Faefrost

I think McFarlane might be in for another shock. he has said he spoke with the "construction toy buyers" for the stores, and they all say that construction toys, brick toys is where the growth is. Where they are all looking. And that Halo and CoD proved that Adult themes work. OK I'll give him Halo (which falls more under young adult action theme), But by all accounts the CoD sets have been barely moving. All the reviews for them are good. The action figure people love their new minifigs. But the sets just sit there? It seems to be the same with much of the other brands. There is a reason why Megabloks and K'Nex now have exclusive deals with TRU. It's Walmart and Target aren't buying them anymore. or at least not much of their product. Going into that environment McFarlane is going to get slaughtered. His three products will be relegated to a dark shelf way in the back at TRU and then clearanced out. The only other stores even mildly interested will be Comic Shops (really not big McFarlane fans these days) and Barnes and Noble. So yeah these might be worth a forensic examination when the price dips down to $10 shortly after they release.

Oh I don't disagree. But we will never know the full reasons behind some of the choices. And it isn't unique to this line. Heck given the length and breadth of the Star Wars line it is often surprising some of the things either missing from over there, or that have not been done beyond a very brief near impossible to get exclusive set. Like Bespin. It's obvious from some of the development photos that they at a minimum had sketch models for Lothlorien and the Balrog encounter. Maybe not pleased with the results? Maybe cut for shelf space or tested poorly? Maybe they didn't want to go full Bionacle / Hero Factory for a LotR set? As for characters? Missing Eowyn is the big one. Witch King in helmet comes in second. (The lack of that set may have simply been a restricted new parts budget. But then why do the Mouth over the WK?) Honestly I never understand the deep love for Faramir around here? Yes he is a named character. But pretty much all of his actual lines and development are, like the Pirate Ship all in the extended edition. And what we see of him marks him as a bit of a twit to be honest. OK it would be cool to have a Ranger Torso. But really we did not see much more of him than Haldir. Heck the unknown elf lovingly dubbed Figwit by the fans has and does more across the 6 released movies. So as you see they will never be able to please everyone. As it stands we got the Fellowship, Gollum, Elrond, Saruman, and an assortment of Orcs. Everything past that is pure gravy. I've said it before, the Pirate Ship is a not particularly desired LotR set... but it is an utterly fantastic Lego set. One of the better lower priced ships they have done in years. And one that will command a high aftermarket price down the road, alongside Helms Deep.

It might be out today? I was in the Lego store and I saw them stocking a ton of new Technic. I didn't notice if they had that big Volvo Earthmover.

Luke's ship had the grey markings in Empire. One of the other Snowspeeders was the orange (Wedge I believe?). So they are both accurate. We tend to remember the orange one best because we got the best beauty shots of it as Wedge was searching for Han and Luke after the Wampa.

I love it. It has a great deal of energy and motion. It feels like it lept off a comic page.

If this rumor is true then chances are as I asked above that a lot of it has to do with how good of a reception the Bionacle stuff has had on Netflix. It's a nostalgic property that falls into that same sort of area as Transformers. I would not be surprised to see a new line tied into a new Cartoon Network show. Why not someone has revived and repackaged pretty much every other 90's cartoon and toy property. Besides Michael Bay needs a new project after TMNT!

Oh dear. At first I thought you might be being overly picky as a professional. Than I looked at all of the pictures. Ugh! The figures heads can fit through the holes of the chain link fence. That's how far off the scale is. And the tower door looks to be two stories tall compared to the figs. I can forgive the shoddy painting and obvious brush marks on prototypes to show the press. But those molds aren't going to change. Those are just horribly off. Someone above was talking about the uncanny valley, and how often little things will break the illusion more than big? Getting the scales wrong is a sure fire way to kill the illusion.

The irony of Todd McFarlane arguing that stuff built with Lego is not realistic enough for his tastes? Todd McFarlane!?! The guy that gave us Venom and Spawn? Who's primary contribution to comics was scribble vaguely tentacle like sketchy everything? With an overal feeling that the artist just knocked an ink bottle over on his drawing and left it that way? And people seriously lacking in noses and proper musculature? That Todd McFarlane? Is it April 1 already? I don't know if what we are seeing are prototypes or actual production sets. But I can tell from looking at them that what the stuff in those pictures is made of is dog poop quality plastic. These are styrene kits, not ABS. They are meant to be built once. You can tell from how translucent the tone of the plastic is, and how the parts trees look in the one picture. Lousy quality styrene hidden with some color washes. These are "Snap Tite Kits" not building or construction sets.

Was looking at the reviews of the China Ice Mammoth. Why oh why does Mark Stafford avoid doing licensed themes? :_( It looks like it might have some potential for MOC'ing up an Oliphant. Certainly a better starting point then the AT-AT.

Am I alone in thinking a Zur En Arrh Batman seems almost tailor made as a potential comic con exclusive? It's something that really only the real comic fans would know who or what it is? And let's be honest with ourselves. In order to know that character you probably are also someone who knows who Grant Morrison is. Not what I would think of as the most common shopper in the Lego aisle at Target.

In some ways that is mildly a relief. Given the deep, confusing and overly detailed lore of Bionacle I was fearful that they had already brought in the Bionagynecologists?

You all are bickering about the representation of girl robot Bionacle people vs boy robot Bionacle people? CONGRTULATIONS! This thread is more mind numbingly surreal than the debate over "why the Chima Eagle chick has a belly button and boobs? " Since I am something of a Bionacle neophyte, it having occurred deep within my dark ages, and like most Bionacle neophytes I find its lore at this point more than a tad confusing, could someone please explain how exactly one tells a boy Bionacle from a girl one? (Anyone answering "boobs and a belly button" will be beaten senseless... Or in this case sense full... Even if it happens to be true.)

It's the opposite. The Polybags are almost never found in the Lego stores. You find them as exclusives at the large third party merchants. In the US it's typically Walmart, Target and TRU. The only ones you find in the Lego stores are typically extras after a giveaway month.

Wow! That means pretty much 3 "UCS" or high end "Creator Expert" sets hitting at near the same time. (Slave 1, Tumbler and Mini Cooper). Hopefully they don't canibalize each other in sales. I can't remember how normal that sort of release is? Do they typically do the D2C sets all in a lump?

I use the PoP Hassasim figs for Haradrim.

Unlikely I would think. I suspect the decision regarding how many LotR waves was made 2 years ago when PJ split the Hobbit from 2 to 3. They probably opted to change a planned 3rd LotR wave to a 3rd Hobbit one. This would make the most sense. In fact from a business sense swapping the 3rd LotR wave for a 3rd Hobbit instead would be a no brainer. - generally unless you hit some sort of crazy StarWarsesque synergy, generally a third wave of a line would be the point of trending down. Unless a new movie is releasing. - the level of boost Lego would get from tying directly to a third in theaters Hobbit movie cannot be downplayed. Watch what will happen to the GotG sets come the first week in August. Yes we AFOL Tolkien fans are passionate. But ultimately these are kids toys. And the kids are the major purchasers. They buy what they see on screen they will be buying the big Dragon. - by all appearances the first Hobbit wave did much much better than the first LotR wave. Bag End in particular was a Christmas season must have. Whereas LotR really had no show stopping top selling set, save perhaps the Army builder. - like most movie licenses the license itself was probably somewhat short. Maybe 5 years max. Middle Earth is sadly not a stand alone multimedia merchandising juggernaut like SW or Super Heroes. - it is extremely rare for ANY non Evergreen theme to go past or even receive three waves. Tolkien seems to have been planned for 5. All they did was swap focus on the last. The decision was probably made far enough back that no new tooling was produced. Probably just some sculpted and cast prototypes. Which they make and abandon all the time. Orthanc was probably designed after the decision, in part to use the new Eagle mold. And to appease the hardcore fan base with a huge surprise. (Also remember Hobbit probably has a much much higher "new mold budget" because it is tied to current movies. They could get far more financing because of that. That could be why the license is two themes.) This of course assumes that they ever planned or considered a third wave for LotR. LotR may have just been filler until the full range of Hobbit subjects were available. For all of our cries of things missing, they did cover the three movies rather broadly. And in ways that make sense from a Lego design perspective. We have 5 Fellowship sets, 3 Two Towers sets, 3 RotK sets, and Orthanc and Orc Forge which kind of straddle movies. And we have a set from what can be viewed as the climax (black gate. I never said it was a good set.) In terms of Lego design it makes perfect sense. First wave we got the big good guy castle. Second wave we got a smaller bad guy castle. A big vehicle and it finished off with a spectacular bad guy castle. This is not an unusual pattern for Lego.

That one sentence has pretty much summed up WB's movie divisions approach to DC for at least the past 20 years.

I think we may be mentally placing Galaxy Squad too far along the timeline. I kind of thought of it as more a reworking of the planned Alien Conquest 2.0, where the ADU takes the fight to the Aliens. So a much more near future scenario following shortly after AC. In which case Ultra Agents could easily be a slightly further on near future story with an older Solomon Blaze. (heck we never do see his hair color in GS).

Neat and well thought out. Is anyone else having Bubblegum Crisis flashbacks?

The polybags are mainly promo items for the big box stores. So it will depend on how well the previous ones did with them, and whether they want more. I also suspect that if we do see any it will be a way of helping to deplete stock of existing Hobbit minifigs. (ie the Hobbit Gandalf polybag which basically ran down the LotR Gandalf figs). So what Hobbit related minifigs do you think they have the biggest untapped barrels of?

I'm wondering about how close their names are, considering the two characters were basically created by the same people? It doesn't seem like they would leave that possibility of character confusion there unless they in some way intended to? Possibly related to Satine in some way? Of note, she looks to be about the right age to have been born around the beginning of the Clone Wars. Probably about 16 at the time of Rebels. Her helmet is not the standard Mando hat and instead is the same custom owl eyed helmet design as is sported by Bo Katan, Satine's sister. Younger sister? Niece? Secret love child of Obi Wan and Satine? Or just Filoni reusing names he likes and already finished 3d models? I think the Rebels sets will surprise us. TCW sets did quite well over the years. The Ghost especially seems to be eye catching. Which makes it stand out a bit in a wave full of 2nd 3rd and 4th versions of things. (5th for the Snowspeeder). I think the big sets of interest will be #1 (by a huge margin) Mos Eisley, and after that it may start veering in unexpected directions. Looking at the sets on the shelf, surprisingly the ISD does not draw the eye. The box art is just a big grey slab. Nothing about it screams "take me home!". The AT-AT isn't bad. But the new never seen before Jedi Scout Ship and the Ghost really draw the eye. They are good looking ships. Very distinct.

Bionacle returning? Interesting. I'm going to hazard a guess that the old shows are doing spectacular on Netflix?

Congrats! And well done spotting what none of us saw coming. That article is a fascinating read. Lots of neat info on how involved the Neo Classic Space guys were with this. Plus very interesting to hear about the age, condition and subsequent replacement of the old CS robot arms mold. I think TLG definitely got their monies worth out of that particular set of tooling. That humble space part has been used everywhere.

It's just the artist / art style. BH6 is by the same people who made Tangled and Frozen, so the art, especially the less stylized human characters tend to be similar. No matter how much they try and fight it, some things just bleed through.

It isn't so much a desire to not have conflict or violence. Lego has never had an issue with historical or fantasy depictions. It has always only been specifically modern (20th - 21st century ) warfare. Case in point you mention Castle and Pirates from the 80's and 90's. Pirates was actually a last minute decision. The actual theme as planned out was Europa. A Napoleanic theme. Soldiers and Cannon, etc. in fact they were so far along that a number of new parts were created for it. But at the last minute in play testing the kids so preferred the Pirate stuff to the soldiers that the theme was changed. And thus Pirates. War but for the playful whims of the children. We tend to over analyze this from both ends. Some cannot understand Lego prohibition to modern warfare. Warfare that those playing with their toys may experience. Others have this overly romanticized and idyllic picture of the peaceful Lego of the past. Lego is not pacifist in that they seek to minimize conflict. In fact they have said many many times that they recognize that conflict play is both integral and critical to how boys play. They just don't want it to be conflict that can show up in their neighborhood tomorrow.