jdubbs

All torsos just jumped 50%, not just Castle torsos.

When you see leaks that turn out to be bogus, they're coming from trolls, pure and simple. It happens every year, right around the time the real leaks surface. When you see leaks this early that turn out to be legit, they generally originate from third-party stores which have been shown a list of upcoming products (and occasionally pics of those products) so that they can get their orders in for the next 6 months. This too happens every year (twice a year), pretty much like clockwork. LEGO is certainly doing what they can to clamp down on leaks, and they may well be using the tactics you describe to zero in on the perpetrators. But I believe this is more directed at LAN members who share press releases and photos despite being under NDA, and LEGO's own store employees taking pics in the back room, etc. As for LEGO using leaks to gather market research... no. Just, no.

To be honest I've stopped paying attention to LEGO Star Wars. The quality of the shows fell off a cliff, and my interest in the line went with it. Perhaps when Andor returns...

I can't help but point out the irony that is... your profile pic.

Knowledge. The preliminary photo of the barge was an early sketch, lacking any kind of detail (let alone minifigures)... it was a studded shell with exposed technic, approximating the footprint of what will someday be a finished set. If you are guestimating at prices based on the appearance of that sketch, you are not likely to arrive anywhere near the actual product price. I don't recall saying it would be $650. But there are plenty of people out there questioning who would buy a $650 Venator, especially considering the ISD didn't exactly fly off the shelves at that price. Or the Razor Crest, considering it had only been in a TV series, and blew up half-way through that. Or an Eiffel Tower the size of a Christmas tree. Or a Titanic the size of, well, the Titanic... there's clearly a large enough market for giant LEGO things that LEGO keeps making them. I think you're being a bit optimistic here. I would realistically peg the Barge in the MBS price range at minimum, especially given it will almost certainly come loaded with minifigures.

The larger UCS/MBS set typically comes out in the fall, whereas the smaller set comes out in May. When and if the Barge is released, it won't be $230 (or likely anything close to it).

You are new here, so a word of advice: just because you know something doesn't mean others don't. I guarantee you Renown knows all the sets you're drip-drip-dripping (or being drip-drip-dripped), and then some.

You are missing the point. Some official pictures show it in gray. Other official pictures show it in brown. It is this contradiction that has spurred the confusion, and thus, the article.

Man when this place goes off the rails it REALLY goes off.

Fingers crossed for season 2.

The Marvel mechs are $15, not $8.

Nice.

Man, you sure can hold a grudge.

There was also the helmet.

So certain are you?

The problem with the current approach — a Mando set here, a CW set there, an OT set or two mixed in — is that, without at least 4-5 sets from a single movie or show out at once, LEGO is inevitably gong to concentrate on the same "hero" vehicles/characters in each of those sets. The likelihood of getting an obscure character or ship/location goes way down when there are just a few sets from a given show/series out within the year. Say what you want about TFA sets dominating the lineup for over a year, but that approach allowed virtually every conceivable ship/character from that movie to get released. Contrast that with Andor or Obi-Wan Kenobi or Book of Boba which got just one or two sets each... if all you want are X-Wings and TIEs and Jedi Starfighters, the current approach is great. Otherwise, very limiting...

Oh, was it in the movie? It's been a while. I remember there was some deleted scene with them... maybe some standoff between them and Vader?

They left before the duel started. (No, really... there was a deleted scene that showed the Emperor dismissing them...)

Inaccurate because it doesn't (appear to) include the cyborg guy who pilots it? Or something else?

Yeah, LEGO is going to keep re-releasing these ad infinitum, that's just a fact of life. Does it need to be to quite this extent, though? I would say no. We happen to have all 3 on shelves at the moment, but that's not always been the case, and as we get further from the OT/ST and more and more new media crowds the space, I would hope maybe LEGO could evolve to "1 of those 3 should be on shelves" rather than 2 or all 3 as we've been getting the last 5-6 years. I also think the Falcon's continued appearance in the ST (and Solo) helped keep it on LEGO's radar. Since it's unlikely to appear in new media for the foreseeable future, I could see them scaling back — way back — on how often they re-release it. They haven't done a System ISD in a long, long time (sure, other sets are similar), and if they feel the need to do an iconic OT flagship set, I think that could come first at this point, esp. if the current Falcon is somehow still on shelves this Christmas. That said, I would prefer almost anything else over these three sets, the Falcon especially. With only one or two slots each year large enough to support "big" ships, it's a real drag that it chews up a slot every few years. I would love to see an Imperial Cargo Shuttle, or a Fondor Haulcraft, or an AT-ACT, or Dryden's Yacht... just, something new. But sadly most of those simply won't ever happen.

No.

And I really hope it's many years after that.

Okay, while Rex may not be "just another clone", he is yet another clone. Which we've gotten a LOT of lately... in the last 5 years we've had phase 1 clones, phase 2 clones, defective clones, airborne clones, specialist clones, white clones, orange clones, blue clones, purple clones, flame yellow clones, more blue clones, and more blue clones after that... it's a lot of friggin clones. And, for some of us, there is more to the PT than just clones. There was a time when a set like the AT-TE would come with a few new Jedi and then a BP would come out allowing you to mass up the corresponding clones... to me that made a lot more sense than cramming clones (and nothing but clones) by the bucketful into every PT set imaginable. I get that the kids love them, I get that they're cheap and easy to make, but if would be nice if there were a bit more, shall we say, balance to the lineup? Because lately it seems really lopsided in favor of one type of character at the expense of everything else...

Dude. At least try to be respectful of others' opinions. I disagree with a lot of you on many, many topics, but I don't reduce your comments to "blah blah" or call you morons.

I’ll be honest I don’t understand the obsession with either Rex or the Gunship. Rex feels like a character the more vocal complainers in the fandom defaulted to once they could no longer obsess about Cody. Not in any movies, yes very prominent in the cartoon but still, he’s just a clone. One of literally millions. One that essentially boils down to a slight variation in deco on existing parts. The gunship meanwhile has been done at least twice now, is readily available on the aftermarket, has been moc’ed many times, can be built from bricklinked parts, etc. Yes, at a price but honestly not that much higher than whatever Lego will eventually charge for a new one. I don’t mean to yuk on anyone’s yum but rather to say that there seem to be much larger holes when it comes to PT representation in Lego. Ships and locations and scenes that have only been done once or not at all. But especially: minifigs… there are, what, 20 versions of Padme as yet unmade, and several times that many Jedi, senators, separatists, aliens, and so on. None of which can easily be kitbashed from existing parts or have been made as customs. And, even though I am personally more interested in OT/ST era sets, I for one would rather have new figs and sets from any of the trilogies or eras, than rehashes of stuff that’s either been made before or that’s only vaguely differentiated…