fred67

And when my daughter is with me while at the LEGO store, she goes crazy and needs a PAB cup of pink and purple bricks when they have them. She also doesn't play with dolls (hates them) and likes video games... Yet she still likes pink and purple bricks (but then again, so do I).

I don't think anyone should expect the kind of success that SW had, you will bet setting yourself up for disappointment. SW has the SW:TCW, an ongoing (and very popular) series to sustain it. With all the nostalgia people have for LOTR, it's not enough to sustain it for a long time. I'd say if we got three years of LOTR, we should consider ourselves lucky. Is POTC dead? That didn't even last a year. (*) I'm not arguing there's not a TON of stuff I'd personally love to see (and shell out good cash for), but I'm not going to be irrationally exuberant about it, either. (*) EDIT: meaning: you have hype leading up to the movie, then the hype fades for most movies shortly after it's release - that's what happened with all of new licenses lately: Toy Story, Cars, and POTC. The Hobbit will at least have two good years of hype, and I'm hoping that, like the LOTR, the hype won't die off so fast. If it's another $2 billion franchise (the first LOTR movies averaged over $1B/each, over $3B total), I think we can get three years. EDIT 2: wanted to comment on the pictures. Gandalf Arrives is EXACTLY what I expected (and one of the set suggestions I mentioned). Shelob Attacks... pretty much what I expected; the spider is bigger than I thought it would be. Uruk Hai Army looks pretty terrible. Figure pack only. Weather Top... not what I expected, and too small for multiple levels. I would have preferred just the figures with a few rock pieces if it's going to be that small. Mines of Moria... looks like we'll get a new cave troll (and not a recolored Wampa, I hope). I think they would better name it Balin's Tomb, and have other Moria sets. It looks pretty good, though. I'd like more walls, but understand why they're not there. Helms Deep... well... it's play set, and it's preliminary, so I can't be too hard on it. I like that they have the culvert/drain, the main entrance... looks about like what I expected. I'm going to be honest here... if we want really great versions of anything, we're going to have to do them ourselves; TLG is going to give us a lot of pieces and iconic figures to make it possible. Unlike Harry Potter, where often trying to get the right colors was difficult, these are just gray. TLG should do us castle fans a favor and release bulk gray.

Everybody has their own reasons for loving LEGO. I wouldn't have thought at first that I was so interested in minifigures, but it turns out I am. I love the CMFs, and while I didn't care for POTC in general, I wanted the iconic figures and ships from it (I ended up getting pretty much everything, but that's a story in itself and I didn't spend any money on them). Now, previously, I'd only bought one shop I thought was cool (IFS). Anyone that thinks licenses won't suck people in to buy sets is delusional; TLG is making a great choice. With LOTR, I love the whole fantasy genre, so am very enthusiastic about it. I'll likely get every set, both for the characters and sets. I do think that I don't like to see too many licensed themes at once, but the way I see it, I'd be willing to bet we get back to classic pirates next year while the castle theme goes to LOTR. I don't really see it as a problem. Other themes, like Cars and TS3 seem to be their own themes, they don't usurp another theme, so I have no problem with them, either. I think the superheroes will be like that, and I will likely try to get some of the superheroes just for the figures, too. The bottom line is you can't make everybody happy; I'm fairly certain that the licensed themes make more people happier, though. I get the feeling that the same thing that happened with IJ happened with POTC - the initial wave of sets HAD TO have stuff from the new movies, which weren't nearly as popular as the originals. There's little else to do with SW, IMO, although I'd like to see new versions of some sets that were only released once (Cloud City!) instead of third and fourth versions of other ships. My problem with your complaint is that it hasn't happened yet. You're already disappointed when they haven't even shown us a single set. Maybe you've got a great idea... if you expect it to suck, then it'll at least meet your expectations, and likely you'll be ecstatic at some of the sets. On the other hand, if you're picturing a Helms Deep set like some of the MOCs you've seen online (that have like 20k pieces) you're definitely going to be disappointed. I think if we have some reasonable expectations... things like Helms Deep or Minas Tirith being multiple small sets, like Hogwarts, I don't think you'll be setting your sights too high.

That's what I did, as well. As a fairly long time train fan, I actually had most of the pieces (including a 9V motor to use). I do not think my train matches exactly... especially some of the presents, I think. I don't recall, it was a couple of years ago when I built it from parts. From this year, the whole display: DSCF1264 by FredJH, on Flickr

Everything's a controversy. You can't make everybody happy. Even LOTR is now a controversy. TLG can't win for trying... if they just release plain old building sets, they get slammed for being too much for boys; if they try some things to attract girls they are accused of being patronizing.

Agree with Andonii. The problem with POTC is that they had to pick stuff from the new movie, and it just wasn't as iconic or interesting as the sets from the older movies (IMO).

My two cents: First, vexorian, it seems like you understand the problem with your complaints... that TLG doesn't really care about any individual in particular, and that TLG does what's financially best for TLG. A lot of idealists don't like to think of TLG as just another profit driven company, but that's what they are and the decisions they make become an easier pill to swallow when we get over it. But I do think you have every right to complain about things you don't like. I did the same thing when they dropped 9V for RC... I'm still not happy about it and I still complain from time to time. I do accept it, though. Just know that, while it seems like everyone is jumping on your case, I think we all recognize your right to complain and voice your opinion about it. Second, it's true that if all TLG was licensed, or even if it was all licensed except things like buckets, I would not be very happy. I do think they're doing too much lately, and I fail to see how it helps them in the long run. I finally got the latest issue of brick journal the other day, and here are some quotes from Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, w.r.t. licensing: "I think is has been fantastic with some strong licenses suitable with our brand. Star Wars is, of course, by far the best example. Indiana Jones is good, also. There is a limit as to how far we can go, in my opinion and also how much licensing products should make up of our total portfolio. We haven't gone over too far, yet. Some of the licensed products have also become core products, like Star Wars, because they are long-term propositions. That's probably what it should be when look [sic] at a license, it should be something that is fairly long-term, not something that is going to be one season." So here you have a recognition that they understand the need for balance between licensed and unlicensed themes; it means I don't think we need to worry at this point that TLG will decide to just to licenses. Having recently attended a marketing presentation by the president of LEGO marketing in North America, from what he said, they realize part of the ongoing, generation after generation appeal of LEGO is that parents (mostly fathers) can look at a LEGO set, like a castle, and say "I had one of those when I was a kid and I loved it," and is then motivated to get it for his child (and usually participate in the building process, too). Licenses destroy that paradigm... sure, SW has been going on for some time, but will they still be doing it in 10 years? I find it doubtful. 20? I simply can't imagine that at all. Secondly, there seems to be a contradiction in there, IMO. As far as we know (someone correct me if I'm wrong), POTC's run is less than one year. Cars 2... Toy Story 3... all short term propositions that I myself questioned at the time (although I did buy some of those sets for various reasons). I do think they if they keep having these two year or less licenses that they may start to falter. I also think they may be doing too many lines. Cars 2 and TS3 didn't really matter a whole lot... small lines separate from everything else. Star Wars interfered with space to an extent; POTC with pirates, and LOTR most certainly with castle. As far as the efficacy of licensed themes on my personal buying habits... I got into LEGO for the trains, and started buying SW (as a long time, middle aged fan of the OT). So, right there, as opposed to being simply a train enthusiast, the fact that they made sets from such a beloved franchise certainly got me to buy more. I tried staying away from other themes because of the expense, but I finally succumbed to HP. Again, these are not sets that replace some other line I'd be buying. Still hesitant to get too deeply into new themes, I bought a couple of the POTC sets that I was really interested in. I was not a pirates fan before that (although I did buy the impressive imperial flagship, it was my only pirates purchase prior to POTC). I don't like the Cars 2 line, but I still bought a Mater because I like Mater. I don't like the Toy Story 3 line, but I still bought a Great West Train because I like trains. So... based on my personal experiences, licenses certainly have the potential to suck in a lot of revenue for TLG. That's only good for us, ultimately, in the long run. They should keep doing whatever it is that makes them so highly profitable - it ensures they'll be around for my grand kids. So... yes... as long as they don't go too far, I'm fully behind licenses. They are not perfect, and sometimes the licenses bother me; they do TS3 and Cars 2 because they will do well with the kids, and that's their core group. While those licenses didn't usurp some other theme, it does take resources away from everything else. I knew those wouldn't be long term propositions, so the Kjeld's comments might either be an admission they are not perfect, or delusionally optimistic... (I'm sure there's other options I'm not thinking of).

It's true... we'll have to wait and see, but most of the sets we could consider them making are either really small, figure oriented sets scenes, or these giant epic structures. There are certainly exceptions, but LOTR has too many characters and too much walking through the wilderness with various "encounters" (I hate to use D&D sounding terminology). Well, we're certainly a group with varied tastes and desires for what LEGO will make, and we'll never all agree on what LEGO "should" do. My interests in various themes have waxed and waned over the years, and I discovered a few things about my irrational exuberance at some of the sets and themes... I won't go into details, but I started collecting castle during the fantasy theme, and when it ended I didn't think much of it (except sad they didn't do elves), and just started happily buying kingdoms... but it just wasn't as much fun for me. I realized that my attraction to that castle line was actually rooted in my love of fantasy in general, and the LOTR in particular. I stopped buying Kingdoms... I'm just not into it. I'm not even going to buy a single joust set. I've been championing all through this thread that I would like LOTR, but would be ecstatic at Fantasy 2 (and even see some benefits of it over LOTR). The "plain old" castle themes just don't do it for me. Agreed... like Derfel mentioned, there's going to be a lot of moaning and groaning at TLG not releasing some epic-ly huge sets, but I don't think you can blame people, either. LOTR is an epic movie with epic structures... just think of the Argonath... it'll take some LEGO/LOTR nerd like me... but with a LOT MORE TIME AND MONEY to do something like that to minifigure scale. While I've defended that a theme doesn't require a lot of vehicles to be successful, I will readily admit it makes set making easier.... SW is definitely easier for TLG than LOTR will be.

W.R.T. Fleshies: I don't hate fleshies, it's just bothersome that I can't mix things from Fantasy Era (and the Elf and Dwarf from the CMFs) with the characters we'll get from LOTR. Or, at least, will have to change hands and heads to match, which isn't as easy as it should be... while there seems to be dozens of heads to choose from, as far as people's faces go, it's a very limiting number. W.R.T. LOTR Killing Castle... no... the way I see it, Fantasy had it's run, Kingdoms had it's run, now LOTR will have it's run. If it turns out to be as wildly popular as Star Wars and they keep releasing sets ad infinitum, I'm sure LEGO will start back with a dedicated non-licensed castle theme the same way TLG did with Star Wars and space. The only complaint is, if you don't like LOTR, you might have to wait for castle for a couple years. Be adults about it... I can't tell you how many years I waited between buying sets for some of the other themes I follow because there was nothing decent (IMO); no use whining. Not castle... Kingdoms. Castle won't go away.

All I can say is "wow." And while I really wanted this theme I was always worried about how well they'd do it.... and now we already have the answer to how they will do the ring! That single picture makes me so incredibly excited... it's a brilliant LEGO Frodo. I realize it's a computer rendering, but I also don't doubt it's based on the actual figure. Now I am excited! Let the conversation turn from "if" to "what" now... have at it!

Reviving a dead thread, but think it's relevant and didn't want to start a completely new one. I don't get to set out the trains to play with very often, but I do manage to set up a Christmas loop with the holiday train and, for the past few years, the LEGO Christmas sets (Toy Shop, Bakery, and now the Post Office). I have a substantial investment in 9V, and while I'm OK with PF, don't want to give up on 9V altogether. I was excited about ME Models rails and bought several sets when they were released - only straights, as I was interested in large radius curves and they weren't available at first. Today was the first day I finally got to try them out with the holiday train... and they work great. The curves are still the LEGO 9V curves, but I replaced 16 straights with 8 ME double size straights (all in brown though, so it's mismatched like roamingstudio's picture). I did not need the tape it comes with... everything connected just fine, and it seems to work great. Looking forward now to getting a few more and some curves, too. Brown ties look so much better, IMO. EDIT: DSCF1281 by FredJH, on Flickr DSCF1280 by FredJH, on Flickr

Nothing except that they don't fit with all the yellow figures we already have. It would look awkward to combine, for example, new LOTR sets with the previous fantasy (or any non-licensed castle) theme... at least the minifigures.

Yeah... they accept "fantasy" violence, not "realistic" violence, and they generally do a fair job abiding by that "rule." I do take exception to the belief that LOTR is more violent than other themes that LEGO has done, though. First of all, it's "fantasy" violence, so that already puts it in line with what LEGO can do without violating policy. Second, as you've shown, they've not just done sets of scenes where many people died, but some things that are relatively gruesome, as well. Two that come to mind are the Indiana Jones flying wing set, and what happens to the mechanic; that pales in comparison to (although no one dies), the Darth Vader transformation set. It's simply not a valid argument when it comes to LOTR. As has been pointed out, too, while we "romanticize" pirates, they were actually pretty terrible people... at least as bad as the fictional orcs in LOTR.

See, here's the problem - I'm as optimistic as the next guy, and I would be really happy to see a LOTR/Hobbit theme, but it's just some guy's blog, and I didn't even see a link to an actual article... The most compelling statement was that it was "confirmed" by Martin Tremblay, but then when I googled "martin tremblay hobbit lego," the only articles I got either referred to a commonly misread LA Times article, or flat out say something like (from the first hit I got): Now, where does it say the Hobbit game will be LEGO? Why does Batman get the title "LEGO Batman," and the Hobbit only gets "the Hobbit," and because it's in the same sentence people think it applies to both. Many of the articles I hit even said it in reverse order: "Hobbit, LEGO Batman 2," which makes it a bit less easy to misinterpret. So I'm not arguing it will or won't happen; I personally think it makes and would be quite popular. My first choice for castle is LOTR/Hobbit, followed closely by another Fantasy Era, followed by anything else (which I probably wouldn't buy), so I really do want to be optimistic... but I think these articles have been misread, and the misinterpretation repeated over and over again, and when you drill down to the source, there's nothing to indicate the Hobbit game will, in fact, be LEGO the Hobbit as opposed to just a regular Hobbit game.

I'd like a link. The only article we've actually tracked down never said the Hobbit game was "LEGO," it just mentioned the Hobbit game along with a few other games, some of which were LEGO... all the LEGO games were prefixed with "LEGO," but the Hobbit was not.

Of course... the problem is not black/brown/tan/whatever, it's that any of the "flesh" colors simply don't match the yellow. Since we already have so much yellow in the fantasy line, it would make combining figures from a licensed theme with original fantasy line impossible.

I wouldn't say I'd "rather" see a continuation of fantasy, but I would be extremely happy either way - not only do we already have a number of dwarfs and other fantasy figures, but you'd be able to use "fantasy 2" with the first fantasy theme, and they'd be yellow instead of fleshies.

Nice. We got nothing really notable... a keepsake like that would be cool. I was expecting at least coffee and donuts or something. There were only maybe a dozen or so people at our store, and virtually everyone there with an invite brought a friend with them, so only like 6, maybe 7 people who got invites went, which really surprises me.

There's a series (actually, a series of series) of books called "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" by Stephen R. Donaldson. In the last series the main character, Linden, has adopted a son, Jeremiah, who has been "withdrawn" and completely uncommunicative (as a side effect of what happened in the last series), who "builds" things. Sometimes it's tinker toys, sometimes it's constructs of racetracks... and then he starts building structures of LEGO that look like buildings from what is essentially an alternate world in which Linden is the only living person to have visited. That happens in the first book, and "legos" are mentioned at least once in each of them so far (the fourth book is not yet released). Of course, this author seems to take pride on being a really knowledgeable word smith, so his use of "legos" is really annoying.

I've always like that term better. I agree, people are "fans" of music, a sports team, a TV show... passive activities, so I like 'enthusiast' better. Not enough to start a thread about it, but enough to agree with someone about it.

I got part 2 sets this morning; I'd do a review but I'm probably not going to be able to build it until Thanksgiving. You've all seen the pictures, so there's probably not much more I could add anyway.

Just so you all know, don't feel bad if you didn't get an invite; it was actually a bit disappointing. You didn't get the scratch off until you want to check out, so you didn't know what the discount would be. That sucks, because both the free pick-a-brick boxes (they were allowing up to 10 in my store, 1 for each $75 spent) and the second Christmas vignette counted only in AFTER discount dollars spent. It mattered to me because I'm a cheap guy - I don't even know how got invited unless my store has no real big spenders in it. Of course, it didn't really matter - because as usual for black Friday, NOBODY got more than 10% off. I was allowed to buy the first Christmas vignette... that was cool because I got two "free" part 2's and now have two complete sets, so can give one as a gift. So, really, the only "real" bonus was an extra pick-a-brick gift box that we were allowed to use today (if you wanted), but I didn't because we had to be done before 10am, which left me no time to pack it well. It wasn't even really particularly worthwhile, as I had to split my order into two over $100 in order to get the second vignette; if I'd had one order I'd have gotten three boxes without the VIP invite; as it turned out, I ended up with... three boxes (but with a second vignette). Also, the pick-a-brick gift boxes seem to get smaller every year. I'm fairly certain these are even smaller than what I remember.

Oooh... Supernatural in LEGO form. I'd buy that.

But is that all the people with invites get? If that's all, I don't want to change my schedule just for that.

Is that not related to this: "LEGO VIP Event" (Invitation only)? How on earth do you think you'll be getting anything for "free?" (unless you actually consider getting a $10 set after spending $100 to be "free" instead of just marketing hype) Edit: I suppose it's different, but I was under the impression that the invited people would get black ("brick") Friday deals ahead of time; if they're going to let all VIPs do it, then what's the point of the invitation only event?