Blondie-Wan

WALL*E will be the next set after this one, so I'd expect pictures for him a few days, weeks or months after we get final pics for this set.

They all look like citizens from City. The characters on the show look like regular people one would see in a city, after all. In fact, most of the torso prints could easily be reused in City sets, albeit with yellow hands instead of fleshtones. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it happen eventually, actually.

We also now know the set number, 21302.

And two more characters to be revealed tomorrow. They have to be Bernadette and Amy.

Huzzah! Ghostbusters officially confirmed, and we now also know each of the micro-builds will have additional official builds that do different things. m. togami didn't propose a miniature version of the time train. The CUUSOO project was for a much larger set. If they had approved m. togami's project and released it with the same build as the micro-build in this pack, everyone who voted for it would be rightfully disappointed and upset, because it's so fundamentally different from what they voted for. Given today's new info, it's possible that's just what will happen - the raptor will have two official alternate builds, and we don't even know whether they'll be dinosaurs, vehicles or other things. This certainly explains why all the accompanying stuff is brick-built, as opposed to including a dedicated raptor figure with Owen, for example, or a flying monkey made from more figure-specific elements for the Wicked Witch of the West. Now I'm curious to see the alternate builds for each thing (and I wonder if any of them have other parts beyond what we've seen in the primary builds?)

Awesomesauce!

The next poster will be available for about a week, toward the end of the month (starting on the 22nd, IIRC), at least in the US.

There were four waves of sets released over a two-year period for Indiana Jones. The initial (launch) wave was all "classic" material (which naturally meant mostly stuff from Raiders of the Lost Ark - three sets from that, plus one small one from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). The second wave was a "new movie release" wave entirely devoted to the new movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, with five retail sets (one of which was a vendor exclusive). The third wave, for winter 2009 (available late 2008), was a refresh wave of just two sets, one from Raiders and the other from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The final wave, from summer 2009, was an appropriately big finish - five sets, making it the largest wave yet (by a very slight margin over the previous year's new movie wave), as well as the most diverse, with at least one set for each movie (and the two least-represented movies getting the most / largest sets). The total breakdown by number and total price of sets per movie (retail-only, so excluding things like a Brickmaster set, convention promos, etc., which were also done; these are listed by release order of the movies): Raiders of the Lost Ark: five sets, $171 USD Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: two sets, $120 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: three sets, $100 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: six sets, $220 Sixteen retail sets in total, with a combined US price of $611, released across 2008 and 2009. On the other hand, Pirates of the Caribbean received nearly all its boxed retail sets in a single huge wave, and then got one additional boxed retail set some months later. The only way in which the theme was presented like the Indiana Jones theme is that the launch was timed to capitalize on the release of the fourth movie in an established franchise for which LEGO hadn't done sets before. The initial wave was huge, much larger than any one Indy wave but smaller than the whole theme, and combined (mostly) sets from the new movie with a few sets from the previous three right off the bat. They then followed that wave with a single set of the Black Pearl - a franchise-central vessel that appears throughout the movies, though the set (with its minifigure complement) specifically reflected the second movie. As with the Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean themes, the current Jurassic World theme is timed to take advantage of the fourth film in a long-extant franchise, but otherwise it mostly differs from those in key ways. For one thing, they actually did have a Jurassic Park theme before, back in the early 2000s - a very small one of just a couple sets, true, and not even as a true theme of its own but rather a subtheme of LEGO Studios, but they did have it. Also, the umbrella title of the overall theme is different ("Jurassic World" rather than "Jurassic Park"). Each of the three themes is being handled totally differently, perhaps partly because of the differing ages of the film franchises - Jurassic Park as a film franchise is roughly a decade younger than Indiana Jones, but a decade older than Pirates of the Caribbean - or perhaps because of the different circumstances around each license (Indiana Jones was another license from their biggest licensing partner Lucasfilm, Jurassic World is the revival of a theme they'd done more than a decade earlier, etc.). In other words, they're approaching Jurassic Park / Jurassic World differently from how they've handled those other themes, so there's just no telling from them what they might do with this one in the future. Anything is possible (and "anything" could turn out to be nothing at all).

Oh, I don't know why I didn't think of it before, but Harry Shearer has Montgomery Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Dr. Hibbert, Jasper, and Scratchy, while Hank Azaria has Comic Book Guy (Jeff Albertson), Professor Frink, Snake Jailbird, and Apu Nahasapeemapetilon.

But this wasn't ever about appearances (as in looks); it's about portrayals. And anyway, it's not like there's anything "official" about this, anyway; I don't think the Guinness people track these particular records (though they might, especially if they stumble across this thread and choose to start because of it), and I'm darn sure the International Organization for Standardization doesn't. We can each count minifigures and actors any darn way we want. And we don't even have to use the same guidelines as each other, so we can all have different lists if we like. I think I'm going to therefore amend my own previously-stated personal rules, so I can count as many things as possible, and therefore I'm going to count the existence of minifigures of, for example, the Joker - any minifigures of the Joker, regardless of what versions they are or aren't or might be based on - towards Mark Hamill, Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, Cesar Romero, and anyone else I feel like counting, including Steve Miller, who sang the totally unrelated 1973 hit "The Joker". So there. :p

I think they might conceivably do an exclusive version of a character, such as an existing character in a unique outfit. Not to give them ideas, but I can think of one for whom it would at least be fitting: they could offer an SDCC-exclusive version of Comic Book Guy attending SDCC himself - like the regular CBG, only printed with a little SDCC lanyard, and perhaps including a bag or backpack for swag. I actually wouldn't mind this one, since it would be so appropriate, as well as likely the only way this particular character version might be released at all. I find it extremely unlikely they would have an entire character released only as an SDCC exclusive, though, unlike exclusive characters they've sometimes done for other themes, such as the Collector and Spider-Woman, since characters from this theme all require new individual head molds, and they're not going to create an entire new mold for a part they intend to make only a few hundred of.

I have seen copies of given sets with multiple box versions just in the US alone.

Most interesting, if disappointing. Where are you getting this sales data? The Doctor Who pack that we know about is a Level Pack, not a Fun Pack - an important distinction, since it's twice the price of a Fun Pack. But yes, that one does indeed have two new molds (and the Back to the Future one with Doc Brown has one), which is still cool.

Hey, when were those "DC girls" sets - the ones we presume will have minidolls - supposed to come out, again?

You could also buy a lot more than four actual little green plastic army men for less than LEGO charged for Army Men on Patrol when it was making Toy Story sets, but in both cases you'd get something less versatile than the LEGO product.

I wonder whether this one might leapfrog one of more of the other three upcoming sets, as the Ghostbusters Ectomobile did the Exo-suit. It requires no potentially-slowing licensor approval, and it doesn't even require any particular colors (though if anything, it'll probably offer a rare non-decorated version of a part that's usually printed - the minifigure-scale soccer ball or basketball).

Is anyone else having trouble logging into LEGO Ideas now?

That's possible, but it would also affect numerous other characters from other themes. Lots of the NinjaGo, Legends of Chima, The LEGO Movie, DC Comics, etc. characters are also well-represented and plentiful in their own themes. Moreover, while many people surely will buy at least some of these packs just to get the characters and other items even if they don't want to play the game, the principal point of these packs is as game add-ons, and if LEGO Middle-Earth fans want to use these characters in LEGO Dimensions they'll still have to buy these packs, even if they already have scads of Gollums, Gimlis and Legolases from various sets. I think LEGO is smart enough to realize all this, and hopefully they'll compare sales of these packs to sales of other packs with common, widely-available characters (and equally hopefully, sales of these The Lord of the Rings Fun Packs will be good).

I think we're talking about different trains. I was talking about the train engine in the background of this pic of Sensei Wu that Robert posted near the end of the last page: That is clearly neither the "Jules Verne" train nor a mini train. It also has some differences with the train I mentioned, but it could be meant to represent that one anyway. There is a mini version of the Jules Verne train, as I mentioned; it comes in the Doc Brown Fun Pack. But this isn't it.

It is indeed supposed to come out, but they may be waiting for San Diego Comic-Con to unveil it and/or the two subsequent sets, which are the Doctor Who and WALL*E sets. I'm very happy with this selection, and offer congratulations to the builder, who's a member here (how many posts before we start openly discussing what project it is?). I would have liked to have seen some of the other projects chosen as well, but honestly they were mostly long shots just on size alone, never mind licensing issues or similarity to sets LEGO just released.

There were lots of projects in this round I supported and which I'm sorry to see declined, but honestly it was expected; most of them were so large I expected them to be passed over for size alone. I'm very happy that the chosen project did get picked. It falls outside the range of things one normally sees LEGO sets made of, and illustrates how versatile the bricks can be - something all of us know well, of course, but not all "casual" LEGO fans do.

That one isn't the Jules Verne train. I think it might be meant to be the train they used , though it appears to have some differences. Or it could even be "just" a train locomotive, with no particular connection to Back to the Future at all, though that seems unlikely to me. That said, the Jules Verne train is in the game (with the right add-on, anyway); it's the micro build included with the Doc Brown fun pack. We see him riding it around in the gameplay footage in the special Doc Brown trailer. I'm curious about how those vehicles will work in the game. Most of the footage and screenshots we've seen show that the vehicles included in physical brick form as micro builds will show up as those exact same chibi-esque builds in-game, but there are also shots which show them (at least the DeLorean time machine, anyway) as "full-sized" builds (in comparison to minifigures, anyway). Are there some sorts of powerups that enlarge the vehicles and such?

I hope it'll bring back some of what LEGO Universe actually was. I thought LEGO Universe was fantastic, and I'm sorry to have seen it go.

I'd really like to know what to do about the constant "updates" to uniformed troops. It makes army building a colossal pain - they keep changing prints on stormtroopers, rebel pilots, etc. with new designs that frequently aren't even improvements, merely different, and keep one from having troops that match. Yeah, first-world problems, I know, but it is frustrating, especially for those of us on budgets who take years to amass forces.

I don't think so. I don't think the characters are really suited for the kind of story that the game appears to tell.