Faefrost

The human disguise Krang was a comic con exclusive or something similar. Major characters or recurring characters or decent mutants? Pulverizer or Mutagen Man Rat King The Sushi guy The Pizza delivery kid Any Purple Dragons Snakeweed Slash The Female Krang from Aprils school The Newtralizer (or whatever he was called. Big scifi Newt type space soldier that escaped from the Krang prison) Cockroach Terminator The big stone and lava statue dude that beamed in from Dinemsion X Krang Prime The Krang Yeti suit robot bodies Chrome Dome (The Foot robot ninja that looks like Chris Bradford) pre mutant Xever Did I miss any?

Exactly! One of the TLG designers or reps told us up front in some interview or public commentary, way back when LotR sets were first announced, that each license specifically defines what constitutes a "construction set" for the purposes of that individual license. Things like piece count to figures, etc. they outright said that the wording of the LotR and Hobbit license does not permit the SW style 4 generic figs plus 50 piece build Battlepacks. It requires either fewer figures or more build. Hence the $30 5 fig Army Builders like Uruk Hai Army, Mirkwood Elf Army etc. it's not that they are choosing not to do Battlepacks. It is that it is not permitted under the terms of the license they have. This is a decision from WB, not Lego. Some licensors require a more substantial build in order to keep a cleaner separation between construction toy licenses and action figure licenses. Remember when Hasbro took issue with the magnets, they did not challenge Lego. Their beef was with Lucasfilms. Some license holders want to better shield themselves from conflict between licensees. It's an issue of lawyers and contracts. Not marketing or product development decisions.

I didn't think we have had any figs confirmed? Have we? Just some speculation and assumption based on a few quick glances of preliminary stuff at London TF?

It's probably not every three years. I doubt they burn through Train Track molds that quickly. But the train tracks do tend to sell in a much better volume than we can assume the Monorail ever did. While Niche, the train stuff is supported by some fairly deep pools of AFOL's and lego train clubs. So you have customer bases buying a lot of track. The Monorails were three high priced retail sets that were basically shelf warmers. The Trains are well over a hundred sets spread across decades and have a strong established user base. They may not be big profit items, but they make enough to continue replacing the molds when they come do, and supporting the continued capital loans to do so.

Much like the Disney Princess line itself the Lego version of the line is targeted very specifically at roughly 4-12 year old girls. so the target audience more or less parallels Friends. It's basically a doll line, hence they get done in minidolls. Like you I personally would prefer a full Disney range in classic minifigs. But I can understand their decision and logic paths to do it this way. If ever they decide to do a $300 D2C gargantuan Cinderella's Castle set, then we might see it as minifigs, as that would be more targeted at AFOL's and collectors. But these are meant to be young girls toys. A kind of plastic based crack that is dialed into them the way Ninjago is for the young boys.

I think we can almost guarantee that we will be seeing more Ninjago sets past 2014. Apparently while discussing the sequel to The Lego Movie it came out why Phil Lord and Chris Miller would not be writing the Lego Movie sequel themselves. Not enough time. They will be too busy writing and directing the Ninjago Movie. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/132424-The-Lego-Movie-Sequel-Set-for-May-26-2017 So Ninjago is Awesome?

I dunno. The Drax one did a pretty good job of selling me on Bautiste (sp?) as Drax. He really seemed to be having a good time with it all. There is another interview with Vin Diesel where he talks about what a different experience it was to be acting and particularly body acting with almost no dialog in a situation where pretty much none of you appears on screen. It gave me some new appreciation for guys like Andy Serkis and Ray Park.

Equally interesting it came out why the sequel will have different writers. Phil Lord and Chris Miller to co writer/directors of The Lego Movie will be too busy writing and directing... Drum roll please NINJAGO!

The Sandcrawler would not have Banthas unless we are getting another new regular retail set that also featured Banthas. It will obviously be a large pricey D2C set. D2C sets do not get new unique tooling. They are made in smaller production runs and cannot absorb the costs of the new molds. It is a fairly safe bet that the Sandcrawler will include a new 3B6 type droid. There is a new mold for this figure that appears in an upcoming retail set. (Jedi Scout Fighter?) But if we didn't see a Bantha with the Cantina at NYTF, it is beyond highly unlikely it will show up in the Sandcrawler set. Why? That is around the same price point as the Death Star and the Ewok Village. Neither of those is technically UCS. (Nor has any set technically been a UCS set in over 10 years. TLG stopped using that label a decade ago. We just failed to notice.)

Why would this be strange? One of the recent tidbits of SW news was a photo of the Ep VII crew looking at some concept art, including a pic of the MF flying over a planet. We might be getting a new UCS MF in the 2015-2016 range. It also might not be exactly the same OT MF that we are used to. After all you would expect some changes over 30 years?

Honestly by far the majority of the "quality" issues that most complain about stem from fairly major production changes that in the end give us far more benefits. Take the color injection system as an example. Instead of using pre colored plastics they can color neutral pellets as needed as parts are molded. There is a hair more variance in some of the colors. But the end result is we get far more parts in far more colors. Sets can be designed with elaborate enhancing color pallets, and not simply limited to available inventories. Take a look at how wonderfully elaborate the balanced color schemes on the Palace Cinema or the Parisian Restaurant are. All of the subtleties. Look at the council of Elrand set. These types of sets were made possible because of the color injection system allowing Lego to produce part X in color Y as needed, with much less logistical effort. The same thing with the extremely rare damaged part. The sets are packaged by increasingly elaborate automated mechanisms. Very very complex machinery. By its very nature something will on occasion slip through and get mangled. Which would never happen in the old days of hand packaging or even less automated systems. But the benefit is they can package up a million of a given set easily and quickly. Which means they can spread the sets that we love further and faster. No business will seek to reduce quality of the product. And contrary to common belief they will rarely seek to reduce costs by directly reducing quality, or reducing quality of materials for absolute cost reasons. Rather they will seek to increase production efficiency and flexibility. Reduce the input supply chain while increasing the variety and efficiency of the product coming out the door. Sometimes in doing so there are trade offs. If a production mechanism allows you to go from being able to package 100,000 sets per run, to 1 million, but on extremely minuscule occasions it may hiccup and mangle a part, say around 0.02% of the time! which is the better deal for you and your customers? How about reducing your supply logistics to a single neutral plastic, and being to generate any part in any color as you need it, when you need it? Is that worth the yellow not quite being as perfectly yellow as it used to be? Oh and one more thing to keep in mind about perceived changes to quality. Not all of them are direct business reasons. Some may be regulatory changes or even a desire to be a more "green" company. There is a complaint that colors, particularly yellow, seem more translucent, and not as vibrant or opaque these days. Or that plastics feel different. A good chunk of those issues can be attributed to changes in the dyes to make them more environmentally friendly. Those old school bright yellows? Yeah it used to take a lot of real interesting substances to get them so nicely bright and yellow. Things like Cadmium or Lead. So which is more preferable? Brighter more yellowy yellows? Or not as bright yellows with substantially fewer heavy metals involved? Remember it's all about trade offs.

Yeah those MoS guns always struck me as a poor use of tooling budget. The Helmets were perfect, and were needed. But honestly for the guns they could have made do with the AQ ones (which are astonishingly versatile for all the complaining.) I hope they do some brick built weapons for GotG. Stuff like Rockets heavier weapons. I suspect that the pricing for tooling for minifig handheld accessories has come down quite a bit in the past 2-3 years. Those are much less precise molds which typically only have one or two contact points, and are really on the far fringes of "system". Things like guns probably benefit a lot from rapid 3d prototyping. They just design the mold around the known handle piece.

I fear you may be somewhat underestimating Mr. Bay's fetish for massive and ongoing explosions. It will not surprise me if Raph has traded in his Sai for hand grenades. At least the sets from the movie look kinda interesting. Although I think I still prefer the Nik based ones. The Nik sets seem to have a more cohere ant logic behind them, and seem better scaled to each other. That big foot truck in the movie set seems oddly proportioned. A little too wide for city, but still feels to skinny. The turtle van feels too wide by comparison. And while the lair looks really cool it looks kinda medieval for the sewers? I can't wait to get a better look at the figs.

4 sets for a follow up wave is not that out of bounds. I think HP had a few 4 or 5 set waves. And even some of the early SW waves were pretty small. As far as themes announcing when they were being discontinued? I think the only one was HP. And that was because of splitting the last movie into two, Lego actually still had product on shelves up until the day the actual license contract expired. That's not normally the case. Normally the license contracts have enough padding that the theme has run its natural sales course and faded off the shelves organically well before the contracts end date. Of course at that time we did not realize that TLG had opted not to renew the HP license with WB in part because they were being offered the LotR one as a replacement.

#3, The Green Hornet's Black Beauty? No idea on the red one or the Winnebago from the second set?

Licenses will also have time elements. So with a license that has a no compete clause, TLG would not be able to put out something in a similar or directly defined line for x amount of time around a movie, or Y amount of time after stopping production on the license sets. Lego probably does often have a small window they can use between movies in some series licenses. But it is more often economically not worth it to do so. In the case of PotC the sets have been gone for over a year, and the next movie was pushed back an extra year. Now normally Lego would wait out the space between movies. The amount of return they get from a PotC themed wave with movie tie in is so much greater than a simple classic Pirates theme, that it is typically a better economic decision to wait it out between movies. But with the extended a sense the equation mat reverse a little. A window opens up to do their own thing a little bit. This works to both TLG and the licensors favor as it can keep the pump primed and keep interest up, so long as it doesn't get too crazy. Hence we see the small pirate Minifigs set. The Sea Cow has little to no bearing on the PotC license. It is a fantasy steampunk creation directly related to a different media property. It has no more direct competition with PotC than the Spongebob Flying Dutchman. It may dance a little closer to the line than say a Star Wars ship or the Coast Guard boat, but it is still comfortably over it. As far as resubmitting rejected projects. It sounds great for this specific case, but would quickly become a nightmare of fanboy generated insanity attempting to clog the system until TLG gives in. Just how many infinitely repeated Zelda and Batman Tumbler projects do you want them to keep re reviewing? Rejected needs to be rejected for the system to work. And for legal and license reasons they cannot do a "not at this time, maybe later".

It's beyond not surprising. It was pretty much written in stone the moment they decided to do a 7th movie. The EU had to burn. Yeah some of it was earlier side stories, and they were often being overwritten by things from the PT or TCW. But look at some of the hissy fits are small but vocal group of fans threw publicly when TCW introduced Mandalorians in a way that differed from what a previous writer had. There is no way that Lucasfilms/Disney were going to deal with that over an AAA list product like a new movie. And there really is no way to preserve any of the EU. The knowledge required of it is too broad, and the base of users who are familiar with it to small. The best they could do would be to reuse or reboot some of the more popular EU characters and settings into the official films in some form. And even that remains tricky. Remember George Lucas never read EU stories. (At best he would look at the art, which he liked).

The old knife molds should be perfect for Drax. In the comics he got his blades from looting a sporting goods store in Alaska.

Love him or hate him. The dude was the penultimate promoter, marketer and ad man. Kirby was a wonderful artist. One of the best that ever lived. But it was Stan Lee's over the top promotion that put eyes onto Kirby's art and revolutionized the industry. Hate and damn the man for his many many faults and his over the top self promotion. But don't fail to give credit for what he brought to the equation. Kirby was a great artist. But he was also a timid bitter man who never had the ability to actually promote his own work. His business skills were appallingly bad. Even late in his career, when he was able to benefit from all the fame and promotion from Marvel and DC he was still unable to turn any of his art into a solid business unto himself. we tend to forget that at some level, all of these things that we love are businesses. The artist is literally a starving guy doodling in a room without someone having the ability to monetize it and turn a profit. (And honestly the artists that can do that themselves are few and far between. Gotta respect guys like Mike Mignolia, Todd McFarlane, Alex Ross and (/shudder) even Rob Liebfield, not just for their artistic abilities, but their abilities to self manage their business to their benefit.) Do I think Kirby and his peers deserved more for all that they gave us? Hell yes! But I also am pretty sure that none of us would still be enjoying these characters today if it wasn't for the efforts of writers and PT Barnum like businessmen like Stan Lee. Love em or hate them. Respect what all involved brought to the table.

A lot of people will tend to give Stan Lee grief because Kirby and such were the artists. Lee's own gifts often get forgotten, including his amazing ability with words. he wrote all of those theme songs. And of course this most classic of them all.

But how could you have missed... Oh and as regards whether or not GotG is well know ahead of time. That isn't always a down side. How many people knew about Blade? Or the Punisher? Most may have heard the term Judge Dredd but I guarantee few realize it was a comic. And honestly GotG could probably do well without the Marvel super Hero tie in. It is a Space Opera adventure type flick. Some funny quips, a talking raccoon, a lot of explosions. It's closer to Star Wars than Iron Man. And at it's core it is something that Hollywood does very well. It's a Dirty Dozen or Magnificent Seven type story. Something that would have been done by John Ford or Akira Kurosawa, just done as Space Opera. I think it will find its feet. It will either be a moderate Marvel moneymaker or it will go over the top and blow the doors off most of the previous movies. (I don't think it will beat Avengers. It may top everything else.) It just looks fun.

Sound effects such as a Lightsaber or Engine noises would be cool. I don't think they could do music without licensing it separately. I'm sure John Williams cantina music is not covered under the "construction toy" license.

I predicted this exact thing months ago. It was just so clear that they would be soft rebooting / reseting things starting from the OT and going forward. All the old designations of what is and is not cannon have been thrown out with them taking a chainsaw to the lore and continuity. With the intended goal to create one single ongoing level of cannon. It's easy to see why Lucasfilm wants the merchandising companies to steer clear of any EU subjects when they do not know if the characters or lore will survive, and in what form. They don't want Hasbro putting out Jaina Solo figures when the character may be completely replaced in cannon with the new movie, and the toy would just confuse everyoe and breed fanboy resentment. This is much less of an issue for Lego as they rarely dipped deep into the EU. In the few cases they did TLG typically was limited to things that had a clear artistic representation, such as from a Video Game, and not simply something from the novels or comics. besides I don't think anybody was really expecting a Tie Crawler or Tie Defender re-release. As far as what will be considered cannon going forward. I think the key test will be "was it seen on screen"? With the "on screen" expanded to cover not simply the 6 movies but The Clone Wars and Rebels as well. (Lost will be any of the Ewok or droid shows... and /sigh The Holiday Special). The books are gone. No easy way around it. The Dark Horse comics are probably gone as well (unless or until Marvel buys out Dark Horse, which I would not rule out given this huge blow to them.) . probably any fully EU characters will be lost. Ship designs could go either way depending on where and how they were used. Although Lucasfilms did use cameo's in the PT and TCW to insert some well liked EU ship designs into the regular cannon over the years. It's safe to assume that they will continue this trend with Rebels. What is interesting is the apparent reprieve that the TOR characters got? There are a few reasons that that may be. One is the massive time difference makes those characters pretty much irrelevant to the actual Star Wars cannon. So no real need to purge. The other is that they are representative of an ongoing live game project, that still has existing contracts and support requirements from Lucasfilms, plus it is operated by their new exclusive video game publisher. So marketing demands there supercede editorial demands. Tie Bomber is full on cannon. It appeared on screen in ESB. Tie Raptor is probably gone unless it shows up in Rebels.

Ok that's just adorable. I love how you managed to blend the System, Friends and Duplo animals to get something coherent.

Maybe because they have a full sized Department store still on the shelves with GE? And a Mall would be a different more modern take on the subject?