MAB

I'm not up with all the Star Wars anniversary tiles, but don't they tend to print parts to celebrate anniversaries of LEGO Star Wars rather than the Star Wars movies? There has been the occasional Insiders reward, stickers for parts and advertising on boxes for movie anniversaries but pretty much all the printed parts I have celebrate LEGO SW anniversaries. Plus Star Wars is a major theme for LEGO with a long history so there has been significant LEGO anniversaries to celebrate. I'll be really surprised if they print bricks to celebrate the release date of the FOTR movie as they had nothing to do with it. Maybe they would use it as advertising on the box but printed parts seem unlikely. I imagine they would just do the next set that they want to do (if any) rather than trying to fit in something else from FOTR again just to match a movie release date. They are doing probably the iconic FOTR location this year. If they really wanted to tie it to an anniversary they could have waited a year.

There is a worrying phrase in the press release ... A true collector’s item that completes the trilogy of sets, following previous Barad-dûr and Rivendell launches, the LEGO Icons The Lord of the Rings: The Shire set is a testament to the enduring power of friendship, adventure, and the magic of Middle-earth I wonder if this is just bad writing, or if they mean that it is the last set.

That is really good, especially at this scale. I think the only downsides are the squared of corners in the mudguards / wheel arches and the tyres too close to the edges. Do those old tyres still rotate OK or are they touching the edges?

I'm still hoping for Barney, Moe and Skinner, probably in that order. Even if they do Barney with an astronaut, Be Sharps or Plow King torso, so long as he has a decent head if they want to avoid him being a drunk minifigure. Same with Moe, Be Sharps or Pin Pals would be fine. I still cannot really understand them not doing Skinner first time around, but including Edna Krabapple.

So that will be a series of six castle figures and six different coloured Classic Space figures!

If those minifigures were loose and not with the set, I would not have guessed that they were Sméagol and Deagol, or even that they were LOTR. You are not missing out on anything. You are choosing not to buy. They are different things.

That was always my take on it too, but more that the visors were (thin) glass that you couldn't see.

100€ is probably low for the main build. It is significantly more substantial than the original in terms of parts. I think the main build is likely more than 2x the value of the cart and side builds, but could see the latter being $50. So probably $200-220 does feel right. $270, not so much. However, it does show how good value the sets used to be for collectors that started in the early days. For $70+$13 (or £60+£12) you could get Bag End and Gandalf Arrives, so including 6 (The Hobbit movie) minifigures plus a Frodo and a duplicate of Gandalf and his horse and cart. I just looked back at what I paid for my original set, it was £42 from amazon. They must have been price matching a 3 for 2 offer at Argos or similar to be doing the 30% off discount. And Gandalf Arrives was £8 (again, from Amazon). As to FOMO, I think it is less FOMO and more the realization that LEGO is expensive and they get you if you have the must-have-it-all mentality. Nobody is going to miss out on the main Bag End set if they can afford it, it will be on shelves for a couple of years. I imagine it is just the realization that they might as well buy it early and have the GWP than waiting and still probably paying near to full price for it due to the popularity of LEGO and the lack of discounts. When I bought my sets in the original theme, they were all sold in supermarkets and I knew I could wait and get a substantial discount (aside from Orthanc as that was a LEGO exclusive). There was an incentive to wait and no incentive to buy early. It is very different now.

No doubt there are strict guidelines as to what they can release and when in the contract with the IP holder, and what happens in the case of a delay in the movie. Especially if there is even a small spoiler in what LEGO release, then there is a reason to delay set releases if the movie is delayed. CMF are also different to regular sets in that they tend to disappear after about 4 months. Without the movie, they might struggle to sell as merchandise does better when it is released alongside the movie.

I have made hobbits using torsos from other licensed themes and occasionally yellow skin sets. The Lone Ranger had a very good range with Barret, Butch, Frank, Danny, Frank, Jesus and Ray. The coachman from PotC is also useful. Most of the female torsos from both those themes are good too. Ault characters from Harry Potter can also be a good source. I've also used Short Round from Indy and ostrich jockey from PoP in the past. CMF prospector can be useful for one working in the fields, as are any plain shirts like that for Owen Grady.

That depends on how long you have been collecting and what you already have. For me, an overpriced remake of a set (The Hobbit version) I already own is not necessarily better than nothing since I am happy with the original which I already extended. This adds a few minifigure prints and maybe an accessory or two which are nice but can hopefully be picked up on the secondary market. Whereas if it was an expensive set that was truly new, then I'd be more inclined to buy it.

There could still be hidden items, possibly under the mat in the entrance or the green mat under the office chair. Presumably that 'tail' piece in the ceiling does something too.

Presumably an error in the unofficial app as LEGO doesn't publish a guide to the codes. If LEGO wanted to they could use the same QR codes for different figures produced in different batches but have some other identifier like a date code so they know which set of codes to use. But presumably they don't think it is necessary to use an Enigma Machine to hide the contents.

I wonder if there is some other function hidden under the floor of the main build or whether the thickness was necessary just to strengthen the angled design. It's gone from a "probably not" to a "definitely not" for me.

By "their own alchemist's shop" I assume they mean not reproducing the set from parts, but using the blacksmith building replacing the blue roof parts with green.

It is a different scenario these days. Long gone are the times when LEGO needed to persuade retailers to stock their sets. The popularity of LEGO and the number of direct sales through LEGO.com or LEGO stores means they don't have to use reveals at the various Toy Fairs to attract retailers to take their stock.

I don't think it would be as it is easily claimed that every CMF purchase gets you very similar contents - a figure and accessories. They all have an equivalent nominal value. It is not gambling in the sense of 1 in 1000 gets you something worth 100 times the value of other boxes. I imagine the QR codes are primarily meant for internal purposes for quality control so they can identify set boxes once packed to guarantee they are putting correct numbers of each in a box. But of course LEGO know customers use them and if it avoids stock being ripped open to identify then that is a good thing too.

Life of George 2.0

It wasn't only feeling packets, part of the fun of the chase was also trading figures to get the ones you wanted. I must have sent and received well over 500 figures all over the world, trading figures I didn't want to complete series and build armies of ones I did want. Increased postage costs did a good job of pretty much killing that off except domestically. And the common practice of buying a box or buying complete series didn't help either.

I think it is highly unlikely that we will ever see the printed bases again. Not just the raised (and printed) baseplates, but even just the flat printed ones. I think the modern style is now to build the base rather than use a single large piece. That has become almost a standard not just for adult sets but for kid sets too. Plus LEGO knows people used the PPP metric and large baseplates are expensive and obviously just a single piece and so push that metric too far in the wrong direction. As to the remake of the Black Pearl, I reckon it will look stunning with nicely detailed minifigures, and probably look better than the original but also come with a hefty price tag.

It might have also been collectors that wanted to build an army, given those figures are army builders. Or even a few collectors wanting one each that got there before you. Pretty much every series aside from the boxes without bar codes have had some way of identifying them. And if they can't be identified, they get ripped open and dumped.

LEGO fans are used to sets being released on 1st of month, even April.

There is plenty of discussions about rumours and leaks here. It is not allowed to post confidential images but that has been in place for years.

For me, cost was and is a factor but not necessarily the biggest factor. I stopped collecting them all about S14-15, as I realised that I didn't like a lot of them at that stage. I had always collected them all and collected army builders of interest to me up until then. But after too many repeats and boring figures, I decided why bother displaying what I don't like. When you have that many on display, you lose the detail and they just look a bit of a mess. And that led to me selling off all the ones from past series that I didn't really like and also not actively seeking out ones I didn't like in new series just to be complete.

If it turns out to be true, then it shows that what happened in the past isn't the way it must always happen in future or, alternatively, sometimes things change.