Faefrost

Not crazy excited about a Tumbler, but it could be interesting. If $199 is the correct price then I really really hope that it is fully Power Functions equipped. Lights, motor and steering. That is the only way I can see a UCS car hitting that price point. Otherwise it is just Orthanc tipped sideways. A mound of black plastic. How big could you make a Tumbler before it gets absurd? Lego will often do multiple reveals at SDCC. Typically each day goes to a genre or licensed theme. In the past they have shown Super Heroes one day, LotR or Hobbit another and Star Wars another. But they often only do one big exclusive set reveal at the show. It all depends on what they have in the pipeline and what has already been seen. I would not expect a SW reveal this time as the timing seems off. They only thing they would have to show would be the new rumored UCS ship. Probably Slave I. But they won't show that on top of the Tumbler. We will probably see one of the Hobbit Bo5A sets. They like showing Middle Earth sets at SDCC.

great MOC. Excellent design.I love that it seems well scaled to the minifigs, and still has the three versions. With that said there are a couple of strong negatives working against it as an Ideas project. 1. The color scheme. It looks spectacular on a MOC, but it really isn't one that can be well duplicated solely by bricks or easily using stickers. Not the biggest hurdle, but one to bear in mind. Ideas is proposing projects for retail sets using current capabilities. Lego has never demonstrated an ability to do that level of printing or brick coloring. Should the set hit review that would count heavily against it I am sure. 2. The above is probably a moot point. Yes I know CuuSoo / Ideas is all about dreams etc. But once again it really is about project or product proposals. There is a somewhat vague clause in the guidelines that directly applies. It goes something like this "While we do accept proposals using existing Licenses, please understand that these do face additional challenges at review". Your MOC is the perfect example of what this little clause is talking about. It isn't just a pre-existing license. It is a currently active specific subject within that pre-existing license. Heck it's one that is still currently on store shelves. Lego has produced 2 versions of the Tumbler within the past few years, with a rumored third due out this summer. what this basically means is the Tumbler as a subject is pretty much the property of the internal Super Heroes or Batman Licensing group and is in all likelihood not available for Ideas to use. It is pre-existing art between the licensor and Lego. They already rejected one Tumbler project for these reasons. A safe way to gauge whether or not something would run into a conflict with the already existing license ask "has Lego produced the subject in a set, especially a minifig scale set within the past 10 years?" If the answer is yes than it will probably auto fail at review. Unless your project is something radically outside the box and not simply "subject X but better than you have done it before" than it is pretty much a non negotiable point. 3. That assumes that it will get anywhere near 10k. CuuSoo / Ideas is currently suffering from a bit of Tumbler fatigue. There are sooo many Tumblers, that it is probably the single greatest subject that many many community members simply dismiss out of hand as something they will no longer vote for. The Tumbler makes for a nice MOC. It works well in Lego, but there are literally hundreds of them up there. Maybe once a few years have passed, but right now? It would not be my first choice to build a project around.

Printing budgets are most likely an entirely different sort of beast than new parts. Obviously designing new art is fairly low cost. At least compared to new physical parts. Where the issue of things like Leg or Back printing budget comes into play has more to do with production capabilities and capacity. Which factory do they have capacity at to make the parts? What are that factories capabilities? Do they have the newer printers that can do double sided with one pass? Or do they have the older that require 2 passes through the production line? Does this factory have capability for leg or arm printing? Etc. remember production time is money. Each step has a cost to the set.

Nice project. I practically grew up in those buildings. My father and my Aunt and Uncle worked in them for over 20 years. Thankfully they all retired in '99. Dad's desk was on the 81 floor of the South Tower overlooking the river. The precise impact point of the second plane. He would have been just sitting down to work. My Aunt and Uncle would have been up on the 84th floor. One of my Scoutmasters was the Chief Engineer of the North Tower for the Port Authority for many many years. My troop used to camp out on the Observation deck at least once a year. It still haunts them. They all lost people they knew. My Dad is an Engineer and worked for a large civil engineering firm that was headquartered in that structure for decades. (They build Nuclear Power Plants among other things). Many of his friends were involved in the postmortem. Between what I have heard from them, and my own knowledge from many years as a Firefighter and Officer, pretty much every single conspiracy theory you have ever heard about those buildings is pure BS. Except one. The one truth? Yes there were plans on how to bring down the buildings. The instructions on where to plant the explosives were printed on the buildings original blueprints. I have seen them with my own eyes (remember Scoutmaster chief building Engineer.) this is not a surprise. Every single building over 5 stories tall in NYC must have demolition plans baked into the building plans, by law. They do not let you build anything you can't take down. Other than being a shocking truth, these demolition plans played no part that day. Other than that every other secret theory is wrong. The buildings fell because of how they were designed. They were not built like skyscrapers. The firefighters around here probably are well familiar with Steel Truss Roof Construction. Basically what they use for big box stores like Walmart or Target. Well the WTC was 110 Walmarts stacked in top of each other x2. Steel Truss Construction fails easily under heavy fire load, and when it fails it rolls inward to the center. The steel beams heat up, twist, and the center fails. Which is what happened. Anyway enough off topic rambling. Wonderful MOC. One thing the pictures never seem to properly communicate. The pillars, the outer vertical stripes were actually a fairly light color.

Technically it's every bodies first "Ideas" set ;) But we know what you mean.

Yes me can tell that. Once a license ends they have to pull the product from the shelves. But we don't know what the actual license period is. As a result we can't guess if there is enough time remaining for Lego to consider it worthwhile to release another wave of sets. (Figure a company will not put retail sets on shelves with anything less than a year remaining on the license. Otherwise they are wasting production resources on an artificially short shelf life product.

I just got mine. There was a line at the Atlanta Sugarloaf Lego store waiting for it to open, just to get these. They seemed to be flying off the shelves. Looking at it And flipping through the instructions I am overwhelmed. This isn't just a great nerd set or pop culture set. There are so many fascinating little builds in this. So many neat techniques. That this is easily one of the single best vehicles Lego has ever produced. The incredible Minifigs are just icing on the cake. I said before how impressive Brent Walker's initial design was. Well Marco's Besso's went above and beyond the call of duty. Somebody please give this man a raise for this set alone. If you like wheels on your Lego, this will easily be the pride of your collection.

That looks great. Although this is obviously one of them high fulutin wealthy rednecks. Cause all his trucks fenders are the same color. And he has mufflers on his truck. Now dang it all why would ya go an muffle a perfectly good truck? Who wouldn't want to hear that. At least they look big and loud. Wonderful little MOC.

Normally I am not a fan of translating the bright city colors to Modulars... But damn! That works and works really well. It looks perfectly like a modern style government building. The stairs are great. The tiling on the floors is fantastic.

OK this one is technically not a MOC. But it is so nerdgasmicly cool that I had to share it. I rearranged the Modular City Shelf in my office to make room for Yep, the Winchester. Yatkuu, the CuuSoo projects creator was kind enough to make the instructions available for download after the Lego Review team opted not to pass it in review. http://www.thebrickf...b-instructions/ http://brickfanatics...k/instructions/ With it in place I had to rearrange my city a bit. Unfortunately its rather off 32x40 base size means it is a corner that can only go in one orientation on a shelf. So City Center it is. Yatkuu's design is quite good. The instructions were great and easy to follow. I had to make a few minor modifications. Mainly reducing the hard to get 1x12's to double the number of 1x6's. If you choose to try building one I do advise pay careful attention to seams and alter as you go. The instructions are obviously from Yatkuu's LDD doodlings, and have a few weak points that I am sure he corrected on his build. The floors are a bit weak and I added some 2x6 and 2x10 reinforcement. The only other change I made was to shorten the Pub sign pole and run a bar up it for strength. It is a great fun build with lots of detailing. Especially in the bar area. First Floor 2nd Floor I blends into the other modulars fairly well. Although I need to do sme more to get it further from the GE to allow greater color contrast. The Minifig is a BrickArms custom Sean with cricket bat. Probably the weakest point of the build is the red phone booth. It looks great but will crumple like a cheap beer tin at the slightest touch. The roof is a little plain, but I think thats true on the original building as well vs And the overall Sean's wondering where the Zombie are? It turns out the "Gray Mafia" are over at the Town Hall protesting marriage inequality. The whole "Till Death Do You Part" nonsense is pure discrimination against the un breathing! After all love knows no bounds... save perhaps those of taste, smell, and parts falling off. Anyway I hope you enjoyed getting a look at a well known but rarely seen build. I had a blast building it. So next up? Either finally finish one of the MOC designs I've been working on, or get distracted and take a set of instructions from our fellow EB townie Kristel out for a spin. http://modularsbykri...m/instructions/

Remind me, because I have no idea where I am remembering this from, but wasn't there some mention somewhere that Rafagast was involved with the defense of Erebor and the War in the North during the time of the LotR? Or was that just from some video game? After awhile the cannon book stuff and the later bolted on stuff starts to run together in the mind.

Honestly? I grew up reading Avengers starting in the early to mid 70's. I know and love them all to varying degrees (and sorry X-Men fans, in my mind Beast is always far far better as an Avenger.) but with that said, prior to the stream of weird and dumb 90's D listers that cycled through, Pym was probably my least favorite character. Granted much of this stems from the assorted horrible "wife beater" and "paranoid schizophrenic trying to kill everybody" nonsense that was written around him. But still there was much to dislike about the character. He was by far the worst case of "comic book super scientist dues ex machina" in the Marvel universe. When he wasn't beating his wife or having a psychotic breakdown he was busy solving any and every problem with science! "What do you mean what kind of science? It's SCIENCE! Huh? You mean an Engineer isn't a physicist isn't a biologist isn't a Medical Doctor isn't a pharmacologist isn't a geneticist isn't a robotic it's isn't a geologist isn't a master of inter dimensional travel and alternate realities and non existent physics? BUT SCIENCE! " this Schlick mostly works with Reed Richards. Tony Stark is an Engineer. But Pym, it just always seems stupid. So yeah I actually prefer Scott Lang Ant Man. His story and character are cleaner, more relatable and honestly make sense. (Now don't get me started on O'Grady...) As far as looking forward to an Ant Man movie. I'm old enough and familiar enough by now to recognize that because the mediums are so different, sometimes B, C and D list comic characters make for spectacular movies. Ant Man is one of those properties. If done properly it can be a fun romp through 50's and 60's style SciFi movies. The whole size change schtick is kind of meh in comics, but is made for a moving visual medium. Filmakers have been playing with it since the first silent Guliver's Travels. So yeah I have been looking forward to this one.

Lego or someone in figure design is doing a clever wink and nod call out to Katniss, the heroine of the Hunger Games novels and movies. The bow is pretty indicative that that was what they were going for. Except instead of tracking and hunting other children, the Lego one is hunting dinosaurs. So Hunger Games meets Jurrasic Park. (Now that I type it I realize that I would probably pay to see that.) The colors threw me at first. But while not M tron, they are actually pretty close to the color scheme of Rock Raiders, who would be the Lego Universes Space Miners.

If you are not willing to play in somebody else's sandbox why on earth would you jump on to direct a Marvel movie. It's like some great novelist wanting to write X-Men or Batman. I don't care how good a writer you are, or how much you love the character. If you are not grasping that you are going under the producers tight editorial control, you have made a bad career decision. Some directors work well in this environment, some do not. This is the exact opposite of the modern prima dona director. It is work for hire. But it can be career making work for hire. It's actually how movies used to be made. I also fail to understand all of the nerd outrage over Wrights departure. For the most part I like his work. I love Sean of the Dead. (Heck this is what is sitting on my desk under construction as I type this) I like Hot Fuzz a great deal. Scott Pilgrim and The Worlds End are more or less watchable... But none of his films scream at me that he would be perfect for one of my beloved big budget comic movies. I would like to see what he might come up with, within certain bounds, but I can understand how someone used to making more self created auteur pieces might have a problem with it. Heck Scott Pilgrim suffered a bit from this sort of thing. Part of why the ending is so muddled. So I am not going to shake my angry little nerd fist in the air in outrage over this. Wright took his ball and went home. Marvel has mostly delighted me for 40 years. Largely because of their "Bullpen" approach to comics, which in turn is what facilitated their huge deep and occasionally very silly universe. I am equally delighted that they have started using this same approach to making their movies. If some directors do not fit well with this approach, so be it.

The Icebreaker and Arctic Cargo Plane are most likely store exclusives. So either TRU, Walmart or Target. They sometimes release later than the regular wave, and they will not hit Lego stores or S@H until the exclusive store has them.

I like that seem a little more generic and less specific use than the last few series. It let's them be more easily used in MOCs and scenes and blended with existing themes. I know the straight up minifig collectors tend to prefer more detailed and specific characters. But I love seem decent distinct types that mix in with my themes. I seem to be in the minority, but I love the space miner. He has a weird retro SciFi feel, yet seems well suited for army building. His colors kind of remind me of the old Rock Raiders theme. And his gear makes me think of some sort of commercial space gear from Dr. Who. The Wizard looks to be one of the high points of the series. I am utterly astonished that they seem to have snuck in a Hunger Games type fig, and impressed at how they did it while managing to avoid the whole messy "child killing" issue. The Swashbuckler looks great and will be a welcome addition in many Pirate or Historical MOCs. The Battle Goddess will be the other great army builder.

Http://www.bricklink.com It is a large buyer and seller matching site for Lego. You can look specifically for the precise figures you want. It has a lot less shady stuff like "Benny" figs than E-bay.

Neat design. It seems like a practical evolution of the Tumbler, and one that makes more sense than its normal form. The figures are great. With that said... Good luch on Ideas, you will probably need it. Much of the CuuSoo/Ideas/Lego community seems to be suffering from "Tumbler" fatigue.

Bleah! I still hold out hope for a UCS Barris Batmobile some day. Granted a Tumbler probably works well in Lego, but I am just sick to death of them.

We've talked about molds and tooling a lot. Mostly in the CuuSoo thread and more recently in the Winter Village thread. Here are the basics. - Lego molds and parts are not actually simplistic designs. They are in fact manufactured to a rather scary degree of high precision. Far more so than most plastic toys. Remember each and every Lego part must connect and disconnect with thousands of other parts in a way that is essentially the same every time. Lack of this precision is what makes non Lego clone brands so awful. Because of this precision and the materials used Molds will start around $80,000 us for something minor like a CMF accessory that is only held, up to nearly half a million $ usd for regular construction elements. - the fact that Lego is a multi billion dollar toy company is less relevant. They don't pay for molds out of cash reserves and then hope to use them. Molds are manufacturing capital items. They get financed. And a business case must be built for each mold or each line or theme. What are the expected returns on the theme. How many sets in how many release cycles can they guarantee that they will use or spread out the part. How much will the part add to the cost of the set, and what does that do to the perceived value? Basically each mold carries a mortgage. The theme or themes it is intended for need to be able to swing that mortgage. A theme will have a limited financing budget that they can use for new parts so designers will use it as they feel best. And not all theme budgets are the same. Things like licenses will get better financing from the bank. Current movie tie ins more so. It does not matter how well Ninjago is selling. New molds for the Hobbit are based off data and expectations for the hobbit. (Excepting new general use construction elements that get spread everywhere and have a longer period of return. Also note there is a difference between new elements made for a theme, and new general elements that simply make their first appearance in a theme.) The general production restraints seem to be roughly, the theme must be able to fully amortize the cost of the mold or tooling in about 18-24 months, and in most cases barring certain large exceptions such as floating boat hulls, the special parts cannot raise the retail price of the set more than around 5% to do this. Note these are all guesses based on observation. But they are probably not too far off.

That's just an automated response, we have seen it many times before. It would be the same if you had asked about new Friends sets or new Monster Fighters.

The part count is one of the things I always prefer with the North American boxes. I like knowing that right up front. (I also like having the set name on the front, but fully understand the language issues in Europe.)

In the US the term "Cola" has all but vanished from the spoken language. It mostly only exists on the labels of products. The conversation will go "Coke please" "We have Pepsi is that OK" "Sure".

If it helps to explain the color discrepancy, the actual building that Inspired Jamie on this one was a "French styled" French Restaurant located in New England where he grew up. Which probably goes a long way to explain the colors. A French style building painted in a more traditional colonial New England color scheme. Everyone is welcome to their views on what works for them and what doesn't. Personally I always find Green Grocer to be the most out of place among them to my eye. It is a wonderful building, but it just feels slightly out of scale with the others. As a long time scale modeler I just can't see past that. I know it's just me. As far as the buildings blending. Let's not forget they are pulling inspiration from all over the world. As someone else pointed out the only place you will ever see a street of buildings like this is a Disney park. I believe the designers are all currently employed in Denmark. But in recent years TLG has been going out of their way to recruit them internationally. While many are from Denmark they have a number from North America, assorted European countries, Korea etc. when designer positions open up it is a fierce international competition for the job. That is one of the big mysteries. It used to be one a year, typically in April. But there have been some recent hints that the schedule between them might have shortened to around 8 or 10 months. If it has become a faster release schedule we might see one around Aug - October. Of course this might be pure wishful thinking, and the 8 months between PC and PR might have just been a scheduling fluke.

Actually it was supposed to read "Hobo Dr. Who". Sylvester McCoy was best known for playing the seventh Doctor. And these days he's Radagast the Bro...errr...the "slightly greenish grey bird pooped"