Blondie-Wan

Sounds good to me. If I actually meet any Greenpeace advocates, I can send them your way if you like, but at the moment I don't know any. I do have to reiterate, though, that I'm not a Greenpeace advocate myself, since you seem unclear on that point despite my having attempted to clarify that to you more than once already.

This is the issue that vexes me most. It's very difficult to army-build when seemingly every year brings new variations on extant designs for uniformed troops. It's not as much of an issue with updates for most unique characters, since one presumably isn't going to want to depict a scene with 30 Luke Skywalers anyway, but when one's uniformed troops aren't uniform, it can take a little of the fun out of it. It's especially troublesome when the updates come so close together. We just had the standard orange Rebel pilot flight suit updated in 2010, I think, after just over a decade of the classic old print. Now, while the original print was charming and effective, I'll actually concede the update was good for the most part, bringing a printed back along with the increased detail. However, we've now gotten further updates splitting it into both snowspeeder pilot and starfighter pilot versions, coming just a few years after the previous update. I don't mind being able to distinguish between snowspeeder pilots and X-Wing pilots, but I already have close to a couple dozen of the original version (not distinguishing further between the old and new dark greys used for the hips), and a comparable number of the 2010 update introduced with that year's Hoth Rebel battlepack. Now those updates have been replaced in the market by the newest update, and if I wish to further build my forces beyond what I've already gotten while continuing to get new sets I have to start over again, while letting those older pilots I accumulated over years go to waste. It's a bit frustrating. :/

... the same as yours. I didn't provide a definition of my own; I merely quoted yours and pointed out the ways in which i don't think it fits the way you're using it. Your own quoted terms are all about threats and intimidation, and I don't see anything in GP's LEGO / Shell campaign that qualifies as either. What is Greenpeace threatening to do if LEGO sticks with Shell? How are they trying to intimidate anyone? These are honest questions - I freely admit it's entirely possible I've overlooked something, and if you can explain to me what threat Greenpeace is making against whom, or how they're trying to scare or intimidate LEGO into doing something, I'm willing to listen. But at the moment, I just don't see it. "Narrow" and "selective" tend to be desirable qualities in a definition, so thanks. I'm not sure where you get "self-serving," though, since I don't stand to benefit in any way from anything connected to Greenpeace or Shell. Honestly, the only one of the three institutions here that I care about is LEGO, and just from the standpoint of being a fan. Now, mind you, I do care about the environment - and why wouldn't I? - but that doesn't mean I think Greenpeace is necessarily right. I agree with lots of the statements elsewhere in the thread about them arguably doing more harm than good, and I don't give them money. That said, I do think they at least occasionally manage to correctly point out an area of legitimate concern. My whole point is that in discussing this whole issue, it shouldn't really matter what Greenpeace says or does; it should matter what Shell and LEGO say and do. It's too bad you think so, actually, since as indicated I'm not entirely sure I care for Greenpeace, given their apparent hypocrisy and their apparent tendency to actually set back meaningful environmental initiatives in favor of merely being disruptive. However, it's true that I do indeed care about the environment, and that's why I think it's not unreasonable to have at least a discussion of Shell's environmental effects and practices and whether or not it might be a good idea for LEGO to reconsider its ongoing relationship with them. As I see it, we can discuss that without saying boo about Greenpeace one way or the other. And please note, I haven't even reached a personal conclusion on this, myself. As I already stated, I actually do in fact patronize Shell service stations from time to time (whereas I've never bought so much as a pithy bumper sticker from Greenpeace).

In my first round of packet-feeling a recently-opened, seemingly nearly untouched box, I did find two Battle Goddeses in the first three packets on the left, and a third just a short distance behind them. I haven't had any such issues with the ones I've opened so far, but I've opened only six - one apiece of the Battle Goddess, Pizza Delivery Man, Lifeguard, Rock Star, Wizard, and Video Game Guy. For whatever that's worth...

All those definitions hinge upon intimidation or threats. Greenpeace's campaign wasn't based on those - nowhere do they threaten any kind of harm to LEGO or its employees or customers, nor do they say "we'll disclose this unflattering information about you if you don't give in." On the contrary, the campaign itself already presents and publicizes unflattering information. The model here isn't one of threats or intimidation, but of trying to guilt and shame LEGO into choosing the desired course of action. That's not blackmail.

Both the Battle Towers and Create & Race sets indeed lack figures, but the Town Master set does include a minifigure, and the Resort Designer one includes a minidoll.

Do as you like, but a) it isn't blackmail; b) we don't really know whether they caved or not - they say merely that they'll honor the current agreement and then not renew (i.e., we don't really know whether they'd have renewed or not without the Greenpeace campaign); and c) whatever Greenpeace's tactics, hypocrisy, etc., it doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong about Shell... which of course is not to say they're necessarily right, either. Having had Shell's ethics, environmental practices, etc. brought into question, it now falls upon us to evaluate Shell's practices for ourselves, using the best available sources of information (which I certainly agree would be something other than Greenpeace), and decide based upon that whether we think LEGO's co-promotion with Shell is a good thing or not (and if not, what we want to do about it, if anything). What we think of Greenpeace really hardly matters, for the most part, I think, as I doubt many if any of us actually support them financially anyway. I'm sure nearly everyone here (myself included) give much, much more money to both LEGO and Shell than to GP (if we give the latter anything at all). I don't think asking exactly what practices that money supports is unreasonable. Personally, I'm actually quite confident LEGO's earnings do in fact support a number of socially conscious and environmentally responsible practices. I'm actually not so sure about Shell's (which is not to say I have an opinion either way, just that I don't know).

It's gorgeous, indeed. I just wish I could get it right off, but I still have a huge backlog of other sets I need, including the UCS R2-D2, X-Wing, Ewoks Village and Sandcrawler, to say nothing of numerous other, smaller Star Wars sets (not to mention a ton of sets from every other theme imaginable)... My only quibbles, I think, are that aside from using stickers for decoration (I'd certainly hope for more printed elements in a set this expensive), it has only one Cloud City guard and one Stormtrooper. With the former in particular, one might reasonably hope to do at least a little army building, but the only sets that have ever featured them are a couple different versions of the Slave I, and the minifigures don't even match. That said, of course the minifigures aren't really the main point of a set like this, and the model itself is gorgeous. I like to mod and MOC my own LEGO Star Wars universe, but this set looks like one I might like to just use as is, sans modification - it's that lovely. Well, I've never ridden in the "real" Slave I, obviously, but I've been a Star Wars fan since the original movie was at the end of its initial theatrical run when I was a kid back in the late '70s. I grew up with various toys, models, etc. of various Star Wars vehicles and vessels including this one, and most of them (such as Kenner's version for their 3 3/4" action figures, and MPC's model kit) did have Boba's seat rotate to stay "level" in flight. According to the ship's entry on Wookieepedia, it originally didn't have the rotating seat, and that was a mod made by Fett himself.

Ah, nice to know! I have several sets from both of those themes - not all the ones I want, of course, but a bunch - but I haven't put most of them together yet.

It's quite common in the Minifigures line, for which it was created. Outside that, though, I think the LEGO Ideas Ghostbusters Ectomobile and last month's Classic Spaceman promo set (which uses it for exactly the purpose described here) are the only sets that use it that I know of, so far. But there they are...

Hey, thanks! And happy birthday!

Today I encountered Series 12 in person for the first time today, at a Walmart in the Atlanta area. Unfortunately, not only were there only five packets there, but every single one had been opened, with loose parts falling out onto the shelves, etc. Oh, well. I plan to buy them at a LEGO Store anyway. It's still annoying to see the results of other people being jerks, but nice to see them out in the wild for myself.

It's a lovely set indeed. I ordered one along with the Research Institute and the Ectomobile on August 1st - all three of the most recent CUUSOO / Ideas sets at once, the same day the last two were released. I actually checked out the site early that morning and started putting my order together but didn't pull the trigger right away; at that time, both the new sets were limited to two per person / order, and I was trying to decide whether to buy additional copies, which I'd really like but ultimately decided I couldn't afford right away. When I checked out the site again a little while later, the limit had gone down to one of each. I took the hint and bought my sets then, and by that time they already had stuff on backorder... so that my three sets (actually four, with the free promo mini Mini Cooper) came in three shipments. But I got them all, and they're all great. The Exo-Suit turned out to be quite an impressive build. The posability of the legs is pretty amazing - they're actually kind of tough to find a perfect "default" standing position for, given the range of movement. The arms aren't quite so extreme, and given how flexible the legs are, I'm a little surprised they don't straighten out at the elbows, but they're plenty posable all the same. I might mod mine to be able to straighten out, though. I definitely do notice the relative looseness of those shoulder greeblies as well, but they're not a deal killer or anything like that. I love, love, *LOVE* the classic spacefolk in green. Like many of us I have a deep and abiding passion for classic Space, and green has always been my favorite color, so including even one them here is a dream come true; having two in the set seems an embarrassment of riches. I don't know if I'll be able to get another, but I'd dearly love to have a whole bunch more. What an awesome set, all told. I also just received the classic spaceman set with a later order, and put it together with the Exo-Suit, and the three spacepeople , two robots, platform o' canisters and giant mech look great together. I do get the observation that the mech itself actually deviates quite a bit from the aesthetic of actual historic CS sets, what with the insane greebling and the paucity of the classic secondary colors blue and trans-yellow, but it's still lovely to have. I'll probably try to rebuild it with a stronger CS vibe sometime, but I also love it as-is. And what a crazy awesome parts pack! I'd love more just for the bits...

Er - Friday's announcement; I somehow hadn't realized there was a separate Comic-Con announcement. If they're not one and the same, I imagine the CC one will be either Jurassic Park (most likely), or the next Ideas set (specifically Doctor Who, most likely, if it's being announced there), or perhaps both. But I'd expect this new Bionicle line to get at least some mention at CC, even if it's not the main focus of whatever LEGO does there.

I believe you're entirely correct about the scheduled announcement not dealing with Doctor Who; indeed, signs point to it specifically being the return of Bionicle. That said, I don't think Character Building's apparent failure with the license means all that much as far as how well a LEGO Doctor Who set or theme would do. LEGO is a huge, respected and beloved brand, with countless devotees of its own, while Character Building is hardly known at all (at least in the US) - how many of us here would even have heard of them if not for Doctor Who? I'm sure there are many people at this forum alone who love the series, but flat-out refused to buy the CB sets specifically because theirs were LEGO-like products that weren't actually LEGO, just as we refuse to buy KRE-O, Mega Bloks, Cobi, Best-Lock, etc. I'm sure LEGO is well aware of this, and taking it into due consideration in making its decision with regard to those Ideas projects. That's not to say LEGO Doctor Who will definitely happen, of course, but I suspect that if it doesn't it'll be for a different reason you've put forth before - an inability of the licensing teams from LEGO and the BBC to come to terms. Anyway... Yes, I think the announcement is for Bionicle.

I think the OP was merely commenting on something (s)he found interesting or amusing, rather than really criticizing. That said, I can see some slight potential for a minor problem, for a customer who is interested in the Minifigures but doesn't follow the releases thereof quite as closely as we do - someone could perhaps acquire all of Series 12 and then see this listing and make a purchase expecting figures from a whole new series (s)he doesn't have any of at all, and be disappointed to receive the "old" figures.

I doubt it's Doctor Who because a single CUUSOO / Ideas set is not a theme (though it can obviously spearhead one if it does well), and the announcement is supposedly for a theme. There's no indication it has anything to do with any Ideas sets at all. That said, there's no small amount of Doctor Who merchandise available here in the US, which someone obviously thinks sells well enough here to bother with, and most of it is frankly more plentiful than the quantities available of most CUUSOO / Ideas sets. Doctor Who seems to sell enough merchandise in the US already for an Ideas set to be viable.

There are in fact multiple molded fishing pole pieces now, including one created a while ago specifically for the Minifigures line (or so I presume, as it has now appeared multiple times in this theme but nowhere else as far as I know), having first appeared all the way back in Series 3, as well as both the next two series after that.

Quite true for the part about a centaur being included with the book, but I agree with Robert8 that the Toy Soldier really should have been in one of the numbered series. That's a minifigure that would otherwise really lend itself to army-building, but who wants to buy dozens of copies of a nineteen-dollar book to do that?

I am delighted by the possibility of a classic, archetypal, "Golden Age of Hollywood"-style movie director. I've been suggesting one since at least as far back as February of 2011, and this one fits the bill, even if it doesn't have the jodhpurs I'd hoped for. Maybe if we're really lucky it'll have an accessory not shown here, a clapperboard. That would be fantastic (even if realistically, usually someone else would actually carry and use the clapperboard on-set). As indicated above, for me he'd not only be a personal highlight, but the fulfillment of a wish I've had for this whole theme for most of the time it's been around. I am really, really jonesing for that Movie Director!

Oh, thanks for that link, Hive - that's really cool, and I hadn't seen it before.

I desperately wish I could get one. :/

I might have, had I been able to revisit it before you'd gotten to it, but there's little point in doing so now.

Agreed, and I did mention your earlier comments of possible BBC licensing snags in previous comments as a potential obstacle. I'm just saying I don't think a lack of broader consumer interest is itself an obstacle; CUUSOO / Ideas voters have already demonstrated plenty of interest - much more than they already have for almost every other project that's gotten made, actually.

I actually can find Doctor Who stuff in Toys 'R' Us, and I certainly think it has at least as much of an active following here (and everywhere generally) as Back to the Future and Ghostbusters, which aren't even really currently active franchises. Certainly one can find a lot more Doctor Who merchandise in any Barnes & Noble, say, than stuff for those other two (and Barnes & Noble also carries LEGO sets). Moreover, the CUUSOO / Ideas sets released to date are largely aimed at adult enthusiasts, even if they do meet LEGO's kid-friendly standards. Most CUUSOO / Ideas sets are more limited than a lot of Doctor Who (or Back to the Future or Ghostbusters) products, anyway. I'm sure they'd have zero trouble selling more copies of any Doctor Who set than they even saw fit to produce at all of the Curiosity rover, for example. Doctor Who is no Star Wars, true, but it certainly ought to be popular enough for LEGO to do within the parameters of Ideas. Remember, not one but two Doctor Who projects both not only hit the mark, but both did so very quickly, demonstrating greater likely demand for LEGO Doctor Who than almost all of the projects they've actually done - nothing but Minecraft hit the vote mark more quickly, and that was done directly by the game's maker, which then promoted the project to all its followers.