Faefrost

If they put the bridge in as the imbedded "playset" feature to justify minifigs, then I would guess at a minimum a generic Shield officer or two. Someone to have sitting at the control console when Stark says "that man is playing Galaga! Didn't think we'd notice, but we did.". But with that said, knowing Lego they probably will not stick 100% to simply one scene or movie. They like to use figs or elements to somewhat broaden things. So we may see some characters from CA2 mixed in. Even if it isn't the exactly right model Helicarrier. Here are some of who I think we might see. The almost certain candidates; Nick Fury, pretty much a given. It's his boat. I can't see any chance that he is not in the set. He is like Darth Vader in the Death Star and SSD sets. Maria Hill. An easy figure to do and a likely exclusive to this set. Once again she is too associated with the craft not to do her. Agent Coulson. Yeah he will be there. Because this is the only real set we have seen for him, and there is to much fan interest in getting him for them not to do him. He is the big draw exclusive fig for this set, like the Heath Ledger Joker is for the Tumbler. Less Likely but still strong potential; Captain America in subdued Winter Soldier/Super Soldier outfit from the begining of CATWS. Falcon, CATWS movie version. Tony Stark in civilian out of armor garb ala Malibu Mansion set. Bruce Banner, non Hulk civilian scientist garb. This is probably the only set for them to give us a non Hulked civilian Banner. Random unnamed Shield guy to fly the thing. Black Widow, with a new print. Hawkeye. An easy one to throw in just to burn off any excess fig stock they have from prior sets. If we get him he would be the Avengers version most likely, and just be the same we have gotten before. Loki. If the Helicarrier has Loki's cell we will get Loki to go in it. The Full Avengers team from the first movie. If they opt to go more Arkham Assylum or Sandcrawler in terms of figures we will get the full team. If they go more SSD or Orthanc probably not. Remote long shots; Shield Agent Brock Rumlow, aka Crossbones. If they are going to give us a more standard Shield officer, they might opt for a named one. Shield Agent Melinda May, aka The Cavalry. If they were to do any AOS character beyond Coulson, this would be who they do. Dr. Erik Selvig. While he never appears on the Helicarrier, this would still be one place to shove him. Hopefully the version with pants. Yeah I'm grasping with this one.

My bet? The bridge area, so they can have the guy playing Galaga and maybe the lab behind it. It's a huge UCS so we will not get much in the way of "play feature" destructible areas.

Iron Patriot, minifig Hulk, I think that is it so far, with Winter Soldier apparently looming. Remember there are no DK marvel books yet, and only one game, so the bonus figs have not had as many chances. DC extras are largely driven by Batman.

When examining "worst sets" I tend to rule out the tiny impulse sets. There is only so much you can do with them, and at the end of the day they are mostly 1 of 3 wildly similar things. Sometimes you get a rare surprise, they are never great, but there is never enough there to be outraged about. For worst I tend to look at larger sets that just fail in some spectacular way. And my opinions will often evolve between simply looking at a set, and having it in hand to hold, build and play with. A great or near perfect example of a great looking set that rises to near the top of the "worst ever" list is the 6892 Explorians Starship. It's a huge beast. The largest Space line flagship until Benny's ssS came along. It attempts to do some interesting things with a more industrial look that channels designs like those in Silent Running or the Black Hole more than Buck Rogers or Star Wars. But in spite of this it really is a poorly designed horrible set. Major parts fall off every time. The main floor of the ships interior falls off the bottom of the ship. The nose is held on by 2 studs and held up by one technic piece. It is littered with horrid giant useless specialized pieces. And it looks best in flight mode... Which can only be seen when you are holding it. Attempting to set the ship down automatically converts it to the much uglier landing mode. The ship is packed with great play features. All of which fall off if you blink. Second runner up for me is the 6979 Intersteller Starfighter. Not a horrid set per SE, but feels like it was designed by three different people in three different cities who's only communication was some scribblings on a bar napkin that got passed around. And then had every gimmick in the marketing departments playbook dumped on it. Lights! Fiber optics! Magnets! It's a fondly remembered mess.

My Piratey Fleet includes Brick beards Bounty Black Pearl Queen Anne's Revenge I have the full range of PoTC sets, but no non ship "classic" sets My ship display shelf also includes LotR Pirate Ship (a really great Pirate ship, even if the Tolkien worshipper hate it for not being a castle siege) Ninjago Destiny's Bounty (one of these days I will get around to MOCing and rebuilding this to look better and more show like.) Oh and the MegaBloks Assasins Creed fishing scow thingy ( way to small. Even MB knows how to make a decent ship, but opted not to.) and the MB World of Warcraft Goblin Zepolin which seems to blend in well. (Actually a nice display piece so long as a breeze doesn't knock parts off.)

This is something that bothers me about this rumor. Lego would not simply not do a MF set because owners or third party resellers were concerned about collectors value of the old. Heck this is now a non existent issue with the MF in particular. Lego would and will simply release a different version of the ship. In this case probably an Ep VII variant, thus preserving the rarity of the core most sought after pieces of the original.

My guess would be very very similar to how they did Venom. A connection on the back with 4 droid or skellies arms attached. It seems like the Yellowjacket suit is essentially the Eric O'Grady Ant Man suit from the comics. A later design by Pym for Shield. That suit had the 4 robotic arms, which also acted as thrust verniers for flight, and seemed similar to or borrow from the Stark built Iron Spider-man suit from Civil War. Since 1986. Avengers 270. The female one wearing stolen Pym tech. She was a member of Zemo's Masters of Evil. It could also be argued that pretty much any incarnation of Pym as Yellowjacket was more than a bit borderline villainous, or at least pretty much insane. The Yellowjacket suit tended to mark the low points of Pym's mental health struggles. I'm sure the Helicarrier will have an interior room or scene, much the same as the UCS SSD did. What worries me is lately the UCS sets have all been coming with at least one truly exclusive fig that does not require new molds. For the Helicarrier that probably means either a Maria Hill or a <sob> Coulson!

I've said this before, but to repeat for the young un's, here's the thing with Boba Fett. To appreciate Boba Fett you have to go way way way back to 1977. The 9-14 year old sect had been utterly consumed by this phenomenon that the adults had never seen anything like before. Star Wars! It was like pure adrenalin and exstacy shot straight into our brains. And all we had for a long few months were beating each other up with flashlights and moms broomsticks while making wooshing sounds. No toys. No chance of seeing anymore of those wonderful stories on screen. The best we could hope for was the inevitable day when that glorious movie finally hit broadcast TV. Maybe once a year. And then finally the dam broke, and we started to get the toys. And oh what glorious things they were. But wait if you carefully clipped the proof of purchases and collected all of the new action figures you could send them in and get a new secret figure. His name was Boba Fett! He was a Bounty Hunter! AND HE WAS FROM THE NEXT MOVIE!!! Yes Boba Fett was the first notice we got that there would be more. That there would be another movie. And he made our 11 year old heads explode. He was cool looking. Helmet, Wrist blasters. Jet Pack. Missiles. All kinds of neat stuff. We knew next to nothing about him. But oh my the stories we came up with that he featured in. We had almost 3 years to imagine. To George Lucas Boba Fett was a throwaway character. Just part of the line up of Bounty Hunters from Empire. But to the young fans he was the first touchpoint of an expending SW universe. he was the central and only thing we knew about anything and everything past the award ceremony on Yavin. By the time the movies hit nothing could diminish him in our minds. And many of us then grew up to write the EU. To make those comics and books and games. And thus we have the fascination with a character that George Lucas has never understood the love for or really had any idea what to do with him.

If it's UCS I think it will be different than what we have seen before. Maybe an above ground battle scene in a non minifig scale? Kinda like the old MPC model? Heck if it is a minifig scale playset it might actually be where they sneak in a new Falcon. Maybe a nicely done hanger scene?

I'm thinking when we do see a new Falcon it will be a Winter 2015-2016 release to put it on top of the new movie, and to avoid major spoilers at least until the hard date.

Lego did in fact announce that HP was ending. Largely because the license was expiring while they still had product on the shelves, because WB tossed an unexpected 8th movie onto the series. So it was widely and publicly known "buy the HP sets by Month's end because on the 1st they get pulled and can't be sold!" They have never said anything official regarding PoTC. As far as we know the license may still exist but be dormant until there is another movie. The same with Toy Story. They like most licenses simply faded from shelves. The only other license that I am aware that they have officially announced an end to was Spongebob, when Megabloks picked it up.

Both Sandcrawler sets are roughly the same size, and both are considered "system scale" while at the same time UCS. Both were high priced D2C Exclusive sets. The newer officially labelled UCS set is simply a modern rework of the older one, that gets the angles and aspect rations closer to the stupid model and adds a bunch more texturing and detailing. I don't think we will ever see one smaller, at least not for a long long time. As some said its not a subject you can really reduce much and still maintain its visual impact and sense of scale. Might that possibly be a way of describing an Acclimator? A major Republic Clone Wars and later Imperial ship that we have never seen in System Scale from Lego?

Christopher Tolkien doesn't like PJ's stuff largely because he and the family have never had a piece of or any control over the projects. They had no input because JRR outright fully sold the movie rights himself 50 years ago for somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 grand. According to one of my Tolkien fanatic friends the sold rights include and are limited to the Hobbit and LOTR books, their appendices, and a certain block of Tolkien's notes regarding those works. So the ability to stretch beyond those is somewhat limited. They can make changes, additions and such in service to the core story and materials, but wholesale creating a new story puts them into likely litigation with the estate. They might be able to get away wit The War in the North, as it is pretty well referenced in the included materials, but it would be a fight. I still suspect that new Line/WB's best course at doing more Tolkien is quite frankly (and coldly) to simply wait a bit for Christopher Tolkien to pass away (he is in his mid ninety's) at which point the next generation controlling the estate twill likely be more willing to play let's make a deal and exploit the remaining written works via the people that turned LotR into a billion dollar juggernaut. And in the end that is likely the only hope we will ever have of more Lego sets or more Middle Earth toys outside of RPG and Wargaming products.

Yep, the event so bad even George Lucas banned it forevermore. I am embarrassed to admit I actually got to see the whole thing live at the time of its one single airing way back in 77. (78?) every now and then some enterprise individual throws an old bootleg ripped from Vhs copy up on YouTube. It has to be seen to be believed. I think they have had multiple colors of Jedi Starfighters out at the same time.

Not so much play features as story. And that would be easy to do with the classic Pharmacies. At least in the US many Pharmacies also incorporated the local "soda counter". They were basically an ice cream shop as well as a drug store. With the classic counter/bar type area manned by the Soda Jerk. Heck Coca Cola was originally a Pharmacy distributed product. There is a lot there for Lego to work with. It isn't just the modern counter handing out pills. Classically they were closer to a small bodega mixed with a soda shop.

Best set? Parisian Restaurant. But Sandcrawler and Benny's ssS are close in behind it. It really has been an extremely good year for great sets. Worst set? Spider Man Helicopter. The set was just wrong in every conceivable way possible. The only high point was a really nice Mary Jane minifig.

I know I am late to the party, but I finally sat down and completed this one (it was my big VIP invite event purchase this year). I gotta say I am far more impressed than I thought I would be. This is one of those sets that is far more intricate and interesting to build than it appears on the box. It was a wonderfully long build, lasting me a week at my relaxing pace of 2 numbered bag sets / night on the big UCS and creator expert sets. I love how they got all the angles just right. Although at a few points the connections seem strange. It's a great fun and quite spectacular build. I do have a few minor nitpicks though; - I hate how visable and jarring the light bley technic lift arms that make up the cockpit roof and the side panel hinges are on the roof. They stand out a little too much and would have been a good place for some part recolors to redish brown. - the yellow tiles for the cockpit windows just don't have enough pop to them. I almost think they would have been better off using printed tile pieces for the windows instead. - it's probably just me, but I never care for those smaller Lego treads. Mentally I always expect the Sandcrawler to have those larger technic style treads. They just have a better, more massive, feel to them. Overall well worth the money. One of the best and most iconic SW sets yet made. And the best hybrid yet of a highly detailed UCS model merged with a feature rich minifig playset.

Nonono! Any proper Kashyyk set must be Of Chewbacca's tree house, and include Minifigures of Art Carney, Bea Arthur and Granpa Lumpy. Plus it would be seasonal!

Great design. I love how perfectly you got all the angles. It looks much better just a bit larger. And am I the only one looking at this MOC and thinking how close, or what a good starting point it is to the Narcissus from the first Alien movie? (The escape ship)

My dream project would be a UCS Sith Harrower from the SWTOR game. Just far to awesome a take on a Star Destroyer type design to ignore.

That does not make a lot of sense. Since Avengers are tied to the next movie the set release will have a firm hard date. Typically not more than 45 or 60 days prior than the movies opening. So probably March. As someone said, they probably mean the new DC Comic sets, which have started to hit reviewers. That's typically a sign that they are less than 30 days from release and closer to 2 weeks.

Based on some of the info that has come out over the years (with tons from Mark Staffords Redit discussions) it is probably something like this. - when tasked to design a set, the set has a specified budget and a specified "change" budget or permitted number of changes. - changes are anything that will require something not in inventory, and/or will require that a part then be added to a warehouse storage slot. So anything that creates a new or currently not in place inventory number and related logistics. So an existing part in a new color is a change. Printing is a change, etc. - stickers however are just considered a part. Since they can just about be created on demand they do not eat up a precious change in set design. So the only costs associated with them is as a part cost. Inventory management of stickers is also much easier. - once you print parts they sit in the warehouse taking up space and inventory logistics until you find a use for them. - further most non minifig printed parts require a manual human interaction during production. Somebody has to load each part into the printing machine. The varied nature of the parts makes automating it difficult. Unlike minifig printing which is fully automated. So when are we likely to see printed parts? - often curved parts get printed as stickers on some can be problematic. Particularly parts with complex curves. - smaller parts such as small tiles. - smaller run sets such as D2C exclusives. It's easier to make and sell out of 100,000 printed parts then it is to do the same with a million. - where the print is a critical or core element of the character or theme, Such as the Cars characters. When will we be more prone to see stickers? - sets that target younger builders starting above Duplo. Unlike AFOLs kids often view stickers as a fun element. - the set or theme has a more limited change budget. - the print is highly unique with limited reuse potential. - the print is license specific IP which even further limits its reuse. I suspect that the designer will often make any decisions regarding printed parts vs stickers late in the process, once they see if they have any excess in the set budget.

I love how alive this moc feels. The sense of not just spacemen, but movement and crisis and emotion is really brilliant. And the big bug is shear perfection. Well done.

Cracked has apparently abandoned actual humor and instead seems to be trying to remold itself into a full blown Social Justice Opression Olympics clone of Gawker. "Hey everybody where can we find a hidden 'ism today?"

I thought GS did quite well at retail? It was a planned 2 wave theme, each wave having the normal one year retail lifespan. I think like most Space themes the human GS centric sets sold much much better than the Alien ones. Something also seen in Alien Conquest. I think the theme probably met or exceeded sales expectations. It was never meant to be a multi year multimedia theme like Ninjago or Chima.