Blondie-Wan

We tend to think of getting the Minifigures this way, but that's not necessarily how they're viewed by the larger market. I don't think most kids are really particularly interested in getting vast numbers of certain figures, nor do they necessarily try to get everything. I think the idea is that kids are expected to trade with each other for the ones they want, just as they've been doing with bubblegum cards for decades. How is that any different from the torsos for any other licensed theme - or just any theme in general, for that matter? It's not like a Series 1 Zombie doesn't stand out in the middle of an Aqua Raiders MOC, for example... In many countries, they are, and people will. And it's not as though every single one of LEGO's other lines is universally popular everywhere in the world. Not all kids, sure, but many many of them do, and like the show. Just what makes you think the show isn't popular enough to sustain merchandise any more? Isn't there still a bunch of stuff being made from it? Besides... "License" isn't a reason. But that's beside the point. With a line of Minifigures using the model of the so-called "collectible minifigures," the products aren't produced for very long, and they don't normally take all that long to sell out. Whether this series (assuming it actually does happen this way - do we have confirmation on the rumors yet?) sells faster or slower than a typical series of minifigures, we don't know, but it's a pretty safe bet to say it'll sell reasonably quickly. They aren't going to be stuck with millions of these things clogging store shelves three years from now; I think 90% or more of them will be gone in a few months, which is probably on target.

Actually, we got a plurality of sets from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - more from it than from any individual one of the first three movies, but not more from it than all three others combined. Excluding "extended line" stuff (keychains, magnets, etc.), the Indy line had eighteen sets (sixteen retail, plus the Brickmaster and SDCC exclusives), of which there were eight from Crystal Skull (including the Brickmaster stuff), five from Raiders of the Lost Ark, three from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and two from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. If broken down into "new movie" and "classic originals," that's 8 for Crystal Skull (including the just barely movie-themed Brickmaster polybag and the ultra-limited SDCC set that included the Brickmaster one - only 6 regular retail sets) and 10 for the original "trilogy." Typically, whenever LEGO licenses a theme based on some franchise that has already been around for a while without LEGO sets, they usually have a mix of "classic" and "new" material, but with a greater number of sets based on the new entry, at least in the first year; that's how it's been with Indiana Jones, Toy Story, Pirates of the Caribbean and even Star Wars (whose first year had thirteen sets, five for the entire original trilogy and eight for Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace). If these are released in multiple waves, the pattern is an initial launch wave based on the classics a few months before the new movie comes out, then a larger wave based around the new release (as happened with Indiana Jones, Toy Story and Star Wars). From there, if the line lasts a while, it then generally equalizes a bit, with increasing numbers of sets based on the older movies coming in subsequent waves (as seen with Indy and SW). Very few licensed themes go on beyond one or two waves, though, unless there's additional narrative material (principally movies and TV) coming out upon which to base sets. It appears that as long as there are regular movie releases and/or ongoing television series to "anchor" the theme, there can also be stuff from other media (such as comics or even video games) in that franchise, but there does have to be some sort of ongoing screen production (movie / TV, not videogame) for the line to continue for more than a couple years at most. Hence why Harry Potter has had sets most of the time since 2001 but hasn't had any since the last movie a couple years ago, why Star Wars has gone on continuously since 1999 (having a new movie every three years from that year to 2008, with a television series from then to now, new yearly movies beginning two years from now and a steady stream of comics, novels, games, etc. on top of all that over the entire time), and why Indiana Jones lasted just two years (it's remarkable it lasted that long, actually, given that there were no new movies on the horizon after the one around which the theme was anchored). The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings, taken together as a single theme, is a bit unusual in that there's a preponderance of sets being released based upon the "classic originals," even in the midst of back-to-back releases of new movies - were it following the usual pattern, we'd be getting far more Hobbit stuff than LotR, but it's actually skewing slightly in the other direction. I'm guessing it has much to do with the nature of the movies themselves, in that even with the Hobbit movie trilogy hugely expanding upon the book while the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy actually condenses from the books, LotR still makes up the overwhelming majority of this overall franchise in terms of sheer running time (and number of scenes, etc. upon which to base sets).

Bo5A?

I don't, but on the previous page Gremer says that according to Brickset, Canada and Mexico will both get Series 4, while the US will not.

I'm in a constant state of LEGO acquisition triage, as it were, and the combined themes of The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings have been mostly deferred on my list of priorities, until today, when I found a bunch of the sets on clearance. I picked up 79000 Riddles for the Ring, and put on layaway all of the following: 9471 Uruk-hai Army (x2) 9472 Attack on Weathertop (x3) 79001 Escape From Mirkwood Spiders 79002 Attack of the Wargs 79003 An Unexpected Gathering I do already have 9469 Gandalf Arrives and one copy of 9472 Attack on Weathertop, so I'm on my way, but there are things I've already missed out on like the Elrond polybag from the game promotion, though I do hope to get that one eventually. Of all the ones I've gotten (or am in the process of getting), Gandalf Arrives is the only one for which I've paid MSRP; everything else has been on sale / clearance. Oh, and I also received a Shop at Home order a few days ago that included eight Minifigures Series 11. Half of them turned out to be Barbarians!

So why the week wait?

Sure. I wrote them, a week ago yesterday: ... and they replied: So... huh. Does it strike anyone else as a little on the odd side?

Regarding my query to TLG last week about US availability of Planets Series 4, I finally got an answer back from them yesterday, one week after I asked, and the answer is... vague. They don't say yes or no, or even acknowledge that the sets are already available elsewhere; the wording of the reply sounds almost as though I'd asked about something rumored and not-yet-released. Huh.

I just found a few more clearanced copies of 9489 Endor Rebel Trooper and Imperial Trooper Battle Pack, and picked up four of them.

Quite possible, but of course we really don't know. Look at it all the exclusive D2C sets of various world landmarks, like the Tower Bridge. Before that set was released, I don't think it's something any of us thought LEGO was particularly itching to do as a set, but they obviously saw a business case for it. As soon as it was announced, many of us - not all LEGO fans by far, obviously, but no small number of AFOLs, either - oohed and ahhed over it and made plans to squeeze it into their LEGO budgets. I think something like the Japanese old-style architecture project would have at least as decent a business case as something like Tower Bridge, purely on the aesthetic appeal of the model (and yes, I realize it'd be changed, but presumably / hopefully the final product would be comparable in beauty to the concept model on CUUSOO). I think the very existence of sets like the Tower Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, both of the large VWs, etc. - all of which are large, detailed, expensive models that don't fit into specific themes (and don't necessarily even match the majority of contemporary sets in being done in a minifigure-compatible scale) but have undeniable beauty - suggests that something like the Japanese Old-Style Architecture wouldn't necessarily be flat-out impossible and automatically ruled against, at the very least.

This is a particularly important point. All those who actually do vote for CUUSOO projects should keep this in mind, as the LEGO CUUSOO team itself does consider the prices people say they're willing to pay for a project when it evaluates the business case for that project. That's not to say we should enter grossly overinflated prices of thousands of dollars when we vote for projects - I suspect those sorts of obviously overblown price commitments are probably tossed out along with the $1 cheapskate votes - but I do think that if you seriously want to see a project become a real set, it'll help if you enter a price that falls into a realistic range, and perhaps skews a little toward the higher end of that range rather than the lower one.

$50 is the highest price of any CUUSOO set they've released (in the US) so far; I'd guess people are drawing their assumptions / conclusions from that. But you're right, we really don't know. I don't think anything has actually been declined on "business case" grounds yet, which I believe would be the rejection reason category for a set that would be too large & expensive to move, and LEGO's official comments on various large projects that have passed various vote milestones so far do mostly sound receptive to the idea of doing such large sets as those (with a few notable exceptions). I'm sure a large set will have to really make its case well, even more so than a modestly-sized set, but I suspect it's certainly doable. BTW, Real Indy, I like your CUUSOO projects and intend to support them. If I might offer a suggestion, you might want to list the estimated piece counts for the sets (or the exact piece counts for your LDD models), to help us get rough ideas of how much these should cost (of course I realize there's much, much more to LEGO pricing than pure price-per-piece, but it would be a nice baseline). :)

They're really not concerned with army-building AFOLs. Their target market is kids, remember, and most kids aren't going to amass dozens or hundreds of copies of the same minifigure (yes, there may be a few kids out there who do, but they're the exception). As far as I can tell, they do their best to make each figure available (Mr. Gold excepted) in quantities proportionate to its anticipated demand over the whole market. The fact that a given figure might be of immense appeal to AFOLs for army-building isn't as important as the fact that AFOLs make up only a tiny sliver of the overall LEGO market, and the kids who make up 95% or more of the market aren't particularly interested in that figure.

I don't think there's going to be much difference between this movie wave and a typical series of Minifigures, actually. From what we see in the trailers, the movie will be populated with a mix of minifigures of every conceivable character archetype, from across all eras of LEGO minifigure production, including the so-called CMFs. The whole wave could be just another typical minifigures wave, with a mix of sci-fi archetypes, cityfolk, historical roles, etc., distinguished from the others solely by appearing in the movie (which of course many others do anyway). The press release language re: old classics being made new again could apply to numerous other minifigures from the first eleven series. I'm looking forward to the movie wave every bit as much as other series. No idea whether any of the movie's major characters will be represented in this series, but if so, it may not mean anything - the movie could have major characters be relatively common, ordinary figures. I doubt they'd do a series of Minifigures that had some licensed figures alongside non-licensed ones, so I don't think think the NBA figures would be there.

It seems to me that's technically more a way of distinguishing the Chinese molds and not the actual plastic, except by association. My point was that simply having different mold marks on the arm or whatever isn't itself an indicator of plastic quality.

What's wrong with Construct-a-Zurg?

As far as I know, they haven't announced a correctly-printed one yet; they're looking into a fix, but so far there's no guarantee there will be a fix. Honestly, I was surprised they even acknowledged it at all. Though the error is there, it's a mere transposition of two letters of very small type, and it's easy to overlook completely. But they have indeed said they're looking into the possibility of a fix (though keep in mind that if it happens at all, it could wind up being just a sticker that one applies over the brick to cover up the misspelled print with a corrected one, rather than a whole newly-printed panel piece).

So did I. It's pretty standard for them to do that - I've frequently made purchases that qualified for more than one promotional freebie; this was just the latest example.

Hey, good luck! You and I both!

I'm an American, but one who spent a lot of his youth in Europe (Air Force brat, here), and I can assure you Airfix is a very well-known name to hobbyists across the pond. I actually suspect they're the best-known manufacturer of plastic model kits over there by a considerable margin.

I'm looking forward to it. I do think it's neat that there are four different sets covering the various Tatooine scenes centered around Jabba the Hutt that are all out at about the same time; it presents a rare opportunity for someone just now jumping into LEGO Star Wars to get a really good representation of a portion of one of the movies all at once. I do wish there were more minifigures included of Jabba's various underlings and hangers-on, of course, but I do also plan to fill out these sets with figures from my other sets, whenever appropriate. So far of the four I have only 9496 Desert Skiff, but I plan to get them all and build them all at the same time.

Thanks again for the info, Historian! Wow, that's amazing. I never got freebies like that when I flew as a kid (which I did a lot, as an Air Force brat whose family moved a lot to all the places my dad got stationed). Holy smokes! That "TOBAKK" sign in the bottom picture... an official LEGO tobacco shop sign!? And those "TOBAK" and "TUPAKKAA" signs in the images above - do those also mean "Tobacco"? If so, WOW - talk about something that they would never do today. Amazing to think of it...

But what if your own CUUSOO project is interesting? (j/k. No worries; none of the proposals I'm mentioning here is mine. I don't even have any yet, though I do intend to change that.) Some of my favorites that I'd like to see include three different projects that appeal to me as a LEGO Indiana Jones fan. The first is LEGO Indiana Jones: Major Toht's Mercedes - the proposal model could probably stand a bit of refinement, to be honest, but the underlying concept is sound. Even if the final model retained exactly the same build (which of course it wouldn't), it would still be a desirable set for LEGO Indy fans, as it would finally give us Belloq in his more iconic, off-white-suited look, along with Toht and Dietrich. Next, we have LEGO Indiana Jones: Ant Ambush - as with the above model, the proposal model here is a little on the rough side, but the set concept is solid. I'd particularly like to have this one because it would mean finally getting minifigures of Harold Oxley and/or George "Mac" McHale, plus more giant ants. Finally, there's LEGO Narrow Gauge Track System - while obviously a major part of the impetus for having this project would be to expand upon the track from The Temple of Doom, this project would have far-ranging application beyond that; I'm sure there are a lot of LEGO trains enthusiasts who would love to have a more fleshed-out narrow gauge track system than that provided by the two narrow gauge track elements that currently exist.

So what exactly makes you think it is of lower quality? You have it right there in your hand, and can feel the plastic, tell how strong it is, etc.... Are you just assuming any elements of Chinese origin are of lower quality, or have you somehow actually tested the quality?

(bolding added)Well, let's not get crazy, here. I must say, I'd actually truly love official LEGO My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic sets; it's too bad they just flat-out will... not... happen. But I'm sure LEGO Disney Princesses / "Classic" Disney sets will exhibit the same quality, cleverness and care as LEGO's other Disney sets (Toy Story, Cars, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc., and of course the extant DUPLO Classic / Princesses and Winnie the Pooh sets) have done (or LEGO's other products in general, really).