Blondie-Wan

Oh, I think plenty of people care about Eight. "The Night of the Doctor" seems to have been very much appreciated by pretty much the entire fandom. Really, I think the only reason merchandise (such as any possible LEGO sets) tends to focus on his incarnation so little is the most natural reason of all - his incarnation simply hasn't had much screen time, just the one TV movie from 1996 and the recent short I just mentioned. I do know he's very fondly regarded, though - even many fans who don't care for the actual TV movie that introduced his version still love Paul McGann's Doctor himself. So... just how long until he appears as a LEGO minifigure, hm? Does anyone feel like starting a betting pool?

Our Barnes & Noble quickly sold out of theirs, even at the inflated price.

I don't know about everyone else, but I think it's extremely unlikely to pass review for the "brand fit" criteria - the show has a lot of adult material in it. Sexual situations and relationships are a huge component of the show, actually. It's not as kid-unfriendly as Shaun of the Dead, say, but surely at least as much as Firefly / Serenity.

I'd dearly love to have more Indiana Jones sets, including the ones you mention, particularly the Dunn & Duffy circus train. In addition to the train, the Hatay tank, the Grail temple, the warehouse and the anthill, I'd also love sets of the Bantu Wind and the Wurrfler (the tramp steamer and the U-boat from Raiders of the Lost Ark), the Lao Che Air Freight Ford Tri-motor airplane (from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), and most especially some sets from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles / The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, such as the train used by Pancho Villa, the "Phantom Train" and the riverboat Collette. There's actually a LEGO CUUSOO project for the anthill scene from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, if you'd like to support it. The build shown is pretty rough and simple; I think the submitter might do well to revise it a little. Still, though, it gets the idea of the scene across (and of course it would be substantially redesigned anyway if it were turned into an actual set). It doesn't have the additional vehicles you mention, but otherwise it's pretty much just what you've asked for. You might consider supporting it with a vote.

I'm amazed the mods are letting us discuss the 13th series of The Simpsons Minifigures already. We haven't even gotten the first series yet, or the 12th or 13th series in the main Minifigures line.

That's actually what they did until just a couple years ago - they've had a LEGO City calendar each year since 2005, and another calendar from some other theme since 2007, but it wasn't until 2012 that they repeated a non-City theme from a previous year (unless you count Kingdoms as a repeat of Castle, and even those were at least non-consecutive), and that was also the first year they added a third calendar to the mix, arriving at what's now the apparent standard selection: 2005 - City 2006 - City 2007 - City & Belville 2008 - City & Castle 2009 - City & Pirates 2010 - City & Kingdoms 2011 - City & Star Wars 2012 - City, Star Wars & Friends 2013 - City, Star Wars & Friends

As I understand it, all the following is true, but I may be wrong, so I'd like confirmation from someone more informed than myself... Technically, applicable sales tax is supposed to be paid on all sales, including products purchased online or via mail order. However, sellers aren't required to collect sales tax themselves if they sell to someone in a different state in which the seller doesn't operate - for example, a company based in California that has its own retail stores in California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington has to charge sales tax to people in those four states, whether they buy items at their local stores or do it online, and the tax charged will be the applicable sales tax for the state the purchaser is in (Nevada, Oregon, etc.), even if the purchase is made online and the item comes from the company's "home" in California - a Nevada resident would get charged the tax rate for Nevada, for example, not California. However, someone in a state where the company doesn't have a presence - Florida, for example - will not be charged. The part that a lot of people don't know about is that even if the company itself isn't required to collect the sales tax, the tax is still technically owed, and according to the law it then becomes the purchaser's responsibility to figure out the tax themselves, and pay it directly to the state; there are even forms available for this, I believe. However, virtually nobody does this, and not many people are even aware of it, and the government doesn't bother trying to collect all these unpaid sales taxes. For all practical intents and purposes, if you're in the US and you order something online from a company based in a different state that doesn't have some sort of presence in the state you're in, you don't have to pay the sales tax. That said, none of that will really apply to the original poster, since he/she is going to New York, and LEGO has retail stores in New York (though if SMC wants to order stuff from Amazon and have it shipped to the hotel, that should be fine, as long as they can ensure delivery before the hotel stay ends). LEGO will therefore charge sales tax on any purchase made in New York, whether it's at a physical store or online. However, if the Rockefeller Center LEGO Store does indeed charge above MSRP, as Clone O'Patra says, it could be worth it to order sets online from one's hotel room in New York - the sales tax would still be applied, but the price(s) on the actual set(s) purchased might be lower, and if the order is large enough the shipping would be free (though perhaps one might have to pay the hotel to have packages delivered there, for all I know). Of course you'd want to make sure it could be delivered before your stay is over! And then there's the issue of paying duty or whatever once one gets back to the UK...

It originated as a religious tradition, but like much else about Christmas it's no longer a solely religious tradition, but a secular one as well. I'm non-religious myself, for example, but I've enjoyed advent calendars over several holiday seasons (and not even just LEGO calendars, but also ones filled with chocolate or whatever). Well, of course all LEGO elements are ultimately combinable, but some things in the calendars lend themselves to re-use more easily than others. Some of them have been great means of supplementing one's collection of a given theme (City, Star Wars, Friends, Pirates, Castle, whatever), while others have been less so (and some individual days in a given calendar might have more appealing things than others).

I don't know about every individual retailer, but as far as the big chains and LEGO's own stores and online store go, I don't think any of the regular sets are truly "Sold out" just yet, aside from the Minifigures. I fully expect additional production runs on nearly everything - probably everything the size of Cloud Cuckoo Palace on up, anyway. I suspect the smaller sets (70800 Getaway Glider and 70801 Melting Room) will be the first to disappear, followed by one or more of the shared vendor exclusives (70811 The Flying Flusher, 70812 Creative Ambush and 70813 Rescue Reinforcements).

Swanky! And isn't that the point, really?

I ran around a fair bit yesterday and finally found some local stores that weren't completely depleted yet, and between two of them I believe I've managed to get six of the seven I didn't have, plus a couple duplicates I wanted (I could be wrong as I haven't yet opened them, but I'm pretty good at packet-feeling, and I'm confident). I should now have at least one of each except William Shakespeare. I still want that one, but I'm feeling relieved that I've been able to get nearly all of them now. I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here - specifically, I don't know what bad impressions or story defects you're talking about. Most people I know loved the characters and the story.

My personal LEGO universe is completely malleable and subject to change, like anything else made out of LEGO, but one of the ideas I keep coming back to is that the minidolls from Friends (and now Disney Princesses) really do exist in the same shared universe as conventional minifigures - given their slender builds, joined legs, and more heart-shaped faces/heads, I like to think of them as actually being the martians from Life on Mars, having donned disguises to pass as human so they can move freely amongst the people of LEGO City in order to study them without drawing too much attention, 3rd Rock From the Sun-style.

I very much doubt it was anything like that; they still make profit from each one they sell, and they don't mind whether a fan builder makes some money - they just want to make sure they do. It's more likely that they simply were cautious - they didn't want to have a huge amount of unsold inventory in case the set proved unpopular, so they made a relatively small initial run. Presumably (hopefully) they'll produce some more, and it'll become available once again.

I still need Hard Hat Emmet, Wild West Wyldstyle, Mrs. Scratchen-Post, Gail the Construction Worker, Larry the Barista, William Shakespeare, and the "Where Are My Pants?" Guy - I don't have any of them at all, and I'd particularly like multiples of Mrs. Scratchen-Post and especially Larry the Barista, along with more of the Taco Tuesday Guy (and any of them, really, but those are the biggest priorities for multiples for me). I really need to find some more of these locally. I have to assume the movie has helped the line enormously - well, obviously, in the sense that the line wouldn't even exist at all if not for the movie, but beyond that I mean that the movie's quality and popularity undoubtedly is making the entire The LEGO Movie line wildly popular as well. The Minifigures and all the other sets appear to be selling incredibly well, with the Minifigures in particular experiencing much, much greater demand (as far as I can tell) than the last few previous series of "regular" Minifigures.

Welcome aboard!

Lovely.

While the originally-planned set (1375 Wrestling Scene) wasn't released, they did wind up releasing a sort of "partial" version of the set as 10075 Spider-Man Action Pack. This was a set without minifigures, just some of the scenery and accessory-type items from 1375, designed to be used with the other two LEGO Studios Spider-Man sets from that year (1374 & 1375). Shop at Home sold the three together as a bundle (K1376) - I actually got this bundle myself, in one of my very first Shop at Home orders ever. At that time, 10075 was supposedly available only as part of the bundle (according to the catalog I placed my order from, back in the day), but according to Brickset they did start selling it individually later on, although the date they give for this (October 2002) is around the same time I ordered it as an exclusive item available only with the bundle. I didn't keep the box, but I do still have everything else, including the background card, which is exclusive to this set (you can see it in the background of the image in the second post in this thread, the one Oky made back on February 3rd of 2009). Here's a better look at it (both sides), from Peeron: IIRC, the 10075 instructions included a couple different builds, including instructions on using it with parts from 1374 and 1376 to represent different Spidey scenes. I'll have to dig out those old instructions again and take a look...

Yes, that's pretty much exactly it, at least with regards to LEGO ones (there are others, of course). See here. Different things appeal to different people, of course. Advent calendars are a Christmas season tradition for many people, whether religious or not, but not for everyone. The LEGO ones provide the experience of getting a small LEGO gift each day in the advent period, and some people find that enjoyable. That daily experience is the real point of the LEGO advent calendars, and if you're not into that they're not going to appeal to you.

Well... there's only one way to find out.

I suspect most of the sets other than the "CMFs" aren't permanently retired just yet - the whole theme is less than two and a half months old, and a top seller across the board. I can't help but think most of it will get additional production runs... with the unfortunate exception of the Minifigures, I imagine. I think so-called "CMFs" are always given limited production slots at the outset. I still need to find several of them!

It may depend upon the project - a CUUSOO project creator might specify that his/her project is for a specific, given Doctor, say. There's a slew of Doctor Who projects on CUUSOO now, and some might have more flexible designs than others, so it would depend upon which one gets to 10k first, and how much freedom TLG chooses to exercise in changing the selected project from its core concept (assuming they do indeed approve one). And of course there's certainly a chance they might eventually do them all, especially if 10k votes are attained by each of multiple projects that are substantially different from one another (most of the projects will undoubtedly consist mainly of a TARDIS exterior and/or interior, plus one or more Doctor minifigures, and it's just a question of which of those gets to 10k votes first, but there can also be projects depicting various other vehicles and locations, that could come with other incarnations of the Doctor). Incidentally, I'd say the 4th Doctor is probably the most iconic incarnation, actually, although the 10th is undoubtedly more familiar to most newer / younger Whovians.

Wow, really? That's an odd choice, to say the least.

It's unfortunate that LEGO fans in the UK might miss out on an enjoyable visit to LEGOLAND because of a handful of bigoted twerps, but it's hardly the first time such people have ruined other people's fun, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Well, considering how quickly these went up, it seems possible some of them were people's existing MOCs that they just decided to put on CUUSOO as soon as they saw the franchise was now acceptable subject matter. They may not all have been designed with CUUSOO in mind.

Well, I don't profess to know exactly how large the fan base is, but I do feel confident in making the observation that beyond LEGO, there is currently much, much more merchandise being produced for Doctor Who than there is for, say, either Back to the Future or Ghostbusters, just FWIW... ... which is kind of indeterminate, really. It could mean that Doctor Who currently enjoys a greater following of serious devotees (the folks who buy merchandise, as opposed to more casual fans content to simply watch the show and/or movies) than those other two franchises do, and therefore if TLG thought they were commercially viable (as they obviously do), then Doctor Who should be a slam dunk as far as the business case goes. Or, alternately, it could mean their research showed significant fandoms for those two franchises that were being underserved by the paltry or dormant or nonexistent licensing programs for them, and therefore they represented opportunities for TLG to grab a share of the disposable income of every current fan of either of them, and that the same opportunity isn't present with Doctor Who fans who have a much broader current selection of things on which they can spend money, so Doctor Who is a more risky license than Ghostbusters or Back to the Future, rather than a less risky one. In other words, who knows? If nothing else, though, Doctor Who does at least enjoy the advantage of being a currently active series, which isn't the case with either Ghostbusters or Back to the Future, neither of which has had a new movie or episode in well over twenty years. Doctor Who is still running, with no sign of ever going away.