Blondie-Wan

AWESOME! An official LEGO Defender arcade cabinet!

Well... not exactly. There are four "missing" sets in the range of set numbers so far (or rather, there are thirty if you include the twenty-six between the Starter Packs and the Back to the Future Level Pack), but they'll undoubtedly be used for other packs in later waves. These cover the first five waves, and all indications are that this is everything from those first five - these are all the packs that'll be released up through May of next year. But there will undoubtedly be a Wave 6, and a Wave 7, and so on; presumably those will include packs with the missing set numbers in this range, as well as lots outside of it (i.e., expanding the overall range). We can be sure there will eventually be lots more characters than the 44 listed here; it's even entirely possible they'll eventually add entire franchises / themes beyond the 14 here.

Ah, thanks for the info (and blast it, I only just realized I said "Isis" when I meant "Iris").

Hey, you and me both. I still hope it happens someday, even if we obviously have to wait a while before it's even a possibility.

It's an expected part of the LEGO Ideas process that project creators promote their own creations, using social media and so on. This accounts for most of the success of the later Golden Girls project - the one that got so many votes in a hurry was featured on lots of news outlets and so on. I agree it's unfortunate the lion's share of the attention didn't go to the earlier project since they were so similar, but FWIW that other project got a lot more attention because of the more successful one, and its creator apparently doesn't consider the second project to have ripped him / her off. I have to strenuously disagree about LDD. Many people with great ideas may not have huge parts inventories to build with; LDD opens up the opportunity to submit projects to those with great ideas and/or building skills, but not necessarily deep pockets. It levels the playing field. Moreover, it also greatly expands the total breadth of projects that are possible, since they needn't depend upon whether one of more given elements have ever been molded in a particular color or printed with a particular design - they can use any part in any color and with any decoration imaginable, just so long as the actual mold is a real one. Barring LDD submissions would hinder the whole enterprise.

Oh, no, there are. The Doctor is obviously new, for starters - possibly not unique to the Dimensions pack, true, but still a new figure either way. Stay-Puft is totally new, of course, and Peter Venkman is s new version, as are Doc Brown, Unikitty, and probably others I'm forgetting at the moment. _____________ So... from that checklist, we now know the Midway Arcade pack with the gamer is a Level Pack, not a Fun Pack as I had imagined. Good to know! There's obviously going to be a ton of gameplay material added to this game over time (aside from the characters), given that we have six new levels being added in just the first eight months after launch. The current list of all known packs, color-coded for easy distinction of Starter, Level, Team and Fun Packs: 71170 - Starter Pack: PS3 (Wyldstyle, Gandalf & Batman) 71171 - Starter Pack: PS4 (Wyldstyle, Gandalf & Batman) 71172 - Starter Pack: XBox One (Wyldstyle, Gandalf & Batman) 71173 - Starter Pack: XBox 360 (Wyldstyle, Gandalf & Batman) 71174 - Starter Pack: Wii U (Wyldstyle, Gandalf & Batman) 71201 - Level Pack: Back to the Future (Marty McFly) 71202 - Level Pack: The Simpsons (Homer Simpson) 71203 - Level Pack: Portal 2 (Chell) 71204 - Level Pack: Doctor Who (the Doctor) 71205 - Team Pack: Jurassic World (Owen Grady & ACU Trooper) 71206 - Team Pack: Scooby-Doo! (Scooby-Doo & Shaggy) 71207 - Team Pack: NinjaGo (Cole & Kai) 71208 - ? 71209 - Fun Pack: DC Comics (Wonder Woman) 71210 - Fun Pack: DC Comics (Cyborg) 71211 - Fun Pack: The Simpsons (Bart Simpson) 71212 - Fun Pack: The LEGO Movie (Emmet Brickowski) 71213 - Fun Pack: The LEGO Movie (Bad Cop) 71214 - Fun Pack: The LEGO Movie (Benny) 71215 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Jay) 71216 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Nya) 71217 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Zane) 71218 - Fun Pack: The Lord of the Rings (Gollum) 71219 - Fun Pack: The Lord of the Rings (Legolas) 71220 - Fun Pack: The Lord of the Rings (Gimli) 71221 - Fun Pack: The Wizard of Oz (Wicked Witch) 71222 - Fun Pack: Legends of Chima (Laval) 71223 - Fun Pack: Legends of Chima (Cragger) 71224 - ? 71225 - ? 71226 - ? 71227 - Fun Pack: The Simpsons (Krusty the Clown) 71228 - Level Pack: Ghostbusters (Peter Venkman) 71229 - Team Pack: DC Comics (The Joker & Harley Quinn) 71230 - Fun Pack: Back to the Future (Doc Brown) 71231 - Fun Pack: The LEGO Movie (Unikitty) 71232 - Fun Pack: Legends of Chima (Eris) 71233 - Fun Pack: Ghostbusters (Mr. Stay Puft) 71234 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Sensei Wu) 71235 - Level Pack: Midway Arcade (gamer) 71236 - Fun Pack: DC Comics (Superman) 71237 - Fun Pack: DC Comics (Aquaman) 71238 - Fun Pack: Doctor Who (Cyberman) 71239 - Fun Pack: NinjaGo (Lloyd) 71240 - Fun Pack: DC Comics (Bane) 71241 - Fun Pack: Ghostbusters (Slimer) Still plenty of gaps in the numbering!

Well, we are indeed getting at least an eensy bit of The Wizard of Oz, though possibly very little. Star Trek was recently done by Hasbro, which did KRE-O sets in conjunction with the last two movies (the quasi-reboot ones by J. J. Abrams, though the sets appeared to draw upon a little more than just the movie storylines), and the rights have now gone to Mega Bloks (which incidentally already did a single Star Trek set back in the early / mid 2000s).

If you're asking me, my answer is "sure, I guess". But I don't pretend to be some kind of authority or anything.

I think they stopped making the LEGO-branded ones for a while, and recently started again. A couple weeks ago I was in a local Walmart - the same store in which, a few months ago, I bought the last of these cases I'd seen anywhere (and where they were on clearance) - and they had a whole new endcap of them that they didn't have before, back up to full price, and most tellingly, they appeared to have the same bright green baseplates that have replaced the old "regular" green ones. They had over 70 of them. I just posted about this elsewhere, but because it's relevant to this tangent in this thread I'll go ahead and mention it here, too: I just went ahead and picked up a couple of those cases. They're $9.97, and include a baseplate as before - which makes the cases a better deal than they used to be, since TLG recently upped the price of 32 x 32 baseplates from $4.99 to $7.99 (in addition to changing the color selection). Most interestingly, the baseplates in these turn out to still be the "old" green (that is, not the bright green that TLG now offers its large green baseplates in on their own). I think I'll have to get more of these cases - not just for storage, but now also for large baseplates in "regular" green that I can no longer get on their own from TLG.

I just bought a couple of the LEGO-licensed "project cases" by Iris - the $10 cases that come with a 32 x 32 baseplate - at Walmart. This is recent stock - this same store clearanced those same cases at $5 and sold out of them last year, and then a few months ago it got a bunch of new stock, back up to the old price of $10 (well... $9.97). Interestingly, not only are these cases still the same price they've been at the last few years, but the included baseplate is still the old green one, not the bright green one now being sold for $8 on its own. You guys missing the original green baseplates might want to look for these things, especially if you need more brick storage anyway.

Today I finally got around to opening up the Plano cases and cardboard boxes this stuff was in, in order to check it out, see what I have, and start cleaning it. It appears to be not just mostly but entirely vintage Castle and Space. Not all the instructions are there, and I don't know yet if all the pieces are either, but it appears my friend left me: 6030 Catapult 6073 Knight's Castle (x2!) 6080 King's Castle (!) 6822 Space Shuttle 6823 Surface Transport 6927 All-Terrain Vehicle (no instructions, so not sure - guessing based on parts) 6929 Starfleet Voyager (x2!) ... and one to three additional LEGOLAND Space sets, going by the minifigures present. I'll figure it out. There's also an ancient note that looks like a LEGO shopping list someone gave someone back in the day, complete with set numbers, notes about set features, advisories about part selection preferences, and names of local toy stores where they could be found, with price info; I guess my friend must have made it for a friend or family member to use when shopping for him. The other side is an apparently unrelated note concerning someone he was apparently babysitting (he'd have been in his early to mid 20s at the time he got these sets - an early AFOL!). I feel incredibly privileged to have been granted this little peek into his life back then. I still miss him terribly. I do feel very fortunate to have this old LEGO of his, though the way I got it has kept me from getting as excited about it as I otherwise would. But I'm still very much looking forward to figuring out just exactly what I've got, putting these old sets together, and ultimately merging it all into my own existing collection. First, though, I'll take a bit of time to clean the parts up a bit. ____________________________ Also today, I picked up a couple of the LEGO-licensed Isis project cases (with baseplates in green - and not the bright green ones sold individually now!), plus a clearanced copy of 70817 Batman & Super Angry Kitty Attack. I now need just three more sets from The LEGO Movie, aside from super-rare promos and the upcoming LEGO Dimensions stuff, though one of them is Metalbeard's Sea Cow. Will I make it to (more or less) completion? We'll see; let's hope...

I love that people are keeping this game alive in their hearts. I think it was wonderful, and I dearly wish it had gone on longer. I got the official astronaut minifigure when I preordered the game, and then they started giving away the rocket instead for people who got it later. However, they also sold the rocket polybag in at least some of the stores, and I bought two on a trip to the Dallas / Fort Worth area in November of 2010; I now wish I'd gotten a few more. A bit later I saw them giving out the astronaut polybags with purchases of a certain size (that I wasn't able to make at the time, alas) at the Downtown Disney LEGO Store in Orlando. Though I wasn't able to get any more of them in the original polybags, though, they also had the astronaut elements in the Build-a-Minifigure kiosk, so I was able to get a couple more that way (though again, I wish I'd gotten a lot more).

I, too, would love to see Star Trek (albeit from the "prime" universe, please, not the 2009 quasi-reboot and its sequels, though I'm afraid they're exactly what thd focus would be on if LEGO actually were doing this franchise). I also would like to see them do The Muppets, and I actually think they'd be a good fit if they could come up with good representations of the characters. I also would love to see a City Zoo subtheme. For existing themes I want more from, I'll jump in and note I wouldn't mind seeing more Middle-Earth stuff. The ones I'd really like most, though, are more "Classic" Space, and more Indiana Jones. The "current monkeys" seem not to be monkeys at all, but apes.

Mine mostly stand on their display base tiles on top of baseplates in those LEGO-licensed project cases from Isis. I have several such cases, each holding one or two series. I just picked up the Minifigures Character Encyclopedia yesterday, incidentally, so I finally have the Toy Soldier. I wish they'd used some other character for the book and given us the Toy Soldier in a regular series, since it's the kind of figure many might want to army-build, but it's not going to happen for many people if they have to buy a $19 book to get a single one.

Possibly, though it doesn't fit the way I've always understood "rerelease" to be used. This is a set that has been available continuously, whereas "rerelease" generally refers to a set from years earlier that was discontinued, and for which the same build was reissued but with a new set number.

I know I should have responded to this earlier, but... It is true, Wodanis. There are plenty of project concepts that will get dismissed right out of the gate. If you dong believe me, just try submitting something based on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Or any R-rated horror movie. Or a church or mosque. Or a project made up entirely of minifigures. The fact they do accept some other submissions which realistically have very little chance of being approved doesn't change the fact that they do have things they just won't accept.

You know, going back to that photo from earlier... Hmmm. They're painted differently. And it's not just a matter of one being from earlier in the production process than the other; each one has paint somewhere that the other doesn't. Since it seems unlikely LEGO would mix up the order it gave its parts paint applications in (i.e., some copies of a piece going to paint station A to get green and then to B to get red, while other copies of the same piece go to B first and then A), this image suggests to me that there are going to be at least two different versions (with different deco) of the sonic screwdriver element. Hmmmm. Perhaps one is for the Ideas set and one for the LEGO Dimensions Level Pack? Or perhaps one of them is for something else still, that we don't yet know about...

I felt I should follow up on this thread to note I realized yesterday it did indeed go on clearance here in the US - I'm not sure when, though it has to have been fairly recently - and the US Shop at Home has subsequently sold out. It's still in at least some of the physical brick and mortar stores, though; anyone who wants it should get it soon.

I got Ezra's Speeder Bike yesterday, and with it the latest LEGO Star Wars poster.

We don't know exactly what their plans are like beyond the first five waves, but FWIW those first five are apparently all due two months apart - September, November, January, March, May.

The $20 isn't just for 83 additional pieces; it's for 83 additional pieces (including an additional minifigure), new prints on some of the pieces that were stickered before, and six years' worth of inflation since 2009. That still might not warrant $20, but I think it covers at least some of it, and it's hard to argue the set isn't really worth it (if anything, the original 10199 might have been kind of bargain-priced for what one got in it).

Aw, I really like the original T-16 (I bought three). And Final Duel II, for which I eventually picked up about two dozen (yay clearances!). And the Technic R2, which in fairness is much more impressive if you take his functionality into account.

As Venkefedo already explained the difference between the uniforms, I'll just go ahead and note I don't think the new Snowspeeder pilot design actually looks either worse or better, to me; it just looks... different. That's not bad, except that even the chest box looks different, when it shouldn't, and that's annoying. Beyond that, I'm terribly frustrated with the constant "updates" to perfectly good minifigures. I don't mind too much with unique characters in their personal outfits, but it's pretty vexing when trying to army-build any sort of uniformed troops, and the Rebel pilot flightsuits are a perfect example. I didn't entirely mind when the original design from 1999 was updated in 2010; the old design really was in need of it, what with no backprinting and all. But I have to say I very much liked the new one introduced in 2010 (ironically in a Hoth Rebels battle pack, where it represented Zev in his Snowspeeder flightsuits rather than an a Starfighter one), and I'd have been fine if it had stuck around. In fact I thought it was going to, so after slowly amassing 20+ of the old ones over the first decade of the theme, I started over again and got about as many of the new ones in just a few years, and resigned myself to repurposing the old ones. Then, however, they not only finally introduced differentiation between Snowspeeder and other pilots, which would've been fine on its own, but also redid the "regular", non-Snowspeeder flightsuit again, just a few short years after the previous update. Do I go ahead and invest in a bunch of new X-wing pilots, starting from scratch again, right when I'd gotten to the point of finally having as many as before? Or do I ignore the new one and just stick with the older ones? If the former, I have to spend a bunch more money just to get to where I already was (twice!). Ugh. If the latter, then I'll have a tough time expanding my forces beyond where they're already at, plus I have to live with having greater differences between the new Snowspeeder pilot legs, which are nicely printed, and the (second) Starfighter pilot legs, which aren't (I do find I do want to at least use the new speeder pilots, for the different jacket print as well as the white "gloved" hands, but the incongruities between them and the previous generation of fighter pilots annoy me). I'm actually thinking of using new torsos for speeder pilots and the previous (second gen) torsos for X-wing / Y-wing pilots, and downgrading the Snowspeeder pilot minifigures slightly by swapping out their printed legs for the old unprinted ones from my original X-wing / Y-wing pilots, so they'll better go with the second-gen torsos I'll use for my "active" X-wing / Y-wing pilot minifigures (and at least I'd be getting use out of those original minifigures again). I also really hate the unnecessary ongoing revisions to the stormtroopers. I'm fine with updates to a point, but beyond that point they seem to have the opposite effect of the one intended - i.e., they make me less interested in buying new sets, since I feel somewhat less able to use the new minifigures (at least for any kind of uniformed troops) with my old ones.

There's more to it than simply "which set is most in demand?". Cafe Corner, as a larger and more expensive set, would tie up more of their production capacity. And unlike with the Winter Toy Shop, which did get some slight additions and updates but for which the main build is structurally the same, Cafe Corner would require drastic redesigning, since certain window elements used for it were retired around the same time the set was, and the molds are no longer used, and the nearest equivalent parts have different proportions. The whole top portion would have to be redesigned to accommodate whatever windows they used in a "reissue" instead of the originals. In other words, they would have to put more new design work into it and allocate more production resources toward it than they did with the new Winter Toy Shop, and they'd still get a building that looked less like the original Cafe Corner than the new Winter Toy Shop looks like the old one. The demand for the old CC may have risen more than that for the old WTS, but do you think the difference is enough to offset all those other considerations, plus the fact it would be a more expensive set anyway? I don't want any personal trouble with you, either, and I regret that so many of our recent discussions have put us at odds with one another, but I trust we can disagree civilly, and enjoy one another's contributions to this passion we both share even when we're disagreeing. FWIW, I've been pretty forthcoming about acknowledging it when I do turn out to be wrong. If you'll look over my recent post history, you'll note that I've mentioned multiple times that I've been wrong about various things, like TLG doing a theme around The Simpsons or a set around The Big Bang Theory; I do try to own up to it if I err. I'm just basing my statements on the best information available to me, like anyone else, but I've never pretended to work for TLG or represent them. I certainly hope to get along well with you, and everyone else here - but especially you, actually, since I see you're in Georgia, which makes it at least slightly likelier I'll meet you at some LEGO event or a store or something than most others here. Are you in the Atlanta area, by chance? I know a few others here are, though I haven't yet met any EBers in person, something I hope to rectify eventually. I moved to Stone Mountain last year, and I know at least a couple others here do some of their LEGO shopping at the same stores I do...

Incidentally, most of the review images aren't showing up for me. Is this the case for everyone, or is it just me?