Robianco

Well if there was anyone I can think of who would attempt a 15m Home One to sit with this scale it's probably you. I might be in the minority but even as an old school OT fan I've never felt the affinity with the Nebulon B that some have, especially as standalone builds... it was more the whole fleet as we moved in to see Luke's recovery. Seeing it as part of a scaled fleet with Mon Calamaris and a Corvette really brings it to life as it did on screen and made me appreciate what was an already exceptional model even more. I can only add what others have said in their appreciation of this whole build. See you in three years when that Home One is ready! ;)

Well Lego haven't made a Pokemon set and I'm sure if we went through IDEAs for every possible license etc then nobody would be allowed to talk about anything. Thankfully Pokemon isn't close to something I'd personally want to discuss but for those that have an interest I think it still sits within the new site guidelines. With regards to posting images I'd assume that you can still embed images from Flickr up to 1024 pixels wide etc as is the norm on the rest of the site... and post count isn't included for any thread in the Community part of the site so there's no change there. I wouldn't even mention Lepin in this or any thread especially to discuss any of their sets. They're just a straight up 'No'. I think if anyone finds anything of interest rather than post links... which I think should be something people are still mindful of then maybe what the set name is etc (DLP9032 for example) and people can then search in the usual places for that set. I'm sure if people wanted to grab an image and then crop it and post it via Flickr etc then that would be fine. I'm personally glad that the discussion will move away from cloned figures and copies of existing stuff and we can concentrate on things that are entirely new.

The problem I found with the Doll stuff was that the print was fine but some of the moulding wasn't great. At least for their older set with the tan camo. I only really pick up things which are close to Lego in their quality and I don't collect Marvel so that rules quite a lot of stuff out. The GOT stuff doesn't look too bad to be honest but It's not something I'd probably ever look at or put on display once it arrived. Same with Assassin's Creed as I've never played it. I'm just waiting on a couple of Batman figures, Saturn Girl and a couple of others. My orders tend to be around the £6 rather than the £46 mark.

Can you name an IDEA figure that is OK to talk about? I would assume that any figure released from an IDEAs set would constitute an existing release and therefore be a clone and non-discussable. If it isn't released then I'm not sure where that's going. With regards to customisers I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask to see the contract between the customiser and the license holder allowing their use of the characters likeness before I worry about that. As I said in the thread regarding the site's position on bootlegs, Lego and the license holders themselves seem to be perfectly fine in people creating these characters otherwise they'd shut down the eBay shops that currently have hundreds of figures of their characters for sale. It would take one email from their legal team to eBay and those stores would be closed. As this hasn't happened we can assume, at least for that sake of this thread, that the discussion of such figures should be fine. If your issue with the creation of custom or bootleg figures is that you've had a figure that you've created that you feel has been bootlegged then surely your creation, to make it accurate to the character and be Lego-like, would involve the use of things such as Lego style muscle definition as well as any of the uniform, facial likenesses or other graphic elements to make it recognisable. None of which you would have license to do. Permission, by inactivity of the license holder, possibly, but people can't stand firmly in the grey area of IP infringement and simply say other people are worse because they're selling. That's not up to them. I'm assuming the cloning of one of your designs is the reason you have changed your stance on bootleg figures? I think if you're going to be this firm on how dislikable they are I'd recommend carefully removing any bootleg parts from your figure collections otherwise it could come across as contradictory.

It could certainly be an easy year. Those UCS slots are something I'm hoping give me something big to focus on but a lot of the other stuff rae easy passes for me... even the Quad Jumper. From what people have been saying about potential Freemakers sets (assuming it's real) do we know if another new story will be here by the time this wave hits? Is there potential for new characters rather than just those from the exiting episodes?

I actually quite like Joker. For a kids film where he's going to be more lifelike than in the animated shorts or games I quite like the silliness to his grotesque nature. As others have said it at least gives very original and new parts to create your own ideal Joker. I actually think Riddler's mask print looks a little worse. It looks too squashed on the face. Ivy's eyes are something I'm going to have to wait and see on. They remind me of Juno Eclipse's a little as I don't like the eye make up defining the eye area and making the whole eye look like a pupil. Maybe once we see how that's animated in the movie it'll help adjust how my eyes see it.

I can't remember off the top of my head how much a PAB cup is at the Liverpool store but I think there's two cup sizes. There's a B-A-M tower in the Liverpool store and I think it's £4.99 for a set of three minifigures with accessories in their plastic clamshell case. The nice thing is there are often various licensed parts in there too. I'm not sure if there's anything specific worth picking up that you couldn't get anywhere else. Whereabouts is your friend visiting? It might be worth knowing just in case anybody from that area has specific knowledge of that particular store.

I think we'll assume at this point that they're OK as even through they're based on Lego designs they're unreleased and aren't a clone of an existing release.

All I can say for those Freemakers sets is I think they'll have another series and then they'll probably stick a Zuckuss or 4-Lom into those sets. And they'd get my money quicker than a Quad Jumper will!

Same here. I like this variation. I've got the previous two versions so it's nice to have a completely different variation of the character that still has some link to the existing Batman universe.

So after picking up the Death Star I thought I'd update my Imperial Officers. Still need to add Jerjerrod and Tagge as well as Krennic but not looking too shabby.

Not forgetting the LBM is happening only once and with that it's only two waves of an entire license that's affected. The second wave of which will include movie related sets. That means in a year's time it's out of the way and the entire roster is opened up again while we get some characters from the Bat-verse that probably would never have seen the light of day.

I've had the same as Spock. I've also had occasions when I thought I'd made a post and then clicked to move on to another part of the site... only when i've visited the thread again and tried to make a comment my original message appears in the dialogue box. It seems that happens if it doesn't successfully upload or save the comment.

I really think people are reading into this too much and I'm not sure if some of the comments are just being awkward for awkward's sake. Start a thread and add content. If it breaks the new site guidelines it'll be closed down. If it doesn't then that's fine. Lego, DC, Marvel, BBC or Whoever aren't going to come after anyone for commenting on something on this forum but at the worst the site will be asked to cease all talk of such things.

And I think this is where any discussion could very quickly go south. It's a very fine line. Even if SY or a similar company did a set of DC related figures that Lego haven't done then we know someone's IP has been breached yet it's not a replica or clone of an official Lego product so technically can be discussed. Things such as Sen Bao's Falcon Commandos can surely be discussed as they don't infringe upon any immediate IP but some of the camo print can be very similar to CitizenBrick's parts. But then I suppose CB don't have any copyright over camo print. The guns and accessories that are issued with the Sen Bao figures look to be copies of moulds from companies such as Brickarms etc but then I'm sure BrickArms don't have a license from Heckler & Koch to produce likenesses of MP5 machine guns. Where is the line drawn or are people making far too much of some things? I personally don't see a problem with a thread that says 'Hey... Here's a '66 Batgirl by a Chinese company' when we don't have one from Lego and it's a glaring omission from the '66 Batcave and polybag. I see that as no different from any of the customisers who freely sell on eBay and other open and public platforms. Many accessories are created from non-Lego ABS so as long as the product is of decent quality then it's about as valid as any other custom figure. It's personal preference whether people want it on genuine Lego pieces. Each bootleg minifigure has subtle differences in their moulding that make them not be complete copies yet are almost entirely compatible. It's when that Batgirl figure is one of eight from a set and the other seven are all clones from the official set. It's difficult to talk around that and conversation may ultimately lead to far more cloned figures being shown than those that are unique. I'm sure it'll still get people popping into the thread to call it immoral, illegal etc. Maybe it's something that could be tested out but I think it'd be an awkward process at least at first. People will be cautious about what they can and can't say for fear of it being shut down again and eventually that may happen anyway.

Yep. As petty as some people may find it it's totally up to Lego what gets released and when. If they feel they need to issue a removal notice (however futile) then that's that.

Yeah... and I can see why. It's probably only something that has any kind of really negative connotations when the likes of Syco, Megablocks and Oxford are lumped into the same category as Lepin or Decool. Previously it was probably pretty fair. At least the history is now know and admitted. Lego should certainly be confident enough in who they are and what they've become to acknowledge such things.

$4 to $12 isn't too shabby for a torso so he must be a little special. I know the red wavy women's hair was apparently only released on the Phoenix SDCC figure but it's quite common from being in BAM towers at Lego stores. I wonder if this torso was circulated in a similar way (although obviously older). Either that or as MAB said it's an alternative part of a set that just hadn't been listed on BL.

The term clone brand has always annoyed me a bit. Isn't Lego a derivative of Kiddicraft's Interlocking Brick System? In which case Lego is a clone brand. Just that they're now the brand that has it's name used as recognition of the entire toy genre in the same way that Sellotape and Hoover have. Surely a clone brand should be a company that only produces clones of existing sets whereby anybody that does their own thing are just competitor brands.

With regards to the line spacing above if you hold down shift when pressing return it gives a single line space rather than the double space a regular return gives. I think the update seems to be working nicely as a whole now especially on my phone. The only thing I'm not sure about is if I press on a latest page of a thread it used to remember where I'd read up to and take me to that post but now I just go back to the top of each page. Not a huge issue but I wondered if that's something that's going to update also. Ninja'd on the linespace return.

I actually don't think this was a snobbish decision to make and to be honest it's one that I think was becoming inevitable. I think making a decision to 'censor' something is actually a hard decision for a site to make. The reproduction of many, many sets by Lepin was drawing comparisons to the bootlegging of minifigures which is completely understandable. While the bootleg minifig thread was started due to completely different figures from those produced by Lego there did then develop a systematic copying of Lego's licensed minifigures... essentially no different from the Lepin issue with those sets. Lego's court case against Lepin has brought them very much into focus and Lepin then having a platform on a Lego forum, albeit in the community section, to have their products discussed puts this site at odds with Lego's interests... a site that has a very good relationship with Lego. So with that I think that one thread being closed was always going to result in both being closed. I still think that the bootleg companies have actually brought some really nice minifigure parts, and indeed minifigures, to the market that compliment anyone's Lego collection (just don't judge everything created the same as some are absolutely horrific). But with that comes the issue raised previously about custom minifigures in general. Any likeness of a licensed character is owned by someone and the customisers don't have a license to replicate that but are being allowed to by inaction of the license holders. There has recently been a case where a very well known customiser was due to release a new character but had a cease and desist order from the license holder. This license holder didn't ask for any of the other figures being produced to be stopped even though they hold the licenses to them. So seemingly license holders choose their moments to exert their authority when a release can coincide or compete with their own future or impending releases. I knew someone who did something similar with needledrops of first pressings of Beatles vinyl. He got a visit from EMI's legal team at his some 6 months before the Remasters were released and he was asked to stop his 'work' for 18 months. They admitted that surviving members of the Beatles had heard his discs and even owned some of them but they wanted any barrier to the remasters releases to be removed. He was told that EMI didn't want to appear like the 'big bad' and go after a one man band but they'd stop him if he didn't comply. That said he stopped and 18 months later started up again... offering a service to Beatles fans of authentic first press vinyl sound cleaned up and brought to the digital age...all with the knowledge of EMI, Apple and the Beatles themselves. I also know that the people that bought his discs (or were sent them for doing QC on the sound) also bought the remasters, had previously bought the other CDs, owned vinyl and had contributed to the financial juggernaut that was and still is The Beatles and will continue to do so forevermore. So, as far as I'm concerned, the matter of whether the reproduction of a likeness is acceptable is only down to the license holder and if they allow it to happen then that's fine. It's that simple. If they didn't allow it then there are 4 or 5 customisers who'd have their shops shut down by now (and yes, most of them are US based). I think Lego and their license partners know and happily accept that customisation and creation of new figures is something that enhances and expands a fan's collection, but systematic replication of their product on an unprecedented scale isn't and it's not something they want to accept. I think if Lepin had just cloned a couple of the early modulars then lego probably wouldn't have taken this strong a stance... As much as they wouldn't have liked it they may have even accepted that people who missed out on those sets might buy them instead of the genuine sets from resellers or scalpers. They'd have lost no sales because of it. But that's not how it went and for the next 12 months I can only see Lepin cloning more and more in an effort to get their product on the market. If their bricks are getting as good as some people say then who knows... the case might prompt them into investing in a designer or two and making some unique sets in the way that some of the other clone brands have done. Turn what seems to be a decent brick quality into something more legitimate. Something that can be discussed and even compliment the modular landscape in a much more positive way.

The original Yoda Hut had the X-Wing along with a form of hut that opened out. I agree though that the set just couldn't justify a UCS tag as a playset. I'm sure there could be a fantastic MOC that would be the right kind of size and brick count but nothing that could really be bought off the shelf with instructions for children to follow.

Did someone say there was a VIP early order date from 15th (tomorrow)?

I think I might try and source those Knex Blue Meanies as they might look quite good alongside this. I must admit looking at that Knex set should give you enough of an idea why it was priced much lower than Lego.

Interesting comment from someone on a forum for Adult Fans of Lego. I'd probably say that anyone that was interested in the Beatles would know about Yellow Submarine anyway regardless of whether they've seen it. These images are also the cover of a very successful album. The Beatles are iconic enough that they could have a set of figures from each era whether that be in their suits, tan jackets and sheriff badges from Shea, Sgt Peppers or Abbey Road. I just don't see the platform for those to appear unlike Yellow Submarine.