Clone OPatra

Just to be clear, the rumours of Garfield and Macguire Spider-Mans' inclusion in the film is so far out of the bag in this discussion and the internet that I'm not going to clamp down on speculation/discussion about them appearing in the rumoured additional sets. BUT anything else related to them like leaked plot details, leaked costume details, etc fall under the guidelines I posted previously and not allowed unless officially released.

Yeah, there has been way too much discussion of leaked film info in this thread, and like always (surprise surprise), it has spilt out of spoiler tags into full view comments. Here's a handy reminder of what you can discuss and what you can't: Info in officially released materials (i.e. press releases, trailers, photos) & interviews: yes Everything else: NO We've said this enough times. Here on out I'll be hiding infringing comments and issuing time outs to the repeat offenders.

We have thought about a number of subforum ideas over the years, and even come quite close to creating a Superheroes subforum when both of those themes were even hotter (though Marvel is getting hot again), but ultimately haven't seen the true need. There simply isn't as much building and posting of creations in Licensed as there is in other themes, so there's not as much to go in its own section. Sure there are multiple discussions about certain themes, but to compensate we've gotten a little looser and allowed more speculation and general discussion in the yearly Rumors & Discussion threads. I'm not sure what subforums within Star Wars you mean either (there are contests and factions), but Star Wars is its own forum because there weren't many other licensed themes at the time that decision was made, and it's held true to today that LEGO Star Wars is simply a massive fandom for AFOLs with lots and lots of activity. Looking at all the MOCs/MODs etc that people make and post here for Star Wars, no other licensed theme remotely comes close. However as more and more of LEGO's business seems to be focussed on licenses, we're definitely still open to making some structural changes when/if the need arises.

That advent calendar is excellent. Special stuff from Diagon Alley, Griphook, the ticket, Hagrid's cake, pre-sorting robes and little builds that go with the scenes.. really great stuff.

Minifigure design had already reached modern standards by 2010 that have stayed consistent since then (besides extra things like dual moulding and more side printing), so the old characters still fit in with new ones. I agree a few were better than newer ones or had better faces, though really only Ginny from the Burrow and Lucius' and Bellatrix' heads come to mind as better. Also partial to that Dumbledore's head underneath his beard, though I like the newer beards and hair. Others were on par (Luna, Weasley parents, Snape for instance) or certainly not quite as good (Hagrid, Lupin who looked nothing like Lupin, Dobby to name a few). And by no means were those sets bad - they've just been far surpassed by the newer ones. Just compare the Burrow sets, or Hagrid's Huts. And some people say the 2018-20 Hogwarts sets besides the Great Hall didn't have much interior space, but just look at the 2010 big Hogwarts... very little truly playable space at all. With LEGO I can never truly understand the attitude that something you formerly thought was good is now bad because something else hasn't been made. If you think the Harry Potter LEGO stuff you got from 2018-20 was great, it's still great! You can have an amazing Hogwarts or Harry Potter display with tons of characters, and it's still amazing! How does lacking DH material devalue the rest of it? This isn't like, for instance, a film trilogy with an ok first film and terrible ending that makes you never want to watch the first one again because you know the story is going nowhere. It's more like saying, well, I better get rid of my Fellowship of the Ring sets because LEGO never made Eowyn, Faramir and Minas Tirith.

So, that line is your definitive iteration because it kind of nodded to all of the films (at a stretch)? Despite having (for the most part) non-specific character designs and lacking heaps of the stuff that LEGO gave us from 18-20? At the time, I loved what LEGO did from 2010-11, but compared to 18-20, nah. Them not finishing it out with DH material at this point in time doesn't undercut the brilliant wealth of stuff they have given us: so many accurate character designs, new characters and places they never covered before, pretty much all of the important faculty of Hogwarts, beautifully done Hogwarts sections, etc. etc.

Um, the movie isn't even out yet. Let's wait and see how it actually is? Plus (not that I put much stock in the Oscars), the director won her Oscar after she'd wrapped Eternals, so it's not like Marvel signed an already Oscar-winning director. Marvel has hired a fair number of renowned Indie directors, with mixed results: some are great but others clearly can't handle the action scenes and those are thus given to an action department and come out pretty generic. And no, there's no way the hype is anywhere near Avengers where each film was built up with beloved characters over multiple other films. Like THELEGOBATMAN said, LEGO is already doing more sets and coverage for Eternals than they generally do for standalone films.

The other category of things that are cheaper on BL than B&P (besides basic bricks sometimes, and of course older things not on B&P) are things that's aren't broadly desirable to fans or aren't rare or exciting but have high production costs for LEGO so cost a fair bit on B&P. One example is Friends Minidolls. For instance, Martin: plenty of sellers have him for the equivalent of $5 AUD and below on BL, while on B&P his torso alone is $3.94 AUD, his head is $1.02, his legs are $2.90, and his hair is $.46. But of course, all of the cheaper ones on Bricklink are in Europe, so if you're not in Europe you might end up with quite high shipping costs and you'd need to want other stuff from a store to make it worth it. Another example is generic dual-moulded legs, like the ones with a colour top and yellow bottom. Dual moulded legs cost a lot to LEGO, but to fans they're pretty much just legs, especially the ones without printing. The blue and yellow ones can be had easily for less than $1 (AUD or USD) on BL, but cost $3.74 AUD on B&P. For the most part though, broadly desirable things like Minifigure parts and new or rare parts tend to be cheaper on B&P.

Despite the CMF's release date being 1 October here in Australia, I'm already dreading the process of getting the figures I want from this series. We're very likely to still be in lockdown where I am, with retail stores closed to browsing, so there will be no way to go and feel the packs. There are some online stores that sell full opened sets without markup, but I only truly want about 5 out of the 12. Not a fun time for CMF once again.

This has almost nothing to do with LEGO at this point, but personally I hope it's a wake up call to the studios to stop bloating the budgets and runtimes. Some movies have actually been doing pretty solidly at the box office at the moment, but the big movies' budgets are SO high that it's impossible for them to become profitable during the current circumstances and lower audience turnout. Let's get back to 90-minute, slightly smaller scale films and they can be in business even during our current times. Anyway, if the MCU slate does get pushed back again, that could give LEGO an opening for another Infinity Saga wave, and to that I'd say: yes please!

In a way we're almost talking across different points. I'm certainly not against cool named figures coming in small, Battle-Pack size/price sets. How great would the Ahsoka Maul set have been if it only included a smaller, less detailed throne but also had two more figures, for instance? It does come down to expectations a bit. When we were in the habit of expecting Battle Packs that were good(ish) for faction building each year, it got annoying to see non-army-building sets take up their spots. Now that we've had nothing in the BP size, anything will be better than nothing. At the same time I agree with part of @Kit Figsto's sentiment that it's also not good when the army-building figures are locked in a set with named characters, like in the Mundi and Barriss set. That's the same point I was basically making with my tendency to dislike VS packs, because in that case also one faction I may want will be locked into a set with one I don't.

From personal preference, I disagree. I get the positives of vs packs - a battle within a box, LEGO able to cover multiple eras in a single wave if there are only two BPs - but to me I'd rather have the option of which faction I want. Especially in the prequel era, when the villains are usually droids, I'd really not want half the figure spots in a BP to be taken up with droids. LEGO had already started losing the plot with BPs before temporarily moving away from them, with named unique characters that serve nearly no purpose in multiples. I hope when they bring BPs back that they get back to basics: solid mass-able troopers with at least a couple of plain ones and one or two more specialised but still mass-able ones.

Got to say, though I didn't exactly have trouble, I did find building the wings tedious and unenjoyable. After completing the first one, I had to reluctantly bring myself to continue on to the second, though the completed ship is worth it. My Bo Katan's helmet is ever so slightly misprinted, with the top dark blue printing a little misaligned. From a distance it looks ok, but closer up it's annoying. I might request a replacement, but knowing the current printing standards the replacement is just as likely to have misaligned printing too.

That's fake too and has been around for quite a while.

Done! I agree when there are few enough sets in a theme, it makes sense to have one ongoing topic.

The Flying Lesson is clearly designed to go with the 2021 modular system. How is that not obvious from the 8x8 sections built on grill plates with removable 8x8 roof sections? It just has one weird out-of-system section and can more easily blend in with the older sets due to its colour scheme. It's not shown as combining in the instructions because it's a store exclusive, and LEGO quite often omits store exclusives from the back of instruction manuals and other materials. I never knew this to be a fact, but Marcos Bessa said himself that store exclusives like the Flying Lesson get smaller runs so are literally harder to find than other sets (even if they're perfectly available when they release), so perhaps LEGO excludes them because they have a shorter life span and they don't want kids who get one of the other sets to be disappointed down the track.

Plus, LEGO has gone too far into the detailed route a couple of times and then walked it back. They made those new pistols in the Line Ranger line for example, which looked so un-LEGO and didn't have any connection points beside the handle. I thought that'd be the death of the classic pistol mould, but sure enough that Lone Ranger pistol never returned and the classic pistol lives on. They really do need a new broom mould that incorporates a thin strip for the Minifigure legs to slot over, like how legs attach to LEGO motorcycles. The only problem would then be that the figure couldn't hold on while riding, but the current ones don't work all that well for other reasons.

It's exciting, but it can also be like... I paid how much for this tiny package?? If you're just buying Minifigure parts and one of everything like me, you can easily spend $100+ and it fits into a small padded mailer. But getting specific exciting parts is always thrilling anyway.

Just finished building mine today and I agree, it's a very nice build and the way the angles go together is quite good. I can't say I played with it rigorously, but did give it a bit of a swoosh holding it from the back, which worked fine. That must be a lot harder for a kid with kid-sized hands. The idea to not lock the top is truly mindboggling. You can't tell me that the extra second of "inconvenience" it'd take to unlock the top and access the interior wouldn't be worth the gain of being able to pick it up from there. The only thing I can think of is that the way they built the top fin, without any technic running through it, wouldn't actually support lifting the whole ship from that area, and they therefore don't want to even suggest you do that by providing a locking mechanism. And like @ToaDraco, as someone who got the original Imperial Shuttle when it came out, I'm very much conditioned against trying to pick up a ship from its fin anyway. The complaints probably come in light of the fact that LEGO has been making every ship durable from all parts, and that every previous shuttle locked (as far as I remember). Plus, who wants a ship that you swoosh upside down and the top opens?

Please keep the political and social stuff out of this. The point about more people buying luxury items is one thing, but the rest CERTAINLY does not belong here on Eurobricks. And a reminder to everyone: if you see this sort of thing on Eurobricks, report it and don't engage. Of course investing in LEGO isn't a sure thing, and you're not going to make a lot of money out of it unless you start to put a lot of time and resources in. Within Star Wars, there's almost always the risk that figures and models might be made obsolete by later, better ones, but in some cases it's a more sure thing that that won't occur, like P1 Commander Wolffe for example. To quote Jango: "we won't be seeing him again". Doubling your money is pretty good in any setting though, even if the market price doesn't continue to rise beyond that.

If you'd really like to use that leg print for something else, go for it! I get what LEGO was going for, but the figure itself still looks fine without the belly overflow and it frees the leg print up to be used for other figures. Plus, given reviews I've seen, the belly print on the hips doesn't have enough opacity to it (as usual...) so doesn't look great anyway. Yeah Jerry's hair is a neat new piece and would definitely be very useful in more colours.

As someone who was on the internet (including this site and paying attention to this forum) ten years ago, I'll share my insight just from memory. LEGO does release their annual report in which they share over profits and a breakdown of top performing themes, but as a privately owned company it's their complete discretion what to share and how they shape the narrative. They have never provided breakdowns within themes of top performing sets, but of course internally they'd be looking at those kind of number. The fact that the Obi-Wan Starfighter performed badly was pretty clear cut. It wasn't just retired quickly, but was put on sale by LEGO themselves and lasted on sale for a good little while, which never happened with UCS sets. Then we have the benefit of hindsight and LEGO never touching more prequel material at the UCS level to know that it truly must have underperformed. When you ask if there was a consensus if the Prequels sucked, you have to look at where. I'd say there was a fairly broad internet and public opinion wide consensus that the Prequels were not good. Especially amongst fans who had either seen Star Wars when it originally released or gotten into it with the theatrical re releases in the 90s, the Prequels really felt like the floor being pulled out from under them. That was the broad consensus. However, when we're talking about AFOL Star Wars fandom 10-20 years ago, it's a bit different. Some AFOL Star Wars fans certainly liked all of the new designs even if they found certain narrative elements so so, so it's not like everyone on this site only cared about the OT sets and nothing else. The people really hard core into Star Wars liked everything. But the UCS-buying market was another different subsection again. Bear in mind that LEGO's popularity was nothing like it is today, and though the adult market was surely bigger than LEGO gave it credit, it was still much smaller than today. That adult LEGO-buying Star Wars fan market would have skewed more towards the general population consensus, the type of people who loved the OT but not the PT. They'd be people who grew up with both Star Wars and LEGO and therefore would buy a UCS OT ship but certainly not something from the Prequels. They'd be people who wouldn't buy the regular Star Wars sets, but would see LEGO had made this gigantic detailed ship, and buy that. It's taken LEGO probably longer than it should've to notice that things have changed. Their big-set-buying market is much bigger, and a whole lot more people feel warmly towards the PT than did 10+ years ago.

This is only the second time!? At least we have three more alphabetical series to Frontpage. Every single series should've been on the Frontpage in my opinion!

Prices for all sorts of collectibles have risen enormously as there's lots of "new money" in the world and thus people with astronomical amounts of cash deciding to get in on collectible things. It's happened a bit with collectible video game sales for instance, and I won't get started on NFTs - not the same thing, but an example of people splashing extreme amounts of money on basically nothing. Sanity and sustainability play no role. LEGO has gotten increasingly popular, so it was only a matter of time until that bled over into the LEGO secondary market. Luckily it's not all bad yet; plenty of themes and types of things have remained relatively stable on Bricklink, but for the really popular and widely talked about ones like Star Wars, the time has passed when the rare figures were remotely affordable. I remember the days when original Cloud City Lando was a very desirable figure, and went for about $30, which I thought was insane for a figure at the time.

There's a telling reason that it's fake. Next to the price on all of the real issues of this magazine, it would say Issue 70, Issue 71, Issue 72 etc. The latest issue that is releasing in early August is Issue 74. However on that image with Finch Dallow, it says "Order 66" next to the price. I do wish it was real, but that's a big tell IMO. It's nice feeling the shared love for this wave. I didn't mean to say that I hadn't bought ANY LEGO Star Wars since the Tyderium, but nothing big - I think only last year's AAT (almost solely for Ahsoka, though the Ahsoka trooper was nice too and I somehow had never gotten a previous AAT) and the 501st set since then. Even though I don't mind not spending money on Star Wars of course, it's also a fun feeling when there are new, desirable things in this theme. @MaximillianRebo I agree that the "whole location" sets work better overall, but some interior ones have looked good too; the Carbon Freezing Chamber and the Hoth Medical Bay come to mind. The location sets are almost always a bit overpriced for some reason, but the builds in this year's in particular look sparse. I actually really like the designs in the Mandalore Duel, but the price is way too high for so little. A sale will help with that.