Khaled Yousef

I understand where the OP comes from, and I think the problem is that most of the time the mods would correct someone “behind the scenes” and we don’t know if anything is being done. Sometimes it’s not that important, but in some cases I think correction should be pronounced, and I see mods do that in much less shocking cases, like someone ranting off-topic or something similar, so why not do the same with bigger issues? For instance, in one thread a member got a little bit too enthusiastic and insulted me, I refused to answer and reported his post, and nothing happened, maybe they did say something to him but I, the one who’s been insulted, and other members who’ve seen it happen, will never know, so it might seem to a casual viewer that insults are OK on this site like many other sites. Every time I visit that thread I see the insult and I’ll never know what the mods did about it, and while it’s not such a big deal it still is frustrating since Eurobricks is generally considered to be THE place to be if you wanted a “clean” web forum experience. And somehow that little incident made my experience here less enjoyable. I understand that the mods are busy, and that they’re doing a tremendous job keeping this site together, and that when someone reports something it’s almost certain something will be done about it. But it’s always better for others to know what is being done, especially in case of profanity and insults, the same way we see things being done immediately in public to off-topic ranting.

I fear it might also include the Cinderella Castle of Disney. No seriously I’m scared now; that would suck.

Now this is my idea of a perfect MOC: 1- Creative idea, I haven’t seen anyone who thought of making 3PO in chrome gold at this scale. 2- Awesome design, the overall look and your attention to details speaks for itself. 3- Wow factor, bringing all this shiny bricks together is not an easy or cheap job, and it’s definitely eye-candy to real fans. 4- And finally presentation, your choice of dark background and perfect lighting makes your model really stand out. It’s a beautiful MOC Anio… amazing job as always.

Now this is what the Black Pearl set should’ve been; it’s absolutely fantastic, you’ve done a great job with the overall look and details while retaining the standard SYSTEM scale.

I think the ones being robbed are those who buy the original UCS Falcon for thousands of dollars; I wish LEGO would release a new one so we can buy it at retail price again and not get robbed.

Thanks krisandkris12, I’m a HUGE fan of your work, the Venator and Invisible Hand project.

Small update for Han with short hair for Smitty500 and Lord Tyrus. LEGO Star Wars - 15 Years Logo (Carved) 2 by K Yousef, on Flickr

BrickSev: there is no way they can trace his leaks and discover which store manager is responsible for them as long as BrickJagger doesn’t reveal where he shops. Bothan spies should learn how to cover up their traces or else we lose them.

Yeah, Watto looks odd in this lineup; I too hope he’s a placeholder because he makes absolutely no sense to come with this ship. I know it was mentioned that Queen Amidala came with the Bongo before as an example of minifigs out of place, but she was a unique and brilliant figure, and the jedi went on the Bongo to save her after all. Watto however is just another minifig we already have and he has nothing to do with the Infiltrator or Darth Maul. Unless Qui-gon comes with improved leg printing, this set looks like another useless release.

Completely agree, all those Episode I sets we keep getting every wave don’t make any sense! Ordinary remakes in a very short time span and nothing creative on the minifigure side either. I wished they could’ve given some attention to the other two PT movies before waves are dominated by the new movies.

Here is hoping that BrickJagger proves to be one of the trusted sources around here; if his store manager likes to talk then we can get some more information out of him, maybe even for other themes.

Not just hilarious, but terrific builds as well; I’m surprised by the effort you put in these dr_spock, keep them coming. The catapult one would be even funnier with sound effect “pvvvvt!” And what the heck is that drill thingie in the S&M one? People use these? I mean the banana I understand, but that thing!

You see, I tell you clearly that I respect your opinion, and I say that I also understand that the last wave wasn’t very popular, and I say that I think that some members here, including you, have done a respectable effort and made keen observations that mean something, yet you consider it fine that I’d be attacked, because you think I “seem” to generalize, and I “seem” to dismiss everyone’s reports, and I “seem” to do so and so? All I “seem” to do in fact is that I don’t completely agree with your opinion, how does that justify the offence? I’m sorry, but that’s not fair. Since I said I respect your opinion and I don’t think everyone here is wrong, you could’ve gone like “oh well, it’s OK to disagree with someone as long as it’s done in a respectful manner” or something of that sort, if this was an amicable conversation between fans, but you just keep attacking me no matter what I say since I don’t fully agree with you. You can’t win with someone who puts words in your mouth, or neglect the actual words you say… you’re just too competitive for me. This “sales” discussion started when people claimed that LEGO must have cancelled the last LotR wave because the sales of Hobbit line were so bad… this was an on-topic suggestion that I felt it was worth discussing. It then strayed away from this topic to unprofessional people thinking they can make market studies out of a couple of posts on an internet forum, I pointed out it wasn’t the most accurate method, and that the reports are too few and might not be that reliable, and a couple of guys started to attack me as if I’ve offended the honor of some holy endeavor they represent, thinking they speak for everyone else here… and using heavy words like “delusional” and “condescending” on a toy forum for crying out loud! I tried to deal with their intensity in a calm and polite manner repeating that I respected their opinions even though I disagree with them, they neglected what I said, or didn’t understand the difference between disagreement and disrespect, and just kept on throwing stones, and the conversation strayed away into something unpleasant. I apologize to other members who might have found this thread hard to follow because of this, since I was part of it, and I’ll seize to evoke people who refuse to discuss things in a friendly manner, and refuse to take back rude insults. I have reported the insults to moderators as advised, and I’ll seize to feed this fire right now. Until we get news or meaningful discussions about Nuju’s IDEAS set, the only official “future LotR” thing remaining, there seems to be no reason to post here anything other than never ending off-topic flame wars.

Deathleech: The biggest evidence to why you ignore parts of my posts is that you still consider yourself among those whom I said their judgment is clouded, when I specifically mentioned that I don’t mean every one and I didn’t want you or anyone else to take it personally. Do you believe that anyone who shares your observation must be right and unbiased by default, and anyone who disagrees is in denial or living on an island? What if I think the outcome of your survey would be inaccurate? Why should that mean I think your personal observations are biased or that you don’t know what you’re talking about? It seems I must go on and say I agree with everything you say so you’d finally accept the fact that I respect your opinion? I still do respect it by the way, even if you still think otherwise, if that’s the last thing we’ll disagree about. Maybe I’m coming off wrong like you said, or else how would you get from my words the impression that I’m calling all fans bitter, and not just a couple of them, when I myself am a fan! Bobbtom: you haven’t apologized for the insult you made earlier even though I haven’t been but polite in my disagreement with you. In real life do you usually attack people who disagree with your opinion like that? How’s that working out for you? I don’t agree in one paragraph and disagree in another; I agree to specific points and disagree to specific points, that’s what happens in normal conversations. Now when some guys tend to generalize and deal with responds as “with” or “against” and behave like everyone around here is in their “team” and anyone who disagrees with them has insulted the “team” and should be attacked, so they tend to use the “we” and “us” in their defense instead of “I” and “me,” saying things like: Why do you disagree with “us”? Why do you think “we’re” wrong? They turn any minor disagreement into a flame war. I don’t agree with people who consider the third Hobbit wave to be such a failure it caused the cancellation of the last LOTR wave, I think their methods only leads to mere opinions not facts, and when I disagree with those opinions I shouldn’t be attacked. While I agree that the wave wasn’t very popular as I’ve clearly stated on many occasions. I don’t think this is condescending or delusional. That’s it. How some people find this offensive is beyond my understanding.

Deathleech: and do you know what’s your problem sir? It’s that whenever someone doesn’t agree with you, you immediately assume he firmly believes the opposite point of view. When did I ever say I thought the third wave sold like crazy? When did I suggest that the third wave was flying off the shelves? Never, but since I don’t agree with considering the whining of some fans here to be good evidence that this wave was a complete failure, this automatically means for you that I think it was a HUGE success. You offer me tea; I tell you it’s not hot enough and you go like “so I suppose the tea is freezing then, do you see ice floating on top?” I thought Tolkien fans are the type who takes their time reading, but you my friend seem to be very hasty reading posts half way through and making assumptions. I can go all the way back and quote what I said regarding my agreement about the fact that this line wasn’t very successful, in fact I did just that answering MAB a couple of posts back, but then you never read my posts, you just assumed since I don’t fully agree with your point of view then I must be someone in denial and I don’t deserve my posts to be read carefully before making up your mind about my opinion.

Why is Rebel face = Clone Wars face? They’re totally different; Rebel faces are just like normal minifigs from all licensed themes, normal eyes with pupils, while Clone Wars had weird bulging eyes and huge lips making them look very different from all other minifigs. I’m very happy LEGO decided to go with normal faces for Rebels, for even if I didn’t like the cartoon so much I can still get the sets and collect more Star Wars characters that blends with the ones I have.

I agree, but up till now there have been very few reports of such kind to be considered enough randomness to complete a picture of international sales. You need to have different reports from different chains of stores (not just Target), from different countries all over the world (not just the US), plus reports from online buyers also from all around the world (not only LEGO.com but also resellers like BrickLink), and as far as I’m concerned this didn’t happen yet on this forum. If you want to make a sound random market study, like the one you described with birds which is a legitimate method indeed, then you must go through all the previous posts, see how many individuals actually shared legitimate information and not just echoing opinions, study their diversity considering locations and mediums, eliminate the bias due to dissatisfaction with the product and then you’ll come up with a complete picture. Be careful also not to double count reports, as some enthusiastic reporters repeat themselves over and over it might make you think there are too many of them.

MAB: you miss understand me my friend, I mean no disrespect to that particular opinion. To quote myself from a previous post you might have missed “… and saying that the line didn’t look like it was very popular is a fairly logical statement that doesn’t require a professional marketer to declare, so I understand what most of you guys say, and I don’t think it’s wrong at all.” You see? In normal day-to-day usage (deal with something as so) means “consider as so,” “so” being a fact, while (deal with something) usually means “accept and live with.” At least that’s what I think it means. What I think is that random observations shouldn’t be “considered” as facts; indications maybe, but not facts. Meanwhile I “accept” them as legitimate opinions to be discussed and I respect them as such. And to reply to what you said: no, a few random locations doesn’t build up a complete picture, and some vague reports from ordinary people here doesn’t create the necessary randomness of a total survey… people go to college to study these methods, you know, there are rules, and they definitely don’t apply to the incomplete observations we see here most of the time. It seems to me that people who didn’t like the last wave wants to believe that it did so bad LEGO is licking its wounds, and that’s a bias which affects most of those observations. And I say “most” so you don’t think I mean your observation in particular. I’m objecting to a trend, not attacking certain individuals. If I didn’t like the discussion I wouldn’t be here, I just like to keep logic in check and not stray away from facts biased by personal opinions, that’s all. We desperately need some good news here to absorb the amount of negative energy that infests all conversations that have anything to do with LOTR and Hobbit sets.

I just got the Emperor from the book, and to my surprise he had dual face expression, one angry and one evil, no one mentioned this before I thought he’d have only one angry face. However, the upcoming one seems like a better option since he seem to have an angry and a normal expressions, it’s more useful than two excited faces, I wish I had waited till the pictures of the new one appeared.

Splitting the two movies into three didn’t just hurt the movies and made them look stretched and boring, it’s also the most plausible explanation why the LOTR and Hobbit waves looked too weak. Combine all the sets that had been released in one introduction wave of classic LOTR and two powerfull Hobbit waves and you get yourself a very successful line as it was originally intended to be. Deathleech: I agree with you that LEGO didn’t put enough new molds in the third wave, however, what I meant was if LEGO saw that wave 2 did poorly they wouldn’t release another weak wave just to fulfill the license, that would just be so dumb, like “hey, that last wave did so bad because it was weak, let’s make another weak wave to make it even worse”. They would definitely try to improve things, and they don’t need new molds to do that, better choices of scenes and some battle packs of minifigs with existing molds would’ve done the trick. If they didn’t bother doing that then maybe, just maybe, the line didn’t sell so poorly in their own perspective according to their own target. Leica sells ten lenses a year, Canon sells ten million lenses a year, and each manufacturer fulfilled its target as planned despite what the casual observer might think comparing the two numbers. I really don’t see why we deal with some complains of some angry disappointed fans on some internet forum as the final statement on how these two lines actually sold (in stores around the entire world and through on-line outlets including resellers). And please don’t give me those “stores had low stock” or “shelves weren’t full of sets” or “Target or Wall-Mart DECIDED to do so and so” or “EVERYONE here reported bad sales in their stores” because these are all random unprofessional observations and wild guesses.

Just rumors for now. A new Hoth Rebel Soldier in the advent calendar this year also hints to a Hoth set in a way, but nothing is confirmed yet.

That theory doesn’t sound right; assuming that LEGO saw that the second wave didn’t sell well, then don’t you think they would’ve tried to do better with the third wave, like make better sets that avoids the mistakes which caused the last wave to fail, instead of repeating the same mistakes or miss the final opportunity to make some profit out of this expensive license before it ends? This theory makes LEGO look like a teenager who’d be disappointed by his failure that he would be depressed and start to hurt himself, do drugs and fail purposely in exams… we’re talking about the biggest toy manufacturer in the world here; with teams of professional marketers and designers, try to give them some credit… perhaps those were the sets they planned to release from the beginning, and they were just spread across three waves instead of two?

This is really an impressive MOC. And those customs are outstanding; they’re professionally done, very accurate and detailed, and the colors are spot on. Please make more of those, perhaps a Cantina scene with more of your customs next time?

Like most Episode I remakes this year; it’s just another poor decision.