Venkefedo

Great capper to the wave!

Since I missed the Endor bunker set, I nabbed a Poncho Leia torso off BL. I had a spare POP princess head and a Leia hair from a Kingdoms figure (or an old BL purchase, I forget)... added some sand blue legs from someone else, voila! Endor Commando Leia (also scored a helmet, so she can show Wicket it's just a hat). Waiting on a CapeMadness coat to add to a spare ROTJ Han to make a decent Endor Han...

Lego knows that people feel up the bags, and has always seemed fine with that. Lego Store employees often help customers find the specific figures they want, so I doubt this is some official thing.

Tower, phase II as well!

Not much of a story this time. Phase I can be found here, and the obvious inspiration for the tower itself, Combee's wonderful WoW-inspired Ogre Encampment, is here. I'm still unsure how the legs connect to the tower platform in his; mine is a very shaky connection via hinge bricks. Had a lot of fun trying to figure it all out! Over a year after Ruggezh and Tark of the Grashtaz tribe killed the guards of a small outpost, an Orcish tower had emerged in its place. Moving quickly after the scouts returned with news of their conquest, the Dwarven outpost was demolished, the orcs not even bothering to clear out all of the debris--even building upon it, and displaying the remains of the slain guards. The tree next to the outpost was struck down and used to build the rickety tower, along with several other nearby trees. Emboldened by their success and with a foothold in this mountain pass, the orcs invaded the nearby mining town and became entrenched in the region. The dwarves and humans, however, were already drawing plans to drive the orcs back to the Marches and fortify the southwest... "Alas, poor Thorgal...." They shredded the Mitgardian flag, but the colors still shone brightly! The stump of the tree remains, and a tumble of ruined stone serves as crude steps to the ramp spiraling around the tower. In addition to removing the original outpost (built on a couple 6x12 plates attached via jumpers to the greater base), I rearranged several pieces of the surrounding base, mostly what were meant to be loose stones, kicked around as the orcs built their new tower. See the rest on my Flickr! Thanks for taking a peek!

Nope. Many of us are speculating we may see some Cloud City love in 2015, since A) we're getting a UCS Slave I with a new Bespin Guard and an updated ESB Boba, and B) it's painfully obvious at this point that Cloud City is one of the few remaining OT locales in desperate need of an update (the other major one being Dagobah). We've had oodles of Hoth, Tatooine, and Endor in the last several years, but the only Bespin Luke/Leia/Lando figures Lego made was back when licensed figures still (mostly) had yellow skin.

I was thinking along those lines, too... glad to see someone else came up with a very similar explanation! The point is that until 'real' Emmet jiggled and fell off the table, it was pretty much an elaboration on a story the kid was constructing in his head, a fancy & funny daydream... Emmet actually moving turned the entire film into, sorta, a Neverending Story-kinda fantasy, where the 'story' turns out to affect the real world. Emmet falling off the table is like Bastion chasing the bullies atop Falcor at the end. Doesn't ruin it or anything, it just makes it something different from what we expected with all the 'real world' elements in Lord Business' collection giving away the 'twist'.

Sweetiepie means the 'twist' of what Emmet does while in the 'real world'... it's no longer just an elaborate version of a kid's playtime story, now a piece of Lego actually moved on its own.

That's kinda what I'm planning on... it's just silly that the torso & legs are different from the ISD Stormies at all! Still nice looking prints, and the handful of old-torso stormies can swap helmets with the ITT ones easily enough and remain in the rear...the "matte painting" stormies, if you will

Rereading The Hobbit in general does that! Most of the dwarves had no unique voices whatsoever, and while the dwarves' characters weren't fleshed out nearly as much as I'd have liked in the films so far (Bombur's pretty much just physical comic relief) at least they're more sketched out than the names & hoods of the book...even if only slightly. In any case... I'm glad these have hit stores. Target only had shelf-space & tags for the Witch-King set, in a temporary 'promo' bit of the action figure aisle that tends to change a couple times a month (this one also had the S12 CMFs, and a bunch of the $25 SW sets on the other side), so I'm not sure where they'll find a home for it or the other sets.

Yep, late in the week is the last mentioned time. I think he's trying to get a few more pics since he's missing several, but don't expect everything to turn up by then... may have to 'settle' for the Rebels sets, the movie sets, and half the Microfighters.

It's not the crystal OR the frog you should feel for, it's the hair on the hat for the Princess, and the telescope and/or bar from the wizard's staff...or the beard!

Technically that was a Shadow Stormtrooper, or a Blackhole Stormtrooper... Darktroopers tend to be bluish gray, and with very different armor & helmets (and are usually droids)

Wow, classy. You apparently didn't read any of his other posts in this thread or other theme threads where he's been posting. Star Wars isn't going up until Thursday or Friday. He WILL post separate pics; haven't you paid attention to the other themes' pics he's been posting this week? TLM & DC Superheroes had separate pics at the very least. He didn't post Speed Champions pics separately since someone beat him to it while he was asleep... Cuz he's also fighting a cold. The main reason it's taking so long is, as others have noted, so he doesn't spoil things for all of us by compromising his source... in addition to the cold, having a life, etc. Nope! Just scurriers and other small fauna.

Kenner & Hasbro, masters of leaving troops exposed in their vehicles... the Imperial Troop Transport was another such vehicle, leaving six troopers exposed on the flanks, in danger from sudden turns, low-hanging branches, and Rebel marksmen! I was reminded of the Snow Cat, too, tho the Havoc is another good match. When you first posted it, I was tempted to ask if the cockpits can separate like the Cobra Stun, but looking again at the Kenner art I realized that wasn't the intention. So many Joeverse vehicles this thing resembles. Now I'm afraid I've gotta go back down the rabbit hole of looking at all that unproduced stuff.

Wouldn't the Lake-town guards just be included in the count for the Lake-town men? (haven't read the book in awhile)

Doubtful, if it's meant to be an "lieutenant = blue" type of thing, since that ranking/color system kinda went out the door almost immediately after Geonosis. If it's Phase II, then whether it's a named or unnamed LT the colors & patterns are kinda up in the air.

His good face is visible in the minifig lineup on the bottom right corner of the boxart

AT-DP's stormie may be unique... the prelim pic showed some modifier in front of the name; could just mean it'll have different equipment (some speculate "riot stormtrooper", so a shield may appear even if not in the prelim pic--another nod to McQuarrie), or it might be an officer or some other trooper-type entirely. Or it might be a regular old stormtrooper and the extra word in front of it on the box-art was just an error... just2good will enlighten us soon enough.

Most of the problem is that of all the Rebels figures seen so far (which, admittedly, isn't many), only the stormtrooper is 'different' from movie-style figures, and it's a wildly unnecessary change. Someone got paid to design a new print for the helmet, torso, and legs of the Rebels Stormie... time, money, and effort that could've been applied to some other character! 99.9999% of Lego fans & kids would've been perfectly happy with the stormie currently in the ISD set being included in the Ghost and the ITT BP (thrilled, even, at being able to get 4 at a time in the ITT)... it's only a vocal minority slamming the Rebels-style troopers, sure... but that vocal minority would be singing the praises of the Rebels line if the troopers didn't have those deep frowns and rounded belts & all that. I'm annoyed by the Rebels Stormies, but will still probably get a couple sets of the ITT regardless... it wouldn't take many to outnumber the handful of OT stormies I've currently got (only a couple with the modern torso print; I'm not sure any of mine have leg printing), and I can always swap helmets to have the more complete prints, but with OT helms, at the front of a squad of stormies in pictures or on my shelves... it's just a silly, needless difference when Kanan, Hera, Zeb, Ezra, Chopper, and the Wookiees can all rub plastic elbows with Han, Leia, Chewie, Ackbar, etc. OTOH, the rate the prints have changed in the last few years, we'd practically have to be rebuying characters annually (or at least their latest heads) to keep everything in our SW minifig collections up to date.

...and for largely the same reason: they're shooting at main characters. The series would be pretty short if all the Rebels got killed in the first gunfight. All that's missing is a "let them escape so we can track them to their base/capture them later" order that likely happened on the first Death Star and on Cloud City. But it's also important to note that even tho they're highly-trained, they're nowhere near the levels of the clonetroopers who were born & bred to be exceptional soldiers. If that program had continued, the Rebellion may never have taken off, but as they were weapons against the Jedi there wasn't much need for Palpatine to keep buying new clones to populate the Imperial war machine... it was about keeping order, no longer about fighting a war or betraying Jedi. So stormies may be "elite", but it's a different caliber of "elite"--and thus Star Wars heroes, who even without the Force tend to be luckier & more capable than the average citizen or even Rebel soldier (kinda like RPG player characters), can clash with stormies frequently and not get mowed down. Hopefully the show will have stormies not be completely useless as the show progresses; they're not Battle Droids, who only really held any menace due to numbers, and were usually outclassed by SBDs, Destroyers, and Commando Droids during TCW.

Target in Burbank already had Witch King Battle on the shelf today, but I opted for some CMFs instead... still, pretty tempting to scoop up a couple (I think they had enough to recreate Ring-vision Weathertop)

Indeed! The alternative would be a 1x1 round tile waffle, and that's as big as a doughnut... too small!

Stopped by Target and...they had them! And for $2.99! They were picked over pretty heavily, but I managed to nab the Genie, Swashbuckler, Hun, Battle Goddess, and Princess (haven't opened to check, but I feel reasonably confident!). The rest were all, predictably, Pizza Guys and Gamers, with one Lifeguard in the mix... I can wait on those.

I must've done it wrong last time... bouncing back & forth to copy URLs and all that, and embedding links in the embedded images to allow for viewing larger sizes.