MAB

They are meant to have solved the dodgy reddish brown issue. I haven't had any modern ones break but then I never had any original ones break either.

They have been selling quite well on BL recently. I've sold my remaining Legolas / yellow ones and most of the reddish brown ones that I had. I imagine many people are replacing them, or just adding more generic elves. The old Legolas head is selling quite well too.

The other good thing about 2x2 and 2x4 bricks is that they also stack on top of DUPLO bricks, so good while the child transitions from DUPLO to LEGO.

Personally, I'd pack it all away if you are tight on space or have it in a home office or similar if you have somewhere she doesn't go. At that age, she is likely to mix up your existing LEGO or possibly break parts. But more importantly, she is also likely to be very underwhelmed at gifts of one set if she gets one for a birthday or Christmas and is used to having tons of it around. With my kids, we started off small (even though I had loads stored away), mainly Classic style boxes or bricklink buys to get them used to free building rather than building a set and displaying it. Young kids don't need a huge amount to get them interested. Give them too much and they will spend ages looking for parts. Better to have a bucket or bag full that you and they can play with together.

People that waited would be happy. There is no punishment here. If you decide to buy on day 1 with a poor GWP just to be one of the first people with the set then I don't think you can complain that there is a better GWP later. Not that I think there will be a specific LOTR GWP, but there will be better ones than the house, or even just a better VIP points offer.

The original question was about is anyone army building with them as the poster hadn't seen any armies here. I think there are two reasons that there are not so many armies built with them. (1) the market has decided they are the expensive ones, which means army building is going to be expensive and (2) any army built with them is going to look similar but not fit in with the original fantasy era trolls. Especially when you combine those two reasons together, I can understand why there are few armies of them. Sure you can remove the jaw and place a new helmet on them but that doesn't really add anything new to army building. Plus the jaw is the part that makes this one look unique compared to past figures. Removing it to make them look a bit like past trolls seems a waste of the one unique part in the set. If I was going to army build from CMF again, I'd save my money and wait for an army builder that added something I don't already have. But for people that don't already have any of the original Fantasy Era trolls, I can see that they might want this one.

I doubt that matters to LEGO. It is only tired if you already have all the past sets. These are not adult sets, they are sets aimed at children. The new batch of children that reach the target range each year don't care about sets that were produced two or five or ten years ago. Any new set is fresh to them.

Why would they need to do a better GWP now? Better to do a great GWP after a few months to help later sales. People buying on day 1 don't need a good GWP.

Why do they need growth in the IP, when they have continued high volume LEGO sales every year. Star Wars did not get new material for years, but it remained a great seller. It could also cause huge problems with future licences if they tell Warner Bros that they no longer want to do Harry Potter. There is still big money in the franchise so Warner would license it with another brand, probably Megabloks / Construx. And once their big franchise has moved to a rival, who are they going to partner with for future movies.

I've been a lego fan long enough to have the original trolls and it is not the same. This new one doesn't fit too well with them. Even though the face is similar, the skin is different and they wear Chima style outfits. They cannot mix any body parts with existing trolls due to the change in colour. If there was a good range of other parts to mix and match to mix up an army a bit, they'd be more interesting. But an army of them all looking the same makes them a bit boring. Of course you can mix up weapons and headgear.

There are very nice troll armies. I'm not a fan of the new CMF orc, it's too goofy for me.

There is also more than the cost of the plastic. There are all the salaries, not just factory staff but also from designers to marketing to customer service, there are infrastructure and machinery costs, energy and storage costs, transportation costs, licensing and other legal costs. Sure, the family earn huge fortunes from their ancestors' investments but there are many unseen costs. When buying a minifig, you are buying more than a few grammes of ABS.

Yeah, those were the days! I still have a few green classic space figures left but sold most when prices went crazy. They did all the IDEAS Ghostbusters figures too for about $2 (the torsos were just 5p). Some of the other good parts I've picked up there were all the microfigures from the Batman and LOTR games, the Palantir from Orthanc, Saruman's dress slope from Orthanc, quite a few complete or near complete superheroes - Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Hawkman. There were also quite a few parts that were mispriced as free.

It is not always those ones, although it has become easier to spot the ones that will be popular. Series 10, the bumblebee was incredibly popular. Whereas S4 viking and S5 dwarf were not so popular at the time. In one of the minifigure guide books, LEGO said they were often surprised by which ones became popular and found it hard to predict. Uneven distributions in a box seem a good idea, if they get the popular ones correct. But if they don't, then they get complaints that there are too many of a particular character. I would say the opposite. If they know that a couple of figures will be much more popular than others, then putting them in blind boxes (that cannot be felt) is the best way to distribute them. It gives everyone a fair and random chance of getting one. Whereas if they were labelled then many of them would not even reach the shop floor if a store employee knows they can make an extra $10 per figure they buy, or a reseller goes in every day and removes all the popular ones.

Then they wouldn't be blind bags. They have to be blind to be blind bags. If they are no longer blind bags, then they are no longer really a collectable series. If they identify / name them on the packaging, then completing a series would be much harder since it is even quicker and easier than having to feel for them to grab all the good ones as soon as a box is opened. So LEGO might as well just do away with them completely. Selling them as a complete series is rather boring, removes the 'collecting' aspect, and defeats the point of them being pocket money priced packs. Identifying individual characters means the less interesting ones will remain unsold and the interesting ones will only be available on the secondary market at high prices.

I'd be surprised if they have anything more than the deal with Warner, for the films only. There is no evidence of any Amazon related content coming from LEGO as yet.

I prefer the old in most cases. For me, the torso styles are different enough in style that they cannot be mixed and matched.

The opposite has happened with some Star Wars sets and characters where they are not redone or where earlier versions are done better, as interest and demand is increased and supply is low.

It will be interesting to see whether they are still worth anywhere near as much, especially if LEGO decide to release further sets that duplicate locations and minifigures. You can do what you like of course, but many people have enjoyed it based on the ratings given. It was obviously made to appeal to more than just hard-core LOTR fans and thus some hard-core fans have made it their role to put off anyone else watching it. Think back to the original sets, there was a vocal minority complaining about many of those. Weathertop was too small, the Mines of Moria was just a bit of wall and doorway, Uruk-Hai Army was just a little bit of wall, Shelob had no cave, the Council of Elrond was too small, the Black Gate was half a set, Wizard Battle was unnecessary if you have Orthanc, and then there was that ship. If you listened to the negative reviews of the time, you would not have bought them.

I'd probably trade the original minigures for the Fellowship, plus Elrond and Arwen and maybe long robes Saruman for it.

I enjoyed watching The Hobbit movies. And I also enjoyed The Hobbit LEGO sets. I also enjoyed watching The Rings of Power. For me, LOTR > The Hobbit > ROP > the 1977/78/80 animations. But I am glad all exist. I'd prefer them to exist than not exist.

The difference is that a theme is more likely to have a range of different sized sets.

They are still rumours. I think it is big enough (actually, too big) as it is. Increasing the size and cost even further would likely lose many more buyers than the extra size gains in income. I also doubt we will see a small expansion for it. If we are lucky and get smaller sets for a LOTR theme (instead of ICONS) then there are plenty of other locations they could do and give something new rather than being an add on to an already large set. If they visit Rivendell again in a smaller set, I imagine there would be duplication of characters and possibly some architecture. So something like the small Wizard Battle vs Orthanc in the previous LOTR theme.

It is an "appreciate what you already have" year!

I would imagine many LOTR fans would want the Fellowship. Much more than would want other characters but without the Fellowship. I doubt very many LOTR fans will be buying Rivendell. At that price and scale it is for LOTR AFOLs not LOTR fans. Whereas if you can pick up the complete Fellowship for $40, more casual fans would buy in to the CMF. Without the Fellowship, and with no small regular sets, I doubt a non-Fellowship CMF set would sell very well. But I don't think we'll get one as I don't think enough of the target audience for CMF are into LOTR.