MAB

I don't think those sets overlap in potential customers any more than, for example: Rivendell, Ninjago City Markets, Avengers Tower, Disney Castle, Gringott's Bank, and the Jazz Club (all 2023). LEGO make a lot of sets these days and a reasonable portion of those are large and aimed at adults. We have a much wider choice than a decade ago but it means we cannot buy everything unless we have a very large budget. I have the original Bag End and I don't think I will bother with this one. It doesn't add much especially as I've already extended mine using quite cheap common parts. I'm not a fan of the large curved parts which seem very dominant, as a prefer using smaller parts giving a bit more randomness than the repeated same curved surfaces everywhere. I'm also not a fan of cloth / foil parts like the tent roof and banner. I like Merry and Pippin so I might buy them on BL, the new Hobbits are nice but I have quite a few customs already. The fence is nice and I'll borrow that idea. The prints around the windows/door are nice. The dragon firework is good but easy to replicate. The tree on top is OK but the solo tree by Bilbo is awful. So overall a few bits I might pick up but nowhere near enough to justify buying the new set.

I don't see a problem. Just buy from a cheaper store.

Agreed. And even that wouldn't work in the cases where, for example, CMFs or other sets are released by stores early and someone buys them and creates a video about them. Quite a few leaks are caused by stores releasing information or images. If LEGO want to stop that then it is between them and the store, not taking legal action against a person that sees the information. This only affects people that want freebies from LEGO, where LEGO can control their behaviour by taking the freebies away.

Only if you follow "major youtubers" that take other people's content so they can monetise it. The leaks will still be there.

So no difference in reality. There will still be plenty of leaks just not from the youtubers or websites wanting to profit from them.

I make similar ones for DIY folding cameras. There you need the thickness to ensure that they are light-tight. But for a lego train any thickness paper would do and thin paper is relatively easy to fold into shape.

Star Wars also has a big bonus of parents or other adults are often the ones buying products for kids, whether it is LEGO, lunch boxes or pyjamas. Star Wars is seen as fairly safe and kid friendly and so 3 year old kids have Darth Vader (or Batman or Harry Potter) PJs not because they like them buy because their parents buy them. It gets the kid at least knowledgeable about the franchise early, and no doubt the same parents also buy them LEGO X-wings or whatever around the age of 10. All these big franchises work on getting the kids in early these days. LEGO included with DUPLO Batman and 4+ sets for Star Wars, Batman, etc.

I'm hoping it eventually appears. As well as black, I'm also after the browns, the greys and some white. I have three black from wolfpack so just one more will mean I can have half the nazgul with each style.

It is a complicated problem, and LEGO have a lot of insight from two other big franchises - Star Wars and Harry Potter. LEGO know that (1) Small sets will take away sales of larger sets, especially where there is a relatively small group of characters and the majority also need to appear in the smaller sets. (2) For small sets to sell in regular retail stores, they have to sell well to regular kids and not just fans of the franchise. Retailers expect small sets to be fast movers. SW and HP sell well to 6-10 year old kids as well as older kids. LOTR doesn't have the same reach for younger kids.

We had a gingerbread woman in the holiday Gingerbread House set a few years back, so I hope we don't get another one as it would be a bit of a waste.

Sure, it wouldn't surprise me if they do a Hunt for Gollum set, or maybe 2 or 3. But will it spark a new range of smaller and cheaper LOTR sets aimed at kids? I doubt it. LEGO knows LOTR is doing well with large sets for the adult market.

If LEGO wanted to 'fulfill a currently open castle slot' and get kids buying that type of set, I imagine they would do Castle sets again instead of LOTR. LEGO would have full control over content and time lines, and they could do building sets, minifigure packs, and associated merchandise. If they do Gollum movie sets, I expect them to be on shelves only briefly like most previous movie tie-ins rather than part of an extended much larger LOTR plan, and that they would keep adult sets for LOTR separate from kid sets for the new movie.

In some cases they were a bit silly, but in other cases OK. Things like the female skater or skier were pretty good. Although I guess those are not clumsy gender swaps. The same happens the other way around too. I wasn't really a fan of the boy unicorn after the girl.

I don't think they need to do it for the regular series as we'd end up with a glut of heads. But what I do like is when they do gender neutral torsos so that you can switch male and female heads around. Of course, it is not possible to do it for every torso. If a male torso needs to have clearly defined muscles, or on a beach type torso where male is topless and female has a bikini, or on a dress where it needs a V-neck type opening, it is fine to have gender specific prints. I prefer no hips print, as they look a bit silly when the adult appears skinny next to a small girl with small legs. But where no gender stereotype is necessary, a gender neutral torso allows more customisation. I go even further, and prefer no skin print on the torso too, so hands can be switched to go from yellow to fleshie or vice versa. Indeed. The carpenter could be gay and in a relationship with the plumber. If someone wants that, it is fine. If someone doesn't, it is also fine. It is like the old (in my view, wrong) argument that a character must be male because there is no strong indication that it is female, so just because a character doesn't have LGBT stereotypes on it, it doesn't mean it cannot be L, G, B, or T.

Presumably, as the recent output has all been LOTR and nothing from The Hobbit for about a decade.

Yes. It was also why the S2 Spartan was relatively hard to find or expensive to buy on the secondary market early on, as the barcodes meant you could scan a box of 60 in 10 minutes or less.

Do they? I would have thought that most people wanting a minifigure based Minas Tirith set would want buildings that represent some of the city. I think they could do a gate at ground level off to the side with a wall , a platform maybe 8 studs high for the main build of the city as a second level, then the beacon on a rocky outcrop another 8 studs higher. The geography would be wrong but you'd get the main scenes in.

It depends what you call Minas Tirith, and depends what you call microscale. Minas Tirith will mean different things to different people. It can mean the entire city, the Pelennor Fields and the City, or just part of the city where a scene takes place. Similarly, some people call Barad-Dur microscale as its overall heigt no way scales with that of a minifigure, whereas others call it minifigure scale as it is designed to have minifigures inside it. So it is completely possible to do a minifigure scale version of Minas Tirith and do it well, depending on how you define the two terms. I'd take a part of the 7th level including the courtyard, tree and some background scenery such as a facade of the hall and citadel if it is done with a decent selection of minifigures over a minifigure-less white 40x40x40cm inverted cone shaped object representing a multiple level city with a grey bit sticking out the side. But no doubt others would prefer the latter.

Yeah, S2 Spartans were expensive from day 1 and quite hard to find in stores, same with S1 Zombie. The S3 elves were relatively easy to get and relatively cheap at the start, and I found similar with S6 Romans. There were plenty of people swapping elves and Romans. I used to trade 3 regular CMFs for 2 elves or Romans.

The reveal on brickset looks pretty good to me. I'm not sure if I would have preferred 1 character plus a car or house and the tree, or the four characters. No doubt someone will release other heads sone in a similar way so the whole crew can be made. It would be fun to see some scaled up brick built fabuland parts too.

There are various other options though - no minifigures but just typical builds of things that used to be in Fabuland, or brick built maxi-figures or larger figures to go alongside scaled up builds, or they might be reintroducing Fabuland and this is a teaser of the theme (unlikely). For example, I could see them doing a fairly large brick built 'holey' tree alongside a larger than original brick built Fabuland style car and possibly a brick built character to go with it. So a bit like they have done in the past, such as the Classic Pirate was not a minifigure at all but a much larger brick built version of a classic. I just don't think they would try to do Fabuland with the licensed heads as they are not really right for the theme. The Fabuland vibe was not just the characters heads, but a number of long retired parts such as the car chassis, windows and doors, the weird car doors, the trees. To get the vibe right at minifigure scale, they'd need to reproduce the accessories / architecture. I think it is more likely that this will be scaled up and brick built than trying to reproduce a long retired theme at the same scale with existing parts. I don't think a minifigure with an animal head in a City style car would remind me much of Fabuland.

OK. Doing it probably wouldn't make sense to have them as blind collectables any more. They would need to have each one as an individual set for sale on their site, plus a further numbered set for the random ones to be sold elsewhere. If they are doing that, why not just make them all identifiable through the set number no matter where they are sold rather than one type of set for LEGO and blind boxes for general retailers. Anyway, they would still be cleared out online by resellers with multiple accounts or family accounts, etc. Plus it weakens the idea of being a collectable series. What can help is if they sell something similar but not necessarily the same. For example, in the past they have done sets like the caveman, the bunny etc, using similar parts but not quite the same but usually after the event. If done at the same time, that is likely to reduce pressure due to army building. If there was a slightly different wolfpack figure in a small set with a different cloak and maybe a different colour or print wolf, that would reduce the demand from the army builders. There will still be demand for variation, but people would be less likely to pay way over the odds for the cmf if a very similar figure is available elsewhere. And at the same time, it keeps the cmf special/ unique to those that care about exclusivity in that series. I still find it a bit surprising that they don't do such combination sets like the Halloween and rock stars they did a decade or so ago. It seems there is money on the table for something like a warrior pack of similar print but not quite the same figures to recent castle style figures, or ancient warriors, and so on. But for whatever reason, they seem not to do it. I remember buying the Halloween pack with zombie, witch and ghost back in 2012. It was £10 for three figs plus some parts at a time cmf were £2. I would imagine now that a four pack of popular figres plus a few parts would sell well for £20 or $25. Even if it came out a year later, if done regularly so people get used to knowing similar figures will come, it could help keep down demand for specific cmf.

The whole idea of CMF has changed massively from the early days. I was a regular collector up to about series 15, owning every character aside from Mr Gold. The early days seemed to be much more about the collecting aspect. I regularly used to buy CMFs and trade duplicare figures with other collectors, all trying to complete their series or army build specific characters. I imagine I did at least 400 trades worldwide from 2011-2018, arranged through brickset forums or swapfig and other similar routes. That aspect of collecting seems to be dead. Now it is more that you buy a box, have three sets, and keep one and sell two. Or you buy a set from a seller doing that. Or you scan figures and aim to buy 12 (or army build). The concept of schoolyard style trading seems to have gone completely. For me, the trading with others was just as much if not more of the fun of these compared to owning the lot. Now it is so simple to just buy the lot without the fun of the chase. There is no sense of achievement when you open the 12 you bought in a box of 36. That was a big reason I stopped collecting them all, alongside introducing too many licensed series that I had no interest in.

If they are going to do Fabuland again and include figures, they need to have new moulds for the heads. I wouldn't mind them using regular minifig legs and torsos but the heads are pretty special. They shouldn't just be recoloured versions of existing licensed parts because they are a bit similar.

It wouldn't be a very good map of Middle Earth if it didn't have the iconic locations of Middle Earth on it. We have also had Bag End, just under The Hobbit branding. Will they do other iconic locations in future? Probably, but because they are iconic locations rather than because LEGO is hiding future releases in plain sight in an existing set.