Blondie-Wan

We certainly do, and I think TLG knows it, too; in fact, I'd bet they've already had internal discussions about the opportunity these particular licensed themes present to have more female characters. Even though these comics universes have heavy male skews like most of the other source material for licensed themes (as well as most of TLG's homegrown themes, it must be said), both universes are so huge and abundant with characters, and have plenty of female characters throughout (both super- and non-super-). We do already know of several from DC: Wonder Woman Catwoman Harley Quinn Poison Ivy ... and one from Marvel: Black Widow I also suspect there will be more, from both sides of the Marvel/DC publishing divide, as well both sides of the heroine/villainess divide. In particular, if the X-Men are going to be one of the initial three major areas of focus for the Marvel line (as the press release notes), I can't help but imagine we'll get a few more Marvel women, since the X-Men have quite a few female members.

It's quite lovely! I'm actually a little irked, simply because I was already thinking of doing something with the Daily Planet building myself for the LEGO Superheroes contest, but this is an attractive piece of work. I do hope you find a way to do it in real bricks.

It's not a real set. pedro, the person who posted it, created this for a contest.

I don't know; I'm just taking note of what it says in the rules. TLG does offer videogames for around $20 from time to time, and a shirt for somewhere from $5 to $15 sounds about right, so that leaves us with perhaps $25 or less for the set. There are plenty of inexpensive licensed sets, of course - even Star Wars has had sets released for as little as $3.99 US (mostly just minis, of course, but still), and there are plenty of sets from various licensed themes that run for around $10 to $15 - Ambush in Cairo, Indiana Jones Motorcycle Chase, Jungle Duel, Army Men on Patrol, Mater's Spy Zone, Tokyo Pit Stop, World Grand Prix Racing Rivalry, Freeing Dobby, The Forbidden Forest, Desert Attack, Captain's Cabin, and all those Star Wars battlepacks, to name several from the past few years. I therefore don't have any trouble imagining the line containing a small set for something under $20 (in fact, I expect it, since they nearly always try to hit a variety of price points, including low ones, with the launch wave of a new theme); I'm just surprised that "The Batcave" is apparently such a small set. Perhaps the thinking is that since they already did a large Batcave previously when they were just doing Batman sets, they don't want it to be the big set in this new wave now that they're doing the whole DC universe and not just the Bat-specific portions thereof. Maybe they'll do another large Batcave later. Maybe the big set in this wave will be the JLA headquarters (as MightyMegs suggests), or the Fortress of Solitude, or a lair for Lex Luthor, or any of a zillion other possibilities. (I'm going to assume the flagship set - both literally and figuratively - of the first Marvel wave will be the Avengers helicarrier). That sounds plausible to me... I'm sure TLG understands the appeal of Batman and his rogues gallery, and I'd bet they will indeed revisit Arkham Asylum if the line goes on long enough (which I think it very well might). Ooh, you know what I think would be cool? A set for Superman's origin - one with Jor-El and Lara on Krypton, putting little baby Kal-El in the rocketship...

Ahhh, yes, these are wonderful! I was fortunate enough to get four of these, and I've often thought of doing a quasi-"review" of them for these forums, just to discuss what things were in them. I remember hearing of all kinds of crazy things in them, some quite useful, especially before Pick-A-Brick had as much stuff in it as it does now for example, I remember reading about one person getting twelve of the pizza-printed 2x2 round tiles. There are all kinds of neat things that were in the bonus boxes strapped to the tubs - printed elements, odd pieces, ordinary bricks in rare colors... you name it. These tubs were really something special - there was no telling what would be in the boxes, but there was bound to be something useful that would be hard to get otherwise, and that was in addition to these tubs simply being good deals (in that the price-per-piece ratio was just about the best of any current "set" ever, less than a cent and a half per piece). Of course, most of the overall contents (everything packed in the tub itself) would be extremely basic bricks of the sort you get in any one of those bulk tubs, but even so... man, I wish I could go back and get a bunch more of these.

On a slight tangent, occasionally I've asked a nice LEGO Store employee about whether they might have any additional minifigure elements aside from the ones I'm seeing in the Build-A-Minifigure kiosk, and they've brought out boxes of parts for me to paw through. From what I've seen, these boxes of minifigure elements used for the BAM kiosks appear similar (or even identical - I've never seen a minifigure parts box and a PAB element box side-by-side before, so I don't know for sure) to these K boxes used for the Pick-A-Brick walls. Has anyone ever tried to buy a K box (or the BAM equivalent) of minifigure parts? That could be interesting, especially since the boxes of BAM elements I've seen will each typically contain parts of one of the five general types of MF element (head, torso, legs, hair/headgear, accessory), but otherwise contain a random mix (a box full of some colossal number of heads, for example, with dozens or even hundreds of different faces, each in varying quantities). I have to assume it would cost more than $70 if they would let one do it at all (and that's a big "if" to begin with, surely), but I can't help being at least a bit curious...

I just noticed the official rules to the contest on the LEGO Superheroes page appear to give a slight hint as to what we can expect next year, at least in terms of the size / cost of the overall lineup, as well as of one particular set. As several have already pointed out, all three of the top prizes include "the complete 2012 LEGO Super Heroes: DC Universe collection," and the fourth prize includes "the LEGO Super Heroes: DC Universe Batcave set," which obviously tells us that we're getting multiple sets and that one of them will depict the Batcave. Beyond that, though, if you click on "Read More" for the rules, it gives the estimated retail values of the prizes, from which we learn the following: Second prize - The complete 2012 LEGO Super Heroes: DC Universe collection: $250.00 Third prize - The LEGO Super Heroes: DC Universe Batcave set, LEGO Batman video game for the platform of your choice, and a Batman T-shirt: $50.00 That suggests the 2012 DC Universe lineup is more substantial than, say, the entire Prince of Persia lineup, but less so than the combined eight retail sets so far for Pirates of the Caribbean - roughly comparable to the first year of Indiana Jones, minus the exclusives (Peril in Peru and the Brickmaster set). The bigger surprise, I think, is that the Batcave set apparently won't be a huge set, the "flagship" set for its year the way the previous one was, but instead a small set, surely no more than $20 (since one would presume the videogame and t-shirt combined would be at least $30). Also, the overall size of the lineup of sets might be a little smaller than suggested, if "the complete 2012 LEGO Super Heroes: DC Universe collection" referred to here includes things like the inevitable keychains, magnet sets, etc. that will surely accompany the line, instead of being made up purely of regular sets. But we'll find out for sure with time...

Well, it does have eleven years' worth of inflation working against its price; I haven't bothered to look up inflation figures, but off the top of my head I'm inclined to guess $140 in 2011 isn't all that much worse than $100 in 2000. As far as being "fairly ugly and odd-looking" goes, have you seen the 7190? This one is much, much better than that one, and with a higher piece count, to boot (almost twice as many, in fact).

All very nice! That said, I'm getting a bit frustrated by the various updates to uniform components.

I'm on the fence about Iron Man. I certainly don't find the helmet as objectionable as many here do, though at the same time I don't really find it necessary. Iron Man's helmet isn't really all that different in size and shape from head of its wearer (Tony Stark), and TLG has frequently printed various details on standard minifigure heads; I think they could have gotten away with just using a regular minifigure head for Iron Man, and perhaps including an "extra" head printed with Tony's face to indicate when he had the mask part flipped up. At the same time, this helmet bothers me less than, say, the new Mandalorian helmet in the Star Wars line, which lots of people seem to have embraced in the same way they appear not to have done with this Iron Man helmet. I do appreciate that at least now the helmet turns (i.e., it and the backpack are no longer a single piece), but I liked the "LEGO-y" look of the old, and find it more in proportion with the rest of the minifigure (as well as other minifigure helmets and other headgear). But I think I'll adjust to the new one, and eventually move to using that helmet as my standard for Boba Fett. I do remember that when Batman was first launched a lot of people thought the cowl was too big, but I guess people adjusted. I seem to recall TLG people specifically being asked about it and responding that they had to make it that size in order to make it thick enough to meet their standards (apparently they're still mindful of the fragility of the chins on the old classic helmets that led to them discontinuing that element entirely). Anyway... I think we'll survive. While at this scale Iron Man's helmet does look substantially larger, in terms of absolute size it's not really much larger than other minifigure heads and helmets, and probably won't have any effect on people's building. Of course, it's also possible that if the line goes on we'll eventually get other versions anyway - a smaller external helmet, perhaps, or even just a printed standard minifigure head - the same way other characters and uniforms and whatnot from other licensed themes have gotten redesigned over the years (including not only too many Star Wars and Harry Potter characters to list here, but even things over relatively brief spans like the redesigned face print for Marion Ravenwood from Indiana Jones, or going from a non-printed helmet to a printed one for the Green Goblin in the original, movie-based Spider-Man line).

The '60s TV/movie Batman stuff would be neat to have, but I believe it's probably part of the tiny bit of the DC-related stuff that the license doesn't cover, since IIRC Warner doesn't own the rights to those productions with Adam West (I think Fox does). Of course, it still is simply based upon the Batman comics and whatnot that existed at that time, so it might be possible for TLG to do "retro" sets based on older Batman comics that therefore have a lot in common with the Adam West show and movie, but I think a few things very specific to the show (like that show's specific interpretation of the Batmobile, for example) will probably have to be MOCs.

That part got a redesign that omits the little "stems" a couple years ago. It was recently discussed here. As far as I know, the new version is completely replacing the older one, presumably because they no longer intend to make use of those little pins on the side (I believe in some older sets they were used for attaching flames to things like the inside of dragon mouths for a fire-breathing effect).

I think it's also worth pointing out not all pieces are equal; one wouldn't expect to pay the same for five 1x1 round plates as for five 48x48 baseplates, for example. What is the average piece size of each of these sets? I think the piece count is certainly a valid criteria by which to compare prices, but what about the average size of those pieces? Has anyone thought about comparing the weight of the sets to measure the overall quantity of material? What about prints and complex parts (light bricks, for example)?

The Freeze buggy and Penguin sub don't seem that unusual to me; superhero comics are replete with odd little vehicles and gadgets created and used by the more well-heeled superheroes and supervillains. What was so odd about the Penguin's sub? Heck, even without going to the original comics at all and looking just at movie incarnations, both the very different Burgess Meredith and Danny DeVito Penguins from the '60s and '90s movies had their own distinctive, funky craft. There seem to be so many of these sorts of things that honestly, TLG can get away with just flat-out inventing stuff if they so choose. But beyond that, there are plenty of notable specific locales and vehicles associated with these various characters on both sides of the license divide; the only issue I see is that so many of them might make for huge sets, requiring some invention to fill out the lower price points. Where'd you hear about certain Indy sets not performing well? I was under the impression the whole line in general did quite well...

Not the way it's traditionally defined outside EB, but I think given the somewhat arbitrary theme distinctions used here, it could be considered one - it apparently is still "city/town/regular, day-to-day life"-type stuff, after all. The only difference between it and the other stuff in City is apparently the scale - but that doesn't stop people from putting microscale spaceships and whatnot in the Sci-Fi forum, for example, or talking about the numerous non-minifigure-scale Star Wars sets (minis, "midi-scale," large Technic figures, large sculptural character busts, etc.) in the Star Wars forum, so...

Well, as Joebot just observed, the known initial DC lineup consists largely of Batman's rogues gallery. I suspect they may be aware of the particular popularity of Batman and may wish to capitalize on it (essentially revisiting their entire earlier Batman-specific theme), but I think it's likely several sets in both the Marvel and DC lineups will have additional characters deemed necessary to flesh out the sets. For example, some of the Avengers sets will surely be based upon specific scenes from the upcoming movie, and those will undoubtedly have additional background people in them here and there (much like how some of the sets TLG did for the first two Spider-Man movies several years ago would contain the occasional paramedic, NYPD officer, taxi driver, etc.). At any rate, each of these universes is both immense and popular, so it's conceiveable - not certain, obviously, but within the realm of possibility - that this/these theme(s) could eventually become as big as LEGO Star Wars. Seriously, it could go on for years and years, with the focus for each universe shifting every couple of years from one or two superhero "families" to one or two others, the way Star Wars goes through cycles with sets focusing on whatever's in the most recent movie, and/or whatever older, classic installment is currently marking some noteable anniversary. Next year, for example, we're getting Marvel sets focusing on three areas - the Avengers (tying in specifically with the movie), X-Men, and Spider-Man. Perhaps after a year or two of the latter two sub-sub-themes they might start doing sets around the Fantastic Four or the Secret Wars or whatever. Perhaps there'll be some special promotional thing every now and again or Comic-Con exclusive or whatnot that focuses on some niche like Squirrel Girl or Howard the Duck. No guarantees, obviously; they might drop the whole superheroes thing within a couple years. However, if there's anything that has even the slightest potential to be a LEGO theme as huge and popular long-lived as Star Wars (besides Star Wars itself, obviously), it would surely be one or the other of these comics universes, or the both of them combined. And if they did indeed wind up doing a hundred or more sets over a decade or more, then I think we'd eventually get all kinds of characters like Willy Lumpkin and Jimmy Olsen.

I don't get some of the complaints about the features (particularly the tauntaun gate and the foliage); I think the added play value (and yes, remember this thing is a kid's toy, after all) does increase the appeal of the set. That said, I do agree the overall "look" just isn't cohesive - it's a broken-up bunch of greys and whites, and truth be told it's kind of ugly. This speaks to a personal view I have regarding aesthetics of LEGO Star Wars models that differs a bit from a lot of people here, actually - even though it may be more technically accurate, I think models that are mostly just a bunch of grey are pretty boring-looking, at least in LEGO (even when the actual item doesn't look boring in the same color scheme). I'm therefore very much in favor of being a little more adventurous with colors in my SW models, in ways I know others here aren't (frankly, it's one reason I'm leery of posting images of MOCs in this one forum, even though SW is a primary LEGO obsession for me). Anyway, normally I find the color schemes in official TLG SW designs more appealing than those in most AFOL SW MOCs - but here they've managed to make it even less appealing, I think. That said, this is still worth the price just as a pack of parts and minifigures, and I'll happily get it as such. It should provide excellent material for incorporating into my own Echo base.

They are indeed a way off, and the Marvel ones undoubtedly look less polished than the DC ones because they're farther off - according to the press releases, the first of the new DC sets will launch in January, while the first of the Marvel ones launch in May. The DC minifigures are therefore final, or close to it (and look it), while the Marvel ones are still prototypes (note that not only are the new molds for Hulk and Iron Man still rough-looking, and the Hulk's face unprinted, but so does Thor's hair, probably because it's an existing part but in a new color and they haven't molded any regular production units of that hair element in that color yet, and the decorations on Captain America are just paper decals. Also as noted in the press releases, the Marvel characters from the upcoming movie The Avengers (and the various movies that lead into it) are indeed patterned specifically after their screen incarnations, while the X-Men and Spider-Man characters will reflect their classic comic looks. Wolverine may well come with a reversible head, showing his face masked and unmasked; I pretty much expect it, actually. Also, I think it very likely many characters will be represented by more than one minifigure, showing some of those characters' different "looks," just as we've gotten for Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Sheriff Woody, Spongebob Squarepants, etc., including existing minifigures for Batman and Spider-Man and so on (and even Johnny Thunder, Lord Sinister, etc., for that matter).

I see what you did there. These themes are going to bring about scads of "Avengers assemble!"-type puns, I suspect...

You know, this topic title really shortchanges the magnitude of the announcement, IMO - the news is so, so much bigger than merely resuming an already-existing Batman theme.

Ahh, I thought so!

I've never really gotten how "collectible" has somehow become synonymous with "rare." Something common can still be collected - indeed, it can be collected even more. The fact that something might be plentiful doesn't mean it can't be collectible (I do of course recognize not everyone will agree). In the case of this particular set, I don't know that it actually matters - there's already a limited subset of the entire production run that was made extra-desirable for its exclusivity (the first few thousand copies, with the individually numbered certificate). I think if they wanted to, TLG could do one last production run of this set without ruffling the feathers of the hardcore collectors / speculators (not that I really care about appeasing them anyway, but assuming it's important...) simply by not producing any more copies with those certificates (as would surely be the case if they were to do it again at all). However, I don't think TLG is really interested in reissuing discontinued sets these days, alas. ____________________________________ Of course, it's easy for me to say this, as I don't have one of these yet myself and desperately want it, but have no way to get it. Even if I had the money now, I could never ever be sure one I found on eBay or whatever was a legitimate, non-counterfeit, genuine LEGO 10179. Given that small customs shops like Brickforge and so on exist (that are able to make their own, small production run elements comparable in quality to TLG's own) and that much / most of this set is made up of fairly common elements, what's to prevent some unscrupulous individual from simply forging their own copies of the rarer elements in the set, adding them to bunches of the appropriate genuine LEGO elements, recreating the packaging and selling it all as a genuine TLG 10179? Before the price went up, the fact it simply wouldn't be cost-effective was deterrent enough, but now? I've expressed concerns about this before, and others' responses there were somewhat comforting, but I'm still not sure... ____________________________________ Meanwhile, since 10179 is off-limits to me, my personal LEGO SW collection feels incomplete. Oh, it'd never be complete in the sense of having everything, but this is worse; it's missing one of the more vital, core, essential things. The Millennium Falcon is very close to the heart of Star Wars for me, and it seems that if there's anything I should have a "deluxe" version of, it's that. Not having it kind of kills my ability to enjoy some of the other UCS sets - why should I have a UCS Imperial Shuttle, say, when I don't have the Falcon? The Falcon is the vastly more important vessel in SW, and to me personally, and having a UCS version of the shuttle or the Executor or something like that when I don't have the "ultimate" official LEGO rendition of the Millennium Falcon just feels a little... wrong, somehow. I therefore find myself dreaming that one day - and yes, I know this isn't going to happen, but I can't help but wish for it anyway - there'll be an even better, more definitive version of the ship.

That site is a teaser for the reveal, the date i guess is the start of comic con? so it would be revealed at that date, keeping the licence a suprise. Just my guess! Oh, I'm sure. I'm just wondering about what it means for non-DC superheroes, and dreaming a bit. For that matter, why not dream a lot? Marvel is now part of Disney, with which LEGO already has a good relationship anyway - they do themes based on a number of other Disney properties, including Pixar ones (Toy Story and Cars, obviously). WHAT IF (itself a classic Marvel series )... they did an overall "Superheroes" megatheme as I've suggested, and not only had DC Universe and Marvel universe subthemes, but also did one for The Incredibles?!? Just imagine (a classic TLG tagline )... Marvel, DC and Pixar superheroes, all together, saving little brick cities everywhere... (Ok, I know it's serious pipe dream, pie-in-the-sky territory, but if one's going to dream, why not dream big??? )

Well... wow. This is certainly a dream come true for many here, I'm sure! I'm actually not a huge DC fan myself, but I do have some respect and appreciation for the comics, and I'm looking forward to these sets. Regarding what this means for Marvel... I notice the logo at the bottom of the SDCC promo shown with the article has a small "DC Universe" above "Super Heroes," but the logo on the website just says "LEGO Super Heroes," without "DC Universe." Is it possible they might do both Marvel and DC as something like "subthemes" of one big, overall "supertheme"? Whatever else happens, I, too, missed out on lots of the LEGO Batman stuff, and look forward to getting another crack at that universe in brick form, especially now that it'll officially include stuff beyond Batman.

While I, too, am disappointed that this new theme won't be a new minifigure subtheme a la Paradisa, I'm still curious and awaiting the specifics, and I have to say Aanchir's arguments are extremely well-reasoned. To be honest, I think that's completely preposterous. There's no way they produced a fifteen-year overstock on elements (most of which are still regular bricks, after all, when all is said and done). Note also that sets introduced over the course of the theme's life included new colors (not much grey of any sort in Belville, true, but the reddish-browns very much are) and new elements (for example, I believe the first appearance of the minifigure R2 leg in black in any set was not in the Star Wars theme for which the piece was designed, but in Belville, where it served as part of a TV camera stand in Pop Studio). They continued to design new figures and other elements for years. If you absolutely insist that the theme must have been unsuccessful, a more plausible argument to account for its longevity might be that TLG subsidized the theme, carrying it despite it making a loss specifically in order to pull what girls in that it could. But I think it's very unlikely - a year or two, perhaps, but a decade and a half? No, this theme has to have sold some sets - perhaps not in spectacular numbers, perhaps just at a point where it was hovering close to the break-even point, but it has to have done some business, above and beyond whatever business TLG's inarguable flops did, to have lasted so long. Yes, it's true it never had substantial distribution, but it's not as though Toys 'R' Us isn't a pretty noteworthy retailer all by itself. FWIW, I've seen Belville sets in LEGO's own stores (of course), Toys 'R' Us, and Tuesday Morning (a clearance / remainder chain - which doesn't help support an argument for Belville's popularity, I realize, but at the same time they had Belville they also had Bionicle and other popular stuff; this was in the mid-2000s. I haven't seen any LEGO of any sort there in a few years, though). Well, why don't you ask them? I know they sometimes misjudge markets and so on as does any company (which is why they can sometimes overestimate the market for something like Galidor, say, or underestimate the one for Minifigures), but they are a huge, multibillion-dollar, global company, and they do lots and lots of market research, which most people like ourselves outside the company never get to see. I'm sure you're right that they don't always get perfect results with their research, but I think it's safe to assume they're not just taking wild guesses with no backing whatsoever. Well, sure, if you really see no use for them whatsoever. But they're not sold with that expectation, obviously. The figures are part of a set, just as the minifigures in any minifigure set are part of it, and not included simply to be thrown away. (meyerc13, I hope you don't think I'm picking on you just because I argued with your entire post while ignoring everyone else's; it's just that yours had pretty much everything I wanted to respond to concentrated in one handy, easily-quoted post, and it was easier to just quote your one post than a bunch of different people to make the same points. )