Faefrost

There are rumors flying around that the Exclusive might be a UCS Batman Tumbler. It would kind of make sense. NYCC is at the end of the month. That would be a likely place for Lego to announce such a beast, and June is typically a Super Hero month.

Iconic ships come first for me. Preferably something with a bit of weight and shelf presence. Stuff like the MF, ISD, etc. I vastly prefer OT, but there are some PT and TCW subjects that I like. I prefer ships over playsets, with a few exceptions. Iconic buildings such as Jabba's Palace or the Mos Eisley Cantina are fine. Where possible I like the grungier ships and the stuff from the greyer edges of things. Smugglers, Bounty Hunters etc. I'm kind of looking forward to the Phantom for this reason. I will by sets based in part on figures, up to a certain price point. Maybe $30 USD depending on how many figs. Past that I will just Bricklink the wanted figs. I loathe sets with Battle Droids. I consider them neither minifig nor acceptable Lego build, and will avoid sets with them wherever possible.

My only complaint with Kreons is they don't always seem to seat or clutch onto studs as well as I would like. Particularly the back of the legs seem finicky for sitting. Plastic quality and printing are good. Design aesthetics can be hit or miss.

Do you get a discout price on the PAB cups? The system may calculate add "full MSRP price worth of points then subtract points related to discount"? The -200 one looks like it was used to reduce that large purchase.

The movie Turtles fig look awesome! From the neck down. But dear lord those faces. OMG! I think we have new candidates for ugliest licensed Minifigs? Sadly it doesn't look like the Ninjago bandanas will fit. That would have been a good option from hiding those hellish noses so they don't scare the children.

If I can prove to the IRS that I am a Priest of Legoism does that mean I can declare my Lego sets on my taxes? BRILLIANT!

A UCS Tumbler would line up well for a NYCC reveal later this month. And June is typically a Super Hero themed month for Lego, following Mays SW focus. So it could very well be. Are there any major Lego specific events or Brickfairs between now and May 15? Lego marketing tends to like to save the Superhero and genre big stuff for the Comic Cons, something like a Mini Cooper would be revealed at a Lego event. The June 1 public date makes me lean more towards a Tumbler. Of course this all may be fake out. The May 15 VIP access may be the GB Ecto 1, with a known June 1 street date. Nothing says its a big set or even an unannounced set. Just a new exclusive set.

The article was published on April 1, so it may just be someone having fun. Of course you never know. Although I am deeply disturbed by this Hello Kitty porn connection! Who will protect the children!

release dates will vary, but the they are split into Winter release waves and summer release waves, and merchants will see the catalogs ahead of time. Baring certain exclusives such as store exclusives and D2C sets we have a pretty good idea of what both 2014 release periods will entail. At this point the earliest we could possibly hope for a retail LotR wave would be Winter 2015. Although technically that would be real close to the last Hobbit wave. we can't rule out the possibility that Orthanc was the themes finale.

Best set ever? Based on shear scale, playability, wow factor and overall general appeal. The one that turns the volume up to 11 in every possible way? 10188 the Death Star. No other set captures quite so much of everything. 10288 Haunted House would be my runner up. Great dollhouse like play features with that delightful mix of fun macabre. Once again hits every right note across an incredibly broad range of fan types.

Weirdly it might not be "doubly licensed" as Warner Bothers is a license holder for both. It would just be some sort of extension of one or the other existing licenses. And yes you certainly could create a project under CuuSoo. It would just bump into the same sort of pre existing license conflict that the Sandcrawler and the Tumbler projects hit at review. If anything the problem is substantially worse with TLM. A safe bet is that Lego will reject CuuSoo projects that involve licensed IP subjects that they have made before. At least in minifig or system scale. It doesn't matter if the new CuuSoo project is a new, different or better design, the prior art under the license exists to the licensed subject, and not the specifics of the set design itself. And the issue is pretty much everything that appears on screen in TLM probably qualifies as that prior design or prior art. It' goes well beyond GlenBrickers thoughts that almost anything from an existing Lego License will run afoul of inevitable discovery already covered under the contracts. With TLM because the entire movie is more or less validated Lego designs, outright owned by Lego as one of the primary IP holders, it isn't inevitable discovery, it's already prior art from the moment we first laid eyes on it.

Ghostbusters was kind of a mostly random coincidence. Yeah the two projects fed off each other as they got popular. But the side by side race was mainly just a purely random fluke. Under normal natural conditions it will be extremely rare to see that repeated. Not even the steady progression of Zelda projects have run that closely. Whereas Dr. who was CuuSoo shouting BTW we now except Dr. who submissions, 1234GO!!!! CuuSoo itself defined the point of submission and guaranteed multiple projects simply by making the announcement. They essentially and wholly unintentionally created a Dr. Who contest.

For those that missed or didn't get the stinger for next weeks AoS episode. Here it is

I think the Trans Clear Insectoids helmet also showed up in Agents. Didn't Slimeface wear one?

After the Captain America clip there was a teaser for next week. Basically "Trust No One! Everything has changed!" I think I saw a bit with the Black Shield Scientist lady from the Science Academy (or whatever it was called) under attack and warning Coulsons team. I think I have figured out both who the Clairvoyant is and who May has been reporting to. But if I am correct in both it will be mildly annoying as it pulls way more from the movies than from episodes. About the only thing in the episode that felt a little cheesy or "low budget" was the prosthetic work on Deathlok. I swear he had more neon and pointless lighting on him than a 92 Honda in the Hood. Although I had a small nerdgasm when Skye looked at him through the SHIELD magic technoxrayvision and we saw underneath his skin... DEATHLOK! The real classic Deathlok. Oh and did anybody else catch the reference to the Canadian Department H (Not that they could really effectively use that one well given that Fox has rights to the Big W, and probably most of Alpha Flight. Although I hold out hope that we might see one or two at some point. Puck would work well. Somebody call Peter Dinklage!)

This was by far THE BEST AoS Episode of the shows entire run. They finally stopped trying to recreate an '80's action show ala Knightrider and went full Marvel Universe Jack Bower. Full supporting cast. Helicarrier, virtually every named SHIELD agent we have met sans Hawkeye, Black Widow, Maria Hill and Fury himself. Tactical action, reveals, a real named and identified comic book villain looking closer and closer to his traditional look. Tension, conspiracies, betrayals, twists and turns. Did they fire the old writing staff and bring in new without telling us? This felt like a Wheedon show firing on all cylinders.

Well yes next is Dr. who, we were mainly talking what would follow that. The Dr. who project is a given as it was inside the range that is typically measured in hours. I don't think Lego will hold the series thing against it at this point. It was Lego that requested that it and all series projects pare down to a specific single set. It may factor into marketability, and business case, but probably not substantially at this stage.

They're are not unexplainable. If you are googling "fishy" it's easy enough to also do a bit of Internet investigation into where most of these come from. In most cases there is nothing overly fishy about them. 1. Large bulk blocks of things in unusual or unseen colors almost always originate from places like the Model shops or the Parks maintenance shops. Remember when they create a long term display piece such as a park display, or the more recen life size X Wing or Bag End, they also create enough of any specially needed parts to maintain it. Make repairs, replace worn or weathered parts etc. however storage capacity is finite. When they retire the statue they sell off the extra parts. They retired a large airplane display last years. A lot of people were able to get lots of some unusual colored parts from that. 2. Smaller lots of unusual or Unique parts, such as 1974's stuff is more often than not prototypes or mold testing. Once again TLG does have finite storage capacity for this sort of stuff. Remember a test run or prototyping can produce thousands of non retail quality parts. Stuff that they will not use in sets, for whatever reason. Prior to Lego's patents expiring this stuff was considered trash. There was no real interest in anybody else copying Lego's designs. Essentially floor sweepings. They used to sell it to employees and locals for pennies on the dollar. Often they just dropped it in the trash dumpster. I bet most of 1974's parts come from the local area around Billund or select factories. 3. Old factory or warehouse stock? Once again storage is finite. They don't keep stuff that they will practically never use again. Once a mold is retired, if it is not replaced with a new very close revision, chances are the old parts get removed from active design and production use. They will use some of the remaining parts for replacements, for a reasonable time frame after which they will dispose of the excess product. Either trashing them, selling them dirt cheap, or selling it in bulk lots to some sort of local clearance partner. The key word here is local. They will not bother to ship this sort of thing worldwide. They just want it gone. In a manufacturing business the two most expensive things are time, as in production time, maximizing the use of every piece of the production chain. And Space. Real estate. How much space do we have to put stuff, put people, make stuff, store stuff, move stuff etc. 3 cubic meters of parts they can no longer use As product is wasted space. It will be gotten rid of, and not by fishy means. 4. Local testing or development. Once again, before the expiration of Legos patents and the rise of clone brands it would not surprise me if Lego sent stuff home with staff for basic play testing and feedback. Just take some of these new parts home and tell us if it's any good? And again very local distribution. And the stuff probably sat in bins of parts for years or generations until the rise of the Internet community and things like Bricklink and EBay. As I said above until the combination of the loss of patent protections on their product and the rise of the Internet Lego community all of this stuff was literally factory floor sweepings. Like sawdust in a chair factory.

GG is a fantastic building. But always strikes me as a hair over scale compared to the others. MS just does not flow as well with the other sets. Just a noticeably different design aesthetic. A little more obviously Lego than the other Modulars.

We just found out about the May the Fourth be with you giveaway fig a yesterday, does that count? We don't know if there are any unrevealed store exclusives yet with the next wave? And there is probably one more UCS set to be revealed in the Fall. Do any of those count for reasons to still be talking about things?

I think you all are missing a key point in the TLM universe. It is exactly what the characters say it is. No more, no less;

Well now she is. Before that she spent many years as a barely used D list character. The black suited Spider-Girl or Arachne. She was created in Secret Wars during the 80's. Bounced from title to title over the years from West Coast Avengers, to stuff like Omega Flight. I think she was in X Men as part of Freedom Force at one point? Really the best use of the character in her entire run as SG was probably in the Ms. Marvel Civil War story arc. (And even then a lot of what made that story good were her contrasts with Anya.) Since she has become Madame Web and handed off the black suit to Anya she is really more of a Spider hero supporting character. Yes she is more distinctive now. But you would not see the Madam Web character used except as a driving mechanism for one of the more mainstream Spider types, spider-Man, Spider-Woman or Spider-Girl. Actually thinking on it Julia as Madame Web is probably fair game for Sony to use in their ASM movies. She is now a Spider-Man supporting character.

There have been review periods with no set that passed review. They just did not stand out because at that time CuuSoo was pretty much sitting on results until they had something positive. The new structure should mean we now find out every 4 months. Also the Birds set is in the same review group, and honestly it has a decent chance of passing. It is an exceptionally well done organic subject, and a series of MOCs that we know the Lego design team has long been fond of. TBBT will not pass review. It is very much a North American exclusive subject of a fairly generic sitcom. As I said somewhere above, if you were given the choice between making a set about a Hollywood interpretation of Dr. who fans, or an actual Dr. who set, which would you go for? Probably 99% of the mixed group of TBBT and Lego fans would also buy a Dr. who set. The same cannot be said going the other way. Dr. who will probably pass review. It has a lot going for it. The main things working against it could be licensing issues, and also the fact the Character Builders versions of the same just exited the Market. There is a strong embedded and committed (as they probably should be) fan base, but business case may be too close to call. I'm guessing next to 10k will be either the Wayne Manor or XMen mansions, or possibly that new fast climbing Metroid project.

It looks like the second Dr. Who Tardis will hit 10k within the next day or two. If nothing else it should be educational to see exactly how they apply the new "first come first served" rule for same or similar subject projects? http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/59181 Based on some of the comments I kind of suspect that this projects creator is being overly optimistic regarding CuuSoo's somewhat vague feedback regarding the rule. He seems to think that they are meaning the first in gets reviewed first. But this answer comes from the CuuSoo staff and strikes me as more "the Lego Review Team determines how to apply any and all such review rules. Not the CuuSoo staff." My gut tells me that any same subject projects past the first will not get more than a cursory preview unless or until the first project fails review in such a way that does not also fail the subject being proposed. Something like "it's a good viable IP subject that would work well. But the first proposed project is made with Megabloks and requires unique MB parts". I think the rule is to specifically avoid doing a side by side comparison, and all the bruised fan feelings that that can create.

There is a book Star Wars: Revan. I think it might be part of a trilogy.