MAB

It might be a single mold, with multiple parts on a sprue that get bundled into a bag. Plus these are accessories where they don't need precision molds. The only connector part are the hand held hills and so these do not need to have precise diameters.

It is the depth that is the problem here for me. My deepest shelves are about 38cm or so. The large depth means it is more suited to displaying on the top of a deeper sideboard or table.

Neither do the crappy ones! :-)

It is good to know that LEGO are having the same problem - it is too big!

They did recently (2019) do the anniversary figures for Star Wars where they used yellow skin again for these one-off display figures. They did Lando again using reddish brown and this just shows the issue - yellow means Caucasian skin.

Putting yellow in licensed would be confusing now. If yellow is representing white characters in licensed, it sends the message that unlicensed sets with yellow are whites too. If you want yellow licensed characters, you can pull off the hands and switch to yellow and replace the realistic coloured heads with yellow. It is only where skin is printed on torsos and less commonly on legs that there is an issue.

Yeah, the BAM online is dreadful now. 10-20 of each type of part and they are all fairly common and cheap parts. It started out OK, with a couple of interesting torsos, one dual molded legs, some decent hair and a couple of animals.

You are building and reviewing toys aimed at 5+. These appeal to young children and they will be interested in them, whether or not you have a disclaimer that they are for adults. Youtube can overwrite your settings and can also ban accounts that continually mark videos as for adults when they contain material that appeal to children.

One thing that has changed a lot is self representation. With the huge variety of body parts that are available, people like to represent themselves in minifigures. Race and skin colour then becomes an issue. Although LEGO use the story that yellow means they don't assign any ethnicity, many people assume yellow means Caucasian, and this was backed up by using yellow for white people in early licensed sets. I see City as some fantasy world and not real world, but if others want it to mimic the real world then the uniform skin colour can be an issue, especially if they view yellow equals white and they want to depict other races. For Castle and fantasy, I prefer fleshie as I like to represent history and often licensed fantasy. I grew up with maxi figures and early minifigures so I'm not younger generation, and there are plenty of people my age that prefer realistic flesh to yellow just as there are plenty that prefer yellow and some that prefer classic smileys.

There are still more unlicensed sets than licensed, and more unlicensed than there was 20 years ago. If you want sets to go with City, then buy City or Creator or ICONS. I find minifigs from unlicensed themes such as Ninjago are harder to use in City than some licensed minifigures. If they put yellow characters in licensed sets now to try to appeal to people not interested in the license, people interested in more realistic looking characters would not be as likely to buy. Then in that case, they might as well not make the licensed set at all. I think it is good they make products appeal to a wider market. It is usually quite easy to switch heads and hands, so long as there is no skin print on the torso or legs.

So buy from the many in-house sets that have yellow skins. Licensed sets need to look realistic to sell, so they use more realistic skin tones.

We don't have them on our PAB. But for Black Falcons it is the other way, plain cheaper. Not that I need to buy any plain legs, I have 100s!

Use plain legs. That is what I use for modern Black Falcons. Even though the legs are available I prefer plain ones for posing them.

The intention of my post was to say nobody should feel the need to spend $500 to send a message. They should spend $500 if they want THIS set. As to the bit bolded, I don't think anyone should feel they have to spend money to keep LOTR alive and well, or guilty that they are damaging the chances of more LOTR if they don't buy this. Buy it because you want it, not because you are a LOTR LEGO fan and want more. I'm not buying it, not because of the cost but because it is too big and needs significant modification to fit my display so I will use existing (and new PAB) bricks to build a smaller version with less depth to it. My existing Riverdell is between 40-48 studs wide but only 16 deep (up to 32 deep including the courtyard). I so rarely turn it around, the interior and depth doesn't matter to me. The new roof is much nicer than mine as are the architectural details using those white swirls. There is also too much overlap with minifigures of the past (as I partly assumed there would be). I'll save that $500 for other LEGO. If they do further sets including Pippin and Merry in Gondor and Rohan armour, Aragorn with a crown, update Gandalf etc, then I might buy again if those sets fit my display. If they do a Witch King, even more likely. But if they do another similar size $500 set then I'll probably skip that one too. If there really are many new LEGO LOTR fans since last time then the set should still sell well and send the message that people want more. Ideally I want to see smaller but still adult sets. Something half this size would have been preferable to me. Maybe they will get that message at some stage if the larger sets don't sell as many as they hope and they get such feedback if they survey why. But that is a wait and see. For me, they are now doing too many massive sets that require a large piece of furniture to display it on and look good. I don't think it will take too long for collectors to be saturated with too many large sets that each need a large display area/volume and LEGO will need to be careful that while people might have the money, they might not have the space.

If stickers were "banned" from expensive sets, then I imagine that for this set it would mean: - no pictures or other decorations on the rear side wall, - no Mithrill armour, - no pattern on the bed or bedroom walls, - maybe a printed 1x2 tile with "There and Back Again" if they can reuse it elsewhere. The decorations don't really add a much to this set as so much of the detail is brick built, so chances are the decorations for minor details and Easter Eggs would just disappear.

They are also from a theme primarily aimed at children with lower price points. I would buy a set with the gazebo alone, without the bridge. That contains a lot of the swirly white parts I will need to buy from PAB. It would have made a nice and reasonably priced Hobbit set - Gandalf, Galadriel and Saruman meet in the gazebo. People still buy the original Council of Elrond and that is far less impressive than the gazebo.

Nobody should pay $500 for this set with the impression that they are sending a message that they want more of the same. Buy it because you like it and want this one. I think it is a really nice set but I'm not buying it. I don't even think it is that bad value for money. For me the issue is the size and that I already have all the main characters and in most cases i prefer the existing ones. I'd also have to mod it to fit my existing shelves, buy new furniture or display in another room. So I'm just going to copy parts of it using existing parts and PAB orders for the white swirls and so on, and scale the design down slightly to fit. They could do a hall / building and courtyard, a separate bridge, and a separate gazebo. All stand alone fine, it is just that they are not as impressive as one big set.

Same here. I measured the space out and had to double check I hadn't misread. No doubt the x and y dimensions can be shortened a little as it is probably measured as open as possible to maximise the dimensions, but even so it is a very big volume required to hold it. It wouldn't surprise me if a number of people have an issue with it being too big, no matter how great it looks.

With stamping and PAD printing you also need to think about the scale. A product that stamps 15cm images that look good might be terrible for 1cm prints. The fuzziness of the print edges is the same at both scales so much more noticeable on a small print.

They don't have to give reasons why anything was rejected so we never know for sure why they were rejected. It could be that they had a similar Bag End in production, it could be that it overlaps with their plans to bring back LOTR, it could be that they thought other designs were more feasible, it could be that the IDEAS team didnt like it. We cannot really read anything into it being rejected; it might be because of a similar set or it might not. If they later come out with a larger scale Bag End, it might have been the reason they rejected it. Or it might still be some other reason.

The submitter has no rights over the shape/form of Bag End. If they made their model look like Bag End and LEGO make one that looks like Bag End at the same scale, then they will naturally look similar as they are both based off Bag End in the movies. Sure the IDEAS submitter can make a fuss on social media but they have no claim over the idea of Bag End.

I don't think LEGO would pay any attention to the dates of an IDEAS submission. If they wanted to do a Bag End under ICONS as the first return to LOTR, then they would have done it. If they want it to be the second or third set, they will do it. Just because someone decided to submit a larger version of an existing set, based on a movie by a company that LEGO already has agreements with, it is not going to stop or delay LEGO doing a larger version of Bag End if they want to do one. The submitter has no rights over a Bag End made from LEGO at any scale.

The question being replied to was whether it would be Bag End with Thorin's company, or should they buy the minifigures now. There have been no serious rumours about The Hobbit returning so it seems unlikely at this stage that the complete company would come in an 18+ set. They'd still need permission to use The Hobbit characters, even if the main theme remains ICONS. I imagine it will be a bit like HP vs Fantastic Beasts when it comes to adult sets.

Given the number of figures in Rivendell, that doesn't leave many places for LOTR characters. It would then presumably be badged as The Hobbit like the original sets were, rather than LOTR. And we don't know if they will be producing The Hobbit sets again.

I doubt we'd get 18+ Hobbit sets at this stage. The movies are over and are nowhere near as followed as LOTR. Maybe at some stage but more likely to be kid sets again, if they go down that route for Middle Earth. As for being overpriced, it is now limited stock priced at what the top end of buyers will pay. With the entire cast of The Hobbit?