Faefrost

It gets a little greyer these days, since they seem to be giving TRU and the online branches of Walmart, Target and Amazon better access to the D2C's. Really I think it is more a factor of expected production run. The real traditional D2C sets they only expect to make a couple of 10 thousand of. The real retail sets start above 100,000 and go upwards.I think that they have seen enough interest from the retail channel for some of the larger pricier D2C sets, that they may be basically giving them the same immediate access to these new properties with huge media tie ins. And yeah from where we sit it is probably getting hard to tell the difference between a large D2C set and a large retail targeted set. Much like UCS D2C may have evolved into a meaningless or non existent distinction.

I'm not sure on the third build, but the two we know are Bike Shop and Cafe. The picture we have is of the Cafe.

A plant and a BURP could mean that its not a building, its a cave?

Doubtful. They seemed to mix up the fleshies and lemonheads in the movie trailers. Maybe at some point it is someone else wearing the Batman suit?

Frozen may also technically be a different license from Princess's at least until Disney formally adds them to the "Princess" list. (With their big crowning ceremony and all)

Lego has outright discussed how much input Lucasfilm's has had in set decision making for the past 10 years. Some of the lead SW designers have given interviews talking about it. if I remember correctly the decision of what sets or types of sets to make is falls more or less around a 60/40 split. With Lucas telling TLG what they would like to see for about 40% of the sets and TLG having a free hand for the other 60%. (and that isn't fixed in stone. A year LF has a big project they may want more, some years they want less. Plus they set the overall tone for a wave. OT, PT, something new, or just a broad mix, etc) This way the wave or year ties into Lucasfilms overall marketing pushes and projects. and then further all licensed sets are reviewed and approved by the licensor who has a veto on everything. And they do carefully review every single detail. Just the colors used on certain figs can take several back and forths and test builds to get approval. There is no reason to suspect that Disney is not taking the same direct hand that Lucasfilms always did. It's still the same Lucasfilm's people managing the properties. They just draw a paycheck from Disney now. Now if we start seeing Mickey Skywalker rescuing Princess Minnie Lego sets we will know that Disney has directly started making requests

I suspect that the license itself goes at a minimum until Spring/Summer 2015. But that can be a limiting factor as well. They will not create new waves for a license that only has a small number of months that it can remain on shelves. They wouldn't want to do a full wave of something and then turn around and pull it from shelves 3 months later because the license ran out. (like they ended up doing with Harry Potter). They would probably just stock up the existing sets and sell them for as long as they could. If we do get another LotR line it might be a sign that the license has been extended.

Remember the long lead times for Lego sets. These probably started designa nd production when Tangled and Brave were current or nearing release. Plus TLG sometimes seems hesitant at jumping on things sight unseen. The Princesses lines tend to be fairly immunized from whatever the current newness is. I bet we will see a Frozen set whenever we see a next wave. And we WILL see another wave I am sure. Lego just discovered a money printing machine. Probably very late summer / early winter targeted at the Christmas season.

Ummm? http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=79008-1 I'm thinking we don't have enough to determine a patern behind anything that Lego does. (Honestly as much as I love the set designers their pattern of set selection at times can seem a bit odd and occasionally distracted...SQUIRREL!)

Wow! That's actually a surprisingly verbose answer from what looks to be a real human being. Not the normal "we thank you for your interest" form letter. and yeah, everyone BUY LOTR and HOBBIT! I don't care if you hate the Pirate Ship. Buy three! The big thing that changed was the Hobbit got split from 2 movies to 3, and then the third movie had its release date pushed back. I suspect that the Summer 14 wave was originally planned as a LoTR wave, but with the third movie things got shifted. TLG always knows they will get the most bang with a direct movie tie in. So Hobbit gets priority.

Rather I should say any of the NCIS characters could step into wards role without missing a beat, and be more interesting in doing so. he's just playing that generic agent. But doesn't really seem to bring that much else to the table.

I don't think its quite that bad. My take on them; Malinda May - Yeah kind of stereotyped cold warrior with baggage. How she shines through depends a lot on who she is playing against. Her interactions with Coulson have lots of depth. As to a lesser degree her interactions with Skye. Everything with Ward is just a great sucking black hole of cardboard. No chemistry. No personality. No reason to interact at all. I still think they so pile her with so many "stoic badass asian woman" tropes in part to trick your eye away from the other non stereotypical asian woman in the primary cast. Ward - he is the big pit of dull in the show. Badly defined character. Badly written and inconsistant dialogue. Completely wooden in every interaction. Utterly bland generic character. You could swap him out with any random guy from NCIS or similar and never even notice. Tossing him and keeping the Mike Peterson character would have been 100x more interesting. Fitz and Simmons - overly cliched cutesy quirky scientists. Mildly annoying. Mostly pointless. Might have been less so if honestly Pacific Rim had not just given us a much better interpretation of a similar dynamic. Skye - Honestly she is growing on me a bit. The worst thing about her character is the writers tried for her to be too much. Spunky and Peppy and uber hacker chick, and homeless yet stylishly fashion consciously so. Like some sort of "gucci bag lady" pushing around a shopping cart from Nieman Marcus. Coulson - He's at his best when he has someone good to play off of. May, Peterson, Veronica Hand, Peter McNichol etc. The woodeness of the primary cast doesn't give him a lot of room to work. He's phenomenal in a lot of those end credits scenes. But some of the episode meat can fall flat. But Wasp gave him tongue cancer!!! The same announcement also said Paul Rudd would be Scott Lang. Which could be good. There is a lot to work with character wise in Scott. Kind of a down on his luck single father meets Peter Parker sort of shlub. It could work on film. certainly a lot better than O'Grady.

So they are going for the "Hank Pym is a bit of a jackass" style of characterization?

It's not that they don't want CS to tell anybody thing s like that. It's just that that is not the type of information that anyone would ever put anywhere that CS would have cause to look at it. Production Schedules. Production Locations. Specific Factory Information is all stuff that is typically internal only, and is not generally put where outward facing personnel or departments would ever see it. Just for basic business security reasons. And what exactly would they replace the parts with? They do not differentiate between chinese factory made parts and others. They simply know what sets were produced where. Factory of origin is not typically viewed as a product defect or a an issue for CS ressolution in and of itself.

So many wonderful architectural details. You have perfectly captured the feel of New York style buildings. Very basic earth or stone tones above the ground floor, with a lot of simple texture. That detailed grey is just perfect.

Megabloks would never happen. But I always worry a bit with Kree-O. There were rumors that Disney might buy out Hasbro awhile back.

I would be disappointed. Like others SW brought me out of my Dark Ages and is a fixture in my collection. Granted if they had ended today with the winter wave I would be numb to it. I doubt I will buy one of those horrid sets. But the forthcoming summer wave? That would break my heart. And I can't wait to see what they do with new stuff.

I'm doubtful that the customer service reps would be able to determine country or factory of origin from the plastic markings. That sort of thing is generally viewed as internal business information. The best a CS rep could probably tell you is which set it came from (if its reasonably current) and if a replacement part is available.

Let us not forget the comic boom of the 1990's, where the crazed collectors market drove print runs from a few hundred thousand up to millions each month, and how devastating it was on the industry when the bottom fell out. If Lego has any brains they, while appreciating overall business growth, especially among the high end and AFOL markets, are quietly seeking to disarm the ticking bomb that can be the "investor market".

Isn't the Bo5A supposed (in theory) to take place on the plains in front of the gates of Erebor? So it's possible an Erebor set may be the big Bo5A set? I still think if we get a Smaug it will be in a set with the Laketown tower and balista. After all anytime Lego is given the oportunity to shoot at something like a dragon with something like a catapult they will take it. It's an added but completely unintentional bonus if such an event does in fact happen on screen. I mean that whole "black arrow" windlass thing just justified 10 years worth of flick fire missiles in one horrid deus ex machina.

Pretty much the entire movie is spent in the shadows or lands that suffered the destructive touch of Smaug. The once thriving areas reduced to wasteland. I think that's what they were going for. That the journey took them through smaugs path of destruction and its resulting desolation.

and lets never forget our glow in the dark octopus!

LOL I'm glad I'm not the only person who did that with the advent calender mini builds.

Looks like we got a touch of Mazinger going on there too. Neat!

To be fair, outside of Spin-Masters How to Train Your Dragon toy lines I can't even think of any Dreamworks movies that any major toy producer has licensed? or succeeded with? But anyway all of this is pure speculation on my part. I was trying to think what a viable replacement path for the Middle Earth lines would be, at that one struck me with its combination of named characters, dragons, vikings, ships, and period buildings. Plus lots of catapults and shooty things. We'll see. Hopefully they do sneak in one more wave.