MAB

Right, but there will be a tie in to a current movie. I don't think the LOTR set will look like the Black Panther bust. It sounds like it is going to be more in the style of the UCS range from Star Wars or the ICONS Castle. That said, I think we have to realise that some people don't like minifigure based sets, and like to see LEGO used to build things, rather than just a backdrop for minifigures. We also don't know what the target sales are for sets like that. Sometimes it is enough for them to have a large set that people look at, but then go on to buy other sets. Same with the football stadiums. They don't seem to sell but they get people talking and visiting stores. I imagine Titanic and Eiffel Tower are similar. Great looking sets, but just too big for many people. For me, it is not that the Black Panther bust is a bad set, just high priced and possibly niche interest at the price it is. I'm not really sure of the demographics of the audience for Black Panther and how much that overlaps with people that have that sort of money to spend on a LEGO bust. What I do know is that it got a lot of news coverage in mainstream media. Plus, sometimes LEGO needs to fail on a set. If they didn't, it means we would not be getting anything very novel when it comes to design. One or two sets failing abysmally would not harm them.

I just went through the 2022 City sets as listed on Brickset, ordered by parts count and stopped when I got to polybags. I make the total counts 6.5 sets Police, 3.5 sets Fire and 32 sets not Police or Fire. So about 25% are Police/Fire. The 0.5s in the set counts are because of one combined Police / Fire set. For road plates, I make it 10 with, 32 without (but I might be two out so 12/30 depending on counting the plates in stuntz sets). So again about 25% of sets have them including one construction set where the plate is being carried by truck. Interestingly, the with/without road plates was about even when going through the larger sets at the start of the list but rapidly sided without without once smaller sets were taken into account. So about 50% of larger City sets have them. But for next year's sets, I think I saw just one road plate in a set. But of course there are still many to appear.

Or there is the opposite view that you don't understand their target audience. LEGO knows how well the big sets sell. They know how well things like model plants and art sets sell. They know how well the busts, helmets, statuettes, and so on sell. They know how the UCS sets of SW sell. I don't think the idea of adults liking minifigures is lost on LEGO, they produce large sets with minifigures in too. Look at the ICONS Castle, Mos Eisley Cantina, Hogwarts Express (Collectors Edition). Sure they produce brick built sculptures too, but the figure based sets are still there. It is one of those strange things, that as the popularity of LEGO among adults has changed, so the product itself has changed as new people to the hobby expect different things. Sets marketed towards adults have often become huge, expensive, flagship type designs. The sort of thing that in the past they would have done once or maybe twice a year across all ranges, usually as a UCS SW set or a Creator Expert set. A decade ago, the £100 / $130 / 1300 piece Helm's Deep was a big set and a lot to pay for a LEGO set. Orthanc was then released at £170 / $200 and was seen as very expensive for the time. Whereas today, Helm's Deep would be on the lower end in terms of size / cost for the adult set range, and Orthanc probably just a mid-range set. They have taken the UCS model from Star Wars and applied it across all themes for the 18+ sets. They know adults with money will pay high prices for the large sets. It has affected adults that were used to buying the 10-14 type sets, as they now seem somewhat simplistic compared to the 18+ offerings.

There are toned down versions of Star Wars and franchises like Batman suitable for very small kids. My kids, for example, knew of Darth Vader long before they ever saw Star Wars. However, I cannot think of many LOTR toys that are aimed at very young kids, or even at 8-10 year olds. That is why I believe LOTR would not be a good seller across the whole age range of LEGO. It is not really about the content, it is about perception of who the material is for. You can buy lots of kids' clothes and toys with Batman on, SW characters on, etc. There is a perception that these franchises are kid friendly and so toys are made that are suitable for younger kids, and younger kids know of the franchises that way. LEGO tried to market LOTR to 8+ year olds last time around. Whether it worked or not, only they know. But it was very easy to get large discounts on LOTR and Hobbit sets. All movie franchises that LEGO do are in competition with each other. They only have so much production capacity and stores have only so much shelf space. LEGO will produce what stores want to take. Doing a current movie or a perpetual best seller aimed at many age ranges makes more sense than doing an older movie(s) aimed at a smaller group. Especially for general retail sets. It is so frequently said that LEGO are leaving money on the table by not producing (insert favourite theme here) as me and people like me would buy them. No doubt that is true, but what is important is what else this would it knock out and how many sales do they lose because of that. It is the same with LOTR. They will have done their analysis and decided that it is better to go for the adult market and in doing so that it is better for them to go for one big, expensive set rather than 6-8 smaller ones aimed at either 8-14 year olds or even at adults at the lower price points. Plus doing it as D2C means they get to control the sales, they are not going to general retailers.

Star Wars has some sets that are 4+ and lots that are 7+/8+ etc. Harry Potter has sets that are 7+, 8+ etc. I don't think those younger age ranges are appropriate for LOTR. Last time around, LEGO badged LOTR sets as 8-14 and 9-14. I think that was a mistake. If done today, they'd probably be 16+. I don't think 8-10 year olds were into LOTR. I really doubt if many 10-14 years old kids are either, not when there were / are SW, HP, etc (and now Avatar, Indy, ...) in competition with them. So to me, it makes sense that they target LOTR above the younger teen market and go for the adult market. We obviously do not know how well the adult sets from ICONS and the other adult-focussed expensive sets are selling. I imagine they are doing well though, as LEGO keeps making them. Something in their marketing for adults is pointing them towards one large detailed set instead of multiple smaller sets. Would it be good to get a large D2C and lots of supplementary sets? Sure. But that doesn't seem the way LEGO is going for adult collector sets.

Sure, any LOTR fan thinks it should get a full range of sets. But against that LEGO has the following info: - (some) adults will pay for large sets - they did small sets through regular retailers in the past, and know how well they sold against themes like HP, SW, and in-house - other movies will be in cinemas and they will be making small sets in themes for them. You can resent the statement that LOTR is jot for a larger age range if you like but I cannot see under 12s being interested in it anywhere near as much as HP and SW and Ninjago. It is aimed at older teens and adults. If LEGO is producing other licensed and non-licensed small sets for younger kids then it makes sense that they aim their LOTR offering more towards older teens and adults. Some of the complaints about the initial waves of LOTR was that they had play features and were small rather than being large and detailed.

Also they know that enough adults these days are willing to buy one large detailed set. Even better for lego, they buy direct from lego. Some won't, but do those adults matter to lego? For a theme to work with small sets, they need to make enough small sets to give people what they want. Do a poor range and it will be left on shelves. A small Balrog set won't sell too well if people cannot get the Fellowship in cheap sets. Do the Fellowship in cheap sets and they risk affecting sales of the big set. Mixtures of set sizes work for HP and SW because they are very large ranges, aimed across a wide age range. LOTR is not. Plus there are going to be other movie franchises that will be having smaller retail sets that have movies out at the time. There are already complaints that lego does too much licensed stuff. Adding LOTR again as a large theme would increase those types of complaints. Keeping it to one large set instead of lots of smaller ones gets round that.

They have been mentioned in this thread, along with others, but without a set number. The original leak got both set names with correct set numbers.

It is weird that the leak got the first two spot on, but no information about the third BH. I wonder if that means the Aragorn and Arwen one is going to be exclusive to LEGO (or LEGO plus another store) and so was not in a retailer list.

It looks like LEGO may be introducing their own collection analysis tool too (seen on the thread on bricklink).

Yeah, 3 brickheadz from those numbers and names.

Good old citogenesis. Now we just need leaky_minifigure to source stonewars and it will be a fact!

Yes, it was released yesterday and seemed to break selling features (adding inventory) for the whole day. And there were complaints that it was originally put in the same place that the part out button was placed, but thye have now moved it.

I have some standard parts in my basket and they still show. I might try checking out in a few days.

Where do you think the market is though? In adults, children, or both. I think it is adult dominated, hence them going for adult sets (in terms of size and cost, and collectability rather than play for the BH). Ideally it would be both adults and kids and we'd get a range of set sizes and styles like HP, but I don't think LOTR has that following type of following for younger kids.

It is in the UK. Multiple other reports too, so presumably worldwide. You can easily check by logging on to the lego site.

To LOTR fans, it makes sense to introduce battle packs. But I can also understand why they might not do it. I cannot see parents and grandparents picking up a pack of Easterlings or Haradrim and buying it for a kid. Even if they do just a single battle pack with one Rohirrim, one Gondorian, one Orc, one Uruk-Hai with LOTR branding on it will not sell anywhere as near as well as SW battle packs, because kids are not interested in them. Of course, adults will be, but are there enough adults that would buy them? Probably not enough to have them sold through toy stores and supermarkets like the original sets were. The only adults wanting to buy them are ones that would purchase the big set too, or already have LOTR sets from a decade ago. Without smaller sets aimed at LOTR fans not willing to drop $500 on the big set, any battle packs would not sell. Very few people would want a Gondorian army without also having the Fellowship. Without a range of set sizes, battle packs would be doomed. No doubt their sales stats showed that LOTR/Hobbit was not of interest to kids a decade ago. So why think it will be any different now? There is a clear market for (expensive) adult aimed sets though, the secondary market shows that. Why do a $200 set when you can do a $500 set. Casual fans might drop $50 on a set if they are interested in the license but not really into LEGO. By the time you get to $200, I imagine most people willing to spend that much (even if just once or twice per year) will probably also spend $500 on a set. So it makes sense to focus on hitting that large adult set price point. Forget the kids, go for adults. Their recent releases have gone high in part counts and prices. They must have data to show that instead of releasing multiple small/medium (or what we might have called large in the past!) sets, they might as well go for one big one without giving choice of armies that individual adults might want to build. Also the funko-brick-pop-headz seem to be aimed mainly at adults too. They are build once and display items with next to no play value. If the LOTR ones sell well, maybe we'll get a few more brickheadz for LOTR but I cannot see good BH sales translating into the development of smaller minifigure based sets. I imagine LOTR is going more the way of Ghostbusters and Stranger Things than going the way of Harry Potter. GB got the small IDEAS set first, but then got the expensive HQ for adults and later some BH. It also got Dimensions sets as they were popular at the time. Stranger things got the expensive Upside Down house and some BH. These both seem focussed on the adult (or older teen) market than on more traditional playsets like the original LOTR sets. Of course they could go like HP and do both adult (or older teen) aimed sets as well as play sets, but personally I don't think the market is there for play sets as much as I'd like to see them.

I wouldn't be happy either. It is just that I wouldn't be surprised if they did reuse it. As to purist customs, I quite enjoy finding pieces in other themes that work well for LOTR. There are always missing parts of course, nearly always torsos. Faramir really needs a nice Gondor print torso. I've done plenty of versions of him in the past but none look quite right without it.

I've never come across one. As you have found, most of the software is based on blocks / cubes, which works great for six feet tall models but fails quite badly for details that are comparable to the size of the blocks.

I doubt we'd see a new hat/hair for Gandalf, as we already have this, which they would probably think of as close enough. It just needs a recolour and a better beard to use it with. A hat / hair / beard combo like for Radagast might be a possibility. But probably not if it was just going to be used for one set when "good enough" moulds exist.

Another way to do mosaics is to take a high resolution image, crop it to the relevant dimensions, then reduce the image size to however many pixels you have studs wide x high. That is how I used to do plans for mosaics a couple of decades ago!

Extra generic elves should be quite easy to produce without needing new prints. I bought a load of the elf hairpieces from the Hobbit sets when they were plentiful and cheap last time and a load of Legolas heads from replacement parts. They go on just about any torso. For example, for Lindir from The Hobbit I use this Chinese NY torso (swapping out the hands) and plain dark blue legs: Even excess Gandalf torso and legs with an elf head and hair look good, and combined with a dark blue cape make a decent Figwit. They also look fantastic on the S3 CMF elf. Personally, I'm fine with the existing swords. I don't think they can really do much better than what we already have, given the hilts must be much thicker than reality to be held in a minifigure hand. The shards of Narsil are easy enough to make yourself, although the blade parts don't attach to anything and fall off a 2x4 tile at the slightest knock.

I tend to use plain legs, or at least ones without printing near the thighs. I like to pose figures and I don't like it when prints do not match up. I have about 25 of the original Viking CMF legs I might use, and another pile of mixed similar legs. The dark tan looks good against most coloured torsos. Although I tend to prefer plain. It is the same with Black Falcons, to me plain black legs look much nicer than the printed ones, especially when posed. So for these I will probably keep mainly plain legs, but choose leg colours that match the arms to give each one more uniformity. So I'll go for sand blue legs on the dark tan / sand blue torso, and so on. I'll be pulling the arms off the dark tan and black torsos to swap out some of the colours (such as dark red, blue and green) about too for more variety. I'm not sure if it will work so well for the olive green arm torso, as that also has the olive green on the torso too.

It's a shame the other person didn't order a load more stuff!

If LEGO wanted to do a fantasy troll theme again, they would do them without needing permission from anyone.