Blakstone

That is the chicken and the egg concept. Is it LEGO's responsibility to tone down violence in society? Would it make a difference if they tried to? While the obvious answer is that a corporation does not have a responsibility to do that, we can see that LEGO accepts some of the responsibility. This is why modern war is off limits and modern police do not have weapons. I think the change to having good and bad soldiers is market driven and LEGO is responding to it. However, I always liked the blurred lines with the Black Falcons, Crusaders (Lion Knights), and Forestmen. The Forestmen and Lion Knights would switch places as the hero and the villain. The Black Falcons would be rivals, not evil. However, the 2013 Castle has evil looking heads for all the Dragon soldiers. I bought most of those sets on clearance only but I would even out the good and bad heads amongst them. I hope that 2016 brings more nuance between the factions. Even if it is Fantasy, Dwarves could be the allies one time or the rivals to the humans.

I think interiors is a great thing to MOC, but LEGO is not likely to do it. It is very hard for them to do any civilian sets at all. The following quote is on the 2007 Castle line specifically but the 2016 line would have the same constraints and pressures: "Throughout all the testing we have done for Castle we have included several Civilian style sets for the kids to review with the rest of our proposals. Unfortunately when it comes to the ranking of products they always come at the bottom of the pile, even when we have tried to spice them up by including some sort of battle or attack scenario to the products, they just never rank very highly. Kids really prefer just to have a big Castle to protect and a load of Battle machines and vehicles. Also if we did a Civilian set at retail, it is more than likely that it would be the last one kids would pick on their collection list and they may never actually get that far. We can’t afford to have products sat on shelves that are very slow to perform as we have limited shelf space in the different stores. A box like that could take the place of a Star Wars or Exo Force item etc which could sell five times the volume very quickly. Generally if products aren’t seen to perform in the first month or two they can be very easily dropped from the assortment." Star Wars has had battle scenes indoors. That is similar to the Mines of Moria where you get the idea that it is inside without having to build all of it. But to have a banquet hall for Castle would not have enough action for kids. AFOLs might want to recreate a Red Wedding though.

The back of this box looks interesting as well. This looks like a win even when you have the segments stacked up.

Robin Hood entered the public domain before there was even an United States or even public domain laws. Anyone can make a Robin Hood movie or TV show without having to pay royalities. If LEGO were to tie into an existing movie, though, it would be different. But that would be a greater expense for LEGO. I can give a better example with a much newer work: The Wizard of Oz. The book is now in the public domain and anyone can make a movie based on it. However, the 1920s film is still under copywrite protection so no one can make use things that were invented just for that movie. This includes the color of green for the Wicked Witch. This is why you see so many adaptations of it. Back to Robin Hood, as long as the minifig prints did not tie into a specific film, LEGO would not need to buy the rights to it. They would if they felt that the cross promotion would help them more than it cost though.

A Robin Hood line without a specific movie tie-in would be yellow. Abraham Lincoln is yellow. Of course, he showed up in The LEGO Movie. But even Cleopatra... I mean the Egyptian Queen is yellow. Still I think LEGO would more likely do a Forestmen theme where kids could decide if they were Robin Hood and his Merrymen or not. I doubt we would see a box where each character from that mythology would be named.

I appreciate LEGO not wanting to demonize real life groups of people. I can see them instead having cowboy gangs of bank robbers. So there is both good and bad cowboys.

Since he mentions it along with Harry Potter, we can see that he is talking about current and past themes.

I guess the Lone Ranger really was bad for LEGO after all. LEGO Group CEO Jørgen Von Knudstorp told ToyNews that “Other times we try something out like Prince of Persia, which didn’t really work out, or The Lone Ranger, and that has to be done from time to time because we do need to test the water a little bit.”

To summarize 150+ pages, it is extremely unlikely there will be any more Middle Earth sets. There will be the exclusive Bain in the Battle of the Five Armies DVD though. If you mean to invest in Middle Earth sets in order to have a financial return, I wouldn't know. It seems risky. I recommend the sets if you enjoy the movies.

I think LEGO would be successful with Wild West, but the biggest challenge is completing with other LEGO themes. I would be Wild West only if there wasn't any Castle, Pirates, or Superhereos that I wanted. I doubt that Wild West will come back as a theme soon, but it seems to be a viable theme within CMF like the Greco-Roman. While the Lone Ranger movie did bomb, the LEGO sets in my area did really well. I only find the Silver Mine on clearance. I doubt quite a few sets but never saw the movie.

GoH is a sub forum that I rarely go into. While the builds look inviting, it is too much trouble for me to try to tie into all the mythology of that story. Why, then, was Middle Earth here at all? It is not historic to say the least. Of course, any theme with dragons or trolls isn't historic either. Perhaps Castle 2016 should be moved to the SciFi forum while Middle Earth goes to the Licensed forum.

When Kingdoms was ending, the Powers That Be decided to put Middle Earth here in order to keep that forum active. Other historic licensed themes such as The Lone Ranger did not come here. If Middle Earth was in Licensed, this place would have been as dead as the Pirated forum. Pirates used to be a part of Historic but the Castle and Pirates posts combined was huge. A split was made so there are two historic forums now. There won't be any new Middle Earth sets but I don't think the MOCs will completely die out. Castle will get new lines as few years and be the main focus of this forum again.

I would guess it was a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA). So LEGO tells the local managers but then require those same local managers to not share it. I would sympathize with them too. Regarding Castle 2016, I hope the factions, whatever they are, would get banners like the Chima army builders. Frankly anyone wanting lizardmen should just get the Crocodile Tribe pack.

There are always complaints. This is the Internet.

That is the rumor we are all discussing. If it was up to a list of AFOL wishes, Fantasy might win out but I would rather have a return of Forestmen, Black Falcons, and Lion Knights (from the same era). Chima will be gone by 2016 but there will still be Ninjago for the younger kiddies. I would rather not have a junior line for Castle.

If we are going the way of Fantasy, I would rather have a more limited amount of factions. Perhaps humans and either dwarves or elves. I think that goblins / orcs make sense for the evil faction. Pirates this year is using Blue Coats that fit well with the CMF Revolution Soldier. I think that the CMF goblin would likely fit well with Fantasy 2016. I would be very frustrated if skeletons come back as a faction. I never bought a Fantasy set but I still have enough skeletons to challenge any of my other groups (except Romans).

I only have Plastic Man out of your three wants but I lke your dwarves and trolls. Let me know what seems like a fair trade for you. PM is new in the Polybag.

The Goblin King was the only set I never bothered to finish building. When I build a set there coming a dawning realization as to the point of every brick. Ruins such as the Goblin King had too much where things felt too random. Dol Guldur sets had more of a pattern behind them. It represents the sets from the mobie, but it was still was bland. The big surprise for me was Weathertop. It looks horrible but I really enjoyed the build after I built it. It still did not feel like Weathertop from the film, but it was a great structure. Wave 2 Hobbit had an army builder with Mirkwood Elf Army but the build still felt pointless and most AFOLs here felt the minifig selection was poor. Too bad there was no Toys R Us polybags for the Hobbit wave 3. I had a large collection of Mirkwood Elf Guards from wave 1 and Laketown Guard from wave 2. I wish we could have got Iron Hills Dwarf soliders for wave 3.

Different fans have different focuses. I get that Bobbtom wants to army build not just the villains but also the heoric armies. That's cool. Taking a quick count of AFOL posts here he is not alone. But that does not make it universal. The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit lines appear to be less successful than LEGO would want. But that does not mean that anyone's theories are automatically correct. I probably only have 12 Gandalf's and 4 or 5 Gimli. There were three variants of Gandalf at least. So this talk about 500 Gandalfs baffle me. I assume it is an exaggeration. LEGO is my primary hobby. I don't buy toys every day but when I do, it is LEGO. However, my nieces that I buy LEGO as gifts also enjoy other toys. I think it is rare for kids, the primary audience, to only want LEGO as toys and even rarer for them to collect an entire wave of any series. That is why LEGO goes for different price points. They found that people spend at different levels for different occasions and want to balance their options. Middle Earth was always going to be risky for LEGO. While popular with AFOLs that MOCed with them for a decade their target audience never saw the old films and the Hobbit films were not out yet. I doubt that a few more army builders would have changed the fate of this line. I hated the Goblin King set in part because I hated that character in a movie I didn't even like. But I found most of the build uninspiring. The rope bridge was good though.

Hmmm... somebody is keeping WETA collectibles going. If a $700 BARAD-DÛR model can sell out, I think LEGO could make a D2C series. I just envision more demand for this than for the D2C Simpsons stuff. The Minas Tirith set is too big to ever go through IDEAS and we know that LEGO did already explore the model on their own before IDEAS. But the model could show the demand and thus LEGO might go with their own version just like they did for all the other large models of existing licenses such as the Tumbler, Hellicarrier, Sandcrawler, etc. When the Lord of the RIngs line started, LEGO did not have a D2C licensed line like they do now. I see this more likely then an extremely small run for an IDEAS set. LEGO has seen the level of support for such a set via IDEAS and has the Orthanc sells data to boot.

BrickSev, I think we all agree with that. It is exciting to see that they are actually doing the test model for ByCougar's project. It means that they are considering it. It seems that some people think LEGO would simply reject it without pursuing the idea for a while.

Direct to Consumer. These are the very large sets that normally are only available at The LEGO Store or Shop@Home. Think of the extremely large Star Wars, Simpsons, or the modular sets.

Good eye. By making it into the Review phase, the Minas Tirith project is forcing LEGO to have further conversations about Lord of the Rings. I doubt it will be green light; however, if we ever get another LotR set, I would still give Bycougars (NujuMetru) credit for it. LEGO has decided that D2C Simpsons line is doable. I would hope they would consider a D2C Lord of the Rings line as well.

That and of course, most Wolverine fans haven't ever picked up a comic book. If only comic book fans went to comic book films, the films would bomb. The Ideas contributors that submit extremely large sets won't get anything developed. After all, anyone can come up with the general notion of a set like "X-Mansion" but the submission is to be more specific such as unique design builds. These massive submissions incredible MOCs, ones that I would drive a hundred miles to see on display, but they are not feasible sets. I am such the construction techniques between a 7000 version helicarrier are not very similar to the one for a 1500 piece version. The over all look may be similar though, but it wasn't LEGO or the Ideas contributor that come up with it. It was Marvel.

Welcome to the board and best of luck on reaching 10,000.