Clone OPatra

It just hasn't been active for a while:

Interesting! They should've told the LAN folks that - surely many of them have the big figures.

Agreed. On a quick flip through Bricklink, the previous couple of versions of his Episode I look struck a better balance with the detail and used negative black space to their advantage. This one looks messy. I'm also glad they haven't done that weird smile again, though they'd already done a good serious one for that Clone Wars Season 7 set.

The robe printing on subsequent figures looks WAY better than 1999, although I think they might have overdone the thick creases on this one compared to some previous iterations.

Thanks for the good laugh at BrickFanatics suggesting people pick up Duplo deer on PaB to add to the cottage display. That'll look great, yep! LEGO's budgeting department and constraints are nuts sometimes. Of course they could afford to include a deer if they wanted, but it's a company and their tight constraints are how they post big profits for the owners even if it means (sometimes) inferior solutions for customers. I'm not saying that's the case with the cottage, since the set is pretty good and the Minifigures are all done well and not lacking in budget, which was more important than the set including a deer. In the case of the MTS though, it definitely needs more animals and the set is lacking for it.

The yellow with black dot in the centre approach on all previous Mauls looks better. The rest of the printing on the face and body here look excellent, but yeah, something about those all yellow eyes looks off.

This line of thinking always pops up when there's some desirable new part on PaB, but it never comes to fruition. Massable new castle factions, space stuff, cool animals etc etc. Regular consumers always get a chance to buy.

The point would be adapting books that apart from the first three were massively cut down to fit film length and lost a lot of the story and magic in the process. There are a lot of people that started out as fans of the books and never really loved what was done with the movies. The first two are kind of slow and the child acting is shonky. The third is suddenly very dark. And then after that half or more of the story is thrown out each time and the characters are simplified. Not to mention details the films get wrong as basic as spells. If done correctly, a show could simply provide a new, different take on the books, and preserve more of the story. All that said, I also think it's a terrible idea because WB has an abysmal track record and I don't trust them to get it right in the slightest.

I think it's wildly inconsistent. When it comes to our regular retailers (of which there are about five) with physical stores, it seems like they don't stock many of the largest sets, but I don't know if that's because LEGO doesn't make those sets available or because the stores choose not to for economic reasons (shelf space relative to the amount of volume they'll move, etc). I think I've also seen that LEGO will have a period of exclusivity for some big sets (like Diagon Alley etc) before opening it up to other retailers besides LEGO themselves. Here we have lots of mostly online-only direct LEGO partner stores though too, and they all have access to selling pretty much everything. When it comes to passing things by, I suppose it's harder with more great big sets, but that's just the way I shop. Sure I'm partially tempted by something like Rivendell, but I have no space for such a thing and have no appetite to spend so much money on LEGO all at once. The most expensive set I've bought in recent times is Grimmauld Place (which my wife bought me as a gift at full RRP - I would've waited for a sale ) I'm pretty sure Lion Knights Castle hasn't been available anywhere but from LEGO, for instance. But I guess it seems like many sets that are D2C in NA do come to retailers here.

I did say regular retail sets, by which I meant not LEGO exclusives or semi exclusives. Certain sets that are LEGO exclusive (D2C) in other countries do come to mass retailers here, but many do not. I don't really pay attention though because I don't buy any sets that have an RRP over about $150 or max $200 AUD.

Ah, they've finally added them to the Australian site. To be honest these are roughly in line with their conversions at the moment. For instance the current $30 USD Star Wars battle pack is RRP $50 AUD, just like Forest Creatures. They play around a bit more with the conversions of higher priced sets (weird the two Hogwarts sets in the March wave are the same price in Aus for instance), and the Hagrid's Hut feels rough at $130 RRP. But that's just why I never buy anything directly from LEGO! All the other retailers here run good sales on a frequent basis, and if you wait long enough and check frequently, good deals on regular retail sets can pretty much always be found.

Bricklink has been consolidating a fair number of similar parts recently. I don't know if that's the case for the arms or they've always had them categorised as "close enough", but the Avatar arms are definitely ever so slightly different.

Things are straying a bit from LEGO again, and I have removed a couple of potential spoilers. To reiterate our general rule: only information in officially released promotional material is fair game for discussion about any upcoming film or project (and of course only as it relates to LEGO anyway).

Exabricks says no to Quicksilver in his stories.

New Elementary lists that as an intentional piece to be added, and they got their information directly from the PaB team.

The Hagrid's Hut looks so cosy. I love that one. The placement of the clips to attach the Forbidden Forest set is pretty strange though. They make sense for the included side builds, but not the Forest, when they really should be at the back. The designer could've just included attachment spots at both the front and back for maximum options. I thought it was kind of amusing how Ash made a big deal out of the hut being fully enclosed when literally every Hagrid's Hut besides the last one, going back to the very beginning, has been fully enclosed.

You missed an opportunity to go all in and say they "made Sue something of a scientist herself". Personally I liked those movies too, though it always irked me even at the time that Doom had the exact same story as Norman Osborne from Spiderman 1. Anyway, it will be nice to finally get F4 figures!

I bought the Marvel Series 2 figures with animals (and others) from a seller on Bricklink all for under RRP even after shipping. Bar a couple of figures in the series, they don't seem to be very inflated on the aftermarket, unlike the CMF25 Goatherd. I guess it's just because many aren't highly liked or sought after characters.

Pretty much all, if not fully 100%, of the Ninjago stuff in these orders were without pictures. Those were quite time-consuming orders to do!

If you mean the golden/transparent ones, they're from the golden dragon variants. Here's a link to them on Rebrickable, and you can then find the individual part number within each figure. They might also be gone already from PaB though, since they're 2022 parts.

Most of the torsos and legs, and some other parts, in the orders in that post didn't have any pictures at the time I ordered them - but maybe in a way that was helpful because looking up all the parts one by one on Rebrickable let me see them at better angles than the PaB renders and really see the detail, to decide what I'd want. I was unfamiliar with the actual detail on a lot of those Ninjago parts too.

If you mean the black robe with purple sash and hands, those are from this Garmadon. It doesn't look like they're available anymore. The torso is 6398772 and the legs are 6385392.

Put up my last round of 2023 orders on my Instagram, if people would like to see. Lots of minifigure stuff: https://www.instagram.com/p/C3U3VzrJj9V/?igsh=MWc0NTJyZmR6NTVhbQ==

It's personal preference but the blacksmith definitely looks too out of scale when right next to the castle in all images I've seen. Perhaps placing the town square in between the blacksmith and castle could be a good segue, but given the town square looks purposefully designed to scale with the castle, I'd say the blacksmith would still come across as too large relative to minifigures.

Ok people, it's off track. Back to LEGO now. Any further off-LEGO posts will be at first hidden and then dealt with via direct warnings if they continue. Thanks.