vexorian

I would actually put higher than 50% probability they will sell individual figs. The announcement mentions construction sets, minifigs and buildable figures as separate entities. There are also so many characters mentioned that it sounds hard that they would be able to design quality sets for all of them. Specially when it sounds that the DC set wave will be focused on Batman. They would be expensive though, and fly shelves quickly. We already know that TLG will be selling action figures for these licenses (The HF-style things). If TLG feel that they can sell actual action figures I don't really see what would stop them from selling minifigs (legally).

I wonder if the Alien could be a new Alien conquest foe instead of a CM. Because that gun as CM accessory would be redundant by now. Although it wouldn't be in production right now, I think?

The D.C. ones look great for being so early. And the Marvel ones will have 6 more months for development. They will be fine. Iron Man's helmet is not that large. It is as large as Batman's mask. If Batman's mask is the same size as a metallic helmet, then the helmet is fine . The designers will probably make it smaller now that people have been complaining. It is not necessary for it to lose the open function before turning thinner.

I think it is for the best. This way classic themes like Castle and Pirates will be able to stay/return without worrying about licensed themes stopping their production. I think the best kind of licensed theme are Pixar or Super heroes as they don't overlap with any of the ever greens. It was sad to see space go because of SW years ago, it is a joy it came back and is doing nicely.

Are there really strong indications for The Hobbit? I just think that if TLG were really going to have that theme, comic con was a great time to announce it.

I am pretty sure Green Lantern was mentioned explicitly. The minifigures from Comic Con are exclusive. Which probably means that once Green Lantern is released, it will look different than the Comic Con version. Remember that there were 12* different Batman minifigs. (* Made up number). You should totally buy the "realistic" megabloks minifigs. I would really prefere figures that look like actual LEGO minifigs rather than small action figures. And the success of LEGO Batman hints me that I am not alone in this. ---------- I think one of these: or Would make Iron Man's head problem less prominent. I also guess that the helmet is bound to become smaller in the final release.

The Tie and its minifigs look great. Although with 4 minifigs I'd expect it to be a little expensive.

This guy:

Hasbro can get away with selling vehicles that the characters don't need. Like a motorcycle for Flash. If the set designs are good, I doubt it will be a problem for TLG. I think that many Batman sets were rather legendary actually, specially that Tumbler vs. Ice Cream truck one. PoP didn't perform well because the movie bombed. And that's about the only unsuccessful licensed theme I can think of right now besides Avatar.

I don't know, it is speculation at this point. but there is a line: "Construction sets, minifigures and buildable characters" We saw the build-able characters and they are sets of their own, so it really suggests that there will be individual figures.

There were important changes in LEGO's vision about selling individual minifigs between the end of LEGO Batman and the announcement of LEGO Super heroes. Somehow I think there will be purchasable minifigures in addition to the sets. Some of the sets have already been announced. There will be a batcave and of course, the buildable Super Heroes. Justice League have a base and ships, so I guess they can do that. Green Lantern could have some battle sets with asteroids and has to fight the yellow guy. Well, there are options.

The licenses have priorities, you know. Marvel would really like to promote the Avengers, and DC want you to watch the DK. So, it is no coincidence that next year LEGO Super Heroes will involve mostly Batman and the Avengers. It is a multi-year licensing deal, there will be time for non-Batman villains and for other Marvel teams.

For minimates (and all the action figures giants as well) it is easy because they just have to update figures and there is always new fans willing to buy them. The problem with LEGO sets is that they also have to design sets. Even in Starwars it is becoming harder and harder to impress people doing repeats of sets. Plus I guess also LEGO want to keep fresh and avoid repeating themselves except with the ultra cash cow that SW is. Though this idea and has that geek culture goodness to it that it may become a SW-like cash cow if LEGO makes great sets in addition to the minifigs.

I would really have liked keetorange in Iron Man instead of Gold, same goes for the minifig. Pearl gold doesn't look too well in combination with mata red.

I thought people might be interested. I found this useful because it confirmed one thing I noticed since last year. The LEGO fan in me is winning over the modder in me. So, these confirm the LEGO fan won. Great! Now, that I am out of character, here are pics. It seems they will replace HALO with those better than mega-average set designs and minifigs being the main issue. But designs actually good. Showing that mega can actually do good designs if they wanted to. Right now the only thing we have is the viking: http://kotaku.com/5823552/from-painsocks-to-demon-belts-all-the-diablo-starcraft-and-world-of-warcraft-swag-you-can-swallow/gallery/6

Are you sure about this? I really doubt mega will still have the license in 2012 now that TLG bought the rights for that year. Mega is also seemingly moving on to other licenses, like blizzard. Even the current preliminary, obviously undone. LEGO Iron man is much better than the mega one imho. At least it looks like a minifig. You get what you paid for. Small copies of action figures with feet that fit into studs are way easier to design than minifigures that follow a trademark style and are actually worth paying for. ^^ Also, mega keeps promising that the plastic quality is improving, but I am not seeing it. They are still above a lot of clones, but they aren't that good. And it is not like LEGO is nowadays such a hard standard to beat, their piece quality has also decreased since the 90s. The only theme at risk would be HF and apparently TLG has said they don't intend discontinuing it. That is informative. My point though was just that TLG had the idea of super hero licenses way before mega , so claiming that they are stealing mega's idea does not make much sense.

Hero factory looked horrible in prelims, so people have some faith please :) It looks accurate but it is terrible as a construction toy. The pieces are not only horribly specific, they use knight kingdoms style joints (Actually, mega's version of them uses a single piece for both joints) which means that kids would be lucky to make any realistic pose with it. And its piece count is under 10, I guess.

If you take a close look, every new mold is actually in prototype material and even the face prints are stickers. Most of these guys are very preliminary. I think the only finished one is the exclusive green lantern.

Actually, why are we complaining about iron man's helmet that much? Doesn't Batman has the same 'problem' but with a mask? Why is it so odd that Iron Man's helmet is the size of Batman's mask?

HF is more suitable as it is more flexible for action figures and allows more poseability . Construct-A-Buzz almost couldn't move and its piece count required a large price. The result was a figure that can't move, was sort of flimsy and was also a tad small for the price. I think TLG just took the route that enabled selling the most.

TLG had the Spider Man license way before Megabloks figured out they can't win through actual design and quality and tried hard to take licenses away from LEGO only to make <insert that tiresome argument> sets with horrible minifigures which were such a failure that Disney and Marvel ran away of them and back to LEGO.

Please let us avoid creating any premature HateDumb by speculating that this will replace Hero Factory. It does not add up. Ben 10 existed at the same time as the stars and HF, afterall. There's no reason for HF to be replaced with this. It is possible that HF gets replaced with a different LEGO-owned action figure line, but that's another topic. If you remember, Bionicle was not replaced with Ben 10, it was replaced with Hero Factory. Second, these are superior to any previous attempt from both LEGO and megabloks to make buildable figures of licensed heroes. The linked HALO stuff look good until you realize they are probably 3 pieces each with completely specialized pieces that are only useful for their designated job in a HALO figure. Whereas these figures are at least going to be build-able. Plus it is easy with HALO as the guys are supposed to have armor which is supposed to look mechanical. Third, note that they may as well still be in prototype phase. Some molds and features may be missing. Fourth, they look silly and they will forcefully look silly in the end, but there is market for these silly things. Megabloks has gotten away with selling Iron Man and Spider man things that look much worse than these and had less pieces. These toys are not meant for your demographic. And Iron Man looks great anyways. Edit: They should have tried to do only figures that are supposed to look inorganic. My ideas would have been: * Batman in Bat armor : Actually, it is almost like this is the intention with the current Batman prototype. * Mr. Freeze. * Brainiac * Iron Man. * War Machine. * Iron Monger. * Apocallypse * Sentinel Well, something like that.

I think the sets will cost around the same as a villain or more but not 20.0. Yes, I don't get it, but I like Batman too. There's something to it. It is kind of early, for what we know then maybe the heroes are lacking tons of new molds that were going to be used for detail. Iron Man looks good actually, but that's because he is meant to look mechanical, so the HF parts work best.

Close ups of the minifigs : http://www.toyark.com/news/san-diego-comic-con-58/lego-marvel-and-dc-figures-from-sdcc-4426/ The material in Iron Man's helmet is certainly the one they use to mimic non-existing molds. The head hasn't even gone into production so there's hope. Unfortunately, I think that there isn't too many of it. If they wish to keep the 3D detail in the helmet it will have to look Chibi. Batman would be interesting as a winged thing if he was given a HF head.

All right great, I hope multi-year applies to Marvel as well.