MAB

They look good. I think I prefer the plain hood to the furry hat.

I think that is the point of Ninjago. It contains pretty much everything that a non-realistic theme would have covered in the past, whereas anything realistic would go into City now. That way, everything goes together even if produced years apart.

There was also Kingdoms in 2010.

For truly new design parts especially with a novel function I can imagine there is some of that. But filling in obvious gaps especially in ranges that other brands produce, I doubt that would spoil it. If someone else does a 1x9 plate I doubt that would stop lego or vice versa.

Yes it can help, but in the same way as using fine grit sandpaper. It dulls the surface but can also get rid of scratches too.

You could try hydrogen peroxide again. I found when I did it, some yellowed again whereas others have remained white for years. Or buy replacement bricks from bricklink.

Not just that, but it would probably sell more to kids if it was the same castle design but came with Ninjago characters instead of Lion Knights or Black Falcons or any other classic faction, because of the large existing market for Ninjago. The good thing now is that while they are making castle sets for adults, the parts for minifigures are available reasonably cheap and typically very easy to get hold of through online PAB so any set can easily be turned into Castle. Ninjago needs little advertising as it is a constant known, year after year, whereas any new (kid) theme has to start from nothing when it comes to getting kids into it. LEGO know what they are doing when it comes to theme longevity. It is a downer for us as it means no more one year themes like they used to do 10-20 years ago, where if you didn't like one, you knew another was coming a year later.

No, we don't get sales figures. But we do get to see sets left on shelves, sets discounted, discussion about how bad people think sets are. But more importantly we get to see what LEGO chooses to focus on, which is almost certainly informed by sales as sales are what drives any company. They brought back / extended Ninjago and decided to stop doing Castle. They drip feed nostalgic Castle figures in CMF and do adult budget Castle sets but not kid budget ones. That gives a very good indication that their data is showing they should keep Castle aimed at AFOLs and other themes aimed at kids.

I think there are sometimes obvious parts to make but I guess the issue is are they really needed enough to be introduced. Then all of a sudden there are enough designs that can use them and so they produce them. There might also be a factor of new is good as people want new stuff. Take the obvious 1x5 plate. That's been around about 5 years now. I have a number of them and use them, but I don't think I ever actually needed to use one as opposed to some other combination of previously existing plates. The 1x7 is the next obvious one but necessary? Probably not.

Only if you exclude all the castle and space builds that LEGO does in their in-house themes. Last year, they even did a space year. Yet when Castle was on the shelves alongside Ninjago, Ninjago outsold it. The kids voted with their purchases and Ninjago won. Ninjago today is what Castle and Space (or the variations of them in later years) were back in the 80s and 90s. Those sets grab their interest and spark their imagination. They also get minifigures. There are many more minifigure based sets than minidoll based. They overlapped for a while and presumably LEGO took note of sales in 2010-2014. Castle sat on shelves while Ninjago took off. Kids went for the exciting stuff rather than what they saw as stale. And presumably they also see Castle as what their parents are interested in.

It is also popular with adults in ICONS and to some extent Creator. LEGO has decided it is best to aim what would be the Castle theme predominantly at the adult market.

What you propose is perfectly possible. I have a little MOC of this scene and it all fits on a 8x12 footprint (with Gollum still up top). But it is a totally different thing to this. Mine is not a booknook, mine has nowhere near as much of the cavern. It is just a little bit of the raised plinth. Perfect for what I want as I wanted something small to represent the end of the movies in a small form factor.

LEGO isn't all about licensed themes. Licensed:unlicensed sets have been about 50:50 for a number of years. If you look at themes, then there are way more licensed themes than unlicensed but that is because few in-house themes now dominate massively. So the big difference is the number of sets in the unlicensed themes. For minifigure based play sets, the big three have dominated for over a decade: City, Friends and Ninjago. Then there are the shorter lived themes such as Dreamzzz, Monkie Kid, and previously Chima, Nexo Knights, Hidden Side, Vidiyo, etc. But Ninjago has swallowed up the traditional historical and architecture type sets that would probably have been Adventurers, it has futuristic tech that could almost be space while the realistic space has gone into City. If I go to the lego.com website right now, City has 73 sets, Friends 50 and Ninjago 42 sets. The little write up on the Ninjago page says it all: ... amazing NINJAGO toys, including mechs, minifigures, weaponised vehicles, motorbikes, dragons, ninja temples and other buildings. That has consumed the small 6-8 set in-house themes. By sticking with the same characters LEGO have made it so that any Ninjago set bought today sort of fits with a Ninjago set bought 3 years ago, 5 years ago or 10 years ago even though they might cover future technology, ancient architecture and some sort of performance vehicle. Whereas previously a Galaxy squad set didn't fit with an Atlantis set bought a few years before, or a Fantasy Era set from 5 years before or a Racers set 10 years before.

That is nice use of the power ball thing. You even got one that looks like it has a mouth and suggests a face!

Leave them in. If you want to preserve them, it might be best to place them in a dark box with padding so they don't rub against other parts, then keep that in a place where the temperature does not fluctuate. But that is not much fun. Personally, I prefer minifigures to be displayed and enjoyed rather than sealed away. There is little point in preserving them if they are never going to be enjoyed. Of course, there is a big difference between assembling and displaying them to actually playing with them. Playing is more likely to damage them, but if that is what they were bought for, then they should be played with too.

That is great, very impressive. I like that the wings have not just been attached as wings and that you came up with an alternative use for them.

That is very clever. Is it possible to adjust the track so that the ball never stops apart from at the start/finish?

Same here, I think where it is a professional army, then it looks better to have mainly consistency in weapons and uniforms/outfits for normal soldiers with diverse heads to make the individuals look different. For knights, where they might be able to afford their own individual weapons rather than an issued weapon, I'll have a bit of variation in swords or other weapons. I prefer mine to look a bit more old school so I use plain black legs with mine, which also makes them look better when posed as the print always looks weird when it partially disappears into the hips. I also replace the arms with black ones for the main infantry to match the legs but then use other colours of arms and legs for different groups (greys both work well, as do browns or tans) so it looks like a tunic over a single colour outfit. Similarly there are black and other colour short sleeve patterns in both yellow or fleshie depending on your preference that look good for a bit of variation without changing anything else. The CMF BF archer has a nice arm but of course that torso is a bit harder to get now (although can often be had for ~2 Euro / £2). The torso is also not bad, but I don't like the printed cape.

Jonathan bleaches his hair.

I went for the heavy armoured Gondor cheapo figures, just for the armour and helmets. Once the plastic flashing has been sanded off and the parts painted they look really nice. I use them with LBG torsos and legs (from heroic knight). I sold off all the figure parts and weapons and most of the capes that came with them which made the helmets and armour very cheap. For any new genuine ones, I'd take a new helmet, a good shield and the standard breastplate if printed with the tree.

I think it is just as much about the conditions you keep it in as the material used to make the sticker.

Indeed, and the problem is that they cannot fulfill what everyone is wanting. There is no way they can do a decent citadel, courtyard and white tree and have the whole city in the same set. My own preference is minifigure scale buildings as that fits in with what has gone before. And if there is a market for architecture style sets or the pod-racer SW diorama set, then I'd prefer they do at least a few of them to create a series and do them well without trying to shoehorn minifigures in at the wrong scale (or maybe include one minifigure that is key to the location a bit like the Disney mansion 40521 if necessary). Minas Tirith, Edoras (not just the hall), the Shire, the Argonath, Helm's Deep, Isengard (not just Orthanc), Mount Doom or possibly even Mordor. All good locations to do a wider microscale version even if they've done minifigure scale versions.

Many people are, but then I imagine that those people were going to be unhappy with it anyway because of the price and wanted a reason to moan. Some people are unhappy about the shape not being spherical, but then to make it spherical would reduce the size massively or lead to a lot of unused space. Or to make it hemispherical would still take a lot of bricks when most of that would be hidden against a wall. They could have done a large sphere and covered it with a skin to make it realistic, but who would pay $1000 for a large beach ball sized grey sphere with no minifigures. Personally, I think the shape is fine, that is what you get when you take a slice through the centre of a sphere. But then the main point of the set is to show a series of vignettes of things that happened inside the Death Star rather than the shape of the Death Star. People whine about the shape, but if it was different they would have whined about something else on a set they weren't going to buy anyway. Some people were complaining that the minifigures were not the most accurate ones, which I can understand even though in some cases the parts are no longer in production. But then others were complaining they were not exclusive minifigures to this set. Yet if they had done that, there would have been complaints about exclusivity and paywalls, and having to spend $1000 for just one minifigure ignoring the rest of the parts and set. I have also seen content from people that have bought the set and are happy with it. To me, that is more important than content from people that haven't bought it and probably were not going to buy it. I have also seen people waiting patiently in the LEGO store to take a close look at it, then go on to buy some other SW LEGO while they were in the store. Which I imagine is part of the reason that this set exists. As to LOTR sets, I have seen people wanting a minifigure scale Minas Tirith set and I have also seen people wanting a microscale set. I don't think there is a huge majority either way so it cannot be said that most people want this or that. Hence my earlier comment about it being possibly the most divisive location, as whatever they do a reasonable number of people will be unhappy with it. It depends what comes with the Minas Tirith set. White and grey bricks are white and grey bricks, it doesn't matter what badge is on the box they were packaged in. Whether the minifigures are worth it also depends on what they are. If they repeat Legolas and Aragorn from Rivendell, and do a Gandalf the White and Denethor, I'd skip them as I already have figures similar to those. If there are just 1-2 useful figures, I'd buy them on BL or ebay and forget the rest of the set. If there were multiple figures that I wanted then I might buy the set even if the build was not very interesting for me, especially if buying the figures on the secondary market cost almost as much as the set. Then I'd either sell the build if it was not so interesting or use the bricks as a parts pack, but as I already have loads of white and grey bricks this is not so interesting especially if the parts are not so useful for buildings if it came with lots of curved parts for shaping the city, for example. I didn't buy Rivendell as it is not cost effective for me. I already have all the original LOTR figures but I did buy the new Arwen on BL for her white dress. I also bought new dual molded legs for the hobbits but I prefer the original torsos and especially the faces. I have used Rivendell official instructions to inspire builds from my existing bricks and I bought some of the fancy white parts and needed to get a load of penny a piece 1x1 tiles to copy the roof. So in that case, the minifigures were not enough to convince me to buy the set even though I quite like at least the facade and roof and the gazebo of the set. I prefered to pay £12.50 for the only one I wanted and probably about £60 on PAB/BL parts. And I still feel fine as a LEGO LOTR fan even though I never bought the set. So if the new Minas Tirith is minifigure scale buildings that I like and contains decent figures, I'll buy it. If it doesn't live up to my expectations, then I will skip it and buy individual parts if there is anything that I want. If it is the only Minas Tirith they ever do, so what. If it doesn't fit my desires, then I don't want it at the price it is likely to be. I also skipped the BH sets even though they were LOTR themed. I don't care about being LOTR complete (even though I was after the original sets). I had the Umbar pirate ship but never really displayed it, so it got converted to a regular non-LOTR pirate ship and the LOTR unique parts sold off (stickered parts and sails) but the minifigures kept. So I now longer own that, and I doubt they will ever do it again, but I don't care as it didn't really go with what I wanted to display.

Do they, or is that your opinion? Is there a survey or something that says people want the want the whole city rather than a minifigure scale set? Because from the back it makes Minas Tirith look like the volcano base in James Bond You Only Live Twice. The city is hollowed out and there is a huge cavern inside. But worse than that, from the front when minifigures are posed on the microscale side, it makes the city look like it is about 15m tall and is just a few walls built on a small hill. It looks like they could accurately throw rocks from the top to the bottom or vice versa. The mix of minifigure and microscale doesn't work when both used together. This is where it is different to Barad-Dûr, as they don't pose figures climbing up or interacting with the microscale side of the tower. There is clear separation between the scales. But so much action in the city of Minas Tirith happens outside, yet there is no outside at minifigure scale.

If they had done a small set with Alfrid in, preferably in his black outfit, first time around when they were doing smaller sets then I would have bought it. He is one of the obvious omissions from The Hobbit line (the other being Bolg). Yep, I have, I sold (a new) one about three weeks ago. It is the second LOTR figure I've been able to sell for £100. The first was Saruman with the skirt piece, who hit that point over a year ago.