MAB

Nice. When you get the dwarves, you might want to remove the benches around the table, so they all stand on the floor instead of the benches. Stupid, non-bendy short legs.

Do it appropriately though. If you join a site just to promote your ideas project, why should people vote for it? You are not allowed to post for the sole reason of promoting an ideas project on EB, the same is likely to be true of other sites. Otherwise every lego fan site would just become a begging for votes list.

The "most profitable toy company in the world" part is only for months 1-6 of this year though, not including the Christmas period, when something like 75%-80% of all toy sales are made. Let's wait and see if it is true after Christmas this year. But TLM being on the shelves undoubtedly affected Hobbit sales. Also in the UK, they were 50% off within a few weeks at ASDA, then regularly at 50% off at many retailers for a long period of time.

The hair blowing in the eyes is particularly nice.

These are definitely printed rather than PAD printed. You can see the striations, especially on the black stripes in the yellow jersey.

There are two. The second one was at the end (2012).

A UCS Middle Earth set will never happen. In fact, I wish people would stop attaching the UCS label to things to make it sound important. Orthanc is not UCS. Why should Minas Tirith, if it was ever produced, be done in the UCS style with fact-plate? The downside is that the lack of projects getting to 10000 votes will also get their attention.

I'm the opposite, I'm not against cutting / modding a part to create a new part that lego doesn't make, if it is really needed. To mod one to make a part that lego already makes is a bit crazy to me.

They posted positive comments on the Dark Side Bucket set too, and remember what happened to that.

I have done it before. Remove the existing arms, pop masking tape on the torso to stop the drill bit slipping, clamp it and drill away. There are two problems though - you will need to remove most of the studs/grips from the top of the legs which really reduces clutch, so you may need to glue the torso to the legs to keep them together (I did). Also the upper arms will no longer be very free to move - the can point upwards, forwards or backwards, but not down. An alternative to the Garmadon part is to just add a 2x1 brick and drill that, but again this increases the height of the figure substantially.

Cobi / Character Building has the license for Scooby Doo, and does a series of 12. Plus there are a few others in the Dracula set. http://www.character-online.com/products/Character-Building/Scooby-Doo/Scooby-Doo-Micro-Figures-in-Display-Brix/

I thought the Witch King set was the best value of the whole wave.

Does that mean that if someone builds a MOC with the intention that it looks like something out of Jurassic Park / World, but to everyone else it looks nothing like anything from the films, then it still goes into Licensed and will not be moved into Action? Is it the intention of the builder that is important, or the actual result? And how will you determine intention? That advice gives the user the say as to where it should be posted (as it is based on their intention) so maybe it would be good to add that Mods will move posts based on their own interpretation of the MOC/content, not based on the original intention of the MOCer. That is, Mods' views outweigh those of the MOCer when it comes to placement. It hopefully doesn't happen too much but we occasionally see MOCs moved into History, even though they could probably fit in more than one place.

I'm not sure lego would do a Persian army, especially not Persian vs Greeks sets. Even though those wars were 2500 years ago, having an Arab-style warrior vs a Western warrior is probably no-go for them.

How many people would really want those characters though? Regular CMFs sell in very large quantities. They are pocket money toys often sold as impulse buys for kids. A Cantina CMF set if advertised as such would probably only sell to people that already own a Cantina, and then only die hard fans, not normal kids. Most kids won't want to have to check a website or encyclopedia to know who they have got. If they were advertised as Star Wars CMF, then kids or parents might buy a couple and then not recognize anyone in them. And not buy lego again as they were advertised as Star Wars, and didn't even contain any of the popular SW characters such as Luke, Han or Vader. CMFs are sold to the masses, licensed ones need to be identifiable characters.

Dino themes may not be ongoing, but they are clearly stated in the tag lines of Action. Although of course the tag line only covers very old themes "Dino 2010/Dino Attack (from 2005)", and misses out the 2012 Dino theme. I remember when the JW rumours first started I wanted to have a look, and expected to see them there, as that is where Dino stuff goes and couldn't find anything. It seems that many things are special cases which are exceptions to the rules. Not that that matters too much, but it may just be better to say that something goes there because it goes there, rather than it goes there to follow a particular rule.

So why is Jurassic World in Licensed? There are not any current Dino sets, so it could be said that JW is replacing generic Dino.

If the numbers available are similar to his BL store, then they could be 3D printed rather than molded.

Only one of those has managed to get over 1000 votes though. Lego will only take a hint when it gets to 10000.

All the licensing details aside, I think the reason that the Simpsons were done as CMF with one flagship set is that LEGO couldn't come up with enough building sets that would sell. They probably didn't think regular people were willing to drop £400 on Simpsons sets to get them all, and that they would make more money as CMF. It'll be interesting to see if they include any alcohol related characters in the next series - Barney, Moe, (and Lenny and Carl).

Although if you look front on rather than from the side, then I find the tree quite visible. Plus it would also be a good piece for an armoured Boromir. Not that it matter much, as we aren't going to get either in purist form.

The tree is important for me as it clearly shows the soldiers are Gondor soldiers. The existing standard castle helmet is not the correct shape, but it is better than nothing. The correct shape helmet with no torso print, for me, is not as good as an acceptable helmet with the correct torso print. Also many official (unique) parts are not the correct shape anyway. For example, the official Rohan soldiers helmet is not the correct shape for many of the soldiers, they just reused the mold for Eomer's helmet. However, it is acceptable.

You need to read the sentence after. Gondor soldiers are easy to MOC and many people did it before Lego did LOTR. They don't look so good now though, as many of the other characters have so much detail - the lack of the Gondor tree symbol is probably the most important identifier, the regular helmet I could live with.

This is where the contradiction is. History describes an architectural style rather than whether something is in a licensed theme or not, or actually history or complete fiction. Whereas a dinosaur MOC based on the JP movies needs to go in licensed, but exactly the same MOC (so long as there is no JP logo) could fit into the Action theme as an unlicensed dino MOC. There is not one placed for dinosaur MOCs, it is split in two categories.

I don't think it matters too much, both flying buttresses look good so long as you are consistent with the design. The simpler one is slightly cleaner to look at, whereas the double looks much more intricate. I guess it depends on what you want people to look at. If you are having a lot of intricate details elsewhere, maybe go for the simpler design. Beautiful work.