williejm

When we have made that assumption in the past - we have been wrong ;) In any event, they can do non-animal costumes, which leaves things like all the food costumes …

Okay so, I’m not quite sure what you mean, but I think I disagree ;) Firstly, at this stage, what have we to go on? I’ve seen it reported that Series 29 is ‘animals’, and seen others asserting that it’s animal costumes. Obviously we have seen leaks of two animal masks that may well be part of this - but I’d urge caution at this stage. Remember when the Marvel 2 CMF was told to us all that it will come with lots of accessories and extra parts, and be able to assemble a brick built Sentinel? That was just someone’s take, and extrapolated and repeated. Previous ‘themed’ series have been S14 “Monsters”, S18 “Party”, and S26 “Space”. In each of those, people made a bunch of hopeful assumptions, but in the end the series we got for each were pretty loosely defined, and not that coherent. Given that, I would assume that ‘Animals’ was similarly broad, and just as a Space series yielded an Android Nurse and a figure embodying a constellation, I would expect this to be a mix. So I’d assume costume figures, and, like Series 18 which gave us more costumes than usual, I would expect that we get more costumes than usual! But I’d guess that might be about half the figures, not all of them. Similarly, animals (new moulds and new prints, plus reuses) have become a key part of CMFs. We have also seen in the past costumed characters coming *with* an animal ( Elephant girl & mouse, Spider boy & spider, Fox costume & chicken, Cat & fish…) so there’s nothing to suggest that those things are mutually exclusive. But I’d guess there were some animal-focused figures coming with new animals making up more-than-the-usual number of slots. Then I think there are grey area figures, and the kind of left-field figures we have come to expect in CMFs … so we could well see something like a ‘boxing kangaroo’ figure (something that was alluded to far back in CMF history as a sparring partner for the first boxer we got). That might also stretch to ‘fantasy animals’ too. Lastly on the issue of moulds - it seems neither here nor there which way they go with this series, unlike licensed series such as Simpsons or the Muppets, this doesn’t *need* a new mould for every head in each slot, for example. Roughly speaking these days we can expect to see about one new mould per figure, but that is spread across the series. With animal costumes, as has already been said, there are a bunch of parts that already exist that can be reused. A peacock costume could reuse the turkey tail and existing ‘feathered wing’ arms - needing only one mould for a head piece. Lots of other birds wouldn’t need any new moulds, and that’s also true of lots of other animals (we already have alternate arms as wings or fins, LOTS of head pieces, and about half a dozen different ‘tail’ pieces … there’s a lot you can do with existing moulds. In fact there are also a lot of people who missed out on early animal costumes, so revisiting some of them would not be unlikely either (just as S14’s monster rocker revisited the ‘Frankenstein’ monster from S4 So I’m going to double down on my prediction: assuming the series is called ‘animals’, I think it will be about half costume, about half animal-focused figures (eg zookeeper, pigeon fancier, park ranger, K9 cop, eagle hunter), and with a couple of ‘left field’ ideas thrown in too. That’s my assumption too. I’d also bet on either the new fox or the pigeon, or another animal that has shown up only once in CMFs to get a revisit in this series. Recoloured mouse or flamingo?

So … my ‘guess’ is that this will be a combination of animal themed figures, rather than solely costumes or figures with animals. That’s kinda how all themed ‘normal’ series have happened before.

Why not just do the guessing in this thread?

The way it’s hard for us to get excited after so many let-downs lol

That’s just the shepherd mould, which is what the dog on the bottom left tile shows

Owls are a point in case too - the brown owl has existed in and outside licensed sets, the great grey and snowy only in HP sets. Each of the smowls is different - one, being in a Friends set, is on B&P. All of the flying owls, save the tan monstrosity from BAM, are licensed only. Realistically only one of them is a bona fide ‘named character’. At least some of them are readily available though. Likewise if you want a terrier dog, you can get a white one from CMF, a black one from BAM, or the presumably licensed named one from TLM2 CMF. If you want a mastiff dog though - tough. I guess I don’t mind so much where the animals are in smaller sets, CMFs, or otherwise available at the lower end of the price scale. Ostriches and camels for example, though rare retrospectively, were both in 2/3 of the smallest sets in the Prince of Persia wave.

Yeah, I mean, I get it - but it’s still pretty weird. Might go complain to Lego that it’s an infringement of my rights to have animals behind a Harry Potter paywall! 👻

No. But it’s very close to the standard shepherd mould. I assume it’s supposed to be a Xoloitzcuintli (Mexican hairless dog). Also notable that they use the old style parrot … so maybe we shouldn’t read into this as anything portentous. One of the things irking me of late in Lego animals is the exclusive moulds or prints that are limited to pricey licensed sets, making them horrendously expensive on the after sales market & not available on Bricks & Pieces. It is a madness that something as simple as a black cat is so difficult to get hold of. Also seems weird that an animal species or breed (eg Great Grey Owl & Mastiff dog) can be subject to licenses 😤

Lol. I’m actually willing to bet money on them repurposing the existing shepherd pup/ wolf cub mould as a fox kit down the line. Though the fox is smaller than the others, the ‘babies’ have a limited lower size they could usefully be, and in think they’ll just use the existing one in a new colour. Assuming we *do* get a red fox soon, what are folks thinking they will use for the body colour? I’m assuming either dark orange or the new red/orange colour. The fox costume in CMF used orange, and the Creator 3 in 1 was mostly dark orange if I remember correctly.

Jokes aside, I’m genuinely puzzled why they make tiny variations rather than just a totally new print. I mean what’s the point, and how does it make sense? Like wouldn’t a new cat colour be more of a draw than, say, a slightly different nose? Point in case would be all the owls: of all the owls we have, different colours have never just been printed with an existing design - it would be the simplest (and presumably cheapest) way to have variants, yet each is different, and in some cases only slightly.

Although the newest iteration of the chicken has a printed eye with a white ‘glint’, so those have gone in the other direction.

Curses @ that BUKABRICKS blog, now my list of animals I don’t have that I *need* to complete the collection has just grown by a few 🙀 I demand compensation. Either off @Roebuck or whoever at Lego sees fit to produce almost-identical animal variants

That is awesome. I do (always) get a little sad at the inclusion & conflation of Friends/fantasy/Duplo/Disney animals - but we all set our own boundaries, and it’s their (wonderfully inclusive) blog! I also learned some things - like the very small but differing face prints on the cats!

Yeah that’s been leaked for a while, what did you want to know?

I mean - they make it up as they go along. The sheep was dual-moulded and printed but started off as cheap on B&P, whereas the goat was single mould and expensive. Likewise recolours have varied wildly in price point. Re the anglers - the initial lime / GITD one was more expensive , the black and white one was pretty cheap ( but GITD usually has a price premium)

More like €4 actually ;)

AKA “seems like forEVER” Think we should fill the time running a bet on the cost of the pigeons on PAB …

Thanks for that @Clone OPatra ! So yeah, it’s dual moulded with no printing - meaning it’s got dead black eyes with no white glint. I know consistency isn’t Lego’s forte on this stuff, and it does still look great, but something slightly lacking to me. I think this also means that we have limited options for ‘recolours’, if the wing pattern, beak and eyes are all dependent on one mould colour. Maybe we will get the main body colour in sand blue, dark grey or dark tan though? Oddly I think the most analogous other Lego animal is the dual-moulded angler fish.

So has anyone here seen the new pigeon up close, and in-hand? From the renders I’ve seen it seems to be dual moulded but with no printing, instead relying on the black plastic moulded eyes & beak. That also means it doesn’t have the white ‘glint’ in the eye. If that’s the case then this is quite a departure from the birds we have gotten recently. The ‘small bird’ and smowl are both smaller but printed, the cockatoo and toucan are not much larger (if any) yet both receive dual/triple moulding *and* prints. I’m old enough now not to trust rendered images, especially on small animals, but just wondered what it was like in real life, and how it compares to the existing flock of feathery beasts.

This one is curious to me, since we already got a cat mask for the previous costume series… so why a new mould? If it was one of the Chinese Zodiac animals then it would make sense as they are standardising those and updating existing masks accordingly (in favour of the full mask with cut out ‘face hole’ beneath the animals’ chin). Will be interesting to see where it shows up!

Any of the light/mid blues would be good, we need green too!

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Does it come with a pet targ?

Nah, I love the OG crab. It’s good, could do with some more colours though