Faefrost

The choice of figures is not exclusively Lego's. The License holder has a say. And they often prefer named characters as set and story drivers. Plus named characters drive overall sales far more than army builders. Army of the Dead were reasonably cheap and easy for them. New printing while a cost, is not an extreme one. The figures were achieved using existing Castle tooling. Now unless you want your Gondor soldiers to wear those Classic Castle helmets I'm sure you can see where the problem lies? (And no, comparing Gondor soldiers to the Goblin King set does not work. The Goblin King was the Wave one flagship for a different theme. It would have a much different parts budget than second or third wave of LotR.)

The Star Wars Planets molds would work well for that. Heck if you have the old set you could probably just swap in the planet for a much netter look?

They have said from the begining, each license defines "construction toy" differently and very specifically. The terms of the LotR and Hobbit license do not permit them to do a Star Wars type Battlepack. Hence why they must do the larger $30 Army Builder sets with more substantial builds.

I think City has been very very steadily increasing it's female population for a good number of years now. Probably it's only real failing is in not having as broad a representation in the lower cost impulse sets. if we actually look at Lego's main product lines in recent years We can see some very clear patterns regarding this. - City, Creator, and internal Lego themes that are generally targeted at a broad spectrum or portray more real world things tend to have seen a huge increase in female minifigs. The only caveat is we almost never see a single minifig set with a female character outside of Friends or CMF's. That can be tolerated as Lego still has to support their core audience, which is 6-11 year old boys, who honestly really do not like female minifigs anymore than they like actual girls at that point. - Lego's specifically young boy targeted Action themes will have some female presence. But are much more focused on the male characters. Ninjago, Galaxy Squad, etc. These really are targeted at the 6-11 year old boys the way that Friends are targeted at girls. Our adult sensibilities really need not apply. Probably the biggest issue in these is not so much the lack of female figs as it is their concentrations in the most expensive sets, often pricing them out of reach for the casual young fan. Maybe spreading Samurai X and the Blue Squads girls to some more affordable sets would be a good thing. - The CMF has been hitting a good balance of male/female characters and is quite useful for fleshing out otherwise male dominated play sets. - Licenses are their own thing. And they depend heavily on source material. As an example in Star Wars the 6 main movies really had very few female characters, and even fewer memorable ones. It wasn't to more recent stuff like the Clone Wars cartoons that we started seeing some breadth and depth to the XX side of the Star Wars Universe. And Lego responded well, and has given us a fairly broad mix of Jedi and assorted rogues. The Empire still seems a bit of a traditionalist sausage fest but what can you do? Other licenses will vary wildly. Harry Potter had at least a dozen female characters in probably 2 dozen fig variants (ok almost all variants being Hermione, but still she ranked second only to the ever present Harry.) Whereas there are really only 3 female characters featured in Tolkiens books, and maybe 4 in Peter Jacksons movies of the same. Heck no named women appear anywhere in the Hobbit book. There's not a lot there for Lego to work with. The huge exception to all of this is the Superhero licenses. And here's the thing. It's not just Lego. Female Superheroes have traditionally sold very very poorly as toys. The fact that we are seeing increasing interest in them is great. But the numbers still don't encourage a lot of them sadly. (it's much the same in the comics themselves. Notice how few Female Hero solo books last for more than 20-50 issues? It's not from lack of trying on the publishers part. They like drawing hot women in spandex. It's kinda a "thing" with them. It's just not enough people pay to support this thing. Which is in and of itself several other related but wholly different issues.) as far as the lack of male minidolls in Friends? Ummm? Have you looked at those things? The Friends girl minidolls seem cute fun and spunky. Perfectly valid as toys. The boys... creeepy. In that same sort of way as Twilight movies creepy. Something about them just puts one in mind of Justin Bieber... only slightly less artificial than the real thing.

I think we have a good number of years before this becomes a thing. And even then finished product merchants such as Games Workshop have a far greater exposure to home 3d printing than Lego does. I don't think you will be printing out your own Lego sets anytime soon. But there will be some huge possibilities for unusual or custom elements. Something that Lego might do well to embrace. Not just allow but encourage hobbiests to design and trade new custom stuff like Hair or helmets. 3d printing has a long time before it can reproduce the levels of precision needed for Lego system elements such as bricks or core building pieces or the actual minifigs. But heck if Lego can actually develop a marketplace for creating and sharing or selling custom digital designs it could turn into a huge profit point. Think iTunes mixed with Team Fortresses Cash Shop hats. Say you wanted a 1930's Leather "New Yorker" style Fire Helmet to go with your Fire Brigade. You are skilled in 3d modelling so you put a design together. You then post it on Lego's Custom Design item shop for sale at $2. Lego does a brief validation of the design then posts it in their shop for sale. You get a cut. Lego takes a small cut. Everyone keeps buying quality ABS minifigures but you can now allow for direct user improvements.

I know we would love it. But I'm not sure how it would go over as a childs toy these days. That noir feel isn't something that kids are overly familiar with. I doubt if most modern kids even know who Dick Tracy is, baring some animated revival. About the only Noir'ish things that even older kids might be familiar with would be Batman:The Animated Series, maybe The Big O, or an obscure video game or two? If anything I think Victorian or late 19th century translates better?

I sort of suspect they avoided saying anything until they had the huge backlog cleared and some good news to give us. This should in theory be less of a problem going forward. Most of the purpose for the CuuSoo rules changes a few months ago was to prevent many of the more obvious technically impossible or "immediate failures" projects from going all the way to 10k, bogging down the review system, and triggering fan outrage and backlash. The new rules increase the chances that what actually makes it to 10k will have a better chance as a product. (They eliminate some of the blanket business case failures, leaving mostly just the projects individual business case.)

Here's the thread over at Brickset. http://www.bricksetforum.com/discussion/3869/why-no-more-monorail (Please keep in mind this goes back to 2012 so they probably don't want it bumped.) LEGO_Nabil is Mark Stafford. And he has a number of very detailed posts throughout the thread. A worthwhile read to realize why "it's dead Jim". This is probably the most direct and concise of his statements concerning it; (quoted from above link, Lego_Nabil, 2012) "The reason LEGO has stopped making monorail is threefold, one the motors and track molds ran out and would be very expensive to replace. Two, no monorail set ever made any money, in fact despite trying several different types at high price points they all cost more to produce then they were sold for. Three, kids these days don't see them as exciting, they are from theme parks or airports, not a futuristic thing at all, in fact pretty boring. Though most find trains quite dull too - sorry, but ninja's vs skeletons is far cooler then a train going in a circle even if it is on only one rail!" Also be warned there is quite a bit of well let's call it "debate" over there that would not be tolerated here. The thread is more than a bit argumentative. You have been warned.

This trailer sort of reminds me of a hybrid between the old Agents HQ and the World Racers Dessert of Dessolation one. I think the new one opens up a little better. But I much prefer all of the hidden vehicle bays underneath the old.

Actually in his commentary on the older Brickset thread Mark Stafford addressed just that. Yes Monorails garner a lot of attention at public displays. Kids love to watch them there. But there is pretty much no correlation between what they like to watch on Exibition like that, and spin off effects of product sales. And it wasn't that the monorails didn't make enough money, or they felt more could be made elsewhere with the resources. Trains is basically a break even or small profit line that Lego sticks with. The monorails did not achieve that. They were a loss.

Lego designer Mark Stafford talked about the research, and what it is the kids actually buy, over in that older Brickset thread. He got a lot of flack for basically saying that no kids don't want to play with Monorails. But he lays everything out very clearly there. I think it would be possible to create some form of modern Lego monorail, using current tech. Power functions and basic parts. But not in the classic 4 wide form factor. And to what real benefit? Look ant the current red passenger train? The only real practical differences between it and the airport monorail was ultimately the track. The monorail had an advantage of being able to change elevation, but in every other way the train systems are more flexible. Plus monorails don't represent what they once did. Once they were the future. These days they are mainly remembered as anachronistic boondoggles. The three most famous monorails in the world. Disney. The Simpson's. And Detroit. One of those has morphed into more of a light rail airport type tram. The others are a famous fictional political boondoggle to illustrate political corruption and fraud, and it's actual real life counterpart of political corruption fraud and failure. Monorails are relics of the rocket age. The modern equivalent is high speed rail, of which kids are more likely to encounter, is still growing, and has supplanted monorails in the areas of political corruption and tax payer fraud. Lego seems well invested in high speed rail sets.

Hasbro actually asked Lego to make Transformers sets a number of years ago. Lego looked into it and opted not to proceed. Supposedly Lego told Hasbro that actual transforming Lego type building toys would not really be an option with the developed tech. So Hasbro then went and grabbed up Kre-O. Who couldn't solve the Transforming problem either. Cons - Michael Bay is like an evil opposite Santa Claus. He shows up one special weekend every summer y=to pee on our heads and destroy a piece of our childhoods in front of us. Further turning us into souless cubicle dwelling drones. Pro's - Even with the above said, My inner child squealed with the delight at the site of Optimus Prime riding Grimlock, while wielding a giant sword and shield, like something out of a Boris Valejo painting. It's like they took the most absurd yet cool fan picture they could find on Deviant Art, and they filmed it!

It look slike Aint It Cool News loves it! http://www.aintitcool.com/node/66052 :cry_happy:

This. They may not plan on formally retiring it until much later this year. But this late in its lifecycle chances are good that they will not order another production run of the set. So if what is on shelves and in the warehouse sells out, than that will be the defacto retirement.

The only "Real World" people that have appeared in the show, that might be interesting or amusing in Simpson's Minifig form might be President George H. W. Bush (in rainbow clown wig ala Homer) and President Ford (Do you like beer and football?)

There is a forum thread over on Brickset in which Mark Stafford offered a lot of commentary that goes into some pretty deep detail as to why there is pretty much no chance of seeing the Monorail again. At least in the type of setup as it was in th eold days. Sadly I can't get to Brickset right now to link it, but If I remember the highlights were something like this. - At least 4 of the Monorail molds can no longer be used and have been retired or destroyed. These are high precision part molds, so figure these would run at a minimum $200,000+ each to replace. - Electric motor systems face incredibly tough (and incredibly expensive) product testing requirements. - The Monorail sets while fondly remembered, never sold well and never made money. Hence when the molds died they were not replaced. - Their research finds that kids like to look at nice displays with movement, like monorails and trains. But it isn't really what they want to play with or buy. The trains survive on the rich dedicated AFOL train fan hobbiests. The Monorails were more a novelty. While they are remembered fondly, there just isn't the actual market out there willing to pay for them. At least not a large enough market to account for well over $1 million in tooling and design costs. There are a lot of fans and AFOLs that are looking to use existing common pieces and Power Functions to design a new type of Monorail that does not use the specialized parts. That would probably be the only hope for it.

Well for starters 3D printed pieces generally still cost more to make in materials plus time and effort than simply selling real Lego pieces. So that would not be the brightest scam artist ever created if they were doing that. As a general rule Bricklink, because it is an active specialist community tends to be much better about scams cons and theft than more open sites like E-Bay. Truly deceptive practices are thankfully rare on the site. Typically if they claim something is new or sealed it generally is. Things like the occasional lost or missing piece from a used set do happen. But I have never encountered a BL seller that does not fall over themselves making good on a problem or missing part.

Let's just say that PJ took quite a few more broad liberties with the Hobbit. AUJ actually does stay fairly close to the book, outside of details and motivations. Around the same level of change as LotR for the most part. (granted with lots of extraneous padding.) DoS goes kinda hog wild in new directions, and ends with the main cast in places that we certainly never read about. No idea what is left from the book to make the third movie out of? It's not like Bo5A took up alot of page space in the novel?

Trust me. You are NOT the normal customer. And typical retail practices are not built entirely with you in mind. Also trust me. "Retiring Soon" and the product disa[earing from the web site are triggered by dates set by th eproduct manager (or whatever the Lego title for the job is). "Out of Stock" and "Sold Out" seem to come from inventory control. And are more automated. I suspect that Out of Stock is used when more product is definitely known to be in the pipeline somewhere. Sold Out is used when they do not yet know if more will become available. It is likely when you see 'Sold Out" that there are no production orders to make new sets. But T:G will often shift product from one area to another depending on demand. So S@H may get a pallet of the given set back from a distribution hub for the Lego Brand stores, if they perceive an excess there. It is not unheard of for a product to go in and out of Sold Out status before being finally retired.

Dedicated Denial of Service. It's where thousands of remote controlled bot computers (typically malware and virus infected user PC's) are used to try and overload a web site or a point on the internet such as a key router or DNS server.

Because even simply showing that the set exists but is currently sold out, gives the customer critical information. Information that the customer does not get if the set simply vanishes from the catalog. It's a perception and marketing thing. Even if the product is never restocked, at least having a period of time (typically through its expected life cycle) where it is still visible gives most customers greater faith in the brand and other products. Plus it has the additional benefits of being able to gauge interest and of pointing customers to related or similar products as an alternative. The absolute worst thing a merchant or manufacturer can typically do is make something just simply disappear. Most would rather see a reason why it cannot be bought today, than not be able to find any information.

I think the most established pattern of Lego's behavior is quite simply that there is rarely if ever any pattern. At least not in the ways we often seek to understand it. Our greatest failing is our undying assumption that .lego attempts or even feels the need to cover everything. They haven't pulled that off for SW in 15 years. They certainly never made the attempt with Harry Potter or PotC. Whatever makes us think they would attempt to do so here. Lego's pattern is to release fun playable subjects that work well in Lego, are easily differentiated from one another by the common folk on store shelves (not by rabid Tolkien fans.) and hit a given range of price points and set sizes. They service retail needs not collector desires. It is joyous when these two things run together. But they are not always the case (see LotR, Pirate Ship) I still maintain that it is doubtful at best that we will see a Bolg minifig this wave. His design changed very late in the game. So late that most other toy makers had red bearded versions of him out for DoS. The fact that the concept art they were given to work with does not actually in any way match what is on screen, has a good possibility of them just saying "brick it!" And tossing another regular Orc in instead. And really, it's not like anyone watching the movie, without pre existing knowledge, really knew or paid attention to Bolg's name. He didn't get a lot of expository dialogue the way Azog did. He was just a big bad Orc leader. They will not be real anxious to do a custom Bolg mold at this late stage. Now if they think that they can reuse the Azog mold with a different color and printing? That's a whole different story.

For most sales inquiry systems that I have dealt with, either online stores or internal systems for sales people, the flag that you are talking about (how many we have?) is what triggers the "sold out" message. Whether or not to display the item in the system typically comes from information the items product manager puts in. Such as date that it will start being sold, and date that it will be retired. There are plenty of sales reasons to display the product as existing, even when sold out. Not the least of which being psychological (we don't have it today but keep checking back. We do sell it!) or marketing (we don't have that today, but you may like this instead!) . I have never seen a situation where a product gets pulled from being displayed through wholly automated inventory control systems. It only happens because the person in charge of that product specifies when it should happen. It is not an issue of it being technically possible via the program. It is an issue of human control over marketing and product lines. It is not typically desirable as a matter of business practice to automate such to that degree. You gain more business trust letting the customer see that the item is sold out (gee must be popular), then them not being able to find any sign of it. Does that make any sense?

It honestly may be for project design. Even Billund does have limited stocks on stuff. If a designer is working through a concept of something, and finds a shortage of the parts he needs in a specific color, to be had on hand, it is most likely easier and far cheaper to simply BL enough to test or validate his design, than it is to arrange to produce more of the parts in the desired color, just for sketch model work. Factory time is TLGs most valuable commodity and is not spent or scheduled lightly. Were the parts something of an unusual or older nature? Say something like a window or brick color that had not been done in awhile?

I suspect that the rules governing existing licenses are extremely complex, vary from license to license, and that the CuuSoo staff have no more understanding of them then we do. An existing license will impose some greater restrictions. But it is probably not a global ban on everything related to the subject. Take Star Wars. It is a safe bet that anything in system scale, that depicts ships, character or scenes from the 6 primary movies, the Clone Wars TV series or the Rebels TV series will fail review. Lucas's license assumption is most likely that these subjects are already covered and already under TLG's pervue and expectation to design in house, with no outside involvement. But some of the more exotic subjects, such as video games or EU books or comics? They might be allowable. Non system scale stuff (that Lego has never done before) such as the Lightsaber set might still be viable. And honestly no one will know until the lawyers get asked. And the lawyers do not get asked until a project hits review. Now with all of this said, there are probably a few safe assumptions regarding pre existing licenses and CuuSoo. - Any subject from an existing or ongoing license that Lego has already produced a version of in system scale will absolutely fail review. No questions asked. Prior art exists. - Any subject that can best be described as "what Lego already made, but much better!" Will fail. Heck this one does not even need a license. Without a radical new approach prior art will once again be in play. - Any project that requests a new set or subject from a prior but no longer active license will face some real rough going. Moreso than a small all new license such as BttF or Ghostbusters. - We will never know all of the licenses that may cause trouble. Nor will CuuSoo staff. Just engaging in licensing discussions with a third party will often be sufficient to preclude something like a CuuSoo project. As an example, because of a disgruntled artist we know that TLG engaged in discussions and did some research work regarding a Thundercats license. The license never came to fruition and TLG used their research work as the basis for Chima, but it is probably still enough to block a Thundercats CuuSoo set. - As CuuSoo themselves have admitted, some licenses carry specific non compete clauses. Having license A may block TLG from other license B. As an example it has long been suspected that the Star Wars license specifically blocks Lego from picking up a Star Trek license. Now granted this is starting to evolve. The classic example of toy related non compete clauses has always been Marvel and DC Comics. But in recent years since Warner Brothers and Disney have entered the picture (and following a long history of both with Diamond Direct in the specialty market) they have come to rethink these policies. These days they get more cash out of Batman and Spider-Man playing nicely together on toy shelves. But most licenses probably are not there yet. So you may find that your fantastic CuuSoo project of a Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper is specifically blocked by the existing SW license. Just a few things to think on.