Clone OPatra

Completely agree. Thrawn and Ezra felt like they had been on pause until Ahsoka and co show up within this story to give them something to do. Anyway, I'm not mad that other people either wholeheartedly like it, or excuse the lack of world building. For me, I can't explain what I wanted to see - all I can say it that what I did see felt uninventive and fell short. The fact that it might get interesting in another season doesn't help, because that style of mystery box storytelling is inherently boring (to me at least). You've got to actually put some information in there to get me invested on a story level. Just "I wonder what all this is about" does not make for an interesting story. But I super digress at this point.

What I meant was the look and design of the "other galaxy". There was nothing inventive about it. Barren wasteland with some tall statues and tiny weird little critters people and some hunters. Ok. I guess it's challenging because we've already seen such a wiiiiide variety of things in the regular galaxy, what were they going to do. But still, I would've liked to see them attempt something a little less boring.

Eurobricks does run a near annual gathering in Europe and does award winning international collaborative displays at Brickworks Chicago. Fan CoLabs, one could say. Just so people are aware.

It would be madness if they completely skipped Ahsoka S2. It's slightly concerning that there are no rumours, but given the show has been delayed multiple times and LEGO seems cool to release TV-related sets long after their source material aired (Cobb Vanth vs Cad Bane, Off-World Sandcrawler as examples), there could well be sets in January 2028. Ahsoka season 1 for me unfortunately sounds a lot better on paper than it actually ended up. The execution was incredibly mid on so many levels - pacing, uninventiveness with the "new galaxy", mysteries being so mysterious that they're ultimately uninteresting, obvious dull volume shots, Ahsoka being too little like Ahsoka, to name a few. I so wish that it was animated like it was originally supposed to be. They were developing an animated Rebels sequel show, which they dropped, but this is absolutely a Rebels sequel show. However I understand that the animated shows just don't have the same cachet to them despite being far superior to the majority of the live action shows. It's also kind of a weird feeling seeing this S2 trailer. It looks epic and galaxy-defining, yet it's a streaming show set in a weird in-between time period. They should've done this as a series of films with grand scale and tight pacing.

Dang I can't wait. This spread of prices feels too good to be true - too much like the old days circa 2010 (though I know it's a January wave and $100+ sets are typically reserved for June-August). I'm so jazzed about the number of sub-$50 sets. Here's hoping they look good!

Same, and I'm on staff But look, we're not in denial and think things are perfect. There's plenty that could be much better. Eurobricks will never have the activity level and buzz it had at its heyday given many external factors mentioned, but we know we could've been doing a lot more than keeping the lights on and keeping things friendly and tidy over the past decade (the latter of which is actually much easier because there isn't so much traffic like there once was). At the same time, we're in an interesting position compared to the vast majority of websites/what people expect of the internet at large. The majority of things - blogs, Instagram accounts, websites - have staff that create, and users that consume (and to some degree, comment). As a forums site, Eurobricks is different. We definitely had much more "staff"-generated material at one point in time, but we have always existed to be a platform for whatever our users want to create and discuss. One example is the Reviewers Academy, which existed to empower anyone interested in honing their skills and posting polished, long-form written reviews. Still, as long as Eurobricks remains a happy corner of the LEGOsphere for those that do like a forum structure, that's reason enough to exist.

It's this one that really sealed the (bad) deal for me too with the comparisons to other sets. It just looks unimpressive compared to either Gringotts or the Main Tower (the latter of which is much cheaper for a similar visual impact). Shrinkflation has hit D2C sets and it is not cool. This set feels like one idea that would've been floated in the concept brainstorming stage that should've been abandoned, but they ran with it instead. The street level is just not what anybody cares about for the ministry (especially if they're not going to do an actual play feature with the phone booth). And like everyone has said, the part heavy rock work is incongruous. This isn't the Batcave. It's a hard location to do, to be sure, so they just needed to commit to something. Do a super grand atrium. Maybe it's atrium one side, flip it around and it's a courtroom and hall of prophecy on the other. Same with the Minifigures. Commit to one thing. Ministry infiltration from OotP? Great, then the main six, Dumby and Voldy, Bellatrix and Sirius, maybe Remus and Lucius (Remus was very memorable in that scene), and Fudge and Umbridge for good measure. And don't half-ass Dumbledore. Tonks, Mad-Eye and Kingsley might be the best done figures in the set, but they're also the least important. The playset had a more complete cast of characters for the scenes it was trying to portray, and novel designs to boot that looked very good.

See the first post in this topic. And actually see Jim's initial reply to you as well. (For what it's worth, it's possible for someone to lie and mislead you and you to still move forward with no bad blood.)

Yeah it was pretty obvious after a little while in the process that LEGO had no interest in the RLOCs (like Eurobricks) moving forward in the program. What was more annoying than that fact (and sure, we can debate whether or not RLOCs should be in the program) was that they weren't up front about it. They could've easily said, look, FanColab on the LUG side is moving forward with in-person LUG groups only. A shame for us, but that would've been fair enough. Instead, they made an application form that asked for a bunch of information (some irrelevant to RLOCs) and then sent AI-generated sounding responses about why we didn't fit their requirements anymore. They could've taken a human approach and just told us from the get go. Still, as Eurobricks staff, our approach is no hard feelings and no bad blood. LEGO can move forward in their direction, and Eurobricks will move forward in our direction. We existed before a formal relationship with LEGO (back when they barely paid attention to their adult fans at all), it was great while it lasted, and we'll continue to exist now with no relationship any longer.

Ok NOW I can complain in peace. I love the design of the Ministry in the films (and I was pretty satisfied with the playset though I know general consensus seems to be against it), but for a D2C, I'm not crazy about this. It's big but it's not WOW, and maybe that's because they've decided to do too much. Why are so many parts dedicated to the street level? Nobody cares about what's above the Ministry. If they'd included the phone booth and it had a working function to drop down to the level below, that would've been great. But nope. Same with the toilet that leads to the fireplace. At least that seems to work, but why is the toilet below ground? So why bother with that building behind the phone booth at all? I don't know, after a run of truly great D2Cs, Hogsmeade and this feel like fumbles to me. Just slightly better playsets but not worthy of existing at this price point and size.

Clearly LEGO thinks so because they do multiple yearly intakes of social media "creators" into that side of the program. It's the cheapest marketing option available. Essentially all LEGO has to pay is shipping (though occasionally they might directly pay certain creators too, not sure). And if anyone goes bust, easy. LEGO just boots them from the program and that's that. As for scraping the barrel - it's the creators applying anyway as far as I know. Not a team at LEGO researching who to approach, though perhaps they have done that to branch out beyond the typical semi insular LEGO sphere. I have seen some influencers who do other sorts of content seemingly getting some LEGO to plug recently here and there.

Everyone wake up! We got a single non-Batman Brickheadz! I knew they'd manage to release something so they can do a spin if they need to and say they have a Superman product our on shelves.

I might challenge you on this point because some of the brands (Pantasy, Lumibricks), while still giving me the ick about copying LEGO's parts, then do a lot of their own development and innovate in their own ways with their lighting integrations, their own parts they invent, and so on and so forth. The days of Lepin and truly shocking quality (and illegal) clone brands are behind us. Some of the new crop of alt brick brands these days are very high quality, and despite riding on LEGO's popularity (and copying some of their element designs) are then taking things forward and delivering really comparable quality competition. I don't have a lot of first hand knowledge of them, but I trust Jangbricks' opinion and love seeing what he's reviewing on his Other Bricks channel because there's so much out there now. For my own part, I bought a couple of the alt brick kits from Kmart here in Australia (not to be confused with defunct Kmart in the US). The design and build process left a lot to be desired and really makes you appreciate how refined and high quality LEGO is, but the actual pieces are pretty much indistinguishable. That's a far cry from clone brands of even a decade ago that had severe moulding, clutch and other issues, or even Mega which used to feel kind of cheap and "different" back around the 90s and early 2000s. Anyway, for me I think Option 2 is probably the way to go for discussion, but it gets trickier to decide with MOCs. As others have said, the majority of MOCs will most likely remain fully LEGO with only the odd third party or alt brick part here and there. The alt brick market seems mainly consumerist at the moment (much like LEGO's primary market these days) - people are discussing, and to a lesser degree buying and building what these other brands offer, but I reckon very few people are building MOCs out of the parts. Just to be clear, EB was started and existed for a good number of years without LEGO support, so there's no reason we'd cease to exist without it! We just need to develop some financially sustainable ways of getting prizes for contests so we can keep running that sort of activity for the EB community.

Well, LEGO's plastic bricks were a copy of Kiddicraft's to begin with... I do agree with you to some degree. A lot of the new brands that have popped up that are of high quality and play in the legal space straight rip a lot of LEGO's design elements that LEGO put the R&D into. All sorts of basic bricks and basic SNOT are fair enough for any brand to have, but it doesn't totally pass the feel test when they've gone and copied the non-structural elements, even if it is somehow legal. That being said, LEGO is doing more than fine as a company financially and has been cutting corners on their own product (to maximise speed and profit I guess), so I don't feel too bad for them or that they need so much fan "protection" anymore.

Hello! We have a topic in Licensed for discussing all things Wizarding World LEGO. Please continue there:

Thanks for sharing your collection! If you could embed a few of the pictures so people can see it right here on Eurobricks and only click through if they want to see more. Given they're already online, perhaps you can right click and "copy image address" to paste them in here. This topic does come close to a sales post, but you have framed it as sharing your collection, so it's ok. We obviously do not allow selling in any of the discussion forums and keep that restricted to Buy/Sell/Swap, or else the site would become very unfun.

Hi @JB07! I've moved your topic to Special Themes since it seems a bit in line with what we discuss in there. This sounds really cool, but please embed some pictures here on Eurobricks so people can see it in your topic and discuss. We do allow an Ideas link, but people must still be able to view your MOC right here on EB.

Hello @Venturcian! Welcome to Eurobricks and thanks for sharing your MOC! As per our guidelines, posts should be an English. We understand that not everyone speaks English and we're an international site, so it's totally fine for you to run your text through a translator and copy paste what it gives you. Thanks!

I ogree with you, but then I find myself thinking we'll, I want Donkey, and if I have Fiona albeit not a great figure, shouldn't I get Shrek too even if he looks bad... So all in all I think I'll end up buying all of them apart from Dragon (because oof no), Wolf (who is good but I don't care for that character) and maybe Pinocchio (who is a perfect representation but I also don't care about much). Standouts for me are definitely Thelonious, Merlin and Prince Charming (despite lackluster accessories), followed by Fairy Godmother and Farquad.

It seems like the angle of this series is "what would this character look like as a standard Minifigure?" rather than trying to make any of them for together proportionally, except for the odd ones out of Puss and Farquad that they have given short legs. The new ones we hadn't seen before are looking good. Merlin's accessories look weak unless there's something that isn't shown in the group shot, but still a good actual figure. I expected kind of weak accessories because that's always what happens when there are a lot of new intricate moulds for characters. The only really bad one to me is dragon. A few others like Shrek and Fiona are questionable, but only Dragon has me saying "what were they thinking".

Are any of the faces new prints apart from Spock and Uhura? McCoy, Chekov and Sulu I definitely recognise, Scotty I think is existing, Chapel in not sure and Kirk looks a bit like a Fortnite character but perhaps it is new. I love that McCoy is using the standard OG LEGO man hair, and I think in a new colour! As for the set itself, it looks good! It would've been fun if it had a play feature to rock the chairs a little bit to simulate corny battle, but I get why it doesn't.

I think of what we've seen, some are excellent, some are fine and a couple aren't great - like most series! I am curious what exactly people don't like for those saying generally that they're horrible. Executioner and Merlin look super. Farquad, Gingy, Puss, Shrek and Fiona all look decent, though the ogre head moulds are a little off or strange I guess. Dragon is the one to me where I go "what were they thinking?" and does look more like something a bootleg company would do. Donkey doesn't look perfect either but it does appear that his head and body are separate at least? And they'll be a standing body version in the set?

Personally, all of the old versions of the Pineapple house were ok but pretty weak. I have the last one - 3818 - which is a fun set and all, but really it's quite basic. The good thing is that that set exists and can still be bought used on BL at around $120 USD (plus shipping) if that's your cup of tea. While I'm usually in the camp of not liking how they do things at such expensive price points, I see it differently here since they've done this theme before, so those old sets exist and aren't super in demand (for now) on the secondary market. For the new one, they're taking it to another level of design and detail. It annoys me more when they do a brand new license, but it's all locked into very pricey sets.

I'm a pretty big complainer but that looks excellent. The builds look excellent and I'm curious to see the new SpongeBob upper half piece in more detail. Still not sold on the new Patrick piece, but overall, well done.

I'm well aware of all the good stuff they continue to do for HP, but a cut corner is still a cut corner and it's made worse when a. the correct parts already exist (no R&D necessary) and b. it's a massive over-priced adult/collector-oriented set. Letting them off the hook because it's been a while since they used the mould is just apologetics. They brought back Bullseye for the 2026 Toy Story 5 set, last seen in 2010. Simpsons moulds had a gap from 2015 to 2025. Fleur's hat had a gap from 2019 to 2024. Magneto's helmet had a gap from 2017 to 2024. Just a few examples off the top of my head. For Dumbledore they felt like they could get away with it, but it's still fully inaccurate to the costume and scene.