Hive

This story I'm about to tell you all is not for the faint of heart... It begins with me being absolutely enamoured by the impressive sets LEGO has been giving us in the Lord of the Rings theme in recent years. So enamoured, in fact, that I decided to make LOTR (and, by extension, The Hobbit) the main focus of my entire LEGO collection. But to do that, I naturally needed the sets from the first LEGO LOTR/Hobbit waves from 2012–2015. Well... not so much the sets themselves. Mainly the minifigures. But before I continue the story, we need a tragic flashback sequence. Back when these sets originally came out, I actually bought most of them. However, at that point in my collecting journey, I was still primarily collecting Castle and Pirates, and I simply did not accept flesh-coloured figures into my collection. I firmly believed that the only true, old-school way to collect LEGO was yellow. Was this LEGO racism? Possibly. Anyway, what did I do? I naturally sold off roughly 95% of the minifigures, keeping only the builds so I could incorporate them into my Castle collection. Yeah... That sucks. Especially these days, when I know exactly how much value I casually siphoned away back then. And, because apparently I enjoy making the same mistakes twice, I did essentially the same thing with another licensed theme: Pirates of the Caribbean. That one also haunts me. But anyway... back to the present. I decided I wanted all those LOTR/Hobbit minifigures back. And what better way to secure minifigures in pristine condition than to buy the sets unopened? At insane, scalper-level prices? Well, that's what I decided to do. So I started hunting down the old LOTR/Hobbit sets and actually managed to secure a rather substantial portion of them. At utterly absurd prices, naturally. But it is what it is. At least most of these sets should retain most of their value, I told myself. Especially the Hobbit sets, which LEGO are unlikely to ever produce again. So, within a little over a week, I bought 12 sets, with another two on the way, plus two polybags. And today, I very excitingly decided to open and build the first of them: 79001 Escape from Mirkwood Spiders. Oh, the joy of opening this set again, fresh out of the box... The smell of 2012 LEGO (which, after all these years sealed away, actually wasn't all that great). The crisp, untouched bags. The knowledge that these pieces had been sitting there for over a decade, patiently waiting for me. A true delight. ... A delight that was extremely short-lived. You see, this set contains quite a lot of Reddish Brown. And anyone who collected LEGO during this particular era will know exactly where this is going. Around this point in LEGO's history, Reddish Brown bricks had a tendency to break. And by "a tendency", I mean they broke like they were being paid to do it. Bricks. Plates. Clips. Breakage left and right. We've all been there. So I was fully prepared to lose a few bricks and plates while building this set. No biggie. They're replaceable. But what I didn't expect... What I really, really did not expect... ...was for this problem to affect the minifigures. And, even worse, I had no idea that the problem wasn't limited to Reddish Brown. Dark Brown was affected too. And I was soon to discover this in the most horrifying way possible. I assume you can guess what happened next. I went to assemble good old Kili, with his lovely Dark Brown torso. I gently inserted his tiny little legs... CRACK. Straight away. His torso had cracked. My heart sank. Crushed and now slightly panicked, I put Kili aside and went to examine Fili, whom I had assembled just a minute earlier. Surely he was fine? After all, I had been *extremely* careful. I inspected him thoroughly. And there it was. A smaller, but still very much present, crack in his likewise Dark Brown torso. Fili was wounded too. Just like that, my freshly opened set had lost roughly half its value (on top of the value lost simply by opening the set, of course). And I was now missing the two most important figures in the set — at least if I want them in proper, serviceable condition. Which, obviously, I do. And the irony is almost painful. I paid the big money for sealed sets specifically to avoid situations like this. And then the first thing that happens when I finally open one... LEGO itself betrays me. But as terrible as this is, it actually gives me an even bigger headache. Because what does this mean for the rest of my collection? There is plenty of Reddish Brown and Dark Brown in those figures too. Do I even dare assemble an expensive gentleman like Radagast the Brown? Are the Orcs affected? What about the Mirkwood Elves? Will Bard the Bowman make it? Will the esteemed mayor of Lake Town survive? Will anyone survive? At this point, I'm beginning to suspect that the safest place for these minifigures is simply inside their unopened bags, where they can remain blissfully unaware of their impending doom. So now I'm left wondering: Do I dare open the rest of the sets at all? And, more importantly... Does anyone have suggestions for more affordable, preferably somewhat similar-looking replacement torsos I could use for my unfortunate, now-broken Dwarven brothers? Because apparently, restoring my childhood LEGO collection has turned into a hostage negotiation with brittle plastic.

I'm building this set right now. I wasn't really interesting in the set itself as the build seems like a less impressive version of the last Creator castle. But I loved the figs and had to get them. So of course I decided to buy it 2 days before the figures went up on PAB... Nothing about the build impresses me. But the figures are great in hand. Really like those. Not a fan of the brick built horses but I get that it's a Creator set. Though they are clearly bending their own rules for Creator with introducing the large panel pieces, so I wish they had bent the rules and given us molded horses as well. That would have been a huge improvement of the set. That said, the brick built horses are fairly clever.

This is fantastic! I love the use of many colors. It's so easy to fall into a grey pit when doing castle builds.

I'd like to give the Book Shop a shout. Well, the book shop part of it at least. I think that one, as a stand alone, would be top 5. But the turqoise residential building drags the overall look somewhat down, sadly.

To my surprise, the votes actually line up pretty well with my own personal favorites (top 3 is Parisian Restaurant, Boutique Hotel and Assembly Square). Crazy that there's no love for the Town Hall or Jazz Club though.

Very nice! I especially love the detail with using hands as branches. Very creative.

The Botanical Gardens look nice, but I'm still somewhat disappointed. I'm not convinced that it looks that much better than 2x the veeeery similar Friends Botanical Gardens. I guess I just expected more.

I bought the Parisian Restaurant (my personal favorite) as a one-off myself, originally planning to use it to moc a pirate era building. But then I fell for the concept and has bought everything since.

Good pick! I'm very fond of Assembly Square myself, as it was a wedding gift for my wife and me.

With a new modular coming around the corner, I was wondering - after 17 years - how people rank the Modulars. So which one is your favorite? If you have trouble remembering them all, you can see pictures of them individually here: https://brickset.com/sets/subtheme-Modular-Buildings-Collection (I couldn't find a picture that had the Museum as well, sorry!)

First off, let me start by saying that I absolutely hate the minidolls, the big eyed animals and the often too crazy color palette used in the Friends theme. And when it was introduced, I ranted towards it in such a fashion that a Eurobricks admin, to mock me, gave me the fine rank I have now (Friendsified!). But, and I know this will be controversial, I think the Friends theme has been the most consistently interesting (full) theme (not counting Icons as a proper theme) for several years now, and a far better "City" theme than, well, the City theme itself and, usually, the Creator theme as well. Yes, the minidolls are useless and the colors often needs a bit tweaking... but the variety within the theme is nothing short of amazing! And the creativity in the buildings, added some interesting and innovative techniques, are usually much better than what we see in most other themes. And the attention to detail is very impressive as well. Look at fantastic sets like these, to (hopefully) show what I'm talking about: All the above can either go into my setups with some modifications or serve as inspirations and parts fodder to eg. modular buildings. Apart from big releases in Castle, Pirates, Modulars, Winter Village, LoTR and such, Friends is what excites me the most in LEGO these days. Anyone else feel the same way?

I kinda feel that castle is too fancy for the Wolfpack...

Mine has finally been shipped, from Belgium.

Nope, mine haven't even been sent yet. Really frustrating to me that LEGO can't even handle shipping in stock goods in a timely fashion. I can live with bricks & pieces usually taking 6 weeks to ship, as that's a special fan service they aren't really making a lot of money on - but selling sets is their core business. They should employ more workers for packaging.

I just built this set, it's a fun build. Full of nostalgia, and it's great to see both new Forestman torsos and - especially - new versions of the classic shield. Absolutely loved it.

It seems to be sold out in Europe now. I sure hope they still have one for my order, which they have yet to process...

Oh that's a shame. Perhaps you can still cancel and re-order? It was heavily rumored to be released today, so I took my chances and believed the rumor.

It's live!

Waiting paid off for me, as I managed to get both the Castle, the Forest Hideout GWP and the Pirate pack add-on.

A very nice improvement on what I see as one of the best sets from the KKII theme.

Thanks for that image, I hadn't even realized that there were two different Lion Knight torsos in the set.

Well how often have we gotten only a King? I don't recall anyone making much of a fuss over that, any of the times it happened. Would it have been nice to have a King, a Prince, a Princess, a jester, more civilians, more animals, etc...? Yes, for sure. Do we *need* them? Not really. As previously mentioned, there are plenty of valid reasons why a King is not necessarily present in the set - also when looking through historical lenses.

Sure, people have a right to their opinion. Having opinions on the design, coloring, size, price, amount of peasant minifigures, number of horses, chosen heraldy and stuff like that is all quite valid. Having an opinion on whether a children's construction toy is historically accurate enough when portraying women in the military, however, is quite silly.

Really? Oh, that's great. I did not see one in any of the pictures.