SheepEater

It looks more interesting than the 9398 to me. Probably the next Technic set I buy. I'm willing to wait for the inevitable Toys R Us 20% off sale, though. Do you folks think it features new parts apart from the new rotor blades?

They just did.

I wonder what Lego expects by releasing "Frodo's cooking corner". By the time this theme ends we'll have so many Frodos, this massive hobbit clone army will just be able to waltz in Mordor and Sauron won't ever know which one carries the ring.

I have all the sets built on the shelf, with no duplicates and no extra minifigs. I broke down which characters need to "juggle" the most between sets if you want every character present in every scene from the movie. The most needed character, in true fashion of the underdog hero of the story, is actually Samwise! Thankfully though, he comes in a cheap set and as a consequence is relatively cheap on BrickLink. Frodo: 3 out of 4 scenes (missing in Mines of Moria) Gandalf: 1 out of 2 scene (missing in Mines of Moria) Aragorn: 2 out of 3 scenes (missing in Mines of Moria) Sam: 1 out of 3 scenes (missing in Attack on Weathertop and Mines of Moria) Merry: 1 out of 2 scene (missing in Mines of Moria) Pippin: 1 out of 2 scene (missing in Attack on Weathertop) Legolas: 1 out of 2 scene (missing in the Battle of Helm's Deep) Gimli: 2 out of 2 scenes. Boromir: 1 out of 1 scene. Every other non-fellowship characters: Same as Boromir, 1 out of 1 scene. Technically, Gollum was in Moria too, but always out sight and never participating in anything. Technically, Gandalf appeared in helm's deep too, but that was in his upgraded The White form and we don't have a minifig for him yet.

There are two Paradisa faces. Which of these two do you deem horrible? Only the second one, named "standard woman pattern" on bricklink, was around for quite a long time. The first one was quite short-lived and only appeared in two non-Paradisa sets (and one of which, Aerial Acrobats, I got MISB with the standard woman head in its place.)

On the chess board above: Why are knights standing in for bishops? Why are jesters standing in for knights?

I too came with two red capes. I gave it to Boromir (looks great on him!), and gave his brown cape to Helm's Deep Aragorn.

Absolutely stunning. It's a crying shame Megabloks has the license for Blizzard games...

I never collected castles until LOTR, but I fully agree with you (except the part about the Hornburg being the only good set - they're all good). Never was much of a minifig collector. They just exist to populate a scenery. Being a primary Town guy, I prefer large buildings/locations over large armies.

Is it really all that worse than Canada? Here weathertop costs $75

And you gave Gandalf's brown horse to an Uruk-Hai. That still leaves out Gandalf's cart itself. Maybe you could have rebuilt it into a wooden race car for Frodo to race to Mordor? That's what I did http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=504639

If they didn't have lipstick, or eyelashes for that matter, what would be your idea to replace it with, to differentiate them from male minifigs?

Does it bother you that every single female minifig face (that isn't the generic classic smiley) has lipstick in one way or another? I have seen a girl on youtube complain about that, actually. I can't find it anymore though so I can't provide a link to it. What about the painted-on hourglass shape on torsos? Me, it doesn't bother me (of course) but I was curious.

This, actually. And the fact that it cost far less for them to include a few more teeny tiny pieces than to have to ship replacement parts.

That's probably what my collection would look like if I combined every single set. But I keep them all in their respective sets, sorted by type in individual bags. Also, I keep axles separate from bushes&pins, and thin beams separated from the connectors.

I want a Rancor set. Include the Oola minifig so the Rancor has somebody to eat.

If we only get 5 LOTR sets next winter, these two are my top wanted: Attack of the Witch King (with Eowyn, Merry, Witch King + felbeast, maybe Theoden). Minas Tirith (bigger than Helm's Deep in size and piece count) Attack on Isengard (Saruman, Treebeard, Merry & Pippin) The Black Gate (King Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas) The Destruction of the Ring (Frodo, Sam, Gollum)

Where is Gandalf's cart? I can't see it. (Or Shire Frodo, for that matter)

The human vs human aspect is very interesting. It's certainly close to modern-era warfare (ie WW2) which Lego is hell bent on avoiding.

I have all 7 sets, and I am tempted to buy a second 9471 Uruk-Hai army set. I'll wait until I see one on sale. I think Lego did a good job of balancing appeal to AFOL + LoTR nuts (who want above all else, tons of detail), and the little kids who haven't seen the movies by staying true to the castle formula of good guys vs bad guys, and adding lots of action features to sets and the box art itself being drool-worthy.

Same for me! And the Aragorn one was pretty boring, I quit after 30 seconds...

Not really luck, unless you consider "waking up" from my dark ages in 2002, just in time to buy it directly from Lego S@H, luck. There's tons of sets that I could have bought MSRP in 2002-2003 and would be worth a fortune now. But hey, hindsight is always 20/20...

Really? Interesting. I took some acting classes recently. I'm looking for full theatre plays, in english or french (preferably both), of Lord of the Rings, in text format. txt, pdf, doc: found NOTHING so far on the net. Would you care to help me with that?

Yup, 8868 is a good example. I always use the medium pulley (as per the box) - it makes the pneumatic functions go a little faster. I'd like to add that the box art is always the same as the instruction cover art. So the instructions are actually contradicting themselves when there's an error.

I have seen the 70s MacBeth movie recently and I have to say, very bad idea to turn it into a Lego theme. Not much action at all. Lots of treachery and backstabbing. And no real heroic protagonist - the main character is pretty much a dick. Compare to LoTR, where as many as 4 characters can be seen as a heroic primary protagonist (Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf)