Clone OPatra

Those are beautiful looking sets, and as predicted, very cool and useful minifigure parts. I'm glad LEGO put a substantial amount of budget into the minifig designs here! It would also be wonderful if Scooby's head uses a peg so that you can swap it with the ostrich head - not sure why my mind went there, but it did.

I can't help feeling that in some ways LEGO mishandled Chima. The idea of animal tribes with distinctive styles for each tribe could have been done very well, but instead after the first couple waves that were confined to the original six tribes (which was a lot to start with) it just got out of hand. Nearly all of the sets have the same formula no matter what faction they belong to - animal faces, little rolling vehicles that detach and look crappy on their own, flyer after flyer after flyer, lackluster land sets with very little interior. The animal head builds are always very creative and well done, but in many sets the face build seems to eat all of the parts and the rest of the vehicle is just some barebones Technic. There got to be way too many tribes as well with no main focus. Sure, they're cool, but it makes everything very scattershot. Chima would have been better if LEGO picked some strong focuses and made tighter waves. If they'd kept adding on to the original six tribes instead of constantly adding new ones, people could have amassed nice matching armies for each faction. As it is, since the third wave I don't want to imagine what all of these sets look like displayed together since I'm sure it's just a big mess of different color schemes. The longest-lasting in-house themes have always had a clear group of characters to work with - Adventurers, Exo-Force, and Ninjago all had/have many repeating characters put in new situations. Chima gave us a lot of cool stuff, but I can't help feeling that if they'd stuck primarily to six tribes to work with (even if those tribes moved into different settings like Jungle/Ice/whatever), the theme might have done better and could still be going.

Terrific, Sabine's helmet comes in a huge set. Nobody saw that one coming Sounds like the Tyderium and Final Duel will pair nicely for anybody interested in getting most of the main OT characters. That's nice at least. Looking forward to seeing how they did a regular-scale shuttle this time around.

I'm always skeptical of these 'x theme didn't sell well' arguments. How are we to know? Just seeing sets linger on shelves for a long time in your area, or be discounted, is not enough to know. We the public never know how much cost LEGO puts into a theme, how many units the company produces, what the projected desired revenue is, etc. The only entity that knows that is LEGO. Obviously some lines do extremely well and others don't, but it's nearly impossible for the public to know. Even purporting to hear it from a LEGO employee is not enough unless that person actually works in the business department in Denmark. With all of that said, I don't think Monster Fighters ended prematurely. It seemed like a solid one-wave theme to me, kind of like Pharaoh's Quest. Not everything has staying power. The fact that Monster Fighters was only one wave says nothing about how LEGO Monsters do on the market. With Universal's Monster Cinematic Universe in the works, it seems some business people think Monsters will sell, and LEGO has clearly been on that bandwagon first just with CMF, then with Monster Fighters, and now with the Scooby License. Maybe the Scooby License will only be a couple waves and then it'll be on to the next Monster related thing, or a break for a while.

I don't take that as a confirmation of being based on the classic show at all, I just take it to mean that the new show has a pretty similar roster of things overall. Yes, the animation looks different, but the costumes and situations will largely be the same, so translated into LEGO everything will look pretty much as it would if it had been based on the old cartoon. I'm still very excited, especially for the minifigures. Sounds like we'll get some cool new hair-pieces and fleshie prints that are City friendly, which doesn't happen too much in Licensed themes. The bad guys should be cool as well.

The product description for Anakin's starfighter as good as states that it's based on the micro series. That's definitely what it's from, no doubt, not Yoda Chronicles.

Which 'the toy fair in NYC' would that be? It can't be 2015's NYC toy fair, since that hasn't happened yet. And if it was last year's, I'm sure other people would have similar information. What toy fair does this refer to, then?

Do you hearken back even further to the beginnings of the Architecture line, as in, the tall square towers? This line has always been a mix between small impressionistic souvenir-type builds and large detailed ones. I personally would not want a large $100 model of a building that's just a rectangle with columns. I fail to see how making this set larger would make it any more meaningful.

This architecture set does just what the building calls for, to my taste. Any larger would have been overkill since there really isn't much going on with this building to begin with. This feels like a really good souvenir set. As a parts pack, this set is insane. For anybody wanting open-stud 1x1s or white beams, well, now they've got them. The only parts rival would be the UN for anybody seeking 1x2 trans-light-blue plates.

Of the three Hobbit films, Battle of the Five Armies felt the most consistent to me. Peter Jackson finally settled on a single tone for the film, whereas Unexpected Journey's tone changed in nearly every scene between comedically stupid and darkly brooding, Desolation of Smaug was also a bit all over the place (though moving towards consistently dark in general). This film also felt the tightest, without too much unnecessary filler thrown in for no reason other than padding out running time. The Smaug scene at the beginning and the White Council fight scene were both particularly well-done and enjoyable. I have read all of the books, including multiple readings of the Hobbit, but reading the books hasn't influenced my opinions of the films too much. I don't mind when things are added or subtracted if they're done well, and in fact I thought that the Gandalf scenes in Desolation of Smaug were the best parts of the film. On the whole, I disliked the Hobbit films because they feel sloppy, with lots of unnecessary (and pretty bad) CGI and additional characters that make no sense. Not only was Azog a terrible-looking piece of CGI garbage, but his character had so little to it. Gothmog in RotK was worlds, and I mean worlds better. Gothmog was funky, evil, and cool-looking, while Azog, who is supposed to be much more of a fleshed-out character, is a dumb cartoon. And since he's CGI, Peter Jackson thinks that orcs can just have chunks of metal embedded in their bodies. Like, Bolg, literally one of the dumbest CG designs I have ever seen. Every time he appeared on screen I just wanted to laugh. All of that being said, Battle of the Five Armies finally felt deservedly epic, unlike the other two Hobbit films. Peter Jackson still made some horrible choices over all, but this film didn't have any scenes to make one laugh out loud at the stupidity, so that puts it a cut above. This trilogy would have been much better as two three-hour films, mostly being about the Dwarves (though montaging parts of their journey) and having a solid side plot about Gandalf. As it became, the trilogy is bloated and extremely excessive.

Thanks for the reviews of these sets so far, j2g. I have to say the American prices are ridiculously good for these, I expected each set to be at least five dollars more than the prices you've said they are. (Also just to note, the ice cream cone piece in black is not exclusive to the Skyhopper; it first appeared in Mixels.) The Skyhopper looks like a really great model. I can't say I want it, since I don't really care about Skyhoppers, but LEGO still did an excellent job on it. I only wish it came with a second Tusken. That's the type of figure you won't multiples of, and it's frustrating to get only one at a time. Just the inclusion of a second makes each seem less lonely. (I can't imagine being the lone 212th trooper in the Umbaran MHC for example, so sad ) I'm really liking the Sabine figure as well, but I hate the printing style that LEGO has been going for on Star Wars legs recently. For anybody with a knee guard, LEGO just prints half a knee guard and then cuts it off. This problem plagues all three figures in Ezra's Speeder Bike, in fact. I really don't understand why they went this direction; they used to design knee prints to fit the printable area, like the old Sandtrooper: Yet now they design things to be too far down and just cut off; see, the new Sandtrooper: It's really quite ugly, and just make the figures look sloppy. I wish LEGO would go back to designing knee guards to completely fit in the printable area.

I'll admit I don't know how store exclusives work in different countries, but I'll still point out that it's most certainly not a LEGO exclusive. It's the LEGO and one-retailer type of exclusive.

Super jumper is just a piece you can attach to any figure that allows you to push down and make it pop up.Overall, I'm liking what I'm seeing here. Nothing amazing, but lots of pleasant builds and good minifigures. Thor does look a little disappointing, and I would have liked a Banner and Steve Rogers face, but even these are not as disappointing as the ugly aliens and terrible Loki face from the first Avengers film sets. Not to mention the original awful Black Widow and Hawkeye figures.

Usually, when nrg posts what sounds like a 'hunch,' it's not just a hunch. He's a real Bothan spy (hence his title).

I've found that, to my taste, the Friends girl hair pieces don't fit aesthetically with minifigures very well. I think it has to do with the volume of the Friends hairs; they pair well with the very slight Friends figures, but feel too bulky on the already-bulky normal minifigure frame. The new boy elf hair part might work just fine on minifigures since it appears to be pretty similar in volume to the sleepyhead spiky hair, but I have doubts about the girl elf hair.

The season is not over. It's taking a break until after all of the holidays, and will return in January.

Nice winter workout Batman variant. He's got a balaclava and a sweat band! The expressions do look very nice though.

You forget - Bothans died acquiring the Death Star II plans. It's not stated how Leia got the plans for the first Death Star that she puts on R2.

Not quite; it's actually the fist from Hero Factory: (Image from bricklink)

As I said in that thread, the black hair looks exactly like the sleepy head hair to me. Not sure how you're seeing it differently.

The female cop torso is from Ma Cop in the LEGO Movie Evil Lair set, and the hair is originally from Padme in the most recent Republic Gunship. Pretty sure that's just the sleepy head hair (also Nightwing and Faora, among others).

The title really doesn't have to reflect the comics at all. The MCU has already shown that while many elements are drawn from the comics, story lines are by no means being straight adapted into film. The 'Civil War' title can be used to simply mean a bunch of Superheroes at odds with one another, and fighting. If Age of Ultron truly leaves Captain America in charge of a new Superhero team at the end as is rumored, that's enough impetus for 'Civil War' right there. Tony Stark can think differently about something, maybe like leaving shield, and there you go. It doesn't have to involve vigilantes by any means. I swear I read a quote about the 'Winter Soldier' title at one time saying simply that they thought it was a cool title, even though the comic arc has little to do with the movie.

I think the grey ones are supposed to be Kamino security. They have the exact same markings as the red Shock Troopers, who are Coruscant security. Whenever I see a picture of one, my first instinct is that it's just a greyscale image of a Shock Trooper.

Doesn't the Hulk go on rampages just because that's what he does? I thought having to deal with Hulk temper control was a pretty common Avengers trope. It happened in the first film - I can see it happening again just to a greater degree, which calls for the Hulkbuster armor.

For the people hoping for 'civvies,' just remember that this is a Superhero toy and it's Disney merchandising. The purpose of these sets isn't exactly to recreate all movie scenes; it's to play out the Superhero scenes and Superhero adventures. The most we can realistically hope for is a Steve Rogers fig in his outfit but without a helmet, which will allow us to make a civilian Cap anyway. He spent plenty of time in the first Avengers film without the helmet too, but of course we only got the full Cap look. I sincerely hope for a Banner fig as well. He has the highest chance of being in civilian garb IMO, since the bigfig Hulk can't be used to play out scenarios with regular Banner (unlike almost any other character who you can turn into their non-superhero form). We don't really need anybody else in civilian clothes anyway, since you can just pop their head and hair on whatever civilian body you like (as long as they have good head and hair - here's looking at you terrible Avengers 1 Hawkeye). Still psyched to see these sets. They are sure to have tons of great minifigs, hopefully better than the last Avengers figs.