MAB

They will probably copy brickwarriors crutches, with the cut out in the top of the crutch to make it look like they are under arms.

What would be wrong with a male dancer? After all, Disco Dude was around long before the Diva.

The big downside for me is not fitting through doors, unless they go sideways. Hard Lego doesn't give like soft dresses.

Yet some people prefer the versatility of being able to mod them. For example, making a Santa Homer or Hazmat Homer, using the standard style head with other Lego parts. Hopefully that will happen with Disney, especially if they do the first fleshie CMF series.

None of the examples include CMF series either. The point is, we simply do not know what the thinking is behind their choices. Do they see CMFs as a series to be displayed together? Do they see them as a way to supplement existing sets and characters? Do they give the license owner the right to choose style and contents? The point of Lego is to sell and make money. There aren't many companies that make Lego mini figures to display on a shelf, or be compatible with Lego MOCs. The number of molded heads is tiny compared to the number of regular heads. They are just giving people that want more accurate molded heads what they want. Just like using minidolls gives part of the population that doesn't like minifigs what they want.

I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the various le and la, at least at this stage. There are not many la's there as yet. I'm not so sure lego would give us an animal killer, especially not in a series aimed at kids. There would probably be an animal rights backlash. We have seen enough dodgy translations in the past. The translation could equally well mean something like an animal trainer or keeper, they don't always come out with the normally used foreign words. It then even fits with figures like the ringmaster, if taken to be lion tamer or something else circus related, or zoo keeper if zoo related. Or possibly vet (have been popping up in Friends).

Although more recent modulars have had more play features in them than the older ones used to. So for example the bank has the robber coming down the chute into the bank, and the ability to launder money through a washing machine into the bank. So the lines are being blurred between city (as play sets) and modulars (as display sets). A large castle with a few built in play features would probably sell well to older kids but still be interesting enough to adults (which pretty much describes what the creator / modular sets are becoming). Ewok Village in SW is again similar, interesting enough for adults, even though it is really a large play set, with its built in play features.

Is there anyone that wouldn't recognize this as the Simpsons? Yet that is not what we got. Despite it being more lego-like, despite it even being in the LEGO TV episode. Someone (whether LEGO or FOX) chose to go down the route of detailed molded heads, even though minifig heads would have worked and even fit in with the tie-in episode. Just because something works and just because the hard core fans want a purist route doesn't mean that is what the company decide to do.

That's probably more down to the subject matter than because they have molded heads though. Many parents wouldn't buy Simpsons stuff for 5-10 year olds. Disney on the other hand ...

It would be good to get a male zoo keeper. We have a female one already.

No, I don't want. But I understand why they might. Minifigures have changed massively over the past few years, more than in the 30 years before that. Lego has shown that it is willing to do complete series of sculpted heads (two of them in fact) where plain heads would have done for many of the buyers. CMFs (at least licensed ones) are not made to give us parts, they are made to sell complete characters. It won't matter to Disney if people want to use the heads as parts, probably not to Lego either. They will want good representations of their characters. They may decide regular heads are enough for this series, maybe not. As to the cost of molds, yes they are expensive but do-able for CMFs. Proof is in The Simpsons lines. New head molds aplenty there. Hardly any of those molds are ever going to be reused, yet there was a financial case to make them. Disney presumably already have 3D computer models too, so part of the sculpting process could possibly be avoided. I don't know how lego works with licensing partners when it comes to reproducing well known characters. As to the wouldn't look as good - I disagree. A molded head would look more like Captain Hook than a lego one. It wouldn't look anywhere near as lego-like, but it would look more like a normal toy of him. Hard-core lego fans may not like it (like many seem not to like the Simpsons) but I doubt that matters too much to Lego. These will be aimed at kids and parents, and so they will do what they think will sell. I really hope they are regular heads, it will hopefully give us a whole range of decent fleshie parts to use. But I can understand if they are not. And that is exactly the problem. If they use one based on Robin Williams (more human than cartoon style) then it might not look like a Disney character. Hook was a TriStar / Columbia / Sony movie.

I'd love some more fleshie legs too, preferably with a armour like skirt, but any reasonable skirt will do. I want to start converting Romans and Spartans to fleshie and it is the legs that are a problem.

They may look fine but it is whether or not they look distinctive. Obviously, we don't know who is in this series. But as it is a Disney series, Disney will probably want it looking Disney-ish. If they do Pan and Hook, would Disney want them looking like any Pan and Hook, or Disney's Pan and Hook. This is where there is the problem between human characters played by humans and human characters that are cartoons. In some cases like Scooby Doo the minifig heads are fine. There is enough about the character that makes it distinctive. I'm just wondering whether Disney would want their characters to appear detailed like Disney characters or fairly generic, especially since they know Lego is willing to do detailed non-lego like heads for entire CMF series. They know Lego is willing to do doll like heads on minifigs to make them look accurate to the original source. Remember many people said Simpsons were fine with just regular minifig heads too - like in the Lego episode. There are of course Disney minifigs in purist Lego form, then also ones in minidoll form where they (Lego and Disney) decided to go for a closer match to the cartoons (or just chose the "girl Lego" style) and then molded heads for Buzz and Woody (that could have been done in an acceptable way using real minifig heads). I guess it depends how much input Disney has, whether they want the Simpsons style for their characters, and of course what characters they decide to produce, whether cartoon or human.

So Peter Pan vs Hook. Does Hook end up without his distinctive Disney nose? So looking like any pirate captain.

^ Let's hope LEGO don't act on the initial comments made by many fans when this was first leaked.

That is different. CMFs have often had one piece heads for aliens, etc. Imagine if they did for example, a Mowgli and a Baloo. If Baloo had a detailed molded head and he was stood next to Mowgli with a plain regular minifigure head, I don't think they would go that well next to each other. Similarly, characters like Captain Hook are pretty distinctive. remove their noses by using regular minifigure heads and they will not look as good as if they did molded heads. They will also look strange next to characters where this type of detailing is present. They would end up looking like this: in the same series as this: Lots of head detail in some of the figures, with minimal in the others. They would look poorly made.

If any are molded, I'd prefer that they are all molded. That is also sensible, since then the whole series looks like a whole series. Not half a series with minifig heads and hair that looks like a regular minifig series, then another half a series with different Simpsons-style molded heads. Not really. Star Wars is an almost 40 year old film franchise that has had world wide coverage over decades. Gravity Falls has been shown on TV in some countries, if you happen to get and watch the Disney Channel.

I think Europe only had one run too and was never really out of stock in the three months it was available. It just wasn't as popular here for "the common man" compared to in the US. I guess that is down to it being a NASA / US focussed set. I know I helped out quite a few people in the US buying them here and shipping them over for them throughout February and March. I never had any problem getting them until they were gone for good.

For weapons and so on you can just about get away with dissolving ABS in minimal acetone (and I mean minimal, allow it to slowly dissolve adding a drop at a time) and casting with that. For bricks it doesn't really work as the castings will shrink a little as the acetone evaporates plus they can deform as well if one part dries quicker than another. And they tend to be rather flexible afterwards too, much more than normal lego. Warnings similar to above about ventilation apply.

Has it been confirmed that it is a series of 16? It could have a different number (like Team GB). A series of 11 numbered and named players would make sense, or could be 11 + substitutes. Although you are right it could be a bit boring. Most German players even seem to have the same haircut, so not much variation at all! If it is actual (named) players, I wonder if they would go down the fleshie skin route? If it is a Euro 2016 series, I don't really get the German DFB connection. The DFB only does it's own marketing, not marketing for other national FA's. Plus there are 24 teams in Euro 2016. It would be pointless to do a series with only some of them so the series would need to be 24 sets.

Are they (Shinkai, Hayabusa and Curiosity) really great though or just another popularity contest? Just like many of the recent sets are media related sets and make it due to the number of fans of the franchise, you could equally well say that, for example, Curiosity only made it due to it's fan base voting for it. The only difference is that it is a real life object as opposed to a media franchise, it still needed its fans. Ideas is by definition a popularity contest, as you have to be popular to get through. If you don't have a fan base, then the chances are unlikely. That is only true in the US and Canada. In the UK and Europe it was available online for about three months and in-store for even longer than that.

^ I doubt it. And if they did, it would be tough for them to get agreement from all the individual football associations to use the badges and kits. If you've ever looked at the Panini stickers, check out England. They always end up with a generic flag rather than the badge, and the kits are airbrushed white. The English FA won't allow Panini to use the badge or kit, as they sell rights to Topps. Character Building has had a license for international kits, I wonder if some of those licenses are still current.

And replace the (minidoll) elves with (minifig) elves, they've got (another) winner.

My son was reading a Lego Club magazine yesterday and I could just see the headline on one of the pages. "Attack on Minas Tirith". Seems interesting. So I looked a bit closer and realised it was a couple of years old and it was an advert for the LOTR pirate ship.

I'm not too sure about the age brackets. I cannot really see 14 year olds wanting to have Nexo Knights. It may be the target build age, but most 13-14 year olds I know of want to feel more grown up than what this appears to be.