Blondie-Wan

They just aren't clear enough for me to be sure about any of them. I can't even tell for sure which of them might be any of the nineteen characters we specifically have official confirmation of, let alone most characters for whom we don't even have any other info that they're in the game or not. I will agree on one I think is Bart Simpson, but I just don't know about those others.

I've thought about that, but they are willing to hold things, up to a point - we've now had two consecutive reviews in which they approved more than one thing. And the first of those had two things approved right away while two other things were held for further evaluation (or license negotiation), and then one of those was one of the two items approved with the next review. As has already been noted, of course they're not going to approve a dozen things all at once, but they also clearly are willing to approve more than one thing at once, since they've already done that multiple times. At any rate, while the owner of a project with lots of time left might well want it to go into a batch with few other projects competing with it, the creators of all those thousands of projects expiring in sixteen days have little to lose anyway, since if they don't make it into this batch they won't make it into any.

I don't think it's a matter of not being "correct"; I think it's just a matter of the artwork showing the character expressing or doing something.

The Corvette made it last night.

Oh. Well, there's a chance of that, too. I mean, we know there's at least one original character in the game - the villain! But we don't know if he'll be an actual physical minifigure or anything like that...

... Guessing is kind of neat, but few of them really seem to me to truly and unquestionably match up to "new" ones we don't already officially know about. I think I'm just going to wait until we have a better view (or just plain official confirmations and announcements) before being totally confident about what will be in the game. Oh, there's a huge chance of that, given that it's already officially known at least one pack will have a The Wizard of Oz character. It's just that there's no telling who or how many.

For that matter, the similar-but-not-identical piece that piece was modeled on, the canopy from that set's predecessor (7191), was also introduced for that D2C set, and remains exclusive to it well over a decade later.

Marvel is not going to happen (unfortunately). But a bunch of others are possible, including currently-inactive themes like Harry Potter (or, heck, even Speed Racer or Avatar: The Last Airbender), as well as things that have never been in LEGO before.

It now seems clear the 1969 Chevrolet Corvette project is also going to make it into the batch whose deadline is coming up. As of this post, the deadline is still more than two weeks away, while the project needs just 78 more votes. It should easily become the eleventh (!) project to make it into this batch. The big question for me now is, will there be a twelfth? Brick-built Adventure Time figures could make it, but at the rate it's been getting votes the last week or two it won't, unless there's a last-minute surge (though if not, it will definitely make it in time for the review batch after that, probably as the first project to do so). There are four other projects that each have over 8000 - three of which have over 8500, but they'll need good-sized last-minute bursts to make it into this batch. And three of those four are due to expire in the Great Ideas Purge, so if they don't make it into this batch, that's it for them. It'll be a shame if multiple projects make it so far only to expire so close to the vote goal, but they'll be just the tip of the iceberg - or among the first few remains in the graveyard, as it were. Right now, scattered here and there around the Ideas site are perhaps a few dozen now-inactive projects, ones that either got archived or made it to 10k but got declined. In two and a half weeks, those few dozen or so will be joined by thousands of others that expired from hitting the deadline without reaching the vote goal, and after that there'll always be a steady trickle of additional projects expiring at any given time, a few each day or so.

I doubt they "need" to spend it at all. I think they just think it's a reasonably good theme to use, both from a creative standpoint (i.e., what will fit and work well in the game), and from a business standpoint (i.e., what can they already use, what will help sell the game, etc.). I suspect it's probably true the theme (taking The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings together as a single theme) hasn't really sold as well as they were hoping or expecting, but I doubt it's some sort of absolute disaster, either. I think they wouldn't have bothered releasing as much as they did in 2013 and 2014 if it were the case, nor would they have made it such a significant part of LEGO Dimensions even now in 2015, with Gandalf as one of the three core characters in the game and (at least) three of the add-on packs at launch also coming from the theme.

One thing I haven't seen anyone address is the way the characters are grouped on the top of that box. Whoever the characters are, it's clear there are multiple "sections" or groups, which appear to be divided by a few vertical lines. What's that about? I'd guess it was something like base game / level packs / team packs / fun packs, or something like that, though I'm not sure.

At any rate, if Gandalf is part of the standard starter pack now for the life of the game, it essentially means they're continuing Middle-Earth as a theme for the next few years... even if just as a single minifigure in a $99 package mostly devoted to other things (the fun packs could presumably be discontinued at any time, but the starter pack will likely be around a good while).

That does sound to me like it would at least be an improvement over having it here in Licensed, since it incorporates NinjaGo and The LEGO Movie as well as a bunch of licenses. I also suggest that at least one of the two or three major Dimensions threads be treated as the "official" main "Rumors & Discussion" thread that we'd normally have for any other theme, and thus update the initial post with the basic known info about all the sets being released this year. Right now that information is mostly present somewhere on EB, but it's scattered around throughout different posts in different pages in different threads in different forums all over the place, and it would be helpful to have it all collected in one place, at the beginning of the "main" overall thread for the theme, like we'd have for any other theme. :)

What will it bring to LEGO? Mostly queries and complaints from consumers about either why they aren't making sets tied to this movie, or why they made a set back in 2012 featuring such a violent, kid-inappropriate character, that's what. :p

I do think this particular license is a suitable one for LEGO, and even if it's a little surprising to see it become an official LEGO thing in this particular way, it's welcome. If nothing else, I hope it encourages more WOO MOCs from the EB community, which can go here in Licensed now. I wonder if there's about to be a slight uptick in transactions for green bricks at Bricklink and LEGO's own PaB... :p

I've been contemplating your room in the short time you posted, and the more I thought about the IKEA Trofast system the more I've come to like it... to the point of deciding to go that way myself. I just went and picked up my first batch of Trofast drawer / trays, and I'll start sorting shortly.

Nicely done! I'm actually a bit of a fan of a number of your functional LEGO creations; it's nice to see you're still at it.

I'm not sure I agree, j2, but that's a marvelous effort and I appreciate it. :) They didn't, actually - the film makers were already in talks with Lucasfilm over using their characters in the movie when they got word of the impending sale to Disney. As soon as they found out they scrambled to sign the agreement with LFL before LFL finalized the Disney deal, since they were sure Disney wouldn't allow it once they fully owned LFL.

I won't! Greendale forever!

I noticed those details about the differences, but I've just been thinking the upper art is simply a character illustration, and doesn't necessarily reflect the exact printed expression on the figure - note how some of the packs' art have minifigure limbs bent in various ways possible in video games but not with actual physical minifigures. I assume the expressions are the same way. Ooh, nice catch! It can't be anything else - or at least, it's certainly not an indication of actual minifigures included. Even if there were nothing else in the box, LEGO would never give us that many figures for only $99.99. Besides, minifigure elements are still elements, and get counted in the traditional LEGO piece count on the box front, which is clearly far too small for so many figures plus the portal and Batmobile. And of course we'd see them all on the box front if they were included. That said, it's possible a bunch might already be included in the game. There must surely be other figures in there besides the ones we put in, after all - one can't think the base game will have just three characters wandering around in all these worlds. But yeah, I think it's essentially a breakdown of LEGO figures available for the game (in terms of sets that include real, physical figures plus their virtual counterparts in-game) at launch (others will surely be added over the game's life, of course). I wonder what special themed bundles we might start seeing for this - like, say, a special The LEGO Movie edition that includes everything in the normal base set but also Emmet or Business, say, or an all-DC edition that replaces Wyldstyle and Gandalf with Wonder Woman and Superman, or one with Scooby's entire gang.

I'm seeing $14.99 for Fun Packs, $24.99 for Team Packs and $29.99 for Level Packs, but I don't know yet whether that's vendor-specific or MSRP. It's US pricing, of course, which probably means those are the best prices, and other countries have it even worse. But I definitely intend to get at least a couple packs anyway. If I can afford it, I'd like to get the game and a whole slew of packs from lots of themes, but whether I get the game or anything else or not, I do want this Unikitty pack and the Back to the Future Level Pack. Eeyup! LEGO Dimensions just effectively added four more sets to the 2015 TLM lineup - or five, actually, counting the base game package, which does after all have Wyldstyle (and for that matter, both the other characters in it were also in the movie, even if they're not quite exactly the same).

Did they? I hadn't heard. LEGO Dimensions is mostly Warner as far as the licenses go, but not entirely - Back to the Future is Universal, after all. And I can only assume the PKE meter in the extended announce video is a big ol' hint bomb about Ghostbusters, which is Sony. The donut seems less certain, but it does look like a reasonable suggestion of The Simpsons to me. And there's that box top art, though we still don't have a sufficiently clear view of it yet to be absolutely sure of anything not explicitly revealed already.

That hairpiece didn't exist when the Ectomobile was released, and would not have been created solely for the set. We don't even know with absolute certainty yet whether it'll be created for this one; it could exist merely for illustration purposes, though my hope is that they're doing it for real (and doing so because this won't be just one set, but a whole line).

The really interesting thing about the included licenses, to me, isn't so much what won't be there but what will - specifically, a license we all thought was on its way out (The Lord of the Rings), one previously used only for a single set that was just discontinued (Back to the Future), and most amazingly, one that had never been used for LEGO before and is debuting with this game, with no indication yet whether it'll even ever be used for any sets beyond this game (The Wizard of Oz). It seems to really open doors as to what could find its way into LEGO, if licenses aren't limited to something current, or even something that's ever been done at all. Older, dormant licensed themes, both large (Harry Potter) and small (Speed Racer) seem totally possible, as do others that have never happened before, so long as they're reasonably family-friendly and not tied to a competitor in either construction toys or toys-to-life games (Disney, Nintendo, Mega Bloks, etc.). Just imagine, and wonder - could we see add-ons for, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? 2001: A Space Odyssey? The Neverending Story? Rocky & Bullwinkle? The pool just exploded - The Wizard of Oz is not only a license with no previous LEGO history, but also over three quarters of a century old. Obviously they're not looking just at what's current, or what's been a LEGO theme before; it appears the only requirement is what could make a good addition to the game. It opens up so, so much.

As Joel is putting together the portal after dumping the pieces out, a couple of elements start to vibrate and jiggle around a bit. Joel says "well, that's not... normal," and then gets a reading with a PKE meter before proceeding. The PKE meter (PsychoKinetic Energy) meter is a piece of Ghostbustin' equipment. Oh, no, Mixels should be a strong contender too, I'd guess. I just forgot about it when I posted those others.