanted the stuff. Trek does well in the adult collector market. But in Legos target age ranges it has a lousy recent history.

For the spikes along the wheel wells look at some of the Bionacle parts available. They may work well without having to modify or destroy any parts.