Deathleech

The March wave would also show up in stores early, like January or February though?

Lake-town Chase has also gone up a decent amount. It's going for about 30% over MSRP in the after market which is just slightly behind Unexpected Gathering. Mirkwood Elf Army you can still find online at most major retailers, and Goblin King Battle can be gotten for $10-20 under MSRP even from second hand sources like eBay.

I would love to know this as well

He had to of used it... a lot. In the few years since I have gotten back into Lego I have had several issues and called Lego about them. They happily replaced everything no problem. At some point though, they are going to think you are scamming them (or you are being too picky) if you are calling them up every week or month. Lego has pretty tight quality control so it's not like they are sending out broken or misprinted pieces in every other set. I doubt they really deem a tiny scratch as something that needs to be replaced either seeing as these are meant for children and once in their hands a whole lot worse will happen.

I'm sure they will. It probably all depends on how frequently you call though. If you are weekly they are probably going to cut you off sooner or later as they will think you are abusing the system. If it's a few times a year I doubt they will take notice or care too much. I know I can be the same way and some of the prints can be kind of sloppy and it really bugs me. I have learned to try and just let it fly for the most part, unless it is really bad or noticeable.

I wish the wings were a little bigger and it didn't have the black dots all over. Surely Lego could have done something different to represent stone better?

Pretty much this. It takes people awhile to get accustomed to anything new, especially if they are familiar with something and have been using it a long time. I remember when I first came out of my dark ages and found BrickLink. I couldn't believe it was a site that had hundreds of thousand of users. It literally looked like something someone would make in a intro to web design class. The new face lift definitely looks a little more fresh and not quite as out dated.

I thought the Toybiz line did pretty well in the early 2000's? They at least were able to cover ALL the main characters, secondary ones, main characters in alternate outfits, and even some lesser characters. I agree that other than those three (Lego, Games Workshop, and Toybiz), no one has ever seemed to successfully tap the market, but is that really because of the offerings, or the material they are putting out? In all honesty I thought the Bridge Direct offerings were mediocre at best. We got half the dwarves, Bilbo, Gandalf, Azog, Fimbul, and a warg. No orc grunts or the full line up of characters. They also looked pretty bad. Furthermore I never really seen them in stores. Not that I thought the Hobbit was a great set of movies to begin with, it seems like the only reason they did well was riding the coat tails of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Didn't the GW LotR line do pretty well but the Hobbit line of theirs failed horribly? With that said I think there IS a demand for medieval fantasy stuff. Heck, look at the immense popularity of Game of Thrones. You can get TONS of GoT merchandise from t-shirts, to key chains, to wine... even action figures (toys based on a very adult tv show.. whudda thunk it). I just feel like the Middle-Earth stuff never really penetrates the market. I never saw advertisements for any of the Lego Hobbit stuff, the Bridge Direct Hobbit stuff, etc. No cartoons, no tie ins, nothing. Heck, the movies weren't even advertised that much (compared to say the Avengers or other current big block busters). It would be one thing if these films were fresh in people's minds like the Marvel movies that get at least two new movies a year, but when the last movies were the LotR ones in the early 2000's you kind of need to market to get sales and interest going among kids.

Yup, or managers will just not give out the promotional items and then take the boxes home and sell em on eBay.

I like the use of minifigures as numbers, but I agree that clock is a little basic other than that. The other two clocks look significantly better. Mixing both would definitely be the best.

I guess this qualifies as a lucky Lego find. A few weeks ago I bought a lot on eBay of assorted bigfigs and creatures. The auction didn't even have everything listed. I mainly bought it for the 2 Goblin Kings and the 2 Cave Trolls. It also inclluded: 3 Rancors 3 Wampas 4 Tan Trolls 2 Mars Mission Commanders 1 new Jabba 1 old Jabba 1 Rotta the Hutt 1 Hulk in tan pants 1 Green Goblin 1 Tauntaun 1 Fawkes Phoenix All for $130. Most of it was new and still in sealed bags. I estimate its worth at about $300.

It looks like they edited it to not give away any info, here is how it reads now: "Are you a visually creative Digital Art Director who can communicate funny, interesting and cool stories? Would you like to manage and execute highly conceptual and creative campaigns for a brand new play universe from the LEGO Group?" "We are launching a new home grown (Castle omitted) line of toys aimed at boys."

The reasons you listed it would be an easy set for Lego to make are the reasons it's at the bottom of most of our wanted lists though. It doesn't need any new moulds or prints.. which means you can build it with existing pieces fairly easily. I honestly could see it being even cheaper, say a $20 set much like Shelob. The thing is I could see a lot of other sets being made in it's place instead. Heck, I would rather get a $20 army builder with Easterlings and Haradrim over Treebeard simply because a TB set brings nothing new to the table. It's one of those sets that would be nice to have in the fourth or fifth wave simply because it would be easier to get all the pieces in one set than having the BL or PaB for em. I would rather have a number of other sets before it though.

I meant $10,000 a day

I would really love a steampunk style golem. An airship would be nice too (hey, it's technically a ship and kids love ships?!).

That's a little misleading. It wasn't an official announcement or anything, it was simply a customer service rep telling you that? As we all well know, the customer reps have extremely limited knowledge. Heck, some even told fans that there would be more LotR waves when that is clearly not true. I would bet the rep that told you it's an Ent simply looked up the Orthanc set, saw it listed as an Ent, and then responded accordingly. I would LOVE to hear the actual designer's response. If nothing else I think it's a generic ent with heavy design influence from Treebeard. Sorry if I seem overly harsh, but this is one of two things that really grinds my gears on these forums. People think if something doesn't look EXACTLY like a character, or isn't specifically stated to be him/her, than it can't be them. Lego is not so black and white with their designs. Heck, even look at some of their main characters like Legolas or Aragorn. Lego got them pretty close to their movie counter parts, but they aren't exact. Why then would you expect lesser characters to be exact replicas? You have to remember Lego is not only doing stylized blocky versions of characters and locations, they are also shrinking them down to a fraction of their size. That means less details can fit on a figure or model, and some colors or designs have to be changed. Heck, they threw a Uruk-hai helm on the Mordor Orcs, gave us "worker" Mordor Orcs in the Pirate Ambush set, gave Dain a red axe instead of his hammer, etc. These are just a few of the MANY discrepancies. The other thing that bugs me is people wanting or supporting specific characters simply because they are their favorite. I love Treebeard. He is one of my favorite "creatures". That doesn't mean I want Lego wasting valuable resources or set slots on a set for him though. As Alcarin points out, you can easily modify the Orthanc Ent to look more like Treebeard, and the minifig selection would offer exactly nothing new except a Grishnak, who isn't that important. Not when we could get a Witch King, Gondor Soldier, Eowyn, Sauron.. or something else. Someone else awhile back was happy they gave us a Necromancer minifigure because that was their favorite character from the book. That's great and all, but the fig didn't look that good and that representation was literally in the Hobbit movie a few seconds. I understand it's hard to not be emotionally attached to characters you love, but sometimes I feel people really don't look at things from a more analytical point of view and see what could have been done, or what should be done. TLDR: I would love a Treebeard set, but not at the expense of more important sets and characters, and especially not when we got the Orthanc ent that is "close enough". /rant

Ya I am not really sure what he could have done better besides the obvious more advertising himself, and made better videos. He was actually losing ground though. He needed $5,000 per day to hit his goal, but eve after Brickset and Eurobricks featured his iBrix he still ended up the last week needing over $10,000 to reach his goal.

The Mega Bloks version looks pretty close...

Lego has their own version, which looks cheaper too...: http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-KP001-Lego-Sort-Store/dp/B005L0MKS4

Me either, at least not on Brickset. I saw the schedules for each day but that was about it. I did find this site, which has a bunch of pictures from SDCC though. The Mixels are right after TBBT pics.

They should release more waves after the initial run, so if we don't get something by September we might still get it after that. My wish list would be a Sauron/Witch King team pack, an Eowyn fun pack, and a Gondor Soldier fun pack. Really I would be happy with any of them though. A $15 fun pack isn't going to make for very easy Gondor Soldier army building.

I don't think people wanted to see the Witch King in the Black Gates set. They just wanted to see the mold used for the Mouth of Sauron used in a different set from that wave. Usually Lego has a set budget for each wave and there are only so many new molds each set can have. For instance the third Hobbit wave used a huge chunk of the budget on Smaug's new molded parts so it left the rest of the wave's sets lacking when it came to new molds (which there were only 3 of?). I think the only real explanation for things is Lego was planning a third wave. It's the only one that makes sense. Of course that still doesn't answer why they gave us multiple prints for minifigs only in one set and left minifigs used is tons of other sets to use the exact same print over and over again. Whatever though, trying to figure out some of Lego's decisions is near impossible. I will say, the new Doctor Who fun pack with the Cyberman gives me a small glimmer of hope we might see a Gondor Soldier fun pack. We already have the ACU fig in the team pack with Owen, so Lego isn't totally against throwing soldiers in their Dimension sets. A team pack with Eowyn and a Gondor Soldier, or a fun pack with just a Gondor Soldier would really help complete the LotR collection. Of course this is probably just wishful thinking.

I have basically given up on trying to find any good clearance deals. My local Target and Wal-marts never have any, and if they do the stuff seems to get scooped up before I make it to the store anyways.

I think he is talking about the Uruk-hai sword, not the huge scimitar (which was used way before LotR came around in other themes anyways):

Probably so she can sit