[Petition] Save LEGO the Lord of the Rings

[wetib]

I hope it helps us with get new sets, but I think lego don't care about our initiative. They don't want give fans what they want. Look at the Hobbit sets. They didn't make the most important characters. BoFA has only 3 armies not 5... Where are armoured elves or Ironhill dwarves?

Edited September 2, 2014 by wetib

[Kraby]

Look at the Hobbit sets. They didn't make the most important characters.

Just out of curiosity, who would that be?

[wetib]

Just out of curiosity, who would that be?

Of course armies who take part in BoFA, at least in the 3rd Hobbit movie. TLG didn't product 2 of 5 armies. We missed armoured Elves and Ironhill Dwarves. Even I would say we missed armoured Goblins with grey torso and helmets.

The Battle of 5 armies also take place between two arms of the Lonely Mountain at the front of Erebor. Lego didn't product set "The gate of Erebor" which could be really big and beatuful build.

All the time I see the same TLG logic with LOTR and HOBBIT.

LOTR - you have mordor orcs, rohan soldiers, king Aragorn with white tree, The Black Gate, but you have no Gondor soldiers. How can you make battle without them?

HOBBIT -you have Gundabad orcs, wargs, eagles, Bard, lake-town soldiers, Thorin's company, Thranduil, Dain, but no Ironhill, armoured elves or gate of Erebor. How can you make battle without armoued elves and dwarves?

Edited September 2, 2014 by wetib

[Blazej_Holen]

Over 700 votes now, its not a week at all so I wish us luck to continue like this, who knows, maybe in month we can reach ten thousand :)

[Kraby]

Of course armies who take part in BoFA, at least in the 3rd Hobbit movie. TLG didn't product 2 of 5 armies. We missed armoured Elves and Ironhill Dwarves. Even I would say we missed armoured Goblins with grey torso and helmets.

The Battle of 5 armies also take place between two arms of the Lonely Mountain at the front of Erebor. Lego didn't product set "The gate of Erebor" which could be really big and beatuful build.

All the time I see the same TLG logic with LOTR and HOBBIT.

LOTR - you have mordor orcs, rohan soldiers, king Aragorn with white tree, The Black Gate, but you have no Gondor soldiers. How can you make battle without them?

HOBBIT -you have Gundabad orcs, wargs, eagles, Bard, lake-town soldiers, Thorin's company, Thranduil, Dain, but no Ironhill, armoured elves or gate of Erebor. How can you make battle without armoued elves and dwarves?

My bad, for some reason I thought that you were talking about named characters, which is why I asked.

Talking about generic soldiers, I can only agree with you, sadly. Same goes for the gate of Erebor, this would have been absolutely fantastic.

[Lord_Tyrannus]

Over 700 votes now, its not a week at all so I wish us luck to continue like this, who knows, maybe in month we can reach ten thousand :)

I signed, but I think there is another problem: we have do reach a great number AND do it quickly... We don't know when the license will end, and even if TLG pay attention to this and change their mind, they will need time to develop the last wave and produce the new sets..

[seta]

^agree, when we reach 1000 we should contact TLG straight away. There's little benefit in waiting for too long, what if we don't get to say 5000 soon enough.

[Blazej_Holen]

With 1000 votes TLG do nothing. That amount of votes says nothing in general wide

[TheRedViper]

Maybe we could ask Eurobricks to share our petition on their front page?

[Trunkbass]

You may have caught someone's attention in the forum topic. A member by the name of Elessar is interested in being sent all the details via private message and might look into getting it posted on the site's front page.

http://newboards.the...lat Mode#770509

Can Gandalf the Green or atreyu2112 pm Elessar on theOneRing.net with the details, if not already done so? If not, I'll make an account on theOneRing and try it myself.

I will sign up as well.

Thanks!

I signed, but I think there is another problem: we have do reach a great number AND do it quickly... We don't know when the license will end, and even if TLG pay attention to this and change their mind, they will need time to develop the last wave and produce the new sets..

I agree that we need to get many votes as fast as we can. It is probably already too late to get them to squeeze some LotR sets in 2015 and the license will probably be over in 2016...

With 1000 votes TLG do nothing. That amount of votes says nothing in general wide

That's right, LEGO would not listen to that amount of people, we need at least five or ten thousand. Thousand votes is too early to contact them, in my opinion.

Maybe we could ask Eurobricks to share our petition on their front page?

That would be a great help indeed.

Good news, the petition already has over 750 votes. I've put 1500 votes as the new goal. Let's get there as fast as we can!

[SMC]

Maybe we could ask Eurobricks to share our petition on their front page?

I have asked.

[TheRedViper]

Awesome!

[Trunkbass]

I have asked.

That's great!! Let's hope this helps!

For people who want to do a little bit more: look at the most popular reactions of the petition and like your favourites. That way good quotes will come on top, and they can convince more people to sign or they can show LEGO what lives among fans.

Edited September 3, 2014 by Trunkbass

[AFOLguy1970]

I hope it helps us with get new sets, but I think lego don't care about our initiative. They don't want give fans what they want. Look at the Hobbit sets. They didn't make the most important characters. BoFA has only 3 armies not 5... Where are armoured elves or Ironhill dwarves?

I think Lego did a much better job covering the Hobbit than they did LOTR. Almost all main named characters are covered. Bolg is the only one left out I would consider an "A" lister.

With LOTR, they tried their very best to impress younger kids with pirate ships, Gimli launchers, flick fire missiles, and other assorted gimmics. The problem is that younger kids are not the main audience for these sets. The main audience actually cares about army building, getting different characters (they dislike getting the same ones over and over again--yes Gandalf and Legolas, I am looking at you), and sets that depict the most important scenes in the movie. How in the world Lego missed the whole Osgilliath/Minas Tirith/Pelennor Fields is beyond me. As stated in the other thread, I think the second wave was not intended to be the last wave. Giving me Mouth of Sauron and no Witch King is like giving me Blue Snaggletooth, but not a Darth Vader in the Star Wars line. There was also a lack of advertising for these sets. I saw Chima, Star Wars, and Ninjago on the TV, but never the LOTR sets.

I signed the petition, although am not expecting too much. It probably would take thousands to get someone's attention to at least get a response.

[TheRedViper]

LOTR were advertised on TV, I remember the Mines of Moria ad, and others.

[atreyu2112]

I think Lego did a much better job covering the Hobbit than they did LOTR. Almost all main named characters are covered. Bolg is the only one left out I would consider an "A" lister.

With LOTR, they tried their very best to impress younger kids with pirate ships, Gimli launchers, flick fire missiles, and other assorted gimmics. The problem is that younger kids are not the main audience for these sets. The main audience actually cares about army building, getting different characters (they dislike getting the same ones over and over again--yes Gandalf and Legolas, I am looking at you), and sets that depict the most important scenes in the movie. How in the world Lego missed the whole Osgilliath/Minas Tirith/Pelennor Fields is beyond me. As stated in the other thread, I think the second wave was not intended to be the last wave. Giving me Mouth of Sauron and no Witch King is like giving me Blue Snaggletooth, but not a Darth Vader in the Star Wars line. There was also a lack of advertising for these sets. I saw Chima, Star Wars, and Ninjago on the TV, but never the LOTR sets.

I signed the petition, although am not expecting too much. It probably would take thousands to get someone's attention to at least get a response.

I couldn't agree more with this post. Especially the Hobbit getting much better coverage and the Blue Snaggs/Vader reference.

I have responded to Elessar over at tORn forum directly with info & links to both the petition and the Facebook page. Fingers are crossed, if the front page & Facebook the petition, we might have a shot hitting a high enough # for TLG to take notice

[Mr. Cube]

Blazej_Holen: That´s right. If we had about 10.000 votes (but 20.000 or 50.000 would be better), then we could get some attention from TLC. We still didn´t reach even the first thousand. I wonder why - the most of LEGO LotR fans still don´t know about the petition or there are not as many fans as we thought?

[Deathleech]

I think Lego did a much better job covering the Hobbit than they did LOTR. Almost all main named characters are covered. Bolg is the only one left out I would consider an "A" lister.

I agree. Lego also seemed to cover pretty much every major scene. Then again there were three Hobbit waves to only the two LotR had. If LotR had a third wave with even four sets I think we would have gotten all the main characters we were still missing (Witch King, Eowyn, Faramir), and had all the major scenes covered. It's a shame really.

LOTR were advertised on TV, I remember the Mines of Moria ad, and others.

Ya, I remember seeing this ad a few times. It definitely didn't seem to be played very often and there weren't any other tie ins at the time so I can't imagine it got most kids very excited over the LotR line when it first came out. Lego really should of released the Hobbit wave first, then the first LotR wave and video game. As it stands the first LotR wave just kind of came outta no where with little support

Blazej_Holen: That´s right. If we had about 10.000 votes (but 20.000 or 50.000 would be better), then we could get some attention from TLC. We still didn´t reach even the first thousand. I wonder why - the most of LEGO LotR fans still don´t know about the petition or there are not as many fans as we thought?

I think it's a mix of both. LotR just doesn't seem as popular as we like to think. I mean none of the LotR Ideas projects even have 5,000 supportes except one, and that was because he had most of his votes grand fathered in from when his Minas Tirith was on Cussoo.

[Trunkbass]

But if you compare the support for the movie franchise as a whole we get an other picture. There are about twelve milion fans of Star Wars on Facebook, but THIRTEEN milion for the Lord of the Rings.

This in stark contrast between the LEGO SW and LotR themes.

[Tijger-San]

I think the main problem is that Lord of the Rings doesn't have any support to keep selling and getting popularity from kids. The main focus group is still children and they are the ones that ask their parents for certain sets. So, if you compare LOTR to Star Wars for which there is still a series airing on TV, video games are created and with a new movie in development you can easily figure out why Star Wars sets or even super hero sets sell and LOTR doesn't so much. The same thing happend with Pirates of the Caribbean. One of the reasons why Ninjago and Chima are so populair is because Lego produces a TV series and video games. How unfortunate this may sound, I think that themes like LOTR and Hobbit can't compete with that.

The most important part of getting this to work is to convince Lego that a next wave of (special) sets will sell. By looking at projects on Lego Ideas I think you need at least 10000 votes for that. To help that cause I just signed.

I think it's very wise to ask LOTR communities to sign. Projects like Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, the NASA Mars rover and Doctor Who achieved 10000 votes via communities. It's also very important to let the world know that this is going on. Awesome MOC's could help getting people to vote. Write a contest! Who knows, do something funny or crazy and make this viral.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Tijger-San

[Blakstone]

I think there is a big difference between Star Wars fans and Lord of the Rings fans in that SW fans have been trained from a very early age to buy almost anything with the characters likeness on it. It could be toys or pajamas or toothpaste.

Lord of the Rings was for the longest time a literary fanbase. The movies drew in a new audience but that has not really translated to the marketing phenomena that Star Wars is.

It is similar to iPhone versus Android phone users. There are now more Android users but it is the iPhone customers that are more willing to pay for apps. So many companies target iPhone users first.

Perhaps we can reach outside of the existing LEGO Lord of the Rings but if the same percentage of general LotR fans bought LEGO that the Star Wars fans did, we wouldn't even need the petition.

[seta]

I think it's also because the sets look bad, and look even worse on the box. I am a Tolkien fan as well as an AFOL, but I had no intention to buy any LoTR Lego. I though Helm's Deep was too expensive for what it was and Black Gate, no way I would buy it for $90.

Then I got a second hand Helm's Deep and realised that it's actually very impressive and then I wanted to collect all of them. But to start with, the boxes on the shelf are not attractive at all compared with other themes. Put ot this way, this is an adult theme, so if they had released mostly big set like Orthanc, 3000 piece Helm's Deep/Minas Tirith they could expect them to sell like the modular series, maybe a bit less but that would have been a better direction.

[Deathleech]

But if you compare the support for the movie franchise as a whole we get an other picture. There are about twelve milion fans of Star Wars on Facebook, but THIRTEEN milion for the Lord of the Rings.

This in stark contrast between the LEGO SW and LotR themes.

Sorry, I should have specified Lego Star Wars vs Lego LotR/Hobbit. Look at the Star War s Lego line compared to the Middle Earth ones. Star Wars obviously did MUCH better in it's infancy to continue for as long as it has. If LotR had sold more surely we would have gotten a third LotR wave, at the least. Plus SW has cartoons and stuff that really help drive Lego sales with kids. LotR has none of that.

Like Tijger-San and Blakstone point out, SW is a merchandising juggernaut and has everything going for it to get sales with kids. LotR doesn't. It might be more popular overall with fans, but that doesn't translate into great Lego sales. If LotR has 14m likes but almost all of those are adults, and Lego only has 5-10% of total sales going to adults, that's not a very good number. That means roughly 700,000-1,400,000 LotR fans are buying Lego sets based on the FB pages. If even a quarter of the SW likes are from kids who will buy sets that means there are around 3,000,000 buying Lego sets. That's well over double. Not only that, Star Wars is rated PG and tailored more towards kids with goofy Stormtroopers and all the cartoons being pumped out. LotR on the other hand is PG-13 which is the very top of the suggested age range for Lego sets yet that is the films recommended minimum viewing age. You see blood everywhere and scary orcs getting decapitated left and right.

[TheRedViper]

I think a MOC contest would be a good to help promote the petition, I also think if everyone shared the petition on their Flickr accounts, that may help get more votes.

Edited September 4, 2014 by TheRedViper

[kofi]

Yes a MOC contest would show TLG that there are many enthusiasts out there who really wish to continue this theme!

I think the problem with the petition is that you have to sign up at this website! And many of us do not want to become a member there!

Does anyone have more information about this website change.org?! Honestly I just signed up without reading anything about the website just to help this competition! But for sure there are many out there who doesn't want to sign up for just helping one small petition!