MAB

And there's the problem - who is going to give it publicity? LOTR has been done, so media is unlikely. It is owned by a large corporation, and they already have a license with lego, so WB are unlikely to promote it. The actors and crew don't seem to care (like Simon Pegg with the Shaun of the Dead project). LOTR fan sites don't seem to be that bothered. Lego staff might give it staff picks again, although now Minas Tirith failed and if Lothlorien gets there and fails then their behaviour may change.

On Bricklink, the definition is ... Complete - Set contains all parts necessary to build all of the models (including alternate models) in the instructions but does not have to contain the original box/packaging and/or extra parts I think it is fairly standard not to include extra parts, since they are not in the instruction list.

Or just more architecture.

In some countries it is still available for below RRP. For example, £35 from ASDA in UK.

Probably. But aren't they normally more expensive than the equivalent blank pieces?

Nice! Now make the body. :-)

I agree. It seems that there is no LOTR fanbase that is clamoring to get these sets made by getting the members of the fanbase to vote, compared to Purdue Pete or Big Bang or Golden Girls or any of the others. That suggests that the fanbase is not that bothered. If LOTR fans have not bought into LOTR lego already, then having a fell beast set is fairly meaningless to them. What's the point of it if they cannot get the Fellowship? Whereas a Big Bang Theory set containing the main cast makes perfect sense for a Big Bang Theory fan to vote for it.

An alternative view is that they need people to want them. It is clear people are not going to ideas, searching for Witch King, and voting for projects. Of course, we know that is not how ideas projects get to 10,000. Yet the massive existing fan base does not seem to be giving these smaller projects a boost like Dr Who fans have done, same for Golden Girls, BBT, Zelda, Minecraft, etc.

Or they both saw this two weeks ago and though "I can do better" https://ideas.lego.com/projects/103214

And there is the ideas problem, these sort of things are not making it. Lego didn't make them in the previous line-up and people are not voting for them on ideas. There is another Fell Beast project on ideas, let's see how this one does https://ideas.lego.com/projects/103959 although it is similar to the one https://ideas.lego.com/projects/41453 that didn't make it 1/3 of the way.

BL cuusoo started mid December, and the piano reached 10,000 end of December. I cannot remember the exact date that the deisgner decide to try to sell the piano through the BL cuusoo platform, it would have been close and probably soon after the goal was reached on ideas. It would have been strange for lego to delete the project once it was announced to be in the review. Probably easier to just not pass it.

I know. But only one set of data is available. So you either use it, or not. The Euro hub also serves most of the world excluding North America. Of course having the US data would be great, but we don't. You have to use whatever available data you have. Sure Orthanc came out in 2013 and others are later. I chose Simpsons House and Kwik-E-Mart since they are also D2C and separated by a year, to look at how the sales rate differs for new set vs old set. I doubt whether something is 1 year out vs 2 year out has much difference on the sales rate, at least compared to 1 year out vs brand new to the market. What we don't know and will probably never know is whether the sales rate for Orthanc is different after 2 years compared to after 1 year coming out. Looking at The Simpsons house in another year might give an indication on the decay of sales rates on D2C sets on a longer term. What is clear is that I shouldn't compare Orthanc to Kwik-E-Mart since one is old and one is new - which is why I didn't compare the two. As to the Sandcrawler and most larger SW sets, I expect "standard" sales to slow down from January onwards, since people know the May 4th promo is coming up and they will get something extra back by waiting. Again, in a year it will be possible to check sales rates if lego don't block the data release. PS. The data is monthly, not yearly, and as I noted I excluded the massive spike at 4th May. They sold six months worth of the Sandcrawler at the pre-May 4th sales rate over that promo period, showing Sandcrawler has a much bigger current demand than Orthanc.

The designer decided to sell this through bricklink MOC shop and listed it at bricklink's cuusoo brick site. https://cuusoo.com/projects/4240 That is probably a big reason behind why it didn't pass.

I prefer to use a soft eraser. Masking tape off the area you want to keep and rub the rest. You might need to do it in stages, re-taping each time if the design you are removing is not all in the same area.

Brickset has been charting it for a couple of months now. Stock numbers are available to them through an affiliate scheme. There is also the possibility that the new molds for Dr Who will be used in regular sets. Especially the fairly generic hairpiece. I cannot see them designing, for example, a Gondor helmet that can be used generically too.

There would be huge resistance. If people want action figures, there are plenty out there already. Minifigures need to be the shape they are to stick to a square based lattice system. If they start changing the ratios, they wouldn't fit in correctly. I don't mind specialised parts to modify the minifig, such as Bombur's beard and belly, but the underlying minifig is still there.

I wouldn't. The sandcrawler is huge in some SW fans' eyes. It is a key vehicle in the opening part of the (chronoligcally) first SW movie. Part of my comment about the size of the requested sets was there because there have been smaller set cuusoo / ideas suggestions for things like Eowyn vs Witch King in the past: 1599 votes https://ideas.lego.com/projects/19148 71 votes (only had a bout 40 days) https://ideas.lego.com/projects/82170 "People" (as in ideas voters) clearly do not want these smaller sets, as they are not being voted for. Whereas the bigger sets: Minas Tirith, and others (eg Barad Dur https://ideas.lego.com/projects/82472) do get the votes. Online sales of Orthanc have been roughly 240 sets per month recently from the European hub (excluding US and anywhere served by the US hub). If a run has 10K sets, and if 5K of them are destined for the US, then that is still about two years to sell those 5K sets. That is very different to an ideas set. Of course there might be a much faster rate at the start, we don't have available stock data for Orthanc at the start of its run. To compare with the other D2C range, The Simpsons, the house is selling at about 440 a month, with the Kwik-E-Mark at 1500 or so per month at the start of it's run. It will be interesting to see how sales of that continue over the months. So maybe D2C sets would work for the larger ones that people seem to vote for on ideas, but ideas is not the way for them to be produced. Lego would have to decide whether it is financially viable to have a D2C LOTR line only, whether the cost of the molds would need to be offset by having additional tie-in money making product (like the CMF series for the Simpsons), whether the existing license is available in future (that is whether the license for the video game plus toy Dimensions line would also cover the building set only too, or whether there are additional costs there - none of us know what the license covers), and of course, whether they believe if the line (for LOTR building toys) has been done and finished. They may well believe they did the waves they did and that is the end. I don't know how many people bought into lego LOTR, but I do know it has been a few years and LOTR sets and especially minifigures are now hard to get. I cannot see them attracting new customers with only a single D2C set or line, if they do not reissue at least the Fellowship. I don't believe lego cares too much about past customers, it is future customers they want to please. A Minas Tirith is only really of interest to peolpe that already have the minifigs to go with it, unless they repeat a lot of them in the set meaning that they probably don't give us what we want (new characters as well as the location). As to LOTR vs "more minor vehicles" like sandcrawler, it is interesting to note that online sales of the sandcrawler recently have been on par with Orthanc, at about 280 per month. Apart from 4 May of course, when sales went to about 1500 (so about 6 months worth of steady sales) in the promo period.

I wouldn't mind a shorter dress piece (not a regular brick slope) to reduce height, with longer pins like the minifig legs so that they stay in the torso better. Otherwise, keep them as they are. I wouldn't want articulated short legs, the custom ones available look rather stupid.

The designer of the piano decided to commercialise it through Bricklink cuusoo, so it is no surprise Lego disqualified it.

What do fans want? To see huge mocs that are not commercially viable? That is what the ideas submissions are showing.

Huge overlap with castle / fantasy. Why? Because they wouldn't do just the things we want / need. They would probably repeat the entire Fellowship as it has been awhile since wave 1 and they would be aiming at new buyers as well as old. So the whole wave would be competition with anything fantasy. Some of those may sound good, but would be awful when you consider some have to be £12 / $15 sets.

Yes, and it appears that they have enough to last through to November for all worldwide (non-US) online sales at the current sales rate, unless they discount it or put further promotion on it.

I've also bought from them in the past, the parts are fine - similar quality to brickforge and brick warriors. Firestar are predominantly resellers of custom parts, so of course they charge significantly more than the originators.

Telling people it is the last chance to buy it when it is not. It has been available for months since they sent that email.

They can try to have control though. If they've got piles left and they are not selling fast enough, then they have a couple of options (i) discount it to increase sales and (ii) increase sales in some other way. I think they tool the later option. Make people think it is about to go out of stock and hope consumers buy it out of panic / resellers buy it to stock up for the aftermarket sales. As above, hoodwinking people into buying it by making them think it is about to disappear. He is talking about the BTTF set, Aug 2013.