Robianco

I've got Cyclops to trade. Only one I'm interested in is Y Wing Astromech.

You mean Megabloks? ;)

Nope.

I think the issue with the figures, while having parallels is slightly different. The thread was started in response to there being figures such as FF available and back then these were a completely unknown entity. Who is making them and are they any good? There have been plenty of times over the last 30 or so months that people have posted on the thread with the same staunch defence of Lego and vented their anger at the fact the thread even existed never mind had any regular contributors. The interest, for the most part, in that thread is for new figures that are unique, that maybe will never be produced by Lego or are at least new at the point of release. Obviously as time went on these companies cloned waves of existing figures (SY released two sets of 8 figures that replicated every AoU figures from those releases including the Helicarrier). I'm not remotely interested in figures such as that... or even with new figures that are printed badly or have poor moulding and fit. But they can occasionally release a new figure that is comparable to Lego or any of the number of customisers out there. Customising is another minefield altogether. I had a (heated) conversation a couple of years ago on a Flickr thread because a member had a Wolverine figure copied by Decool and sold. My argument was that while it was annoying to the Flickr member involved after creating the artwork and having the figure printed, he had no legal right to complain as he didn't own the image rights to Wolverine and therefore was violating Marvel's IP by replicating that figure and selling it. (it was a completely different uniform to Lego's release and is still unique in that sense). The fact that a custom minifig producer can get 50 or 100 printed and sell them for £20 seems to be OK... but if that's copied and sold for £1 that's evil. I argued that it was the same thing but just done on a different scale. Yes, the custom fig was printed on genuine Lego parts and the Decool wasn't but there's a huge precedent for custom moulded parts too. There are accessories, armour etc that are custom moulded by very reputable companies across the world and we as Lego fans accept these. Brickforge make two parts arms and legs to customise the dual moulded experience... so those arms wouldn't be genuine Lego ABS but would work with your genuine Lego torsos. Christo, probably the best custom minifig maker out there, moulds many pieces of fantastic quality but they're obviously not genuine Lego ABS yet they become part of some of the most expensive custom minifigs available. Which brings me on to custom pieces themselves. We talk about Lego going after bootleggers in China because they replicate their product and whether the Chinese Courts will uphold their claim when they've dismissed even more blatant IP infringements such as the cloning of luxury vehicles such as BMWs X5. Yet there are various stores on eBay that are based in the US and sell custom printed minifigures. I can pretty much guarantee they don't hold any licenses from DC, Marvel, BBC or any other company from where the likenesses of these figure originate... and yes, they've cloned existing Lego product such as SDCC figures as well as replicated designs owned by Lego such as game designs. Yet they still happily sell with over 100 items on their store at any one time. If you were to sell a set of bootleg Iron Man armours that Lego haven't produced you can have them removed by Lego's legal team immediately. But I can see why. You need to draw the line somewhere and the fact that there are resellers on eBay that buy figures for 80p each and sell them on for £3 each floods the market with counterfeit product and makes a profit for both the bootleg company and the reseller. Remove this and less people will buy the fakes... which might slow down production or at least limit it to its original market in the east. If the likes of SY, Decool etc had just made non-existing product they'd probably be looked upon quite differently. Firstly let me say that a custom minifig maker normally puts out an excellent product. Very well crafted designs that are printed with more care and attention than Lego themselves due to the small number they're produced especially when pad printed. I've bought many of them. Bootlegs can range from Lego like in quality of print and plastic to utter crap on both counts. Unfortunately these bootleg companies didn't stop there, they're not in it to help AFOLs expand their minifig collection. So they got into cloning sets... across more and more licenses. Some of them have started their own ranges ( in all seriousness if you have any interest in military minifigures check 'S' brand's Falcon Commandos... absolutely superb print across the whole minifigure... if these were Lego there'd be pages eulogising about them) but in the most part they stick with copying existing Lego product... because it sells. I've always thought that these sets were designed for the Asian market. A market that isn't as affluent and so creates a supply for those that demand. Which is the problem. As others have said, with the subtlety of a brick, if you can't afford something that may actually mean you can't own it. I would like a Rolex Submariner but it costs around £6000 so until the times comes that I can afford it I won't get it. I own an Omega Seamaster so I'm more than happy with that... besides if I spent £6000 on a watch my wife would kill me. But I have also firmly believed that people who want genuine product will always go and get it regardless of there being a cheaper fake available. There's a very good replica of Phoenix Customs Arachnid Hero and it cost around £1 (or it was in a set of 8 figs for £6 or so). Yet every time he prints more of the original it sells out at $35 or so each. It's a fantastic figure and some of the best printing I've ever seen on a Lego figure. There are copies of Christo figures yet the originals still sell for far more. There will always be a market for the original (and better) product. Lepin seem to have looked at things and actually thought 'Go hard or go home' and they've gone for it... large products with big price tags and they seem to have got their quality right. This feels different. It's not aimed at the Asian market anymore offering sets for £10 instead of £40. These are £150 sets and they're going after the rest of the world and giving people the top end of Lego's catalogue. Again... if they'd just replicated retired product would people see them differently? Who knows... but they didn't. They're making existing product hand over fist and the quality seems to be comparable so Lego feel they need to stop it. Not just because of IP laws but because Asia is Lego's largest growing market... even with the SYs and Decools doing their thing for the last two to three years, this growth is what persuaded me that the cheaper products weren't hurting Lego's offering as the market was still growing and quality wins out in the end... but now there is something that could really dent their growth and if it sticks around unchallenged it will gain legitimacy in the market place... especially to buyers. For those that have modular towns would you seriously consider holding off on buying next year's modulars, whatever they may be, for £130 in the hope that two months later you can buy a clone for £35? If so that's the reason Lego want to stop it. If Lepin wanted to create something new... something to add to the modular landscape that wasn't a clone of an Ideas set or an existing one they'd be showing some initiative but they've been aggressive in their production with no desire to create something new... they may only have a year to go... Let's see what happens when they run out of things to clone. Basically nothing that hasn't been licensed should exist... we know that. No figure that hasn't had permission from it's image rights holder should be printed... but they are. And I love them. So maybe I'm part of the problem... Can we have one and seriously not expect the other to come along too? As much as I originally thought the subject of scale was irrelevant with the copying of that Wolverine figure years ago maybe I'm falling into that same trap now. Maybe it's Lepin's scale of production that is really the issue and I've actually just become the people I was arguing with. Bugger. This was far longer than I anticipated.

I think most of the recent Ideas sets have been between £40 and £50 anyway so there's no surprise with that pricing for me.

That's such a sh***y comment. There's just no need for that sort of outburst.

Yeah. They'll face that whatever they do. It might be a faff but dual moulding with a red top half and then printing the tan area at the top of that might be a good way of getting the desired effect. Im just glad we're getting these figures with superbly moulded helmets etc.

I've done that same Bard mod for Biggs and I've always thought it looked perfect.

They're both quite different ships and I think as sets they look quite different due to the scale. 10221 is a very impressive build but I think the Star Destroyer is a far more iconic shape so the scale of the 10030 UCS set looks better to me. I've not built either so you'd have to ask those that have which of them was a better build experience and which has the better rigidity etc.

I'm sure they could give them a band of colour that doesn't go all the way round to avoid the nazi armband look. I'm not sure why they see some figures as worth if such detail but not others. I really thought they'd use arm printing similar to the TIE UCS set on the 75159 Death Star for at least a couple of the figures but no go. It will always be an issue on some themes and some figures why they don't utilise full arm and leg printing mixed with dual moulding.

I think I might give the Lego store a call and check a date. If people have box images etc then they must be ready for distribution or have been shipped ready for release.

I agree. Some people get to see the catalogues and are able to share some of the information here... that's a lot of info across various themes and people are worried about specific set numbers?!?! I wouldn't worry about the reliability of CM4Sci. He's about as reliable as you're going to find on this board (or any board for that matter). His credibility does not lie with simply giving people set numbers and occasionally getting mixed up with them. The first page of this thread (or any rumours thread for that matter) will give you a break down of what we know including set numbers etc and should be updated with other info accordingly until a complete picture is know. If it isn't there then we don't definitely know about it.

That War Machine is one of the oldest SY Iron Man figures around. As much as it's a very easy pass on these I'm just glad to see SY still doing minifigs.

With brick parts there's still the obvious thing of it having lego stamped onto each stud. If it doesn't have that then it's not Lego. It's other parts that don't have the Lego stamp in the same way... such as I mentioned on the Falcon. The levers on there as well as the Technics yellow angled bricks don't have those obvious markers so they might be easy to swap out without anyone noticing.

I haven't had my Endor AT-ST built in a while but I was surprised to see how much bigger the new one is next to it. The legs looks so chunky in comparison on that pic but in isolation it looks fine.

They're certainly not worth a price increase. If we get to see more DLP and SY then I'll still consider picking up the odd figure of interest but at the current Pogo and Xinh quality the 80p asking price is too much for what you get.

Yeah. I actually think the companies that concentrate on the brick based products really don't do particularly good figures. From what I've seen the Lepin Star Wars sets for TFA had some pretty iffy figures. It was more down to the clamour from the Marvel fans for some really top end building based sets rather than just vehicles etc. With them cloning another Ideas modular set along with the full line up of regular modular sets I'm wondering whether they'll go into something like that. Either that or Wayne Manor. I must admit looking at those new figures they look absolutely terrible. You can see the quality difference on the DLP Batman figures to the X-Men figures. As long as the DLP Batman wave has a decent Flashpoint Batman I'll be happy.

There are these two heads with stubble that look stern enough: http://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3626cpb0769&name=Minifig, Head Male Large Scar and Stubble Pattern - Stud Recessed&category=[Minifig, Head]#T=C&C=90 http://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3626cpb0946&name=Minifig, Head Beard Stubble, Brown Angry Eyebrows, White Pupils Pattern - Stud Recessed&category=[Minifig, Head]#T=C Pre Vizla was quite gaunt with defined cheekbones so maybe Tarkin's head from the recent TIE Advanced and Death Star: http://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3626cpb1573&name=Minifig, Head Dual Sided Black Eyebrows, Dark Orange Wrinkles, Stern / Raised Right Eyebrow Pattern (Grand Moff Tarkin) - Stud Recessed&category=[Minifig, Head]#T=C&C=90

There are certain sets I can't see happening mainly due to what happened at that location. Lars Homestead is either a building with three family members doing not very much or it's a squad of stormtroopers there for a merciless murder against two elderly unarmed people. Yavin Base would be great for us as AFOLs but as the Empire never landed on Yavin IV a conflict or battle would be difficult to manifest (short of just including a stormtrooper or two and just pretending it did) Yoda's Hut is different as the training of Luke as a Jedi is more interesting a journey for kids to 'play'... they've also got the clash with Vader if needed for a bit of conflict. Cloud City is a must but we've all been there many MANY times.

It does look like it. The way the hip piece goes both up and down at the sides seems to indicate it's moulded rather than just a fabric 'skirt' that folds down from the hip studs.

Oh come on... we know for a fact that SY and DLP have good ink quality. Pogo, Xinh, Bella, Dargo, JLB... even Decool... are all bordering on crap most of the time but if there's one thing that SY and DLP (probably because they're closely linked) have got right is the quality of their print. We can probably put Lepin's figures down in the 'utter crap' pile. Whatever kind of work they're putting into getting their brick quality up to scratch everything I've seen people say about their figures have been pretty dire.

It does look like it. The way the hip piece goes both up and down at the sides seems to indicate it's moulded rather than just a fabric 'skirt' that folds down from the hip studs.

This Scouser living happily in Liddypool also has shelf space waiting ;)

I like those shields. After reading through the Lepin thread and seeing how people are committing to them I wonder how people would feel if they made an X-Mansion similar to the Ideas set?

I don't think it helps that Two-Face figure that the hair isn't on straight. I think once the side of the hair is brought round it'll help shape the scarred side of the face better. Ivy's eye make up was obviously done by the ghost of Amy Winehouse (actually with the beehive vampire hair it'd be a pretty good Amy). It does make the eye shape a little odd though, similar to Juno from the Rogue Shadow set.