Faefrost

Wasn't the actual inspiration for the PR a "French styled" French Restaurant that Jamie knew in New England?

That looks suspiciously like a rather dodgy translation rather than an intentional marketing move. Just some of the wording feels off. Plus confusing Hydraulic for Pneumatic. Etc. did their marketing department just run something through Google Translate then toss it up on the web?

Much of the differences in reporting great or poor sales in LotR can probably be attributed to region or country. By all appearances the line did very very well in North America. Maybe less so in Germany (which is where most of the poor sales stories seem to originate.) this isn't completely unexpected. Germany traditionally prefers the more open play real world themes, particularly City. While North America barrels into the more scripted story based and IP themes. The problem with "growing the audience" is it isn't something that historically works well for LotR based merchandising. Star Wars and Comic Book Superheroes are merchandising juggernauts that will steadily support themselves and grow, even without a direct movie tie in to draw attention. They are the sorts of lines that you use patience with and grow steadily. Whereas In outside of when there are new movies really the only merchandise that Tolkien's properties see sales in are books. Is there a potential to change that? Maybe, but it is a higher risk product line at that point. Personally I think the line would thrive as a licensed niche AFOL product instead of a broader retail toy product. 1-3 larger sets per year over a longer span of years targeted more At the adult fan, collector and display oriented hobbiest. Just as they do with the Modulars, UCS and the Winter Village stuff. That could probably survive the merchandise downturn of the movies ending. But is it the sort of product the license holder is looking for? Is it the sort of thing TLG would even be interested in doing? Believe me I don't want to be doom and gloom about LotR's. I would love to see more. I hope we get another wave. But I am not seeing a deep and driving business case for it. Just a lot of fan hopes. And that worries me. TLG does sometimes surprise us and do things simply because of how cool it is. So you never know? But the chances are still a lot less than we would like.

2014 was looking like a reasonably inexpensive year... Until the Summer stuff leaked. The Winter SW is unexciting. I'll probably grab a few Superheroes (yay? More Batman?) and otherwise mt big Winter purchase was the Parisian Restaurant. Then came summer... Agents, Arctic, Star Wars OT, X Men, GotG, Benny's Spaceship spaceship spaceship, Creator half profile 3 in 1 modular shops, I guess I technically don't need to pay the mortgage...

Some sets will sell out before their planned EOL, and will not be subject to another production run. Most retailer exclusives typically fall under this category. Particularly Target and Walmart exclusives as they do not appear to reorder them. TRU may? D2C life cycles can vary wildly. 2 years is the norm. But some last substantially less (what was the life span on the UCS B Wing?) And some have such steady sales that they will garner life past their original planned EOL(Fire Brigade, Death Star). I'll be surprised if the Haunted House makes it all the way to 2 years, just because I don't think they will rerun a set from a retired theme and I doubt current stock will last until September. Diagonal Alley disappeared from store shelves more suddenly than most because it had a hard date. Lego's license contract for HP expired, so any remaining product had to come off the shelves. On a specific date. I think it was the only large D2C set to face such an issue? As far as your "which to do first?" Personally I would probably get more lasting enjoyment out of Bricklinking a GG or CC. But look at the Superhero sets carefully. Honestly most of the builds are kinda meh. But double check to see if any have a good assortment of parts for the Modulars. This way you get both the figs, and collect parts for your projects.

2 Jawa's 2 Tusken Raiders and some sort of appropriate small build?

Honestly we probably would rarely if ever notice the non IP bootlegs, save the really odd cloned city figs earlier in this thread. Those actually aren't wacky alternative designs. They are all real DC comics licensed characters, separate from Green Lantern. (Red lantern = rage! Yellow = fear = Sinestro, Violet = creepy stalker love = Star Safire, etc). Amazingly wacky alternate designs would while tacky typically can skirt licensing. But straight up characters not so much.

I am fairly certain that they have rather circumspectly indicated that the New Line / WB Middle Earth license has more stringent requirements regarding set builds / minifig than say SW, and would not permit SW type "battle packs". This is why we get the more substantial "army builder" sets like Uruk Hai Army and MEA. Also remember set decisions are not 100% TLG's. The licensor has a lot to say. I would bet good money that New Line probably wanted Hobbit as far as the eye could see for this year. Just as Lucasfilms has often directed the leanings of Lego's Star Wars waves. Ie Clone Wars when the cartoon was prominent to Ep 3 when it was planned for re release, to next waves heavy OT and Rebels push. Lego's set decisions will often will be designed to coincide with the IP holders own marketing push.

We have to be careful about making assumptions about sales, or the success or failure of things with no hard or real data. Case in point the "early retirement" of Gandalf Arrives and Weathertop. Early retirement does not always men failure. Actually more often than not it indicates that sales for a specific set substantially exceeded expectations. But the business case is not quite there to justify another full run of the product. Most typically because they already have what would be viewed as an acceptable replacement product deep in the production pipeline. In the case of Weathertop and Gandalf Arrives, they pretty well sold out and reached retirement at MSRP. No matter how you slice it that equates to a success. The same thing with the Pirate ship. I know the LotR purists hate it. But I would not be surprised to find that it is one of the top selling sets of the entire 2 lines. It has broad cross theme appeal and seems to frequently sell off the shelves at local merchants and big box stores. Once again almost entirely at MSRP. (Amazon did a few sales, never encountered it discounted at Walmart Target etc.) But none of this really means much in the long run for the LotR line. IP movie based themes such as HP, LotR, PotC etc, do a full order of magnitude more business when there is a movie to tie into. LotR has probably been a successful theme. It rode interest in both its source movies and in the then upcoming Hobbit films. However right now we are in a tight scheduled point between 2 Hobbit movies. (And it was originally planned to be even tighter.) so there is more benefit to ride the Hobbit movies out at this point. There will be some new Hobbit push quarterly between now and the last movie. Be it this movie release, DVD release, new trailers for the next, etc. hence why it is better for them to do another Hobbit wave, and most certainly why any new tooling would be directed at Hobbit stuff rather than Gondorians. Honestly? While I think LotR was highly successful, I think in order to see another LotR wave (beyond maybe another d2c set) TLG would have to come to the conclusion that it is so successful as to be worth gaining a long term license for, without media tie in, ala Star Wars. I don't see that happening unless New Line somehow manages to option the Silmarillion or other published works. Otherwise this winter will be the peak point of roi on the two themes, and they would probably walk away from it as a success. (Important rule, don't keep doing something until it is no longer a success. See; Lego, Bionacle) Getting off as the train tops the peak and is going to look downward is the safe and conservative strategy. I think TLG is looking to Superheroes to evolve into their next 10+ year long term license. Not LotR. It would actually be most interesting to know how LotR and Hobbit sales and profits compared to Fantasy Era? Which by all accounts was a successful and somewhat comparable non licensed line.

With the customizes the only point of legality is if they are selling something based on a licensed IP or are attempting to use Lego's trademark. They typically use actual Lego figures and simply custom repaint them. There is no ethical or legal issue there so long as they aren't copying Lego or someone else's designs or using a specific IP. Lots of customizes sell soldiers and military customs. Those are perfectly legal in every way. It's just stuff like superheroes or directly or even closely copying Lego's designs that get into trouble.

Maybe it's a Friends Pink Pony Train? (Ok now quick, snap a pic of the expression on your face as you read that. Post it online. Pure comedy gold.)

Ninjago resulted in TLG's switchboards lighting up with 10's of thousands of upset mothers that their kids favorite toy line was being cancelled. Lego had never seen anything like it. I somehow suspect that having the mothers of the LotR fans all call in wouldn't quite have the same effect.

I think we can now see at least part of the reason your project was outright deleted, and not given a chance for modification. They had a DC Duplo series in the pipeline. 10545 Batcave Adventure 10544 The Joker Challenge 10543 Superman's Rescue

New Blog post http://blog.lego.cuusoo.com/2014/01/06/winter-review-qualifiers-new-review-schedule/ CuuSoo has now switched to a 3 review periods per year cycle instead of quarterly. The upside is they are now promising 4 month turnaround on reviews. Reviews Now Three Times Each Year The LEGO Review schedule is shifting from a quarterly schedule to three times each year. While reviews will happen less often, this shift aligns the review schedule with the rest of the LEGO Group’s internal processes in a way that allows us to release results more regularly. Review deadlines will now be earlyMay (First Review), September (Second Review), and January (Third Review) each year. Our goal is to deliver results for qualified projects from the previous period as (or soon after) each new period begins. This means instead of waiting up to nine months for review results like in the past, you’ll see results approximately four months after a review period begins. They are also promising that the Fall results should be out "within the next few weeks." Whatever that means?

I assume there is a good chance of seeing it in the new TV show Rebels, so it may make its way back into production as a set.

Besides, the blurry green image we saw did perfectly match up to the coloring and shading of Lloyd ZX. So we kind of knew this was coming. I'm sure TLG has a huge bin full of Green Ninja's just waiting to be used. Not so much the Green Lantern figs.

It's recreating the scene from the show that is the " Battle for Ninjago City". Just as the LotR "Mines of Moria" set does not show anything resembling a mine in it. It's simply staging a scene that takes place in the Mines of Moria.

neat! I can see a lot of uses for that. Guns. Cameras, tools, details and greebling. thrusters, etc. plus the potential for some interesting direction changes.

I mostly love it. It really could have done without yet another Anakin fig and given us a Bounty Hunter Ventriss or a dark side Barriss Ofee instead.

Dr Infero's Lava Jacuzzi would still be hard to top. http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=8637-

They had similar problems with Frodo in the first. Some of the character design elements changed and it was very jarring. For example Frodo's feet were huge, and he seemed much taller in TUJ. Gandalf seems noticeably leaner in the Hobbit. And Legolas just felt a little off visually. I liked that they portrayed him as a bit more of an unsympathetic character at that stage of his life. It's the subtle visual details that felt not quite right.

This is kind of proof that Lego can never win. The complaints about the Town Hall were that it was too big. Basically a big empty box. With too much wasted on height and volume, and not enough focus on architectural and interior details. The fans held up the Pet Shop as the better example of how to do it., with its smaller yet deeply detailed presentation. PR reflects that. At this point all I ask is for a new interesting building. Personally I much prefer a well detailed interior. Even if it is just for display. I know its there. But I'm weird that way.

Reddish brown and dark brown would be really useful too. Look how brick like those colors can be in the Pet Shop. The masonry bricks are great for adding just a touch of texture.

Yep. Some crazed Turkish Islamic group in Austria declared that it was insulting and racist (I wish I was making this up.) because it almost sorta kinda possibly resembled the Haggia Sophia mosque, provided you are heavily nearsighted, squint really hard, and are on a 3 day NyQuil high. Common logical arguments, such as "it was based on a building from a 30 year old movie", "the movie based the design on local Tunisia architectural style", "the Haggia Sophia was originally built as a Christain Church, is no longer a Mosque, and currently is a museum complete with tacky gift shop" somehow failed to make this extremely loud "group" go away (astonishingly no more than one person was ever found to be a member of this group.) However due to the "topical" nature of the outrage it got a lot of worldwide press. Lego got sick of being called racist in the press and just announced that the set would be retired permanently at the end of its life cycle. It's a safe bet they will not be remaking it as it is now viewed as "crazy bait".

I don't think that is necessarily a disqualifier in an architectural theme. Nothing in the model indicates that it involves gambling. Alcohol is served there to, but it doesn't trigger TLG's alcohol restrictions. It is more known as a resort hotel then it is as a Casino. Now if they had a minifig scale craps table...