MAB

Nice, although I think the scene with Talos is probably more memorable and might do better on ideas.

Yes, even ignoring skin colour, there are many types of people; tall, short, thin, fat, children, ... they all get the same torso. It used to be that the figures were just characters to exist in the builds. Now it seems that everyone has to have a character that they can identify with or they complain about the lack of it.

Yet why are store employees told this so far in advance? They don't need to know, and Lego is normally protective about new themes.

I use the brickforge viking helmet. Not purist. But way better than horns.

It wouldn't need a new mold, just a new print.

They already are.

^ Interesting, thanks.

Will it really be necessary to lock it? Surely just unpinning it is enough, and let it remain accessible if someone wants it. There are still threads on Lone Ranger and so on in the licensed section, that just get less and less active with the occassional comment. If someone wants to come and comment on what could have been done, they could still add a comment to the existing thread, otherwise they will probably just start a new thread if they cannot add to the old. If nobody wants to add to it, it will soon slide down but at least there is the possibility of keeping everything together.

Did you heat gun the helmet to get the wings to bend?

It's funny. That is exactly why I LIKE these ones. You can have the pirate captain change into a zombie pirate, the lumberjack change into a werewolf, etc.

It's for that reason, when I bought my kids loads of castle parts, I also bought about 100 rock panels (47847) in reddish brown and DBG. Quick height for hidden caves / dungeons.

Green torsos and arms have been made for ages. Is adding the hands really that much of an issue? That they wouldn't have made the classic green spaceman if TMNT were not already there, or maybe made them with yellow hands as blanks of that preassembled part already exist? In fact, the classic space torso has the neck print. So doesn't that mean that the part is printed before the arms and hands are added, so the neck print indicates which way round the torso is when the arms are added.

I wouldn't mind a Robin Hood style theme, it doesn't need to be named as Robin Hood. Although I'd prefer the torsos not to have yellow skin printing on them. It should provide lots of nice green torsos, ideal for fleshie heads too.

Another explanation is that they are not buying the more creative lego sets - there are still new ones being produced. In fact, six this year - the creative brick boxes.

In the late 80s / early 90s, megabloks used to do boxes of plain bricks and small sets in larger versions of these, I guess about 2.5 inch x 2.5 inch x 5 inch. They were great as they stack, you can build off them (so can use them as light weight filler to achieve height under a structure such as a hill or mountain) and good for travelling with a small kit.

I don't think it matters if a part was created for a licensed them, so long as it is generic and not tied to that theme. So, for example, http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=92746&in=M this hair was created for Luke but later appeared, even in the same colour, in city sets. So long as there is nothing about the part that is not tied to the license, it seems OK. Even the lightsaber hilt (which has a strong link to SW) gets used in many other sets.

Maybe, maybe not. They may have found some more interesting scenes in the extended editions of FOTR and TT to recreate. :-)

Another +1 for the capes. I wish there were official capes like that.

Although for LOTR (and the Hobbit) the films did not map onto the waves. I make it that we got 6 Fellowship, 3 Two Towers, 3 ROTK sets. Or 5:4:3 - it depends how you count some of the sets that could be either. Of the 6 Fellowship ones, 3 are small - Gandalf Arrives, Wizard Battle, Council of Elrond. So there is roughly even distribution over the films, possibly slightly less for ROTK. But it was clearly not Wave 1 - Fellowship, Wave 2 - TT, Wave 3 (missing) - ROTK. Of course for the Hobbit, it made more sense to release them in film order as it is a current series, just that some of them had to be preview sets after the change in movie structure.

This is not too far out of date http://www.wallofbricks.com/pab-display.php?country=UK&pab_store_id=105

MB have also just announced they are picking up the TMNT license, so will be making in-roads into what has been lego's territory again. If lego get seen as a company that makes not great sets or expensive series where you have to buy many sets or them all to get the main characters, then MB gets the license and put many key characters into cheaper sets, then this could also harm lego longer term. Why buy lego, when you can wait for MB to get the license when lego are done producing their expensive versions. It's probably not valid for short term popular themes that will gradually die as their popularity wanes (eg Frozen).

I assume he means multiple films in the franchise, which means multiple waves of sets that LEGO can produce. LOTR/Hobbit has provided lego with that - there have been five waves of sets. It doesn't mean they will go on forever in people's minds, and hence in LEGO sales.

No. If you can get them cheap enough. No.

It is fantasy. LOTR should clearly go in with the new Elves theme. :-)

Yes, I know that was how they did them in the past. The company now is quite different to the company when they were producing multiple styles of baseplates in multiple colours and / or prints. I don't think they'll do them in the future. However, if they did them in the future for castles, then it wouldn't surprise me if they picked one standard raised base and then had stickers to decorate them. That would allow mass production of a single raised base, yet also have them decorated.