Robianco

Iffy helmet aside that Chrome Claws actually looks pretty good.

I didn't see anything new on there. Images of Harley that's apparently for sale and they've had Batman and Joker as we've seen previously. Someone posted an image that looks like it was at a toy stand as there's die cast cars behind but it was Joker (UCS Tumbler Ledger version) and then from TLBM is was Batgirl, Joker, Robin, Batman. Does anyone remember the seller on Taobao who had minifigure parts around 6 months before the figures were released? That link is probably long dead but I'm not sure whether the seller would have something similar this year. Either way it won't be long before something firmer or more official comes along.

The figures are starting to appear on the Mexican Lego Market pages on Facebook.

As this thread isn't promoting bootleg sets then maybe it'll stay open. Its at least coming at it from a different angle. I must admit I don't understand the 'If they make it cheaper then that's Lego's fault' stance. Any consumer product is priced due to various reasons from development costs, to marketing, manufacturing, development, testing all the way up to brand marque. Apple don't sell iPhones for £100... but they probably have them made for much less than that. So why don't competitors make equally good products and sell them much cheaper? Samsung (up until the Note 7 fiasco) made a product of equal quality... superior in some ways people might way... but they don't sell them cheaper than Apple. The Rolex analogy is another one... A lot of the cost of a Rolex is down to brand marque. But if you can create and craft a watch as good as a Rolex and sell it for less then don't copy a Rolex Daytona or Submariner. Lots of companies do. Lego are the number one toy company in the world not because they make cheap toys but because they make great quality toys... and they have price points allowing people of almost any income to own Lego products. If clone brand bricks are getting to be the same quality as Lego then employ a designer and make your own sets that are compatible with Lego or contact a MOCer and ask them about buying a design. If they did that they might even end up with their own thread on a board like this.

Pad printing is the technique used by Lego to print on their minifigures. Each colour has the ink lifted by a pad which then presses down on the part to print it. It's a relatively expensive process when doing short runs of figures especially when considering that each colour needs to have a plate made for the printing process. That's part of the reason that pad printed figures can be more expensive than digitally printed figures. Customisers such as Christo, Phoenix Customs, Muddy River Minifigs and Paris Custom Bricks pad print their figures. Here's a video from Legoland California printing three colours onto a brick... it's a simple design but the process is the same. Imagine this for a 6 colour minifigure which isn't too hard to image once you consider you need to print white as a base first, then any colour on top including facial marks such as cheekbones as a separate colour. Then you have digitally printed figures which are produced by people such as Onlinesailin and Poppunkmunky. Digital print works in a way that's similar to an inkjet printer you'll have at home but with more opaque inks. This is then sealed as part of the print process... This has the effect of the ink sitting thicker on the plastic in a way that you can feel. A very good digital printer will get a smooth ink coverage but in the same way that an inkjet printer can have banding or lines appear in the ink this can also happen in digital print and you'll actually see the nozzle lines on some digitally printed figures. The next video shows UV digital printing on some legs. When I first got into custom figures I ordered from PPM as well as Onlinesailin. I have to say that Onlinesailin is probably the best digital print on figures out there... along with a newcomer called Leyile Brick who I've heard good things about. Leyile Brick are based in China but print on genuine Lego and I know European and US based resellers stock their stuff but wouldn't touch bootleg items. I own two Leyile Brick pad printed figures and the quality is very good. PPM are fine and may have a better printer than when I bought from them several years go but I'm not a fan of digital print at all. The thickness of the inks can make detail look clumsy especially if it isn't done right whereas the same print done by pad printing would be sharp and clean. The next video is a review of a Green Arrow figure by Bricks and Bits Customs. At 1.41 they hold the figure closer and mention the thickness of the print. If you look closely you can see the lines on the flat paler green area on the torso from the inkjet nozzle: People such as Penzore and SGP based in the UK also print digital figures but I have some issue with the design of their figures. You may be happy with how they look and that's pretty much the main point. If you're happy with how it looks and how it feels then it's good enough. I'm just very picky about design and print quality so some things I won't touch. I'll just add another couple of videos in from minifigures.co.uk where they review what they consider the best figures of 2013 and 2014. In the 2013 video a lot of them are UV printed whereby in the 2014 all but one are pad printed. When you look at figures such as Black Cat in the 2014 video you'll see how the print is perfectly flat and the detail works perfectly. Bear in mind that these digital figures are the best that you could buy at that time and Andrew should know as he stocks a lot of custom figures.

That's just the point. Wishlists don't belong in this thread. You don't need to read the thread back that far to get the info about the CMF wave.

Didn't we already have it pretty much confirmed that most of that CMF photo was what was getting released? Tarantula, Orca, King Tut, Clock King, Red Hood, several Batman variants, Eraser, March Harriet, Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson etc? Why the sudden posting of various wish lists created out of thin air?

To be honest... regardless of the quality of the prints on those figures the vambraces are impossible to get hold of so if they're moulded to a decent standard they'd be worth picking up just for those.

As the largest toy company in the world and one who's fastest growing market is Asia I'm not sure their pricing structure is limiting their growth. What a product is made from is irrelevant to the conversation. Chinese companies have stolen ideas and therefore don't pay and designer costs, research costs, development costs, marketing costs, cheaper print costs, cheaper plastic costs, less quality control... This isn't just about that's plastic and this is plastic so they should cost the same. If Lepin had developed even a single Technics or Modular set with a unique design then they'd have some merit but just because someone sells a replica item cheaper doesn't mean the original item is then overpriced.

You can't. That's a member title given by mods and staff. Only they can give and edit those. You want to know why it freaks me out? Erm.... try the disappointment at a profile photo not showing what someone really looks like folllowed by the need to buy a sig fig to have a little replica of a member. Its shrines, voodoo dolls, tattoos and going through people's bin all the way from there...

Isn't that just the general way of toys though? If you collect the Black Series Star Wars figures then you'll have to buy the £170 Special Ops TIE Fighter to get the pilot that goes with it... even though there's a similar FO TIE Pilot available in the £19.99 range. Wasn't the Ghost retired before the microfighter was released? They're always going to do things like this. If you don't buy the 75159 Death Star then you probably won't get a couple of those figures as they won't appear in other cheap sets. If you don't buy Assault on Both then you won't get some of those figures and it'll go on like this ad infinitum. The UCS TIE Fighter has arm printing on that pilot which hasn't appeared anywhere else. The Ghostbusters figures in the HQ have both arms printed. Batman in the more expensive sets has dual moulding on the legs whereas cheaper sets have plain grey legs. It's nothing new and don't be surprised if it continues. They've done the exclusive part in an exclusive set in several themes... Tower of Orthanc had Saruman's robes on a printed slope while the version in the wizard duel set had plain white legs. I think continued discussion of how these things are handled will take the discussion way off topic but as for the Fett release in the Skiff I can see there being only a minor change (maybe a different coloured cape) if any to the one in the Carbon Chamber set. Forresto ninja'd me with his comment but I can see what he means regarding main characters. I'd never really noticed Han or Vader being difficult to find as I only really buy OT sets so I actually had them with one of my first purchases many years ago.

If we're talking about Lepin clones of Lego sets then the first thing to notice is that there will be no Lego stamp on any of the bricks. They aren't trying to pass the bricks off as Lego. There's a video here comparing original Lego Porsche parts with Lepin parts: After the very obviously inferior tyres there's an incredible similarity in colour and moulding in all of these pieces. As I'm not a Technics builder or buyer so I'm not sure of how Lego stamps or marks their parts in the way they do with regular bricks. In answer to the question of how to differentiate Lego parts with inferior third party then the answer should be obvious. They'll be inferior. If the question is how to tell Lego parts from replica third parts party that are of similar quality then that's something else. As has been discussed with licensed and modular sets it isn't just enough to dismiss the clone bricks as inferior and toxic as I simply don't think it's true anymore. There are examples of people testing bricks and parts for lead and other toxic impurities and I don't recall a single example of anything being found. That's not to say they may not have other issues as I'm sure they don't have the same QC and other policies in place as Lego but people need to be aware that the parts can be incredibly close to Lego in both look and feel. I think the video above shows just how close things can get and buyers need to be aware of this. Lego's 10179 UCS Millennium Falcon is available as a clone for approximately £150. In this there are 16 5x5 right angle yellow technics pieces and the cheapest one available at a BL store with enough is almost £8 each. That's £128 before shipping for just those 16 pieces. 60 light bley levers with light bley bases... cheapest store with over 10 in is £4.50 each which is £270 plus shipping from multiple stores and then there's the light bley mast rigging available for £450 for 2. So that's 70 pieces of a set containing 5170 pieces that cost roughly £850 on BL before we get to anything with a Lego stamp on a stud as a way of easily identifying it as a fake. I think the comment about BrickLink having some kind of regulation would be a great start.

We are incredibly gifted in the art of queuing with a deep rooted hatred for queue jumpers. Heathens.

Yeah. Got there around 9.40 this morning and there was a bit of a queue to buy already... saw people walking with bags on my way from the car so they'd been selling from minute one. Two queues when I got there... one to buy and one for signing. They were bringing cartloads to replenish the display unit. Two per household and most people were doing just that. After I did a bit of shopping I walked past at around 11.15 and the queue for signing was pretty big... I had my 7yr old with me and she was moaning so I didn't queue up. However many they got in I'm not sure they'll have any left tonight. Best thing was my little girl was given several copies of a display sticker which was quite nice. I've claimed on of those.

I'd say over a thousand of these have gone through the till at the Liverpool Store today already. The designer is signing them from 11am to 1pm.

Am I the only person a little freaked out by this thread?

Agreed. I really don't see how different a Lego version of the ROTJ version would be to the Lego version of the ESB version. Different design / colour of gauntlet and maybe a different colour of cape but that's about it. The UCS Slave 1 had very accurate gauntlets to that ESB image so I'd be happy for the ROTJ as a variant if we were getting arm printing. Maybe if we were talking about an 18" Hot Toys model then differences would be more noticeable.

Yeah... The Superman is a clone of Phoenix Custom version that was also copied in the Batman / Superman DLP wave.

The hips on this figures are also different shape to Lego legs as the piece between the legs goes straight up to the hip section rather than curve round to follow the shape at the top of the legs. Looks like there's printing of the lego colour on top of the boot colour plastic. As WL said above the Spiderman 2099 is the only new figure and I'm sure there are better versions than Dargo. Didn't DLP do that one?

For people who wanted an older Jim Gordon. 66 Alfred. Not my photo... just sharing for display. I think this looks great.

The simplest way to post an image on this software seems to be the 'share' link on Flickr. Just paste that into the message window and within seconds the image appears so you can type any other content around it or add more images. Definitely the simplest way I've seen so far of using Flickr with the site. BBCode also works but the image doesn't appear until I submit the post which I then edit to remove the text that follows the image.

Thanks for the heads up. I've just ordered one too. Might pop into a store tomorrow and see if I can pick one up from there also. It's quite a versatile torso design.

The only way I can bear to look at those is by saying the name in a brummy accent. Is that bottom left helmet meant to look like a crap lion/dog hybrid?

Yeah. It's from Christo.

No it's not. Slave 1.