Venkefedo

Just received the Death Star Duel set for my birthday! Haven't built it yet, but did pop open Bag 1 to put together Luke & Vader. Nice upgrade on Vader, and great to finally have a no-vest, no-flap Jedi Luke

Monty was being facetious. Star Wars has been largely about merchandise since the first movie broke records.

BB-8 likely isn't in the Rey set because he's already in two other sets. They probably put him in the Falcon to make it an anchor set, collecting all the heroes in one (at least, all who crew the Falcon in the movie). They put him with the other big hero, Poe, because he's the astromech for Poe's ship. So both have logic behind them... But it does leave the wave much like any multipack you'd see from Hasbro or Mattel (or practically any licensed Lego wave, really)... If you want to get the whole cast, you'll have to double up on the same R2-D2, Iron Man, or Batman you already got in another set. It's an annoying practice, regardless of the reasoning behind it.

I just tried that, and it works nicely! EDIT: also, the male Resistance Trooper's torso might make for a decent purist Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly. Usually he wore dark red shirts, but a dark tan like that was in an episode or two... The suspenders work nicely, although he wore his belt low but it could work. Some lighter legs, the reddish brown short tousled-with-side-part hair, and a Lone Ranger or classic pistol, wouldn't be too shabby for a jacketless Captain Mal.

The diversity is nice! As for Kylo's cape, it's supposed to be short! It's a short, tattered thing in the actual costume, not a Vader-like long cape. "Three" is not "several". We've seen him in the fiery, flametrooper-filled scene from the teasers and the EW images, the snowy woods scene from the first teaser, and landing on the snowy planet (where the First Order base seems to be) in the Behind The Scenes video. Or did I forget others? I might've. There's also the Vanity Fair photo again in the snow, with no hood and no helmet. I think he looks pretty cool even without the hood. Maul had more than one look; Kylo can too. They included the hood in the set for a reason, we just haven't seen the figure with it yet.

Many have noted that Kylo could also have his mask printed on his head, for the hooded look (and possibly a face on the other side, even if it doesn't seem to include hair for him or Hux). Doesn't matter a bit that the hooded & helmeted look is "iconic" and used on the packaging; we've seen less than a minute of footage featuring Kylo. For all we know, he keeps the hood down half the time! As for the saber, it's a bit disappointing, but the alternatives are limited. A new hilt with raised bits on one end that sheath more of the main blade, masking where the crossbeam on the current new element is, probably wouldn't meet Lego structural standards and be fragile. The option others suggested, having the little blades molded to a new hilt element, would present other problems because either the entire element would be trans-red with the hilt part painted, or the dark silver color with the blades painted opaque red. Maybe they could fuse two different color plastics together, but whatever solution they had you'd be left with a pretty limited element. They've made other limited elements of course, just saying it's not ideal. Still, getting a dark silver hilt (probably with an extra, too!) is pretty nice

They could easily fill a CMF series or two with guest stars, monsters, alternate versions of the gang (most notably red-shirt Shaggy from 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo), Scooby-Dum, Scooby-Dee... Charlie the Funland robot would be a great monster minifig to see. For celebs, Don Knotts, Don Adams, Jonathan Winters, Phyllis Diller, Sandy Duncan, Sonny/Cher, Mama Cass, Batman/Robin, and the Globetrotters all stood out in my mind. KISS would be more contemporary given the new movie. There's also the (very slim) possibility of some of their fellow Hanna-Barbera spinoff/guest stars, like Josie & the Pussycats, Speed Buggy and his friends (it'd make for a good set, and get away from the Mystery Machine color theme) etc.

Most hope for the blue because of the possibilities for R4-G9 and Commander Cody! The red would be nice, but the minifig possibilities are less exciting to me. Maybe this'll be like the B-wing or A-wing, single-faction assortments--no Battle Droids (or Buzz Droids)

It's not ridiculous at all. Disney/LFL have a marketing plan. It doesn't include revealing everything available on Force Friday by the end of July. This is not unusual in the slightest, especially with JJ Abrams involved. We don't even have a proper movie trailer yet--just a pair of teasers--so we know little about the story from official sources. It makes perfect sense not to release images of all the ships & characters due to that, even if there were no other reasons. This!

If budget is your concern, well...set a budget! The prices have been known for weeks now. Set aside those. You've seen 2 full sets, and the build of another (plus the pieces & minifigs of the smallest set). That you haven't seen all the sets yet doesn't mean you don't have enough information to set aside money for them. If TLG doesn't reveal the images before September 4th, and you get to the store & don't like what you see, then you've lost nothing. "I don't care for this set, so I've now got $30/whatever-dollars to spend on other things, or save." The sets won't be there for one day only, they'll be out for months! So I don't understand why you're so upset about this. As for what you don't understand, people have explained it already. There is a marketing strategy for The Force Awakens. There are likely many elements of the movie considered "spoilers", so marketing could blow the whole thing if approached without considerable planning. If D23 or anytime in August doesn't bring official reveals for the Force Friday product launch, it really won't hurt anything because people will simply be wowed (or disappointed) at the stores when they see the items for the first time and get to decide whether or not to buy 'em. But, again, the products aren't available only on September 4th, so there's no real need to reveal everything beforehand.

Indeed. Tho far more likely "Finn Leonis" than "Finn Calrissian"...and even then, not terribly likely (perhaps more that he's the son of Zare Leonis' sister, not of Zare himself) Nice build!

It's where the 'extension' bits are. The one you reviewed has a pair of this part connecting the body of the bike to the extendable front, the one JPN366 posted has it replaced by 2 1x1 round bricks, 2 of this part, and one of this to hold the short gray crosswise axle. Bring up his picture in a separate window and look at your pics/box art, you'll see. The Bricklink inventory for the set showcases all the alternate pieces.

Nice use of Kreo accessories! Some of their stuff is too odd for my taste, but I love those cheek-guard helmets. Closest Lego's got to it are the old bullet-helmets and the Rohan helmets. Some of the weapons are a lot of fun, too... I only picked up a couple D&D figures, but they're still kinda neat even with the goofy arms & legs of all Kreons (I couldn't resist getting several Kreons, with Transformers, GIJoe, and D&D in the mix). Kreon heads are the worst, tho... misprints galore, and sometimes the headgear (mostly Transformers 'helmets') don't even fit properly on the heads. Were those gray shield Kreo? I assumed they were, but didn't see 'em in a quick peek at the D&D sets...

It might have been running out of steam... there were 3 more seasons of TCW planned, pretty much, and then that was it. Had 1313 happened, that might have sparked wider interest, but it would've still been during TCW's run and would've still been fairly brief... the EU would've continued and the books would've shifted focus more fully to Jaina Solo & Ben Skywalker, probably, and explored more Old Republic stuff to support SWTOR perhaps, or maybe launched beyond Dark Horse's LEGACY to tell stories in the far future. The comics... Brian Wood's SW was kinda floundering IMO, and the conceit of it pretending we didn't know ESB & ROTJ were out there (or the many other comics & whatnot that took place shortly after ANH and were supposedly still in continuity) wasn't very compelling... LEGACY 2.0 could've continued for a bit, and maybe some interesting miniseries things like Agent of the Empire or arcs of Dawn of the Jedi or Dark Times (we never did find out how K'Kruhk got from his mini-Jedi Temple on a distant farming world to being part of the LEGACY-era Jedi Order), not sure if Dark Horse had anything else planned for ongoing series. Otherwise there was just SWTOR keeping things going. SW wasn't dead, not like the late '80s, but it may have been starting a decline. The Disney sale rejuvenated it quite a bit.

The "mass majority" may not know these specific sets are on the way, with or without the specific minifigs we know of, but of course they know Lego will be producing TFA sets--they're not stupid--and that those sets will be available on Force Friday along with everything else. The day itself has been marketed already, and will be more often over the next month, and that may well be enough. I'd wager most fans didn't know exactly what would be released for Midnight Madness in '99--I know I didn't, aside from maybe the Commtech thing which I thought was a waste of time anyway--but that didn't stop crowds lining up at TRUs across the country like on a crazy shopping spree, loading up their carts with Maul-emblazoned merchandise.

While that art will be on the box, it's actually the instruction manual cover we saw, I think, hence no minifigs pictured on it.

...or Scooby-Doo (not that it's top-secret, really...and maybe there's already a Lego Scooby-Doo book in the works). Not sure if "Big Bang" is a codename or just some generic term associated with it or what, tho.

Stunning! Beautiful ship. I dig the minifigs, too. Nice use of regular yellow-skins as aliens, nice uniforms on the duelists, and I really, really like those McQuarrie Jedi! The cephalopod Jedi's also really fun.

That's because dude's got a pale beard/stache going on, because it's this guy: Nik Sant.

I think you missed what I was doing there.

That's because the X-wing pilot HAS a jumpsuit. The printing on the Snowspeeder pilot indicates the jacket by also not having a gray vertical strap at the bottom...because the jacket goes on over the gray harness straps (and over the jumpsuit) in the movie costume, as the movie photos show (tho that Snowspeeder Luke pic seems to be lacking the gray harness entirely...) Also, the unique collar's more apparent on the back for the Snowspeeder pilots...

Not exactly... X-wing pilots wore orange jumpsuits. On Hoth, they wore orange jackets with big, puffy collars over the jumpsuits. Because it was cold, y'know. Comparison:

...that's because it's the R2-D2 2, built after the first was blasted at Yavin. It may look unfinished, but it's fully armed and operational.

Yeah, but there's hope with BPs in January (assuming that's when the reported "hero BP" is released...I imagine there will be a villain BP as well, tho probably not 4 FO stormies--more likely a mix)

I think he means that. Now it'll be available in something under $50, so that might have an effect on the aftermarket prices (which can only be a good thing). I know we got Rebels Stormies in a nice cheap BP, but it'd be great to revisit OT Stormies in a similar setting... but we'll probably see First Order stormies (or Snowtroopers or Flametroopers) in BPs before that ever happens.