Apollo VI

By that same logic, couldn't they make minifigures of Troy McClure or Lionel Hutz to honor Phil Hartman? I don't think there's a time limit on when you can honor a character after they've been retired. The even made action figures of Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz four years after Hartman's death: http://www.amazon.com/The-Simpsons-Celebrity-Hartman-McClure/dp/B00005U2HF

As far as plausible new licensed themes that they could have introduced in recent years, I'm pretty disappointed we didn't get a Tron Legacy theme. Lego had signed a deal to work with Disney starting in 2010, the year Tron Legacy came out. A Tron Legacy theme could've happened, but they likely opted to make a Prince of Persia theme instead, which flopped both as a film and a Lego theme IMO. Tron Legacy is visually stunning and it would have been awesome to get sets using lots of black, trans-blue/white, and trans-orange/red. It would have almost been like getting a new Lego Space theme. It's got tons of vehicles too so I'm absolutely positive it would have been very successful with kids. I think some of those aesthetics have even been used by Lego in the new Agents theme with a good degree of success. As far as dropping the ball on themes they've had, I'm disappointed Indiana Jones didn't get one more year of sets to really round out the remaining action scenes in the movies. Once again I think some of the blame goes to Prince of Persia, whose deserty adventurer premise overlaps a little to much with Indy and forced it to come to an end prematurely. Two of the four Indy movies (Raiders and Crusade, which happen to be the two best movies) never even got their respective climaxes made into Lego sets. And if Lego would've allowed it, the Mark VIII tank from Last Crusade could have easily been one of the coolest licensed Lego sets ever. Given that they actually made a Nazi fighter plane in set 7198, as well as many fictionalized tanks in other themes, making a World War I tank belonging to Hatay would not be any worse, in my opinion of course. And for themes they should be doing but don't have the means to do so at the moment, they definitely need to tap into Nintendo at some point. Lego has crossed over with film and TV many times, but thus far they've barely touched video games. We have the Minecraft theme which is pretty straightforward and open-ended, and we've gotten a few sets based on The Force Unleashed and The Old Republic, but basically nothing else. Nintendo would give them access to a huge number of subthemes popular with kids, which could easily be mashed together officially or unofficially as Super Smash Bros. The point is that they wouldn't have to worry about the respective subthemes clashing because Nintendo already makes them work together seamlessly. Individually though, the subtheme possibilities are richer than Marvel or DC could ever hope to be. Mario, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon, Starfox, Kirby, as well as franchises probably good enough for a one-off set like F-Zero and Kid Icarus. If anyone has been following the Amiibo craze since November, you'll know that Nintendo fans are absolutely rabid about collecting toys of their favorite characters. So not only would this be popular with kids, but it would be huge with TFOLs and AFOLs as well. So I really think Lego partnering with Nintendo would be one of the last great frontiers that Lego needs to conquer from a licensing standpoint.

I'm working on a minifig-scale version of the Ranger. It's very tough because of shallow sloping shape of the vehicle. It's not very well-suited for Lego. In my opinion, it's the same issue that a lot of Star Trek ship MOCs run into, and a the primary reason why the Cuusoo BTTF DeLorean's hood was so off-putting. Gentle slopes are difficult to capture in a blocky medium with a limited slope part selection. On top of that you've got all of those window details on the Ranger. You're simply not going to be able to brick-build those details on such a small scale (my ranger is shaping up to be roughly 10 x 24 right now). So the method I settled on was to build the ship around a large windscreen and use stickers to fill in those window details. The UCS X-Wing/Benny's Spaceship windscreen seems to fit the job quite well. It's not the best solution because I generally hate stickers, but it's the only satisfying solution I could come up with. I'll post my final build with I finish it! Hopefully I can make some good progress on MLCAD tonight and tomorrow.

I keep them in but I put a 1/2 Technic pin on the other end. That way if they accidentally go off, they don't travel too far or they don't launch at all. For the large springloaded launchers, I put a 1/2 pin in the last Technic hole of the missile. I'm not worried about wear and tear that much because how they look on display (keeping all the pieces in place) is more important to me than functionality. But if I were worried about wearing out the spring, I'd consider removing the missiles.

For quick, low-effort maintenance I like to dust my displayed bricks with a ~20mm soft bristle paint brush. It's not the best for major cleaning projects but it's a good stop-gap measure if you don't feel like breaking down all your displayed sets every time you clean them.

Nice job! Clever too! The first pictures had me doubt the stability of the mod, but seeing how you used the headlight brick and two-sided SNOT brick really impressed me and alleviated my fears because the Technic connector has firm support on both sides. I thought about modding my 7676 Gunship years ago by adding bubble cannons, but I could never come up with a satisfactory way of mounting the cannons without interrupting the doors. This looks really great in every way and I might just try and add this mod to my gunship. EDIT: And I realize the doors on 7676 move forward and might get in the way of the cannons, but I'll figure something out

This has been a pretty common problem for me with new minifigures. For whatever reason, the "neck" of the torso grips the head very tightly when the head is put on for the first time. I think it has to do with the neck printing bonding with the inside of the head which makes it stick. Typically what I do to avoid this is to rotate the minifigure head as place it onto the neck peg. This seems to keep the head from getting stuck.

First of all, you are missing out on a TON of great Star Wars stories by not watching The Clone Wars. Did you not watch past the movie? What makes you think it's bad? The Clone Wars was a fantastic effort, and many Prequel haters even begrudgingly acknowledge that there's a lot of quality stuff there. Second, we really did need some sort of reboot for the post-ROTJ EU. It's convoluted, inconsistent (quality-wise), and at this point it's extremely hard for new fans to jump in. Luke, Han & Leia are old in the books and their legacy in was nearing its end. They were about to hit a dead end in the EU. Now is as good of a time as any to "cut the cord" and let their EU incarnations rest in peace. I will say that I'm slightly disappointed that they decided not to incorporate everything pre-New Jedi Order, because that would have been a really good place to diverge the stories, and there are basically only a few characters that they would be forced to carry over into Episode VII. Plus, keeping that era canon would preserve a lot of fan-favorite books like the Timothy Zahn books and the X-Wing series. But, I also understand the desire for a "clean break" as to not complicate things going forward. I think we will see a lot of borrowed EU elements still. There's a whole treasure trove of great ideas custom made for Star Wars ready for the future authors. The EU basically gave us a roadmap of what works well and what doesn't work well in a post-ROTJ timeline. My hope is that they pick out some of the better characters, locations, and possibly even stories and re-integrate them into the new continuity. In the end, we might even end up with a better canon than the one we had before. Especially since there will be more oversight now in delivering quality and consistency across all mediums. Finally, remember that just because it isn't canon doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. It still exists in your mind and on paper. Who cares if some corporation tells you that it "didn't really happen"? It's all fiction anyway, you can believe in what you want regarding the canon. Heck, they're still going to produce a lot of the EU books so they even still exist in their own universe. I just don't see this announcement as a cause for disgust, but rather a cause for excitement because the franchise is getting re-energized and there's an effort behind the scenes to deliver something great.

I prefer opaque stickers because in general they are easier to apply. With clear stickers you basically have one chance to do it right. If you begin to lay down the sticker in the wrong spot and peel it back, the adhesive is now smeared in that spot of the sticker and you can never get it to be fully clear again. I messed up one of the clear canopy stickers on my 8088 ARC-170 Starfighter, and every time I look at it I notice that the one canopy is slightly less clear than the other. It's annoying. I don't mind the use of stickers, but I wish Lego would give us better support. You can order missing pieces and download missing instructions, but the one thing you can't replace easily is the stickers. If you get a set with a wrinkled sticker sheet, or you mess up the application of a sticker, or your stickers are old and peeling, what options do we have? We either have to live with it, try the secondary market on eBay or Bricklink that can vary wildly, or contact Lego customer support who may or may not have what you're looking for. The point I'm trying to make is that Lego should make sticker replacements more easily available. A duplicate sticker sheet in every set is one option, but what I would prefer is the ability to order sheets through Pick-a-brick. Having the ability to go back and order an old sticker sheet from Lego itself would put my mind at ease. It would make stickers on sets a more sustainable option than they are currently.

Nice job! As someone who has the Droid Developer Kit from the original Mindstorms theme, this brought back some fond memories.

Disney is going to be making money off the Marvel and Star Wars lines for a long time. We'll definitely see sets for Avengers 2 and Star Wars VII in 2015 as well as miscellaneous sets in those themes in 2014. We could see sets from Pirates 5 and Indy 5 (if it gets made) as well in the near future. It's a lot harder to predict smaller franchises and non-franchises... maybe we'll see Tron sets with Tron 3? I'm not sure which big non-franchise blockbuster they want to push next. I think Disney and Lego should both be pretty happy with the partnerships that exist right now.

That is fantastic! I'd love to see some instructions.

I agree with the other comments, it should be much smaller in scale. Probably in the 800-2000 part range, which would put it around $100-200 US. Make it somewhere around the size of the Venator or the Tantive IV with 2 or 3 small playset compartments and plenty of outer detail. Preferably I would like to see something around 1100-1400 parts and $120-150 US, and no more than 60 cm long. A hangar area, a bridge area, and maybe a lab area are all you really need. As for minifigs... you might as well stick with SHIELD characters and just have Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Phil Coulson, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Captain America.

I was really sad to see Indy go. I wish it could have gotten one more wave. We still needed Sallah, Marcus Brody, Donovan, Toht, Lao Che, the Maharajah, a couple of the Nazi colonels, Mac, Oxley, Young Indy, and some others.

How comfortable are you working with Lego? I would first establish a scale. By setting a scale, you'll know what parts you can work with and which parts will work well for certain details. Interestingly enough, I've been working on an arena (actually a stadium) for a little while. I'm doing the (American) football stadium of the college I go to, Boise State University (hint: It's the one with the blue football field ) Anyway, I had thought about doing it for a while, but I'm not a experienced MOCer and I didn't exactly know the scope of the project. I finally decided on a stadium that would fit on a 32 x 32 baseplate. That's relatively small, too small to even realistically show individual people as 1 x 1 round plates. But it's the perfect scale for certain parts showing certain details, plus it's small enough to fit comfortably on a desk, which is something I wanted (so that I could show it off when I get a real job, of course ) I'm not telling you to go that small for your arena, as it's far too small for a minifig scale (My model is actually more in line with the Lego Architecture series in terms of scale). All I'm saying is, know what you're going for and don't just start buying minifig seats off Bricklink. Go on Brickshelf, search "Lego Arena" and "Lego Stadium" and soak in some design techniques and ideas. When you're ready, hop on LDraw or MLCAD and build yourself a digital model sans minifigs (worry about them later). That's basically what I did and it worked out pretty well. I look forward to your results (PS my stadium is nearly done and will hopefully be posted to the Special Themes board by mid-August, before school starts up again )