MAB

With the lack of information given out by bricklink I would imagine the only people that know much are BL staff and presumably they have been told not to say anything - here or there or anywhere. If someone knows about it and is willing to discuss it, wouldn't they have already done it and not waited for the pre-announcement announcement.

Get some HP CMFs and you'll soon have some spare wands.

Check back on bricklink in 6 days time.

3300014 was released in the UK.

I agree medieval stuff is (reasonably) popular with kids, but not necessarily knights. Maybe that is bias, as I hope if knights come back, they also do some civilian style sets too. I imagine that is because TV shows that (i) are for kids and (ii) get exported worldwide tend to be animation. It is easy to change languages for cartoons, and also settings tend to be more fantasy than real so they make sense to kids worldwide. If there was a show that fits into LEGO's remit, is marketable worldwide, is on TV / streaming, and happens to be live action I don't think they would worry that it is live action. Something has to be first.

It does also show that custom pad printers on genuine lego parts could cause a problem. They could print things like this, get people that live near LEGO factories to sell them as "escaped" parts and they become real (no pun intended!). Then they can start to flood the market with these "rare" parts that LEGO doesn't officially release.

Thick black lines like that are quite easy. Use masking tape to mask off each line one at a time, then permanent marker / sharpie the line. Remove the tape and move on to the next line. I find marker doesn't leave a raised surface like some paints can. Plus black is easy as black is black. Whereas other colours are much harder to match. Similarly, thin lines or curved lines are harder to do, as you cannot mask them off so easily.

It could also be advertising mean not selling well, but if they mention it is successful then people may panic into buying now. As to SH sets, I think there are just too many now. Plus the prices have gone crazy in Europe (although that is true for many / all licensed themes). For UK prices, it is almost certain that regular retail sets will be discounted by 30%, so I never believe the RRPs. I think they are set these days so that sets can be discounted.

It helps to use quotes for specific phrases, so "Wizard of Oz" is better than Wizard of Oz.

I think that was more coincidence than anything else. If you read the press release here https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2014/january/lego-the-simpsons the 25th anniversary is not mentioned until part way down. Similarly there were no "25th anniversary" badges or advertising on the boxes. I imagine here that they agreed with Fox to do The Simpsons House and CMF (and also got their advertising episode in return) and it just happened to be the 25th anniversary. The sets were also available for a couple of years, long past the anniversary. If LEGO wants to do sets based on TV series and gets the rights to do them, then they will do them. What they have done in the past matters not. One of the reasons they have concentrated on movies is probably that they are essentially worldwide events, in that they are released worldwide over a small timeframe and so they sell well globally. Whereas a lot of TV in the past has been highly regional, and with different release dates (sometimes years later) so it is much harder to market the toys globally. The rise of Netflix and Amazon streaming services may well change this in the future. If there is money to be made selling toys based on Netflix or Amazon produced content, I am sure LEGO will be involved. There have also been sets for Powerpuff Girls (Cartoon Network), Scooby Doo, TMNT (I'm not sure if these were TV or movie versions though), Spongebob Squarepants, Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The Simpsons was on TV.

It doesn't say that JW or the Bugatti are selling well. It says that they launched well. What that means is anyone's guess. The lack of SH doesn't surprise me at all. While they may sell well in the US, in Europe they typically sell quite badly.

There is also this thread ... In my view, brickheadz would be most likely - a Dorothy plus witch combo pack.

You can make it stiffer by coating the "shoulder" joint with a little varnish or paint, or wrap a little tape around the joint (although this isn't so good if you tend to change poses a lot).

Presumably because they don't think it would be popular now, and that they want to do new things rather than keep on repeating the old. Pirates and knights are not as popular with kids now as they were in the past.

They were small, but then they had to be to reach a certain price point. Of course they could have been bigger, for a higher price. And not all sets can be $100-$250 large sets.

While that would work, it produces a rather large "tile". Something similar in size to a 2x2 would be better. Until then, we keep having to have a false floor rotated by 45 degrees.

I don't think they get to stay in the factory and do what they like! Also to do a custom print is not a quick job, as it requires the cliches to be made.

So with the chains around Jabba's neck?

There is a nice picture of a model of it here for comparison: Aside from maybe some custom decals for the windows, the LEGO version looks pretty much perfect! I wish LEGO would do floor tiles that can be laid as diamonds (45 degree rotated squares) rather than squares.

I don't agree here. I recently sorted a job lot of mixed bricks and the only way I could tell the difference between real lego and some MB and Cobi bricks was the logo on the studs.

The problem with that is many of the cloners are now on par with LEGO quality. I have a number of knock off minifigs and aside from colour matching, there parts are just as good a quality as the real thing and in a number of cases the printing surpasses LEGO's.

They do, especially for larger sets. Try building a set from a pdf onscreen and you'll realise why!

I don't think they can protect the design of the set - at least, they have not proven that in court. Whereas they have gone after other companies using their or similar logos and packaging. Note the fake sets on ali. They are not using LEGO's original pictures of these sets. A year or two ago, they would have been. That seems to be all that has changed here.

Yes correct. The difference though is that (at least from an AFOL perspective) SW and HP sets of the past were popular and so re-releases / new versions help bolster sales of sets from new films (including ones that might not be as good as the originals!). Whereas if sales of LOTR and Hobbit sets were bad in the past (as many people seem to think so), would the same thing happen? Wouldn't that be dragging sales down rather than bolstering them.