Ql97

I'm an impatient bastard, but man I hope we hear some info on another Ninjago City set soon. I'm hoping Markets sold well enough to push the line into a proper regular series.

Yeah, wouldn't be surprised if the "test" batches of black mugs and brown ladders are that too. Just a little miffed that there's hundreds of those for sale but no pink heads to be found.

So, every now and then, test batches of parts in rare/otherwise nonexistent color combos escape Lego's factories and end up on the secondary market (or maybe some employees made small unauthorized batches, one can never be sure. Either way). I've seen a few examples of these for sale on Bricklink, like minifigure mugs in black or the short ladder pieces in reddish brown. Enough of these were made that their respective Bricklink sellers have a fairly large stock on hand. However, the other day, I was browsing BL and I found a picture of a transparent dark-pink minifigure head (see below). This hasn't shown up in any sets so it must be a factory escapee. But unlike some other rare part/color combos I've seen, there are none currently for sale. There aren't any records on Bricklink of sales of this color either. However, the frustrating aspect of this is that BL somewhat recently started deleting sales records after 6 months. So what this tells me is not that there have been none of these minifig heads sold, but rather that none have been sold in the past 6 months. I was wondering if anyone here has come across these parts in the wild, and/or might know where some are available today? They'd be perfect for a moc I'm working on now, but alas I can't even pay exorbitant amounts for some on BL.

Yes this is it! Thank you so much. Yeah Helm's Deep, Orthanc, and bits of what might be Bag-End and a Balrog are visible in the far back. The Ewok village is there too, front and center. I remember a more zoomed in version, but that might just have been everyone squinting really hard at this one.

So, many many years ago, during the first line of LotR sets, I remember there being a picture of Lego's offices that had a bunch of unreleased LotR sets in the background. I've been trying to find that picture again recently, but thanks to the reboot all I can find is the old leaks of Rivendell and Barad-dur. Does anyone else even remember what I'm talking about?

Damnit, I want so many of these. Forestmen Castle, Bionicle vignette, Mountain windmill, both Japanese temples...my wallet is already crying!

The best (imo) Ninjago City expansion that I've seen so far is this tiny 8-wide little alley. https://imgur.com/gallery/wIXPPDq It packs in an incredible amount of detail into the small space, and matches the official aesthetic perfectly.

Bionicle also has the advantage of being a single theme, while Space and Castle are split across multiple sub-themes. I ended up voting for Bionicle

Ooh, these are great. I'll have to try and incorporate them into some MOCs. Thanks for posting them!

They can be removed. The "Expand your Ninjago City Gardens" inset in this picture shows them directly connecting two of the Gardens, meaning you must be able to remove the balconies to make them fit.

That's what I'm planning on doing, but I'll probably end up having to put the temple somewhere else, because I have very few shelves deep enough for one and a half baseplates. It's definitely something of a first-world-problem, but for me, the temple island is basically an unrelated side build. It's a neat little build, but doesn't contribute to the set as a whole, imo. Something like an overgrown version of the Padoga Park MOC, essentially. That would have been fun to see. https://www.flickr.com/photos/galaktek/albums/72157696244428330

Yeah, might be an unpopular opinion, but I really don't get the point of the temple island included with the Gardens is. It's a pretty jarring break from the established structure of the Ninjago City modulars, and it leaves the Docks' sidewalk just hanging there. It feels like a completely unrelated build that was just tossed onto a Ninjago City-compatible base just for the sake of upping the piece count.

I'm still convinced that there was a third wave originally planned, for release in the winter after the third Hobbit movie, as sort of a big wrap-up for the Middle Earth theme. Then the Battle of Five Armies was pushed back to the holiday season, and there simply wasn't enough time to move forward production of that wave, so they decided to just bin it. I recall Lego's production capacity being under pretty heavy strain at the time.

Nuju my friend, this is the Minas Tirith we always wanted, but never got. Very excellent job. I can't wait to see what you do next. :-)

They could easily make Aragorn, Gimli, and several other existing characters better by adding arm printing. I mean, it's a common enough thing, with Ghostbusters, Wonder Woman, etc. Giving them arm printing would go a long way for these characters. Gollum could also be improved on by giving him a Smeagol face. Orcs of course, we could always use some new prints for torsos and faces. And of course, there are the significant (but not essential) versions of existing characters, like king Aragorn and queen Arwen, robed Theoden, Rohan Merry and Gondor Pippin, etc. Of course it's possible. It's also possible that I will quantum teleport to th--