Faefrost

For those that missed it. Mark Stafford has been active on Redit, and wonderfully and politely answered a ton of questions about the set, and the process of designing it. And why some things are the way they are. http://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/29tas5/lego_ideas_exosuit_finally_revealed/ He is Lego Nabii Case in point, why Green Spacemen? Because they needed Minifigs in which the body, legs, arms, hands and helmet where currently all available in inventory in the same color. (Just the plastic, printing doesn't count for this.) at the moment the choices for Classic Space colors were Blue (because of Benny) or Black (Darth Vader, etc) But because of TMNT there was also a green option. Mark was familiar with Peter Reid's green custom fig and really liked it. Hence we got something new. White Red and Yellow were apparently not an option because not all the parts were readily available in the needed colors. Oh and important takeaway from that Redit thread. At present there is only 1 ( One!) production run planned for this set. So when you see it grab it! Do not count on there ever being more.

You have at least parts of some early Technic sets in there. Possibly 8851 or 8862? And the larger dozen blade looks like 8853 maybe?

FX has been running a new GotG TV spot all day during their 4th of July Marvel movie marathon. (Or as FX thinks of it, Saturday! But on a Friday!)

I would suspect that LR would have more to do with it at this point. That is a recently canceled/EOL'd horse theme. Now if the black Nazghul horse shows up on PAB...?

I'm almost wondering did a factory screw up a flame retardant additive in a plastic batch? I can't imagine anyone would have run a set like this through a UV sterilizer, which would be one of the only other ways I can think of something like that being so widespread?

I'm still a little skeptical of how a UCS Slave 1 will work out? The two big fears are The Canopy as stated above. And the Complex curves of the ship. Something that Lego does not do real well. (By complex curves I don't simply mean that it has a lot of curves. Complex curves refers to the fact that the curves it has have 2 or more different arcs or radius in different directions at the same point. Think an American Football or Rugby Ball if you will.) The problem is Lego has a fairly limited selection of Radius parts to work with. Maybe something interesting can be done with the new 1x2 curved slopes? We shall see how it comes out. Also I always thought Slave 1 is roughly 1/2 the size of the Falcon in all dimensions. So roughly 1/4 the overall size of the MF. (At least that is how it always looked to my eye looking at the Fine Molds 1/72 scale models of each.)

I have always suspected that they might spray the sculptures with a protective clear coat to help prevent that. Plus the sculptures are pretty regularly serviced by the model shops to replace damaged and discolored bricks.. But yeah if you look at the outdoors models you can typically find a bit of UV discoloration.

Sad but not surprising or particularly unexpected. 5 Middle Earth waves tied to three current movies sounds about what we expected. We've gotten less than we wanted, but at the same time more than we ever hoped for. And sadly there is probably no chance of a Middle Earth or LotR CMF wave. The subtle earth tones of ME characters mixed with the often gibberish seeming or similar names makes them fairly incomprehensible for the general public. I hate to say it, but Tolkien as a whole is not overly "toyetic". Lego has probably had the best success of any merchant with the properties as a toy product. But at its heart it does skew older and into the more specialized collectors market.

I think both Marvel Disney and WB DC have finally figured out that encouraging a certain synergy and blending between their brands and sub brands is actually far more beneficial. Something that really has not happened since Mego went under decades ago. By keeping the lines linked they gain spillover fans and brand growth. A kid who buys the Batmobile now has a Flash minifig. That kid will in turn watch the new Flash TV show just to find out more. That same kid may grab a Spider-Man or Iron Man set off the same shelf and discover a whole new world. What the key players are discovering (finally after decades) is that it is no longer the days of competing on the drug store spinner rack for nickels and dimes. In fact the comic properties are no longer a zero sum game. When you raise one to prominence you are boosting all. And a gateway drug...errr... I mean toy line, that let's kids flow seemlessly between the competing properties actually boosts all. Having the similar mastheads on the box places them all in a familiar place that encourages exploration between them. Case in point GotG sets. This is a fairly obscure modern property. If left to their own line they would sell like PoP. No one would know what it was. But under the comfortable banner and red boxes of Marvel Super Heroes? It's something new and worth checking out. And it flies off the shelves. And thus boosts the movie, the overall property, and the Lego line. This is not unique to Lego. Disney and Mattel have discovered much the same with the Disney Princesses line. The overall Princess line does orders of magnitude better than the individual movie stuff.

It's a hopeful sign. But don't read too much into it just yet. I'm pretty sure the designers can request different colors of parts for prototyping and presentation scratch models. I seem to remember that besides the big high volume IM machines they also keep a few smaller units used for things like mold testing prototyping and validation. They can easily do small special orders for design with these. But it is a good sign. Once they have the part, someone will play with it. Figure they have a stock of yellow x wing cannies and blue wedges with CS logo in the warehouse now. Just begging to be used.

Would it be too much to hope that the Princess might actually give us a real dress piece that is the same height and connection as normal legs, and not simply a printed slope? Much like they did for Maggie Simpson? Now that would be something that they could get some long term use out of.

Let's wait and see what it looks like. The barrel is not necessarily a bad choice. It has some texture which adds to the greebling feel a bit. I think the hand itself looks mostly to be that gunmetal color those parts come in. I don't see a problem with that. Some color variation to communicate a huge hulking metal machine is good. Doing it all in LBG would make it look to plasticky at that scale. I never expected the thing to be monochrome. I think something more along the lines of a greyscale variation would do the job better and help give the feel of greebling and business without having to do as much actual greebling, if you get what I mean. Let's see what it looks like as a whole before we throw rocks at it. (And if it then looks like the DeLorean we can happily throw rocks.) just do keep in mind that we were never ever going to get Peter's version. As even he admits that is an extremely fragile model that a stiff breeze will cause things to fall off. Lego's final model has to be able to withstand the same level of play as something like Kai's Fire Mech. The project may be AFOL bait but the product still has to work on its most basic level as a toy. (Besides we AFOLs are the worst for playing with stuff.)

Probably the best "other than the score" soundtrack since Iron Man 1. Speaking of which have we heard any of the GotG score, or does anyone know who is doing it?

And yet would be surprisingly easy to make Minifigs for. Given how many of them use subtle variants on the same uniform, or can be done easily with existing pieces.

One of the things I would absolutely love would be sets with some of the modern space gear, like the AC helmets and the CMF armor etc issued in Classic Space colors and markings.

Red and green flip to almost the same shade in grayscale. They used to take advantage of this for all sorts of interesting filtering back in the black and white movie and TV days. And you will still heavily use red and green filters if using traditional black and white film and film printing. The Minifigs shown in the clip are probably red suited. If it helps any it looks like the color assignment in Peter Reid's Lego Space continuity goes something like this White = ground crew and ground vehicles Red = Pilots and flight crew Blue = hostile Environment Engineers (ie terraforming, mining, planetary exploration) Yellow = scientists Black = special forces In the pictures of the Exo Suit in the book, while it is piloted by a White Suited ground tech, there are several Red Suited Flight crew around it.

That is a lot of cracking? More than I have ever seen across several hundred thousand pieces? Is there anything else going on there? I'm guessing those Legends Beasts all come out of the same factory.

Does anyone else see the absurdity of Greenpeace demanding that the WORLDS LARGEST PLASTICS COMPANY sever its ties to the petroleum industry? I mean we do all realize that that is what Lego is right? In spite of their proffesed "green" outlook and solar panels on their warehouses etc. They are one of if not the biggest plastics companies in the world. So petroleum is going to factor into it somewhere.

Particularly telling that his YouTube video specifically flags for Lego Ideas at the end. It looks like we will be getting the announcement or reveal any day now. I'm almost disappointed. After seeing that video I was kind of wishing we were getting a sequel to his Lego Space book.

More importantly the original classic space also dovetailed into real world event. Yeah Apollo had wound down save for the brief but spectacular Apollo Soyuz flight. But the heyday of CS also corresponded to the first Shuttle flights and the huge interest they garnered. Real space + rise of SciFi = Classic Space. Today much of the awe has gone out of space flight. Even SciFi is not so much about Space Flight as Space Flight is merely a background trope to get to things like giant robots punching each other.

The sad thing with groups like this is actual facts rarely if ever matter. They will just declare victory and move on to the next victim.

To be fair, neither this project nor the CuuSoo voters who drove it were ever about "the set" either. And therein lies the problem with the whole thing. Or at least the point of debate. Yes it's a nice little set in its own regard, and the Dino skeleton is cute. But would this be getting anywhere near production if it was not "social justice in toy form"? And can nobody see where this quickly becomes a dangerous path for Lego to go down? (Note today's stories regarding Greenpeace going after Lego for its decades old partnership with Shell.)

I'm probably in the minority. I actually love some of these type ships. The clunky old freighters and some of the more distinct oddballs from the EU and not simply the classic OT ships. Stuff that looks great parked next to the MF. I love the Sith Fury and the Jedi Defender (OK the Republic Striker is a resounding MEH!) I wish they would have done more along these lines. Stuff like Dash Rendars Outrider and the D5 Mantis from SWTOR. Or the SWTOR Smuggler ship.

My favorite is the Sith Infiltrator one, Just because it has both the horned head piece and the black cowl.

One other bit of interesting casting news. Apparently Andy Serkis has been consulting on Avengers 2 for mocap. Basically coaching Mark Ruffalo and such. But he also mentioned that he has a role in the film. So let the speculation begin!