Clone OPatra

Sure. I've got nothing against these but I think the way they've done the rendering, the colours and the art style of the Gabby minidoll itself make them look a lot like Mega and other competitor brands' minidoll lines. Which again, is fine.

To play devil's advocate just a little, lukewarm reception of the last two Jurassic films didn't stop LEGO doing a full kid-oriented (that just happens to appeal to adults) wave for the first Jurassic Park movie. Yes it's different because kids love dinos, but I'm just saying reception of the latest film in a franchise doesn't have to correlate with what LEGO decides to do. A full adventurey line of sets for the first three films (or first four) could've been a success given it wouldn't be like much else in LEGO's portfolio at the moment. Or it would've failed. We won't know. It does feel sad and weird seeing just a couple of Indy sets on the aisles of my local toy stores wedged in between whole lines of other LEGO sets.

There are rarely enough cool parts at once for me to stump up the $20 in costs for a pack here in Australia, but this batch is particularly unexciting. The only thing I'd really want is the recoloured Genie/Dino tracker hair in dark orange. The dark orange chicken is currently available in an awesome Monkie Kid polybag with a fantastic figure and other great parts, all for only $6 AUD.

Uh huh, ok. I currently in Australia and orders take up to two months to arrive from the date I ordered. I used to live in the US and orders took up to two months there too. And yes, I still say, don't like it, don't use it. It's the service LEGO provides, on the timeline LEGO provides it. Complaining about it is indeed futile, because it's like complaining about any company not offering any service you want them to offer, even if they never said they would. It's like going to a high cuisine restaurant, where the expectation is that it'll take them 40 minutes to get your order out to you, and complaining they didn't bring it to you in five minutes like fast food. The service isn't the problem. Your attitude towards it is.

In my experience of Bricks & Pieces (now Pick a Brick), this is just how it is. It's not a fast service. Personally, I feel anyone annoyed by that just isn't going in with the right expectations. If you want some parts fast or on a particular timeline, yes this isn't a service for you. If you just want stuff, and whenever it comes it comes, it's absolutely fine. You place your order, forget about it, and eventually it arrives.

Since you ordered and it hasn't shipped, or since it shipped? I most recently placed an order on May 9th, and it shipped on May 30th.

The reddish brown version in Dreamzzz also has lime green printing on it, so it's even less useful IMO. I didn't either until I saw Jay's story, and came here to share the news. It's exactly what people wanted for Lee when the Dreamzzz pictures came out.

Yes, that new Dreamzzz piece comes in the set in black, just like I said:

So not only are LEGO making that hairpiece in the Dreamzzz sets that would be perfect for Lee Jordan, but.... they're actually already making it unprinted in black in that soccer/football set with the four female players! Even more frustrating they didn't use the piece for him, but at least it will be available very soon.

The seal set was $10 AUD from Kmart on release day. What a steal for the seals and the actually great Minifigure with that new colouring for the hat-hair and backpack! Love the seals and that they made sure you could put the baby on the adult's back!

I like this microscale Hogwarts a lot. It's a good size to be easily displayable and capture essential detail, while also having the inherent twee cuteness that microscale brings. I reckon it'll still feel a bit expensive for its size but I enjoy it nonetheless. It also has some awesome parts. I didn't know they even still had that old crystal part they're using for trees in the parts catalogue, so it's cool to see that back at all, and in a new colour to boot. Also tan binoculars! And finally, I'm very curious to see what they'll use that new minifigure beard part for in the future. They surely didn't create it just for this.

I love Yavin. It's classic playset vibes. It has all the important different rooms cooked in, a fun small version of a ship, all the important characters (and well done to boot). I might not get it since it's still a bit too big/expensive for me, and I don't personally care about Yavin much, but I love the set and its existence. The other sets, whatever. I'm sick of 501st now even if these have different helmets. I always wanted more than my lonely one, but don't need a whole squad of them. I would love some more actually varied and different clones (like we're hopefully getting with the gunship).

I know you were talking about Star Wars specifically, but LEGO knew what they were doing getting adults to buy 4+ with the City barn set for all the animals (and probably the Incredibles 2 sets too). Tenoo is pretty cool with all the Minifigure parts, though I won't be getting it, but if they ever did like a 4+ Naboo Gungan Battle including a new Kaadu, I'd be there.

The capes are now single-hole capes so that they can fit under the hood pieces properly.

While it could be that, JB Spielwaren has also played funny with teasing things before, like something that turned out to just be a custom Minifigure. The Ahsoka in that image looks more like poster art than an actual Minifigure, especially because it's using what looks like a new head piece. I hope it is real and that we do get a new headpiece, but I'm not getting overly excited from just that tease.

My memory from the Amazing Spider-Man movies was that Andrew's suit had a lot more blue, but looking at photos at both those and No Way Home, I guess I just kind of misremembered. The suits do look pretty samey in the movie as well.

I like what they're going for with both of these sets - display pieces that also work for play and aren't so drilled down into being a display like the Star Wars dioramas. But with Superheroes the appeal always comes down to the Minifigures, and there are some significant misses. Everybody has gone into detail already about Green Goblin, but to be honest the Tobey and Andrew Spider-Man figures look way too similar to me. Those suits actually look fairly different in the films, and LEGO should've gone after what sets them apart and heightened those details. As it is, it's like the same figure with minor print differences. And of course all characters needed leg printing. As for the Endgame set, yeah it needed Rescue at least, not just lots of recycled figs. At least Wanda is a bit better than other recent versions. Overall, even if I'm not buying much of this theme, I'd still like every new release to make me go "wow!" And not "wow, how small is that set and how underdetailed are those figures".

My guess is that they're just new design IDs for the baby cow, baby sheep and baby pig, but it's odd that they're considerably cheaper.

Yes I let my hate flow through me. To be clear I don't think an Exogol isn't viable at all. It'd be better than Obi-Wan ve Vader on a flat grey base. But, as an adult fan and purchaser of LEGO Star Wars since 1999, I'd just really like to finally see more visually interesting locations from Episode I especially, like Theed and Otto Gunga, and get characters that we still haven't gotten after 24 years. Granted there isn't much obvious playability in Otto Gunga, but Theed could work at a variety of price points with a variety of potential characters. I love that LEGO is confident enough to go fairly large with Yavin (despite it probably being better even larger), and certainly want to see that carried on.

We need an Otto Gunga throne room with Boss Nass and Anakin's house with Shmi and naked 3PO before a throne on a lazily/hurriedly designed barren rock planet with Adam Driver in a plain long sleeve black shirt from Gap. In my humble opinion, that is. But yes there are truly so many Star Wars locations that we've never gotten, especially from the Prequels.

The number of available parts increased by 12 yesterday, but I can't tell what they've added. Whatever it is, it's not classified as newer than the previous recent wave of added parts, since nothing new shows up at the top when sorting for newest.

Precisely. This is why. I enjoy setting up displays with official sets, and the 2018-2020 sets are great to display. The newer ones are not. The design team has managed to mash the new sets together into a shape that if you squint, it kind of approximates the "official Hogwarts layout" by the end of the film series. But open your eyes fully and it's ugly, unseemly, full of gaps, a mishmash of colours and design elements. The 2018-2020 sets are elegant by comparison, and I'm not saying that off the top of my head. I'm looking at my display of them as I type.

What do you mean by "looks"? Because sure it's cute that they managed to shoehorn these boxy sets together to approximate the shape/layout of the castle from the films, but in terms of actual visual design the 2018-2020 sets still look leagues better to me. This new system, even when all combined is still a stylistic jumble, and has tons of very unpleasing things to the eye like big open arches and bland wall panels, blocky details, messy colours. For kids I'm sure it's a lot of fun, and like I said it's neat that they managed a Hogwarts shape out of it in the end, but I wouldn't want this system on display. The older sets still have way more charm to their designs.

No.

I love the comparatively massive slope parts as thumbs. Mechs in other themes have been having clip parts as thumbs for at least a decade. Why slopes here? Do the Star Wars designers just not know how to do mechs?