Darth Caedus

In advance of the full PAB (theoretically) returning towards the end of the month...has anyone put together a list of new elements that have appeared since BnP went offline a few months ago? Or even some of the good earlier 2022 stuff that never really showed up (squirrels, etc.) I know Stonewars did this to some degree, looking forward to blowing hundreds of more dollars on PAB when there's actually new things to buy!

So what's the breakdown of the Phase 1 troopers in the Accessory Pack? Logical choice would be Red Blue and Green - Captain, Lieutenant, and Sergeant - to fill in the missing ranks and save the plain Phase 1's for a theoretical battlepack later in the year. I could absolutely see a $20 battlepack with 3 plain Phase 1's and 1 Phase 1 pilot akin to the Snowtrooper pack that's imminent.

Called my local Lego store to ask if they'd have the Icons on September 2nd. They told me it's delayed for a week or maybe longer, didn't have an ETA - apparently there's container ship gridlock that's messing up global shipping. Not too worried, it'll give me time to catch up on more August stuff that's still out of stock...

Vidiyo, salmon colored new hair for Aug 1st.

Pessimistically I doubt that that's the case but that would be awesome if it were so! Keeps it a mystery for anyone casual but is a simple way to incentivize downloading the app.

It is deeply disturbing to see the Vidiyo theme deploy the dreaded blind boxes, which will doom them to the clearance bin like so many other mystery boxes. Thankfully on this 1st series of the Vidiyo characters most of them are weird/undesirable, but it's still not something that's good to see - fervently praying that CMFs stay bags for the foreseeable future. Boxes only help the resellers who will hoard cases in bulk to sell piecemeal. It would be especially cruel for fans of CMFs to finally get a Marvel and possibly Star Wars series after literally a decade+ of waiting only to be cheated by blind boxes.

1000% this will not occur. With 2 exclusive minifigs, this simply can never drop much lower than the $80-$90 it commands right now, and will only continue to rise.

Taskmaster set is now Sold Out, lasted all of half a day. This may well be it for them, assuming Amazon has blown through their supply. Only chance for more would be if Amazon held a few back, or for a repeat of the Bespin Backorder (a last gasp of Bespins showed up Backorderable for brief time many days after the initial release, likely from cancelled orders).

Looking on the gram, is there any truth to the possible revelation that the 501st's are not AngryClones and have a new accurate skintone? Or is that a hoax?

The Viking is spectacular for Middle-earth fanatics - that helmet works perfectly for Rohirrim! Not only is armybuilding the classic Rohan Soldier from the Uruk-Hai Army expensive and difficult, the monochrome Rohan helmet actually isn't great to be the only helmet in a Rohirrim force since they aren't standardized like Gondorians. This helmet will be absolutely spot-on for diversifying the Men of Rohan - and the outfit could almost be dropped in wholesale as well! Cape being too bright for the LOTR color palette is the only issue, but a tiny nitpick. So happy to be getting this helmet. Also LOVING the Knight's sword - at last, we can shake up the longswords used for some of the LOTR heroes and villains! I'll definitely be giving these blades to Gandalf and the Witch-King - they are perfect matches for the crossguards of both Glamdring and Witch-King's longsword (which differs notably from the less bombastic standard-issue Nazgul swords wielded by the other eight).

Everyone's so incensed, but I'm breathing a huge sigh of relief - the rumors of a second Mr Gold style chase rare were extremely distressing, and it's a massively pleasant surprise for me that they were false. Give me a nice, boring, normal series - there should never be another Mr Gold, it was a disaster back in Series 10 and that was before LEGO obsession was even a tenth of the fever pitch it is now - I can only imagine how vicious the scalpers and the hunters would be with such a chase rare. 1/60 is fine, should never be more than that. Figures sound alright, nothing special but non-licensed series are generally just fun side fare IMO - I'll still buy them all, but it's the licensed series where the figure choices matter most.

Agree 100%. Hoping that the scarcity rumor is incorrect, it will really ruin the series for many people. 1/60 rares like the Policeman and Graves were just fine - not too hard to find but rare enough to be cool. Anything rarer than that is a no-go.

No rumors, all we know is that the May the 4th thing will be another $200 item and the October thing will be $350, as people discussed per instagram a while back. Makes sense as things seem to be alternating (big Falcon fall 2017, $350 Bespin fall 2018, big SD fall 2019...) and the May the 4th item has been $200 every year for a while now (TIE Fighter, Snowspeeder, Y-wing, Tantive, with Battle of Hoth being the slight exception). If we were placing bets, an A-wing is the #1 logical pick given how much demand there is for it. You could also view the retirement of the Y-wing as making shelf space so there aren't multiple Rebel Alliance fightercraft UCS at once. Who knows though, could be something Clone Wars or even Sequel Trilogy. It's been over 3 years now since the Red Five X-wing retired, X-wings are always strong sellers...maybe they do a UCS Poe X-wing? I'd say the only sure bet is that the May the 4th will be some kind of starfighter and the October thing will be a Master Builder series item, and only time will tell what those will pan out to be.

Personally, I'd rank them like this: Poe's X-wing: Solid build, cool color scheme, acceptable price, good figures - and very notably, the best and most iconic version of Poe to be produced that is only just now being replicated for 2020 - after half a dozen other versions along the way. First Order Special Forces TIE Fighter: All TIEs prior to 2015 are inferior due to the lack of a correct cockpit mold, starting with the Inquisitor's TIE they began to be 'perfect' in minifig scale. This was our very first TIE in the classic shape - even though it'd take another 3 years to get a normal Imperial TIE when the Solo movie came around. Excellent choice to make all four figures generic armybuilders for those who bought multiples. TFA Millennium Falcon: A slight step upgrade to the 2011 edition, but with vastly better figure selection as the 2011 ones quickly became obsolete with the aesthetic upgrades that occurred early in this decade of LEGO Star Wars. Ended up being a lot of people's first playscale Falcon and a good one at that. A good anchor for the wave that's aged well, despite now being made irrelevant by the 2019 edition. First Order Troop Transport: This set has actually aged pretty well, boasting a decent figure selection for the price and is still an effective rendition of one of the film's few original vehicles. Kylo's Shuttle: Decent figure selection for the time that became much less relevant in short order, now only really being notable for the hooded Kylo option. Good interior but incorrect color scheme and design that's all pretty bleh - not only is it not canon, a ton of the parts feel wasted on boring wing mechanisms that add little play value. The new shuttle isn't immune to some of these issues - it's far from the best ship design in Star Wars - but at least it's accurate (and has much better figures). Rey's Speeder: A fun little $20 set whose biggest crime is being comically oversized and not particularly important in the film. Still, it works for what it is. First Order Snowspeeder: A pretty dull design with a poor figure selection - First Order Snowtroopers have a weak helmet mold that doesn't cling to the head well and 3 of them in a $40 "battle pack" doesn't really cut it. The vehicle itself is forgettable enough that they cut it from the movie itself, and is destined to be forgotten in the long history of LEGO Star Wars as well.

Even at that blurry resolution it looks incredible. LEGO Employee gifts have always been pretty fun & interesting, but this just shot it past lightspeed. At one point I was trying to go for the Trains one (from a year or two ago?) but it was pretty consistently ~$200. I can only imagine what this will go for, not only is it Star Wars with what looks like at least 1 very exclusive minifig, but it also is now a piece of the "20th Anniversary Collection" for any of the completionists out there...darn. Expecting this to rival the more desirable SDCC exclusives on the aftermarket - $500? $750 even? Hard to guess.

Dr Evazan and Ponda Baba would never appear as polybags, particularly Ponda since he'd need a new Aqualish mold. 99% certainty those characters are being held back for an eventual Cantina set, whether a midrange playset one as seen in the past several years or a comprehensive large release. The Cantina is one of the last iconic OT locations to never be really *properly* depicted in LEGO form and any release of it with even as few as half a dozen unique but iconic aliens would be an instant buy for collectors. The very thought of an official LEGO minifigure of Snaggletooth or Brainiac is goosebump-inducing. By contrast, young Beru and young Owen would be perfect for polybags since there's really not a great set that could include them, given LEGO's disdain for any AOTC content (let alone boring Tatooine stuff revolving around the death of poor Shmi). But I think they'll be passed up as well. The fact we've never gotten an old Beru is nuts, especially after 3 Sandcrawlers and 2 Owens.

The Death Star is retiring in 2020? Where was this confirmed? Direct re-release? 0%. Some other Endor set? Decent chance. I feel like if we were going to see another large "Master Builder" Endor kit they'd simply do the Bunker this time - would easily tick all the boxes. Simple but recognizable structure easily depicted that doesn't take up quite as much space as the Cloud City, check. Can include several vehicles like a midi-ish scale AT-ST, speeder bikes, Ewok Hang Glider, check. Action features of Ewok traps and door functions, check. Full of unique character variants, check (updated Endor Han, Leia with a printed poncho and perhaps slight battle-damage, Ewoks galore, as many Rebels and Imperials as they care to include, even a zappy-zappy R2 variant if they're feeling adventurous). Maybe do it as a rectangular diorama with some forest floor, couple big trees, front half of the Bunker with door, and a passable interior. ARC-170 was done in Series 2, but the V19 hasn't been touched. Could be a good opportunity to do a Clone pilot with unusual helmet printing, from a specific squadron.

Luke himself could well sit this one out - Star Wars 4+ sets are actually just 1-for-3 on including core main heroes, the TIE Fighter is actually bizarrely almost army-buildable if one is so inclined, and the A-wing has another generic pilot and only Threepio (not the strongest selling point in the world, especially with the simultaneously available Dewback set) to give a little name recognition. That said, it would be fitting if they reused both the Assault on Hoth Wedge AND Luke in a Juniors kit - get those figures available to a broader community than the lonely few who suffered the grim fate of actually paying $250 for Assault on Hoth... Angry clone hurts a heck of a lot less than the Dakface reuse because we largely never need to see it. It's kind of an accepted meme at this point, and at least for troopers if you really want to diversify, you can draw on any of the myriad existing fleshtone male faceprints out there to shake up your Empire or your First Order. The Dakface, on the other hand, ruins any pilot figure it's on. It's good ONLY for Dak - a happy, ready-to-fight expression, and then a terrified about-to-be-blown-up expression. Great for what happens with Dak on Hoth. Trash for almost any other pilot, since neither expression is neutral or generic-looking. We need unique faceprints at the very least for Wedge - ironically, we may get OLD Wedge before Young Wedge with a unique print since the actor is recently rumored to appear in Episode IX.

One thing that I think folks often forget is that LEGO sets aren't priced in a vacuum - the wave they release in is a huge factor. Waves rarely have any 2 sets at an identical pricepoint, regardless of comparable value or P2P ratio (seen frequently in Ninjago, where you'll find a ridiculous 400-500 piece bargain for $30 and then some overblown ATV somehow clocking $40 or $50). In any given wave, you get some really decent deals, and you get some questionable ones - this has increased in recent years where LEGO seems willing to price some $20-$30 sets more aggressively at the tradeoff of having pricier midrange/highrange kits. Star Wars, in addition to all the other factors, plays with this concept as well. Recall last summer's wave, where you had some really strong deals: 75214 Anakin's Jedi Starfighter was a measly $20 in an era where we commonly see that general tier of starfighters hit $25-$40 depending on what they entail. The 75215 Swoop Bikes was a pretty solid deal too for $30 with 3 unique minifigs - and to balance it out, other sets in that wave took the price hike (the Imperial Landing Craft, while actually a pretty good build, clocking an absurd $90 for the piece count, along with the frequently-bargain-binned Conveyex Train). A similar thing is going on in this wave. The A-wing followed a similar path to the Jedi Starfighter of last summer, costing $10 less than we'd come to expect ($30 for this edition vs. $40 or effectively $43 for the TRU exclusive that was the previous release). The higher end of the line also saw some pretty fair pricing: the Kylo Shuttle is in almost every way a definitive upgrade to the 2015 dud, costing only $10 more with some exceptional minifigures. The Falcon is in fact a major upgrade with an overall good figure selection (some strong some wasted) and managed to be $10 *cheaper* than the previous Falcon (a rare phenomenon indeed for LEGO). It's the middle of the pack where they lumped the biggest inflation - AT-ST and Y-wing being $10 more than most would expect, but still far from the misfire of last summer's wave (the Conveyex has hit rock bottom discounts in many Targets, for example - they pushed the scales a bit too far that time). They're clearly doing what they can to keep the "affordable" $20-$30 pricepoint alive as it's a crucial one to attract casual buyers - having worked for years in retail, I can attest that the $20 pricepoint in particular is almost a "magic number" as to being the maximum that a parent will indulge their kid on while on a shopping trip: anything higher and you start to hit the birthday gift, special occasion territory. This gets lost in the hardcore fan community since every set is micro-analyzed for P2P ratio fidelity, quality of minifigures, comparison against all extant iterations of a model...for us, the $40 pricepoint of the Rogue One AT-ST feels like it was just yesterday, but for a huge chunk of the rapidly refreshing target audience (many of the 8-year-olds of 2016 have long since moved on to Fortnite, etc.) they don't even know that one existed. All in all, I think there's far too much hemming and hawing over MSRP in this day and age where it matters astronomically less than it did a decade ago. In 2009 if a set was $100 you were quite likely gonna be paying that $100 unless it was a dud and went on sale. But now, you've got Target, Walmart, and most importantly Amazon immediately discounting sets right out the gate - I don't always agree with everything on Jangbricks' channel, but he's been doing a great thing lately in accounting for the "actual" price to piece ratio of new Star Wars releases in his reviews, commenting on how many of them received healthy Day-1 discounts so the sticker shock is a much more of a non-factor - when in the past, an otherwise decent set might have been hammered into the dirt for a $20 markup when in reality it could be found 20% off in a variety of venues. Of course, this largely applies only to North America - deep condolences to anyone with the horror of being a LEGO fan and trying to buy sets in almost any other part of the world...

I think a Batman is guaranteed, but there are still many Batsuits that would be really worthwhile and wouldn't waste a slot. Red Son Batman and Gotham By Gaslight are two personal favorites, but I'd also love any figure specifically based on the Nolan or Burton era suits. Hell, the one Adam West version we got wasn't super accurate, would be great to get a special headdress piece to depict that particular weird look.

If it is indeed $700, yes, it absolutely needs some interesting figures to spice it up. Figures always make a UCS better, and weak figures hurt any UCS release - just look at the TIE Fighter, that thing was going for close to 50% off by the bitter end, and it had just the one dull pilot. Same with the Snowspeeder - the two figures were colossally disappointing given they reused the odiously reused Dak Ralter face, killing the collectability. The Assault on Hoth disaster had many more problems than the figures, but the extreme low effort there (generic ponytail lady #29 for Toryn Farr, etc.) made for a weak minifig range as well. By contrast, the Tantive IV, which isn't even technically a UCS release, has a great balance of features/build with a solid, appropriate figure range - as did the 2015 Slave I. The Falcon is already an impressive monster, but including balanced crews from V and VII is a great touch - an a perfect deployment of a one-scene weird variant in the rebreather Han and Leia. This ISD will most certainly have quite a few large pieces, but a full 2000+ disparity in piece count will go over very poorly in the fan community - I still expect good sales, but it's strange that they'd cheap out and deliver a paltry 2 figures with literally the 2nd most expensive set of all time. Again, this is going with the $700 rumor, but it's a very strong rumor.

If he has a unique faceprint, that would be quite nice. Commander Jir and Commander Praji would be very appropriate inclusions given their presence in the scene.

Assuming it's actually $700 and only 4700 pieces as the scuttlebutt goes, it should have had at least as many figures as the Falcon. This was the opportunity to do all those core Imperial Officers that never get proper renditions - Piett, Ozzel, Needa, Jerjerrod, Motti, Tagge all deserve figures, and none of them have ever been done properly (most never done at all). Heck, it would have been a great place to deploy an offscreen character like Rae Sloane for that matter. Imperial Officers are "boring" to casuals but iconic characters to classic hardcore fans - and a UCS ISD is for classic hardcore fans. Reserving judgment til we know price, piececount, and figures for sure, but this bodes ill so far.

Comprehensive overhaul to the list. The hunt never ends!

Stranger Things has at least 3 more season in it guaranteed. From the strong trailer from Season 3, the hype isn't gonna die off anytime soon - the precedent is there with The Simpsons for 2 D2C's from a popular TV show, so I wouldn't count it. Depends entirely on how the first one sells, but I think this will be a slam dunk - it appeals to all ages and countless demographics, has colossal play appeal for kids and display value for adults, if done correctly.