Hive

Amen to this. The level of blind and one-sided LEGO fanboyism on these boards sometimes astounds me.

I love the dragon tower, nice job.

The King Of The Seas has a very cool colourscheme. Granted, the sails are bad and the minifigs even worse... but the rest is pretty good.

I found them all on Brickpedia, searching for the word 'prototype'. There are lots of pics from other themes as well, a whole bunch from various space themes for example. I'm glad you guys like them.

I apologize if these has already been posted here, but I stumbled across some (at least to me) interesting prototype Castle designs from various periods. Some of them are earlier versions of released sets, some are sets that never materialized in any form, some are alternative minifigs... well, see for yourself: An interesting sort of precursor to the Medieval Market Village, pretty well-made. Another medieval village with an interesting look. A fairly standard castle. A Loch Ness castle with creature. An interesting build. A dwarwf mine from the 80's. Very cool, I think. A later dwarf mine. Yet another dwarf mine. Fascinating to see the development of this set over the years. Some earlier versions of the dwarfs. Some unreleased castle minifigs. An earlier version of the troll's mountain fortress. In my view, this version is far superior to the final product. I think I've seen this particular image somewhere on Eurobricks already, but couldn't recall where... it's a cancelled theme called 'Europa'. From Brickpedia: "Europa is an unreleased theme created by the LEGO group. It was set in the 18th century. The most likely reason that the theme wasn't released is that it was too close to both Castle and Pirates." It's my favourite picture of the bunch, and I think it could have been great even though I understand their reasons for not doing it. Notice the wigs! Link to a bigger version of the picture: http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110102230732/lego/images/6/63/Europa.png

To expand on what I said earlier: I think girls wants a theme with good, strong characters. Not just generic minifigs, but an actual story with characters that has names and a backstory. With a, say, 8-12-year old girl in the "leading role", surrounded by her family (mom, dad, big sister, little brother) and her friends. Sets like "Jessica and friends at the zoo", "Jessica at the stables", "Jessica and her family on vacation", "Jessica playing in the park", etc... some pink and purple might be fine here and there, but I don't think it needs to be dumbed down to "girls love pink, PINK EVERYWHERE!!!!" like the Paradisa sets were. Incidentally, I think several of those sets in newer versions could be a good idea.

They just need a theme with tons of horses. And possibly other animals. A theme with a named girl as the key person, with her family in supporting roles. Yes I know it's a cliché, but my experience tells me that girls really dig playing "family" and love various animals, with horses being a particular joy.

Old news: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=51425

It does exist somewhere, I managed to find it during the Talking Skull contest.

I got my prize as well, the very nice Pirates magnet set. Thanks again for this great and extremely well-made contest!

This is a huge dissapointment to me, as it was the only one of the 3 competitions I was planning to enter. It sounded so fresh and exciting, and I feel bad for all the people who made an effort coming up with the hilarious and rewd entries prior to this decision. But oh well, such is life.

The Left 4 Dead entry is awesome! Great job!

"..-. --- ..- .-." Nothing fancy, but the word "four" spelled in morse language using 4 different colours of chewn-out and worn LEGO bricks from my childhood.

Still, the sets are ~6 months away from release. Things can change. And the bricks *looking* like poor quality does not necessarily mean that they *are* poor quality. People just seem really eager to bury this project.

Why do people keep assuming this with absolutely no basis to support any such claim? Maybe the quality does suck, maybe it doesn't. But untill the sets are actually released and someone gets their hands on them, we won't know.

If LEGO believed they could sell 3 simultaneous Castle themes, I'm sure they would produce them.

Licenses such as especially Star Wars but also Batman, Spider-Man and Indiana Jones seems like a lucrative investment to me... they always seem in high demand. But something like Prince of Persia, which ran for barely a year before now being more or less permanently slashed in price big time makes me wonder whether that was a good investment on LEGO's behalf.

No, they don't need a new license as they already own the entire brand. They don't pay for Transformers licenses from someone else, they *own* the licenses themselves. Hasbro created Transformers and can sell Transformers toys in any way they like.

For what it's worth, I read an interview with a Hasbro guy who said that they were aware that their previous line bombed in part due to poor plastic quality. So one should from that assume that means they have improved it.

Yeah it was confirmed long time ago that they're doing a new triolgy. Even I knew that like 2 years ago, and I don't care much for POTC.

I have now added another 7016 Viking Boat vs. Wyvern Dragon, this one unopened, to my list. Got it in a lot I recently bought and I have no real interest in it myself.

I love the old raised baseplates and wish I had one.

Hasbro does not own Star Wars in any way, they license it from George Lucas in just the same way as LEGO does. Anyway, I agree with you that people are a bit too protective of LEGO and their bricks. Yes, these bricks are heavily inspired by LEGO and are fully compatible with LEGO. But why must that be a bad thing? I'm sure LEGO will be fine financially regardless. And I think it's absolutely marvelous to have two great toylines be compatible like this, I wish there would have been cases of that when I was a child. I see these upcoming "LEGO-ish" Transformers sets as compliments to a LEGO collection, not as competitor.

I love Pirates almost as much as I love Castle, but only almost... and since I don't really have enough cash to collect both, my focus is on Castle. I do buy some of the smaller Pirate sets from time to time, though.

Agreed, it looks absolutely awesome. And the green carriage looks like it could easily be modded into a nice little Dragon knights carriage.