Faefrost

Wonderful ship. It just feels very sleek and complete. I love the reference to the classic 70's scifi art.

I'm thinking a Blue Faerie would be involved...

Do a search for "Planet Hulk" and "World War Hulk" they feature prominently in those stories.

No. They said they are still working on the final design and consulting with Peter Reid. So it may be a bit before they have it nailed down. The original Exo Suit design used a lot of advanced building tricks that they will never use in a production set. Things like the legs are each supported by a single pneumatic T joint. There are a lot of little things they will need to work through and re engineer in order to keep the look, but make it sturdy and playable. Whereas the GB Ecto 1 looks to have been pretty solidly designed from the word go with well used standard building techniques. So it was probably a much shorter and easier journey from submitted project to final model design. There is probably a lesson buried in there for CuuSoo creators. The closer you stick to standard building styles, the quicker a set can see production. Exotic techniques will slow things down.

A better metric is typically price per gram of plastic. How much does it weigh? And how does that compare to the other sets?

I didn't look at the actual stated release dates at either toy fair. But I did notice that the signs at NYT's seem to be more weighted to us info. Ie pricing only in usd. So could it be that they are expected to hit the UK in October and US in December? That's not an unusual timing?

Apparently the second weekend take in North America was a stunning $65 million. So almost no drop off from the already insane first weeks box office. I think we will very comfortably be seeing a few more movies with our favorite toys in them.

The release date is probably effected by the movie release date. That close to the movies actual release WB might not care. But TLG does want to maximize the tie in potential to the movie. So they want the sets new, prominent and fully stocked on store shelves at a specific near point to the movie in order to maximize marketing synergy. They may have gotten the previous Hobbit sets out a little too soon with regard to the movies and this can hurt sales momentum. Inside of 30 days is really where they want to be.

Have you seriously given any consideration to switching to decalf? We have no idea what is in this movie yet beyond a few leaked images. We don't know what ships will be prominent. We don't know what characters will be standouts. Or what fan reaction to things will be. At this point I suspect that there are a ton of Karen Gillam's fans who will buy the set for the Nebula fig alone. As for the Warbird? We do not know any context regarding the ships. We don't know which are more important story wise, or make for better play settings. But yeah, you're probably right, Lego obviously doesn't care about what they are doing. After all how could they possibly care when they are not clearly doing precisely and exactly what you want them to, right now. (It's for reasons like this that any Lord of the Rings threads around here seem to be such a thrilling journey into the minds of madness.)

There may be a strategic reason. Hasbro just unveiled their Kre-O Dungeons and Dragons line. The figs are OK, but the sets are awful. Poor mans Castle. Worse than the Megabloks World of Warcraft sets. I can see Lego keeping some sort of High Fantasy theme going in order to not leave that space unchallenged. It's a small hope I know. But you have to figure that TLG is warily watching just how aggressive Kre-O and Megabloks have been with licensing suddenly.

Looking at it, it's making me think vent from an old school slide projector.

The Brick Show has video of a rep showing off the Ghost which shows what is inside. The Front cockpit pulls out and seats two in a row. The top turret has a seat for a fig. There are two pretty typical escape pods on either side with seats and minor detailing, and there is space for at a minimum storage in the two large forward cargo bays inside the front forks. I don't think they can fit a standing minifig. One side has a holder for the extra spring missiles. The center back area is kind of open until you attach the Phantom. Overall it seems to have interior seating for maybe 7? 8 if the Phantom is docked. (Assuming each escape pod takes the normal 2.) Overall it looks to be about the same size, weight and complexity as the Sith Fury.

I'm liking the sort of agents of shield vibe we are getting from the agents. Less Bond and more Coulson. These look like a must buy.

That Jedi scout Fighter is kind of interesting. Does anyone know where it is from? Is it a Rebels ship? A late Season 6 TCW? I love the Hammerhead Jedi, and OMG after all these years a 3B6! I guess we will be seeing the silver version of that little number in the Sandcrawler? So far I have not seen a single Summer Star Wars set that I dislike. (Which is a huge change from the current wave, where almost nothing excites me.)

Quite a few. The 4 armed figure in Ninjago is Garmadon, the main villain. http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?M=njo042 http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?M=njo078&in=S Hmmm? BL says only 3 sets, which doesn't seem right? (Maybe there are more 2 armed versions than I remember?) basically he shows up in the various centerpiece sets. Destiny's Bounty, Epic Dragon Battle and Temple of Light. There is also General Kozu, who has 4 arms in red http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?M=njo074 He is in the Garmatron set.

That pic of you is eerily similar to your sig fig! Congrats, and thank you for this wonderful set. I am going to guess that part of the reason for the speed of this reveal vs. previous CuuSoo sets reflects how satisfied the Lego design team was with the original concept design? And how readily adaptable it was to a production format? If so a double Congrats WetWired. And an important lesson for other CuuSoo projects.

I think increases in stores selling Lego will mostly be short to mid term. As will the utterly immense sales boosts TLG sees from all of this. Hopefully TLGs accounting and marketing people recognize it as a surge or bubble and take steps to solidify gains and open new opportunities. Longer term it will have some interesting impacts. -AFOLs. Yeah a lot of kids will be demanding a lot of Lego. But more interestingly is a lot of the reaction I have seen from adults including childless ones. All of whom are happily investigating things from their childhood. And a number seem thrilled to discover the more adult targeted stuff. And let's be honest yeah a lot of the adults will bleed off. But some will stay. A 10% increase in AFOLs is huge business to TLG. As each AFOL probably equals well over 100 children in spending. - licensing. This will have some huge long term impacts on how TLG approaches licensing. They began this journey with Ninjago, where they saw an internal property behaving and profiting as an externally supported IP license. But this just boosts the order of magnitude. Expect Lego to start doing more mixed media themes and projects. And to establish more partnerships where they not simply create sets based on an IP, but that they share in a piece of the IP. - less critical focus on certain themes. In one fell swoop TLG has probably substantially buffered themselves against a potential loss of the high profit Star Wars theme. As we all remember Star Wars pretty much saved Lego back in 2003. The danger has long been that the loss of that license could have a devastating effect on the business. But this movie may have signaled a high enough degree of diversification that no single external theme or IP carries quite the same crucial role any longer. Lego and the Minifigs are the dominant IP in and of themselves. (To put this in perspective, think of the potential threat to Hasbro, should they ever severe ties with Takara, or find themselves in a nasty licensing fight with them surrounding the Transformers IP?) The one true advantage TLG has in all of this is they are a fully private family owned company. This means they are not subject to shareholder demands that they go for the quick profit now at the expense of long term earnings or over extension of production capacity past the long term demand. In the end this will probably leverage TLG up into the #1 toy maker slot.

Both Atlanta area stores have some of the best, most helpful, and most knowledgeable staff I have ever seen in retail. I wish more stores were up to their standards.

Not surprising. With the movie release pushed back to Christmas New Line and WB will keep a close clamp down on toys and other reveals until at least late summer.

There have been Disney villains in Lego products under and appropriate to their specific license and theme. So we got Zerg and Lotso Bear in Toy Story, Barbosa and Davy Jones in PotC. But we didn't get Barbosa or Zerg in Cars sets. The villains go to the license. And "Disney Princesses" is its own very specific license. With a very specific list of characters. It isn't a blanket license for all of the animated movies. This is also why we will not see a Frozen set under the Disney Princess line until Disney formally adds them to the character list as such. None of the villains are on that specific list. Nor are any of the Faeries ala Tinkerbell. They carry their own seperate licenses.

I don't know. Something Art Deco, maybe 5 stories or so would be interesting. Model the top after the evil building from Ghostbusters and we have added play value.

I think the way Star Lord works in minifig form is he has a double sided face. His head piece has his hair and his open faced helmet (which looks kinda like those old wrestling helmets). So it frames his face but leaves his hair and face open. His two faces will be one with the mask in place and one without showing his bare face.

It is probably somewhat complicated to return to a third party solicitation like that. There can be some weird business, law and licensing issues that we would never think of in the real world. Here's the thing. In order to avoid HUGE issues with licenses, Lego CuuSoo can never ever say or even give a subtle hint that an answer could possibly be "maybe". Even the slight implication of "we cannot do this at this time" leaves an implication that it might be done in the future. Which in and of itself can have a negative effect on a current or forthcoming licensed product line. Setting a precedent that they will re examine something in the future causes more harm to TLG than they would gain benefit from making 10-20k MWT sets. The only way for CuuSoo to have even a chance of working, and co existing with Lego's existing licensed and internal production groups is CuuSoo must stick to a hard binary yes or no at the point of review. With no re visitation. Otherwise it would get unworkable complex and the lawyers would have a stroke.

I think the dividing line as to whether or not a mold can be reused elsewhere is if it is unique and character defining. Hair alone almost never is unless it has very character specific details in it. So Jack Sparrows hair is unique to Jack Sparrow, with all the braids and coins etc. whereas Qui Gons hair, while distinctively shaped, is just a hairstyle and may be re used. Things like Darth Vaders helm or Stormtrooper helms are unique character pieces, so may not be used. Simple hats such as Kepi's not so much. A lot of it will be do the unique character identifiers come from the molding or shape? Or do they come from the color or markings? No matter how you slice it the Rotta the Hutt fig is the entirety of a unique and identifiable (granted obscure) Star Wars character, so no they probably will not be able to use him elsewhere.

I don't think it's even from a toy. It looks like its from something that has a filtered airflow. Vacuum cleaner, air purifier, Cpap machine, high end electronics etc. it was probably just a cool bit of plastic that the kid liked and used to simulate a truck grill or something.