MAB

They will often charge the base price and tax separately - I notice this on every order. Also if the order comes in two parcels (if you buy anything else that is not replacement parts), they will split it and make two charges.

What is the white head from that you have used in Moon Knight? Is it Voldemort with removed print?

The sets are based off movies. Not becuase they are marketted to children and children haven't read the books, but becuase the contract is between Lego and Warner Brothers/MGM. Take a look at the boxes. The logos are clearly shown. Of course the ratio of main characters to generic characters is going to be low in LEGO's own generic themes such as pirates, city and castle. These themes have essentially no main characters, so there will always be a high proportion of generics. Licensed themes are completely different - it is mainly the named licensed characters that sell these themes. That is your opinion only. My opinion is that The Hobbit and LOTR is supposed to relate primarily to LOTR / Hobbit fans, and fans want to have the named characters before generic characters. I would gladly have lost the generic Rohan soldier for a Witch King (although I'd still want Eomer). Mainly because being generic with little distguishing marks, they are easy to construct from generic parts from other themes. I would have even preferred a non-named Gondor soldier than a Rohan, since they are not so generic in that being from a more well defined army they have highly specific headgear and shield. Of course, Castle fans might be interested in the sets due to the parts, but not the characters. If they were interested in the characters, then they would be LOTR/Hobbit fans. If you want generic soldiers, then you can buy sets from the Castle line. The point of LOTR and Hobbit sets (for me) is not to provide more generic soldiers for people that are not interested in LOTR and the Hobbit. Sure, it would have been nice to get Gondor soldiers for LOTR and elves and dwarves for the Hobbit, but not at the expense of the main characters. Sure, they could have done battle packs. But I doubt sales would have really been any different. I noted earlier that Uruk-Hai army seemed to have sold no better than other sets in the series, they needed heavy discount to shift just as the main character sets did. Adding in a generic army builder does not make a set instantly more appealing. Of course, others may have seen Uruk-Hai army fly off the shelves and never be available at RRP as everyone was buying them up for army building. That is not what I remember seeing though. I doubt if a similar set for the Hobbit would have sold any better than most other Hobbit sets. A kid or parent would pick it up and not even know who the un-named characters are, and tend towards the ones with the main characters in.

It probably happened during transport. But for the price of a piece of cart and cellophane wrap around the manual and stickers, they have an unhappy customer that needs to complain.

I cannot see the piano making it past the review panel. The creator of that project has also submitted it to cuusoo-brick, where he is the creator. A number of his designs are already in BL's MOC-shop. https://cuusoo.com/b...tor-picks-today So either he knows that he did not pass review and he has put the piano (plus a few other bits added to it) on cuusoo-brick, or LEGO will not pass the set when they find out he is commercialising it through another (rival) ideas site. Or a third possibility is that LEGO do not find out about it, pass the set, and then look fools when the same design is for sale by another company.

So not done Black Gate at all, and done a different scene? Because if the Witch King turned up at Black Gate, there would be complaints.

Simple answer for me, no. I find them ugly. They add a lot to the price, especially molded ones.

People are strange. I think the 10 I sold were for investments and he missed the final sales on them. He wanted perfect boxes - so I assume for resale. That was when low price on bricklink would have been about £28, as he got a 10% discount on that.

I disagree there. They are only collectables if you want them to be collectables. I still have a rather large CMF collection, but not a complete collection. I never intended to collect them as a displayable collection. I was complete because I liked the new parts and printed torsos. I am no longer complete as I sold off a lot of the earlier stuff when prices went crazy (as other people obviously did want to be complete after starting late). However, I never once displayed them as a complete collection. I used them to inspire small 8x8 or 16x16 vignettes. That is what lego is all about, and CMF gave me that inspiration to build something themed on whatever came out of the packet. My collection now is more army themed (aliens, historical, animal suits, ...) often with 10-20 of each and city themed (a couple of plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, coffee guys, etc). They are never displayed as a collection, but as a group of minifigs doing something in a free build.

I assume they didn't sell well, since they were heavily discounted towards the end. I bought them originally as parts packs, intending to use them mainly for the LBG parts and horses knowing I could probably shift the minifigs to get back my original costs. Soon after EOL, it turned out that people did want them hence the large price increases. I sold 10 of them for I think £25 each to one guy, which almost cleared my costs. Another 8 got opened for the parts with some minifigs sold off, and I still have six sealed boxes that I'll do something with at some stage.

The Hobbit wave 2 was massively discounted on release here. One supermarket was selling Dol Guldur Battle at £25 two weeks after release (rrp £70). It was then regularly that price as other supermarkets price matched. I don't know if it was linked to either poor overall supermarket sales, so they were discounting some premium products as loss leaders to get people through the door, or poor sales of previous LOTR / Hobbit LEGO sets, so they were essentially shifting them as soon as stocks came in. They haven't done the same with wave 3, so it may have just been due to aggressive marketing with loss leaders.

That is true of many lego lines these days. I never buy a non-exclusive set unless I get at least 33% off. It is true of Goblin King, it is true of Riddles, it is also true of army building sets from SW, and Uruk-Hai Army. The best deal I got on any LOTR/Hobbit set was on Uruk-Hai Army. I got it for £12 (RRP £30), 60% off. This was not just a small one-off deal - it was national and I bought 24 sets at that price. Stocks were in their hundreds at minimum. This LOTR battle pack had simply not sold (Mines and Weathertop sold well at 33% off). The best deal I ever got on SW sets was also on the Battle Packs - the Endor rebel and Imperial trooper one, £2 (rrp £12), again large stocks were available. It was also regularly found for £5 so again more than 50% off, as are most SW battle packs. Thsi was the point being made earlier - with LOTR / Hobbit, it is not just specific character sets that did not seem to sell well, it was all sets, battle packs included. One of the best non-exclusive sets was Unexpected Gathering, and that was regularly 50% off. I believe the same is true for SW and castle - battle packs sell no better than regular sets. Most kids do not have 100s of the same battle pack. Adults do, and that is why they expect there to be battle packs for every theme. You are complaining about placement, so why would you put the Witch King in the Battle of the Black Gate?

Even they didn't admit they were poorly designed? Do you really think a company is going to put out a product saying that they don't believe it is worth the price as it is poorly designed? They'd use their other Lego men.

No, I haven't. They are totally different. Castle has no named characters, aside from the odd king or leader. SW is a much bigger IP for Lego, both in time and number of concurrent sets, in which they have done virtually all the characters fairly continuously, and have room for battle packs in the large range they do.

I agree. Battle scenes do not translate well into Lego scenes. They require too many figures and have little play value, when compared to having multiple other sets. What facts are wrong?

So the first two Hobbit films don't exist? They aren't about battles, for the most part they are character development. Or does everyone else just skip them and go for the battle movie? So did you want the Balrog to be 250 pieces, or Minas Tirith to be that size? As if you want rid of the Council set (a key scene as it is the formation of the Fellowship) you need to replace it with something of similar size.

There is also the problem that the existing license was for more than a single set / scene. It wouldn't surprise me if the IP owner would want any continuation to be under the same terms as the previous license. Why extend a license if you are only going to get a small proportion of what you had before?

That may work for you, and anyone that purchases the entire series. However, that is not lego's only market. Many people do not get the entire series of sets. If someone buys, for example the LOTR pirate ship, they need Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli to be there. Without them, the set doesn't make sense. Gandalf needs to be in Unexpected Gathering, Gandalf Arrives, etc.

It is not false that more people want named characters. If you could have a series in which you get a generic Rohan, or Theoden, which would you get? Boromir or a generic Gondor? A number of people want the named characters, and don't care too much for armies. You can deny it, but it is true. Although a greater number would prefer both.

It doesn't matter how it was 'forced' any way. What matters is that it got there, others didn't. It is the same with the mass advertising that TBBT got. All Lego cares is that it was voted for, not how the internet / social media is used to gain the votes.

Of course it is true. They have acknowledged it has 10,000 support, so it is going to be considered in the review stage. Now they might say "We aren't going to do that" without any further consideration and totally discount it, but it has still been considered during the review stage. When they do the review video, they will no doubt say they have had however many projects it was that reached 10,000 and the winner is .... (if there is a winner). They don't have to give a reason for something failing the review, so we will never know how far it gets in the review process - whether it is rejected outright on day 1, whether they build it and decide against it, whether they do the financials and decide it is a no go, etc. The only way we will know how far it got through the process is if it comes out as the winner.

Men's torsos vary wildly (as do women's). Yet all are depicted with the same torso, with the occasionally fat lines (like the sumo wrestler) or muscles if shirtless. I think the Samurai's torso is fine as it is. She doesn't need to be wearing figure hugging clothes or have exposed cleavage.

Look at this link - notice the date - 2013.

They always use old stock photos in those videos. There is the one of the UCS style SW probe droid that has been doing the rounds for ages, every time it is used someone thinks it is a new set about to come out. However, they will be considering it. It passed review, so it will be considered.

Female cyclops - you can pull her hands off for a sand blue monochrome figure. That's why I wanted one :-)