MAB

Nazgul torsos are available and in stock for Europe, so there doesn't seem to be a shortage or any other block on them.

What is trolling about it? I just found it funny that all five designers have very similar features, so if anyone wants to get selected, they need to grow a beard.

For all LEGO does about diversity ... it is quite interesting that all the BL set designers this time are white, male and have a beard or at the very least stubble.

I think you did right. If it doesn't interest you enough to purchase at the start, it doesn't matter how quickly they sell, don't buy it. You shouldn't buy due to FOMO. I bought the Mountain Fortress on a whim and regretted it as I have plenty of Castle and MOCs in my own style already. I tried offering it for sale at £350 on facebook (RRP was £300) soon afterwards, then reduced it to £325 and then even to £300 and nobody was interested. It looks like it has gone up since, so I'll have to get it out and try again.

Common sense is continuing to do a series that sells well. Stopping a theme part way through is also bad for fans. I'm not collecting the LOTR Brickheadz, but I'd be really annoyed if I did and they did not complete the Fellowship.

Plus two of them originally appeared in Weathertop, and the new version was available in online PAB aside from the hood. I've still got my original nine (well, 10 as I have a spare) but have mixed up the torsos now too, and once the hood becomes cheap, I'll mix some of those in too. So with 2 diferent capes, two different torsos and two differnt hoods, that is enough for eight different Ringwraiths. And the Witch King can keep wearing his knock-off aliexpress headgear until LEGO do an official helmet.

I've seen it discussed on a number of LEGO fan websites. Lots of people seem to be wanting to save brickshelf or at least save the content of brickshelf. If everyone goes on to download the entire archive so they can host elsewhere or keep their own archive without realising others have already done it, then it could cost the family / estate a substantial sum depending on the hosting agreement / billing that he had. I imagine the traffic this month will be huge compared to in the past. It might even cause too much debt, that the family just dump it or try to recoup these new costs from anyone trying to buy the site. I doubt anyone downloading right now will be looking to download from a mirror, as there are no official mirrors and presumably if they wanted to save brickshelf, they would go direct to brickshelf. This is a problem. Even though people often refer to it as a community, it isn't really. There are many individual LEGO communities. There is no central hub where someone can say we are going to do this or that, and nobody else needs to do anything as it is being done.

Someone was paying for that, often through advertising on their own site. But I totally understand companies blocking sharing of image files by links. The company pays for hosting and bandwidth costs but the people viewing the files never see the adverts on the hosting company's site and in many cases would not even know which company is paying to host the images they are viewing.

I wonder what billing they have on their account. If it is based on bandwidth and if multiple people are doing this, then they could find they get a huge bill this month.

OK, we are using different definitions. I am using minifigure scale to mean minifigures interact with the build not that the build is proportional to minifigure height. Like every building in City is poorly scaled. For me, microscale is massively scaled down with no minifigure interaction at all. Barad-Dur works OK as a minifigure based tower as the proportions of rooms inside are still believable. I cannot see how they can make the whole of Gondor work in microscale as the rooms would be very weird shapes. Most of the whole city MOCs are architecture style.

I do. Just the white tree alone is pretty iconic, but wouldn't make a very good set. I'd go for a decent minifig based well done part of the city, than a large white inverted cone to represent the whole city in microscale. I don't think the market for huge licensed architecture sets is as big as that for minifig based sets.

I don't think it has to be a playset to be a minifigure scale / minifigure based set. Rivendell is a perfect example of a display set with minifigures and some play features, although adults often prefer them to be called Easter Eggs or hidden features. The courtyard with tree, citadel and hall are a reasonably large area. If they did a building facade roughly 40 studs wide and maybe only 16 deep, they could do the whole of the courtyard about 36 studs in diameter, with the tree. I doubt the 'runway' really adds much for display but a short region could be added even if it is nowhere near long enough. Although there are some nice microscale MOCs of the whole city, I don't think they fit with what they have recently done and I'd skip it if LEGO did one.

Yes a lot might interest kids. Barbie - rival to minidoll (both Friends and licensed). They have done Barbie building sets before but with much larger pieces. Hot Wheels - buildable and customisable Hot Wheels, rival to LEGO's various toy car offerings. And large Hot Wheels - scaled up version of their classics for the adult market. American Girl, Angelina Ballerina, Barney, Bob the Builder, and so on - all brands that could have building sets with miniature figures whether minifigure style or DUPLO style. That is just up to B. There are plenty of others - Fireman Sam, Thomas the Tank Engine, Hello Kitty, and so on. They have existing tie-ins with WWE. I can imagine a series of minifigures selling small building sets well with a big ring set. I've not watched it for years, but I could see them doing things like Eddie Guerrero's low rider being popular with nostalgic adults or similar for any of the current roster. That is licensed stuff. No doubt they could do rivals to things like Creator and City and so on. Many adults don't care about the LEGO branding especially when buying for kids but I think also themselves now LEGO is tending to go more and more expensive. But the big one could be - MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. I reckon that could be huge for the adult market. A Mattel owned brand. The series was originally developed as a way to market toys. Kids that grew up with it are now nostalgic rich adults. Castle Greyskull and the Royal Palace as flagship sets, loads of smaller sets to include one or two of the characters. And similar with HALO. They were a big step up from figures they were doing before such as the Marvel minifigures before LEGO go that deal back from Mega. I reckon there is plenty of room for licensed sets of much more screen accurate and articulated minifigures that can interact with brick-built scenes. Especially with licensed characters, the ability to mix and match figure parts is not so important, so they can do much more realstic versions of characters looks, outfits, size / height, etc. And have them articulated for posing too. There are probably lots of ways they could take it if they want to take a bigger share of the brick building market.

That is why I would go with a fairly narrow facade for the hall / citadel, essentially as a backdrop for the courtyard. It wouldn't even need to be to scale for height. I guess the advantage of an all in one set is that it is (i) impressive so appeals to adults and (ii) fairly coherent as a single build / display. But that said, I'd take individual playsets or a 'big box' style playset, a bit like Assault on Hoth was but with the difference that it hasn't all been done before.

If they did that, I'd predict the words "cash grab" being used. Along with why did they split the (important) minifigures across both sets forcing fans to buy both rather than putting the (important) ones into the top section and leaving the bottom section for the (obscure) minifigures for die hard fans only. And everyone's important definition of important and obscure being different. I think you can do the top section of Minas Tirith reasonable well with a fairly narrow facade of the hall/citadel, the courtyard and tree, a raised rocky area with a beacon, and a bit of wall. That covers most scenes in a compact model. They could even go further and have the whole lot raised just slightly and have the great gate at the lowest point. Obviously the shape of the whole city is wrong, but similar to the way they got all of Rivendell into one reasonably coherent model. Whatever they do, we are not going to get the entire city looking like it does in the movies and have a decent minifigure scale area at the top. Even just two or three layers of the city will use lot of bricks just to lift those higher rings. I think I would prefer a decent scale top section to an inverted cone with a small area for the top.

With hairpieces like those I tend to wait now. There is a good chance that they will do a cheap polybag or comic gift with them in, and if they do there will be loads on BL.

They've done it before with Barbie brick sets too. I wonder if their offerings will be based on their own licenses or other IP or if they will try to take some of the brick market with generic City type sets or Creator type sets.

Same here. I cannot really imagine a set double the size of Rivendell being popular both in terms of cost but also importantly size. Big sets can work for ships in Star Wars as they are a single object. Whereas what we have so far for LOTR especially Rivendell is somewhat hollow in that they are more landscape combining lots of small regions and I imagine Minas Tirith being a city would follow that. Would many people buy two Rivendells at once? I think they'd lose buyers overall compared to doing a decent set at similar scale as Rivendell. Doubling the size doesn't necessarily double the pleasure.

It adds to the cost though if every new character gets its own screen accurate pieces. Accurate hair for Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin would all be slightly different as their onscreen hair is different, and they would all be different to those for Michael Knight, Lee Jordan, Charlie Weasley, and Gray Mitchell. However, they all look fine sharing the same hair piece when you consider minifigures are not accurate scale models or action figures. If there was something so spectacular and unique about the character, then I expect them to do it. So if they did a The Hobbit version of Lobelia, I would expect them to do it in a similar way to Red Harrington from The Lone Ranger, as the hat and hairstyle makes that character unique. Whereas if you have to pause a movie to check if the length of the hair on a minifigure is actually screen accurate as there is nothing else really special about it, then I don't think it needs a new mold created for that single use.

None. I just don't think we need a new hairpiece for such a minor character when existing ones work fine. How many people are out there thinking: We are getting a new LOTR version of Bag End but I'll skip it if they don't do a Lobelia minifigure, and she must have a new hairpiece. I imagine there are people (both AFOLs and fans of the movies) that have skipped Rivendell because of he price and size but would buy the smaller Bag End and so recognizable characters like Merry and Pippin ought to be in it ahead of minor characters that many wouldn't recognize if the character name wasn't on the box.

If everyone is doing it for the same reason though - to save it for the community - then it ends up with allies with a common goal out-bidding each other and increasing the price someone has to pay.

If they did Lobelia, there are plenty of female hair pieces already existing. I would hope they didn't use a new mould for a character that has so little screen time I doubt most people could describe how her hair is different to already existing parts without pausing the movie and taking a screenshot (as below). Her hair is not so different to the usual hobbit hair but of course this is used to represent the male hobbit shorter hair even though it is a but too volumous. I imagine they'd probably use a different one to distinguish male from female. The Dana/Rosmerta hair would be fine for me when you compare their on screen versions. It is too big, but then the existing hobbit hair is too big, in the same way that minifigure heads are too big a bit like bobble heads especiallywhen they use short legs.

Every person contacting them and asking about buying it is probably pushing the price up.

The post I responded to said acquire the domain, not the company. This would be different to twitter/X as there the company was sold. If the Brickshelf LLC becomes defunct and the domain is later acquired, that is not the same company.

Very different costume, and that is a movie series they are not currently making sets for. If they were to do another The Hobbit version of Bag End, then I imagine most people now would want all the dwarves before they do a Lobelia figure.