jdubbs

The real question is, have you? If you look at the box shot, which shows both a still from the movie and the LEGO helmet, you can see from the angle of the print on the side of the helmet that LEGO's helmet is tilted back a good 30º on the stand, which accounts for several of your grievances. As for complaining that there's a stud in the middle of a printed dish, well, perhaps you should be collecting something other than LEGO if studs bother you this much.

Come on, let's keep a little optimism here.

Why would that be insane? The last UCS Death Star directly followed the retirement of the preceding UCS Death Star. They both clearly sold very well considering each was in production 2-3x the lifespan of other UCS sets.

The last UCS Death Star was $500.

People keep forgetting that the last time Hasbro released Slave (sorry, Huttslayer) Leia, the fig warmed pegs in massive quantities at every Target, Walmart, and TRU in the US — in both 3¾" and 6" scales, pretty much simultaneously. People like to imagine there is some Disney conspiracy against the character (despite a statue of her adorning Kathleen Kennedy's desk) because it's more dramatic than the reality that the character just didn't sell well as an action figure (or at least, it didn't sell in the numbers Hasbro through it would...)

Now if only they made both... but that would surely be too much to ask for.

If you have not noticed, there is an ongoing global supply chain crisis disrupting production and distribution of nearly every product being made overseas, or using parts sourced from abroad.

Yeah I ordered that part in black, which seemed the best color swap given the limited ones available. It's an odd part — I had never actually seen it before this — so I suspect it won't be in Reddish Brown any time soon. But all the others were available in Reddish Brown. I really like that speeder bike design, and I don't mind having extra snowy parts, so to me at least, the battle pack is pretty massable. That said I'll wait until it's marked down 20% before buying them in bulk.

It looks great! One question... did you try using a larger radar dish under the side canons? Or would it be too oversized? In the source photos, it looks like it chews up a substantial chunk of each side of the head.

The white speederbikes can also be used for Navarro (The Mandalorian) as well as Hoth. And by swapping in about a dozen reddish brown parts, you can convert the Hoth speeder bike to an Endor version.

For the record I'm just saying that rumors often do spring up from thin air, with no basis in reality. I've heard nothing about a Republic Tank aside from people talking about it here. That's not to say it isn't real... there are plenty of ways it could show up — sets that aren't known or set numbers earmarked for store exclusives, etc. — but in my experience, rumors that have no basis other than chatter on EB or an anonymous post on IG almost always turn out to be bunk. No offense to anyone here.

A long history of bogus set numbers, names, descriptions, part counts, and prices would beg to differ.

Is it possible your country somehow switched to Canada or perhaps Australia, and you're seeing their dollars? In any event I don't think you need to create separate threads for each set you find with wacky pricing. One will do...

So, design one yourself and then give away the instructions. (We'll all hold our breath while we await the results.)

Right. You had a chance to pick... you picked, and other people — more people — picked a different character. I don't see how this is "ignoring fan votes". LEGO never said, "come vote for your favorite PT character" or "come vote and we'll make the top two winners" or "come vote and we'll make the winner plus whatever PT character you choose if it's not the winner." Did a YouTube personality make a video encouraging people to vote for a Jar Jar Brickhead? Yes. Does that mean that viewers of that video all went out en masse, set aside their own opinions about which Brickhead should be made, and dutifully voted for him because of what someone said in a video? Especially knowing 1) the market for BrickHeadz appears to be quite small... and fading fast, 2) how few people actually respond to/act on video content (you said 5% earlier... that's actually quite high, when you look at clickthrough rates and other video metrics... even 1% would be well above average), 3) how utterly unpopular Jar Jar is (and conversely how popular Ahsoka has proven to be), and 4) how short a window this fan vote lasted? No. I get that you wanted a certain character to be made. I get that you are disappointed that that character did not win the vote. But claiming that the vote was rigged, or the "true" results were ignored, with no real evidence to support those claims... I think we've all seen how well that plays in the real world.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but have you considered switching hobbies? Collecting something else, that is more to your liking? Because it seems like you are increasingly negative about LEGO and its products, resentful of fans of other eras/trilogies, and unable to muster even the slightest enthusiasm for what might be coming in the future. You are of course entitled to your opinion, and entitled to express it ad infinitum in this forum... but seriously, do you actually enjoy LEGO Star Wars? I ask this sincerely, as someone who has at various points lost enthusiasm for hobbies so completely that my dissatisfaction with them was causing me actual stress. Ultimately, I decided the best path forward was to leave those hobbies behind and move on to something that actually "sparked joy", as they say... Here's what I don't get: you readily admit that CW/PT fans most likely don't collect Brickheadz, so why would they (or should they) be voting on for a Brickheadz character in the first place? Is it just to cater to the whims of a YouTube personality? Or to prove some kind of snarky point, at LEGO's expense? If you don't care about Brickheadz, what does it matter that another character, other than the one being advanced in a YouTube campaign, is the one that ends up winning? Given the overwhelming popularity of the character that did win (not just among PT/CW fans, but all SW fans), that character's continued appearance in media since the CW (Rebels, CW Season 7, Mando, and her own show next year), and the overwhelming unpopularity of the character being advanced by said YouTube personality (not to mention his absence from virtually all SW media of the last 20 years), is it really so surprising that Ahsoka won, over Jar Jar? It seems here that logic is being pushed aside to prop up some kind of conspiracy theory...

I for one would always prefer something new — from any era — over something that has been released before. But I say that with the understanding that the majority of sets that LEGO releases from pre-existing media (regardless of trilogy/era) are going to be rehashes of previous sets. When and if LEGO puts out another PT wave, folks need to be prepared for most of those sets to be things we've already seen before, or variations on them... this is the case with most OT sets we get, and was the case with the last PT wave we got. At this point, getting even one all-new vehicle or location should be viewed as a reason to celebrate. I am reasonably happy with the January sets that LEGO has revealed. If these sets had to be OT, there are many battle packs I would have preferred over snow troopers (Mud, Shore, Range, Remnant, Scout, or Endor Troopers would have been better) but the timing certainly makes sense given the release of the UCS AT-AT... and the speeder bike build is LEGO's best yet (and better even than many of the MOCs out there, held together by a thread) so at least it's not 4 figs (only 2 of them useful) with a throwaway build. The AT-ST is at least an attempt to do something new with a vehicle that has been released a lot over the last few years, so I count it as "newish" if not outright "new". And time will tell with the accessory packs, but they're never going to be anything but re-runs of existing molds/printed parts/figs... if you're expecting more, well, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. And, this isn't so much "defending LEGO's choices" as it is living in the real world... at the end of the day, LEGO is fairly predictable in its choices. I don't see much point lamenting that things aren't otherwise, just because I want them so.

From what I can tell, only adults are disappointed with the Mario sets, and only those who were expecting a minifig-based line (never mind that very few of the characters would actually make sense as minifigs... at least without being made entirely of new molds). Kids seem to love the sets, and based on the volume of sets LEGO keeps pumping out, it's hard to see it as anything but a slam dunk for them.

It was typically January and April, but yeah. I think some of this is down to COVID and the supply chain disruption, since this more staggered release schedule only just began last year. Spacing out their production and shipments could allow LEGO to be a bit more nimble when it comes to reacting to issues. Given the supply chain issues are expected to last another year, I'm guessing this release pattern will continue into 2023. But looking back, there were often years when sets would not be released in all markets at the same time, so we saw an entire HP wave arriving a month or two earlier in the EU one year, then earlier in the US the next year. Similar things happened with City and SW waves, if memory serves... I think it's just proven hard to put out so much product all over the world on a strict quarterly basis... both for LEGO and for retailers, who have to deal with so much incoming product at once. Spreading them out probably makes it easier to hit all markets simultaneously, which I'd guess most folks would prefer... even if it means sets come in more frequent mini-waves. The set lists are still broken down into 1H and 2H because that's how LEGO's catalogs are distributed, and retailers need to plan for the longer haul.

I didn't say you were asking for leaks. My point is that you know about these sets because of leaks. LEGO has not announced them yet, and when they do, you will see pictures at the same time... If the wait between learning about a set and seeing a set is too long for you, the simple solution is to stop looking at leaks, stop reading this thread on EB, etc. LEGO will always stagger their set releases throughout the year. That's just a matter of keeping fresh product on store shelves, balancing their production pipeline, etc. There is always going to be something even newer coming, after the current new thing is revealed.

If you're going to lose interest in a set between the time you first hear about it and the time you see it, you probably shouldn't be looking at leaks. Because, with very rare exception, there is inevitably a gap of several months between the first sketchy set names, then detailed descriptions, and finally pictures of the actual sets. This is part of the reason LEGO doesn't like leaks... they just distract from what's on shelves now, or about to be.

Or... they actually made and shipped enough of them to meet demand for once.

You're entitled to believe what you want, but you're making logical leaps here. Releasing a skiff without Jabba's Palace (or Barge) is no different than releasing a Snowspeeder without an AT-AT, or a Landspeeder without a Sandcrawler. LEGO has loads of slots each year to fill with $20-$30-$40 sets. They have 1 (maybe 2) a year that could accommodate Jabba's Palace or Barge, and those almost always go to support current media. Of course you're going to see the smaller sets recycled more often than the big ones. And, Jabba himself is a big expensive element to add to any set... just like the Rancor is, or even a Wampa or Tauntaun. Those haven't show up in ages either. It's not because some obscure foreign office of cultural affairs issued a press release about them. Seconded.

The fact that there hasn't been a Jabba's Palace set in X years is no different than the fact that there hasn't been a Venator, or Gunship, or B-Wing, or [pick any other set that hasn't been made in the last 6 years]. You're assigning causality here where there is none.

Were we watching the same movie? Because the way LEGO prices things, $60 would be maybe one pillar, one Jedi, one Beast, and one Geonosian...