Blondie-Wan

It's interesting to me just how substantial a theme Monster Fighters is. I mean, I assume it's intended to be another "one wave and done" fantasy action theme along the lines of World Racers, Pharaohs Quest, Alien Conquest and so on, but it's one of the largest such themes they've ever done - seven general retail sets ranging from $7.99 to $99.99 USD (including sets at both the $79.99 and $99.99 price points; other such themes so far have had the second most expensive set top out at $60 or $70 if they also have a $100 set, but not MF), plus a vendor exclusive, at least one polybag promo, and a big, beautiful, expensive LEGO Direct set on top of all that. They certainly appear to have gone all out for a single-wave theme... Perhaps TLG just loves the theme so much and didn't want to pass up on any particular archetypal monster that it wanted to make sure the theme had enough sets for all of them; I could certainly understand that, given how appealing I find the line myself. Or could it be that they see potential for more than just one wave here? Obviously, however much company insiders might personally enjoy a theme, all their decisions about what to release will be based on what their honest best estimates of the commercial potential of the individual sets (and the line in general) are, and they wouldn't release any of these if they didn't think they'd sell; I wonder what their sales expectations are like. Dare we hope for another wave, after all?

Nifty! But why not post it in the Licensed forum, with the other Indy MOCs?

I very much wanted to get Brickbeard's Bounty and the Imperial Flagship from the 2009-2010 line, but alas I missed out on both - very frustrating, as I'd managed to get more or less all of the rest of the '09 Pirates line (everything but the not-released-in-the-US Advent Calendar and the "extended line" stuff like the Battle Pack and the magnets and keychains). As it stands, then, aside from the small rowboats and canoes and such in official sets (and whatever I might build myself out of regular bricks), the only full-blown official ship I have is the Spaniard Ship / Armada Flagship reissue (6291). (I'm assuming the 6192 Pirate Building Set doesn't count, but I do have that as well...)

It appears to me a couple good candidates might be beast riders and mounts - a simple set of a sandtrooper or two and a dewback, say, or a Tusken raider or two and a bantha. If not inserted into larger playsets, they could easily make for relatively small, inexpensive sets filling the lower price points in TLG's tiers of offerings in the theme, and most such creatures have been done either not recently or not at all.

If they were going to use multicolor prints on the bases, they'd surely do the Team GB emblem as well, but they haven't. It's just a single-color print for the whole thing. Why single-color prints? I imagine these figures are already surely pretty expensive for TLG to produce, given that they'll undoubtedly have an even lower production run than other Minifigures series, and those others don't even have any printing on the bases at all. Here they're not only doing these unique prints and element colors for the figures, headgear, etc., but even the bases are molded in a color unique to this release, and printed on top of that. Making the prints multicolored on top of everything else might push the production costs for these above what TLG is willing to invest in them.

You can say that again (er, wait)... Jokes aside, I've also noticed Peeron seems slow to add / update info. I still find it useful, but I do wish it were more up-to-date. There are numerous sets released in the past couple years that don't have inventories yet.

Oooh, very classy! Those are some excellent prints.

No worries. If he's anything like most normal human beings, he'll wince with embarrassment upon looking back at those comments years from now when he hits his thirties or late twenties. In the meantime, I have to say there are some most impressive collections here, and not just his.

Gahhh! I have enough stuff reminding me how old I am already without people talking in the past tense about the newness of a still-new theme! I wonder whether I'll get anything done in time for this contest...

Are you under the impression TLG signed multi-year deals with not one but both of the two major comics publishers in order to release a single wave for each publisher's universe, and then dump the theme immediately after? I think it's extremely likely there'll be multiple new sets, for both Marvel and DC, before TLG is done with the "Superheroes" theme.

How much something is "worth" depends upon what price its owner and a potential buyer might agree upon, so it's highly subjective and variable. Putting that aside, are we talking about what it would cost to replace everything? MSRP? Combined average secondary market values of everything? Combined prices one originally paid (including markups, sales and clearances, etc.)? This thread asks about one's SW collection; the initial post does also talk about LEGO, but the actual question doesn't specify that, just SW. If we're talking about all things SW, both LEGO and otherwise, I have no idea about mine, but it's probably in the tens of thousands of dollars. My LEGO Star Wars collection appears to fall somewhere between $2000 and $3000 for MSRP. I assume the current "going rate" for the sets I have is higher, although many sets have been opened (and the parts mixed in with those from other sets) - I do also have quite a few sets I haven't opened yet.

I think I'll revise my earlier list. My four most-wanted characters not yet represented at all would be: Beru Lars Deak Windy Camie No, I don't expect these to actually happen; they're just the ones I want.

'Tis nifty, but why not put it in the Licensed Themes subforum? Are you not treating it as an Indy-related creation?

They are - at least some stores, anyway, but they're getting harder to find. My personal experience has been that they've mostly disappeared from stores, more quickly than the three series immediately preceding them have been. I've actually discovered that at least some stores around here still have stock in the back, but for whatever reason aren't putting it out (!). It's almost as though the series got recalled. I've discussed it a little over here in this Series 6 thread.

I've been contemplating a Halloween MOC for a few years now, and I've wanted to put a Pepper's Ghost effect in it, though I don't yet know whether I'll be able to. I must confess to being a little perturbed by this thread - I was specifically thinking about using it for an organ player, albeit not so much specifically because of the Disney attraction - but I guess it's my own fault for taking so long. Ah, well. I do know this illusion has been used in MOCs before, though, including at least a couple previously shown right here at EB, here and here. Hopefully we'll both be fruitful with our own takes on this classic effect. Good luck!

"50% rerun" figures is entirely subjective, and even if a figure is a so-called "rerun" that doesn't automatically mean it can't be great, too. They're not lying unless they say things that are objectively not true - saying the figures are made of wood, for example, or that they're mechanized and move on their own, or that they each have over five hundred pieces - those would be flat-out lies. Saying they're cool and desirable? Not so much. There's a difference between the level of demand required to escalate the prices a set can command on the secondary market, and the level of demand required to make a product sell well enough to keep it viable for TLG to continue mass-producing. It so happens TLG does tend to favor erring on the side of underproducing rather than overproducing, ensuring nearly everything they make these days will sell reasonably quickly, but most manufacturers of all sorts of things tend to recycle their product lines to keep things fresh. Unfortunately that does include discontinuing older products. I honestly wish it were otherwise, myself - I'd dearly love to have enough time to be able to get all the sets they make before they're gone - but I do understand why they discontinue things. Anyway, discontinuing older products is totally different from deliberately launching new ones that they genuinely expect to fail, or even wish to fail. Why would they do such a thing? It just doesn't make any sense. The very reason they had the "older CMF's that barely lasted any time at all" is because they were being cautious; they didn't really know until after they launched the Minifigures line just how well it was going to do. When they sold out in a flash, they knew they had a hit and that's why they ramped up production from Series 3 onward. It was wiser for them to do that than to massively produce Series 1 and 2 before they saw how they were going to do, and risk being stuck with huge inventories of unpopular product. ________________________ Back to the main discussion (i.e., what the series will have): Heh - I don't think this is the case, but wouldn't it be amusing if the "trader" were a LEGO Minifigures collector? It could come with 1x1 tiles printed to represent Minifigures packaging. I've previously expressed a desire for a LEGO Store employee, who might come with such tiles, but an official minifigure representation of an actual FOL would be fun, too. Again, not that I think that's what it actually is (I don't), but still...

Thanks for posting those! Which items were given on which days, and what did one need to do to get each of them?

Ok, my take on the whole list (with the assumption of legitimacy, given GRogall's excellent record for accuracy): Perhaps I'm just a more embracing / forgiving fan than most others here, but there's not one figure on this list that I don't like, going from just these names. Some of them are too vague to really know what they're about, though, of course - "trader"? Would that be a merchant from the age of sail? A contemporary stock trader? A baseball card collector? It could be all sorts of things. The skier and diver seem to be drawing a lot of negativity here, for being repeats of rather ordinary roles, but the first iterations of both of those were at least nicely done figures, and for all the roles that have been repeated so far (skateboarder, surfer, snowboarder, cowboy, etc.), the later takes have matched or even surpassed the earlier ones, while also being different enough to warrant having both. The skier especially is one that many people had liked the first time around, but whose apparent uniqueness (having a number, etc.) made it less than ideal for army building, while at the same time obviously being part of some larger group of skiers (a group of competitors in some sporting event), and thus an obvious candidate for revisiting. I very much would like not just one but multiple additional skiers in future waves, each one different. Though I'm American myself, I hope the football player is a player of the more international variety of football (i.e., soccer). Since we've already gotten a player from one team in Series 4, I'd love to be able to put together another team for them to play against (similarly, I'm hoping for more hockey and baseball players in the future). Another cheerleader is also great for this reason, even if so far we don't have many actual players of sports that usually have cheerleaders (from what I understand, anyway). I also don't mind getting another vampire at all, so long as it's sufficiently different from the previous (and current) ones. More's always the merrier, and if this one really is a female vampire, excellent. I got multiples of the Series 2 vampires with the idea of using the heads and capes along with other hair, torsos, etc. to create a variety of vampires, including both male and female. I'm already pleased that there's currently a theme that includes both, and if we get one more vampire in this line, I won't mind at all. The ones that really excite me, though, are the Bavarian boy, cowgirl, Thespis, robot, alien, fairy, conquistador and Santa Claus. I'd be very happy to get all those.

That doesn't make the remotest bit of sense. First of all, how are they lying? Secondly, why would they try to get the series shut down?

What's the matter with the classic beard? Sure, there are plenty of other good ones now (and I do agree the one introduced in Minifigures for the Fisherman and reused for the Lawn Gnome is the best, most suitable beard TLG's ever made for a classic, archetypal Santa Claus), but that's not a bad beard at all.

What, seriously? Pfft. There's no way an official set containing just those three minifigures alone would have such a low price, never mind with all the other elements (and that includes their accessories). Heck, those three figures in their original Minifigures releases would have a combined MSRP of $8.97; in that form they'd also have the 3x4 bases (and the packaging, with the little leaflet-posters), but this has all those other bricks instead. Also, this comes with the three minifigures preassembled. Granted, that's not necessarily how we like our sets to come, but it is a legitimate reason this carries a higher price, as it's almost certainly costlier for TLG to put the figures together and pack them into the form-fitted plastic blister than it would be to just dump their loose parts into the packaging alongside the other elements (not to mention there are probably a few AFOLs who, lacking the eensy fingers of TLG's usual target demographic, might be willing to pay an additional premium as a convenience fee for not having to put on the Hula Girl's skirt themselves ).

And I agree. I do see why people are upset - the actual house concepts are very, very similar - but the models are still very different. Both models are essentially just different takes on a single "haunted house" archetype; the actual contruction details differ greatly in most respects, and in the ones where they're the same it appears to be the logical result of both designers seeking the most expedient, efficient designs for certain construction details given the sorts of parts available in the LEGO palette. I think it's a shame the rollout of this magnificent set has been marred by what I see as a needless controversy. Of course there can never be definitive proof TLG's designer didn't copy the other, but I see ample room for reasonable doubt, and I believe him. Heck, the construction details are different enough that I'd believe he didn't copy the specific construction design even if he said he had seen the NILTC model and tried to recreate the general look of the building using his own design. With that out of the way... wow, what a terrific set! I'm a little ashamed my first post in this thread was about a completely off-topic Friends cancellation, when what I really want to talk about is this fantastic Haunted House. So many great details! I just wish I could afford it - I've wanted many, many sets in this price range (or higher!), but have never been able to buy one yet. As it happens, I've been planning a spooky, Halloween-themed haunted mansion / castle MOC for a few years now (!), and am hoping to finally get it done in time for Halloween this year. I'd dearly love to be able to get this set and incorporate some of the elements and perhaps a few design details from it into my own creation. We'll see...

What? Sorry, I know it's OT, but since it came up here, when did this happen? Has it been verified?

Ooooh, swanky! I concur with Legobrandon. Blast it, I really want these now, and I'm not even a sports fan! Curse LEGO, making me shell out for sports figures! I've already put together whole teams of the baseball, soccer/football and hockey players from Series 3 and 4, and I'm going to want these as well. I hope it'll be possible to get them in the US through Amazon or something... These are supposed to go on sale on July 1, correct?

We haven't? I'm pretty sure I have. Maybe the rest of you have seen only bits and pieces of the movies. But that said, this is a nifty contest. I doubt I'll even get my bricks sufficiently organized to facilitate significant free building in time for this, but I hope to try to enter anyway. Good luck to everyone!