MAB

> why does lego only strive to put diversity in expensive sets? Probably because many of the appropriate characters are minor characters in the movies, and the small sets would not sell well if the only minifigure in the set was a minor character. Take Dean Thomas from HP for example, he is a minor character in the HP franchise. I've seen the movies, but I cannot actually tell you which movies he was in or what he did without looking it up. And I imagine a lot of kids would be the same. Would they want a small HP set where Dean Thomas was the only character? I doubt it would sell anywhere near as well as if it had Harry/Ron/Hermione in. So that means he will only appear in a bigger set where other characters are included. If they moved to doing realistic skin tones in City and other unlicensed sets, where the heads do not need to represent any exact source character material, then I imagine you would get a lot more darker skin tones than in licensed minifigures. Look at what they do in Friends. The same with other facial features, not just skin colour. >why do realistic tan skin-toned heads only come in expensive history >why do I have to buy either a $60 set or a $249.99 to represent myself in lego? There is a dominance of light flesh heads matching the distribution in the movies LEGO makes sets of. From bricklink, raw numbers without looking for human heads. 972 Light Nougat 77 Nougat 61 Medium Nougat 98 Reddish Brown 49 Tan, but many of these are aliens or scarecrows. If you see your skin colour as tan you are almost certainly out of luck as LEGO does not really use that for human skin (unless in brickheadz, where it represents white). If you go for nougat or medium nougat instead, then you will have a significantly larger choice of (human) heads. You could go for a current set like this $30 one, which gives you both a male and female head in nougat, the colour that LEGO typically uses for hispanic characters. Obviously I don't know if that is close enough for you. The source material has more racial diversity and so the set does too. And it is a reasonably cheap set. Or you could buy the relevant or similar minifigs for $4-5 each on bricklink. It gets much harder if you want specific facial features, and even worse if you want a combination of them, and worse still a combination plus a specific colour. Even with 972 light nougat heads, there are none that have a brown beard and glasses like me, let alone the right shape beard and the right shape glasses. There are plenty of clean shaven heads, some with glasses. There are a reasonable number of beards, without glasses. There are some old man ones with grey beards and glasses. But I guess there are not many people with brown beads and glasses in movies that LEGO make sets for, so none that match me. I have to give up on one of my features to represent myself in minifigure form. I usually go for a head without the glasses, even though I tend to wear them most of the time as glasses without a beard doesn't look right. There are some yellow heads that have a brown beard (wrong shape) and glasses (wrong shape) but I don't identify myself as yellow and prefer to go for the nearest fleshie one instead.

Yellow is the base colour for skin in the LEGO world. It is not a skin colour in real life. Even seriously ill people do not have skin that colour. There is no race in LEGO's yellow skin world, so there is no skin colour diversity. It is only when people outside of this fictitious world are represented that problems arise. LEGO tried doing racial facial features on yellow heads in the past, and it turned out to look stereotypically racist. I'm white. Yellow doesn't represent me, just like it doesnt represent hispanic or black. Light nougat is not a very good match either but it is the closest colour that they make. Just like reddish brown does not match the skin of many black people, but it will be closer than other production colours.

This is simply not true. Professor Sinistra, Dean Thomas, the Patil sisters. They weren't totally fine with it, because they changed it. If they were fine with it, they would not have made the change to light nougat.

I imagine the winner will be a brick built monster rather than a location. A Bowser style statue.

Minas Tirith would not have to be microscale as it would not need to be the full city. Of course, they could go microscale and do a large display item like Hogwarts, or they could go minifigure scale and do it in the style of Diagon Alley (a $450 set). That has just four shops, but is enough to evoke the whole street. If they do Minas Tirith, they could do the white tree and fountain surrounded by a few minifigure scale buildings of importance, without doing all the layers of the city.

Yes, I know. And Minas Tirith, for example, is one location but could be represented by one big single build or alternatively it could be represented by separate vignettes, just like MBS sets such as Assault on Hoth is, of a gate being smashed by Grond, the Witch King riding a fell beast attacking Gandalf in front of a piece of wall, Pippin lighting the beacon, Denethor in the Tower Hall, the White Tree and fountain surrounded by a bit of grass, Faramir on horseback and a couple of soldiers. Maybe even a bit of the outer fields with an oliphant and some Haradrim. That is still one location but broken into lots of small vignettes, just like Assault on Hoth.

Expensive doesn't mean it will be one thing. It could be done in Star Wars MBS style, like Assault on Hoth, with lots of smaller vignettes making one large set. Personally I'd prefer multiple small sets to decide on which ratio of the different bits that I want but a large set of little things is a possibility.

If it does turn out to be in the 500 Euro range, then that should rule out being a set like the Harry Potter Icons set. That set was "only" $250 / 250 Euro / £230, so would need to be doubled in size which seems unlikely for a sculpture set. It doesn't rule out microscale of course.

A full line-up is likely to be 6 and maybe 8 sets in a year and that is what I would normally think of as a legitimate reboot of the theme. But it doesn't match the earlier comments. If you look at the original post I referred to it was "... prioritizing details in making a lot of different variants of each character. Paying attention to different outfits from the films and making that distinction in the figures depending on the scenes being depicted.". I cannot really see how they can give even just two variants of just the Fellowship within one or two waves of the theme unless they skip everyone else in the movies. In the original sets, they didn't do multiple variants of all the Fellowship in two complete waves. So it seems a big jump to go from two BH sets plus a D2C to an evergreen theme like HP getting 10-15 sets per year every year. Here legitimate reboot seems to mean turning LOTR into a significantly larger theme that it ever was in the past. Would that be great? Yes. Is it likely? Not really. Harry Potter has a big kid following allowing for small kid sets as well as larger sets. LOTR doesn't. But I would still consider it to be a reboot of the theme if we got just one wave of 6-8 sets instead of just the two BH and a D2C.

I don't know what that means. Last time we got two full waves, yet did not get doubles of Sam, Merry, Pippin, Boromir, Legolas, or Gimli in those sets. Hence I assume even if they reboot and we get one or two new waves, I doubt we will get a lot of variants of each character.

Even the small LOTR and Hobbit sets have done very well. I bought Wizard Battle at £5 and Witch King at £6 from Amazon. They have been selling for Approx £50 each. Even compared to the RRPs that is still a big rise compared to other sets of the same time.

Why surprised? Popular story, loads of new Lego fans since this was released and limited supply. I've still got a couple sealed from when they were 50% off. I opened most and sold off Smaug for £50 (what I paid for the set). I should have waited!

The spooky one is a GWP now.

I think many people's wants lists are very similar due mainly to missing figures. Although I'm OK for Sauron and Gondor soldiers due to non-purist and handmade customs, Eowyn and Faramir, Haradrim and Easterlings through purist customs. Although a printed Gondor torso for Faramir would be nice. If they later do them it makes me feel I wasted my time and parts! But the Witch King, I have never got his helmet right. So he is definitely No 1.

I doubt we would ever get enough sets to have a lot of variants of each character. Frodo, Gandalf and maybe Aragorn sure (like last time). But otherwise, we'd probably have to make do with one ... and probably none of some (again!)

I'd prefer they finish doing The Simpsons first. Moe, Barney, Lenny and Karl, Skinner.

If they go for a full theme, then almost certainly they'd start from scratch. That doesn't mean they'd redo every set of course. But I imagine prices for the original sets and figures would remain high too, so long as prints are different as people would want the older different versions too. People that want one Pippin or Merry could buy new but new sets might even increase demand for the old. I'd love to see those two hobbits in Rohan and Gondor armour and not in jackets.

Forget Boromir. Look at Theoden. For me, he is still the best minifig ever released. A perfect balance of detail while still being LEGO-like. They did do a buildable Sting in an in store promotion in the US. You had to complete a quest / treasure hunt as Frodo around the store then pay 5 or 6 bucks to claim your prize, Sting. It wasn't very much like Sting though.

A number of people have missed out as parcels went missing in the post, not delivered and returned or the set(s) were not in the packages as they were meant to be. LEGO say they have no more stock and just refund. The law doesn't really matter unless you are willing to take it to court.

The thing is ... adults can enjoy minifigure based themes and sets too. If they do a display piece like the HP Icons set or an art set, I'm out. If they do more like the Hogwarts Express, I'm in. Although it wouldn't surprise me if they do a buildable There and Back Again book with an extra tile to add Lord of The Rings to the cover, the ring, a buildable Sting, and so on.

I'd prefer they didn't go down that route. There are a couple of things I don't like about the SW dioramas. First, they are different scales - so Luke on Dagobah and the Trash Compactor are minifig based, whereas the Trench Run is microscale. But more importantly, they are so expensive for their size mainly due to parts lost to the bases. £26 (2018-19) vs £80 (2022). For the same price, I think I'd prefer three different small sets to one (more set (more detailed, with a base) on the same scale. Especially with the number of characters in LOTR, if they are going to do a full theme then getting smaller less expensive sets with 3-4 characters in each is preferable to me. The SW dioramas cost £220 for three, which gives you 3 locations and 9 minifigures. Alternatively you can buy 3 playsets with 3-4 figures in each for £100-120.

In the old bricks and pieces system there was a work around to order more in one order. You could order 200 by typing in the part number / ID. You could then enter a set number containing the part and order another 200 in the same order. If it was in another set, you could enter that set number, and order another 200 of the same part. It wasn't that big a deal for expensive parts (25p or more), since ordering 200 got you over the £50 postage threshold and adding a 6p part from PAB got you free shipping, so it was just as easy to place multiple orders. But when they did the gold parts from Monkie Kid for 2p it was very useful, since you could buy 400 of each part in one order.

It doesn't matter. It is also in historic because builds are similar to those of Castle type builds. The contents of the forum beneath the name even mention it. There is no need or benefit to split the discussion of LOTR across multiple threads and definitely not in different threads in different forum sections.

I consider myself a LOTR fan (I have all the previous sets, including extra sealed boxes of most of them) and want to see minifig based LOTR sets return but I probably won't be buying the brickheadz, at least not until i see them. I buy sets I want and not because of an assumption that if I buy something I don't want they might make something very different that I do want.