City Jungle Theme! I'm Excited!

SumoLego

CCC said:

Don't blame me for empty wallets! :-)

You're just an enabler.

Yodalicious

^ We're all enablers around these parts.

Yodalicious

And now I have some tigers on their way to my house.

For US folks...they are still listed as sold out online, but $5.10 each if you call.

Paperballpark

^ Interesting. The person I spoke to said it was the tiger. No prompting.

madforLEGO

I think the bricks and pieces folks see a text file. I think they can also look up the instructions to see what the part # matches to what picture. I also think that as more people find these available the more likely CS folks know what they are.

CCC

It is always worth asking them to check if they have part 64648, just to get them to say the name they use.

madforLEGO

....as an aside you can get the 4539486 one in many BuildaMinifig bins at LEGO stores right now.

SirBen

Tigers and leopards are now on backorder in the US.

KingAlanI

Reminds me of Swamp Police. First time I saw a Jungle set on the shelf, I thought it was Swamp Police kicking around. That probably sticks in my mind because soon after ending my dark ages I got #60065, #60066 and MOCed a hideout

romdam said:

Because all cities need a jungle.  Ugh

Yeah, the CITY brand is overused for non-urban themes. It seems to be a default for real world stuff  (some such things also appear in Creator or Friends). I let it pass since it's not a mark against the sets themselves.

Lyichir said:

prevere said:

Glacierfalls265 said:

Well, they must have liked the Venus flytrap piece, it pops up in three separate sets! 

I get they're excited about it, but still that's a little lazy. One pitcher plant swap out would have been great.

New molds generally get put into multiple sets in large part to justify the expense of creating the mold itself. It'd make no sense to only include that highly specialized mold in two sets instead of three, particularly if the pitcher plant you envision it being replaced with would require yet another new mold. There's also the matter of Venus Flytraps providing a much more "active" play feature than pitcher plants.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of the man-eating plants in the city theme considering my preference for the brick-built ones in Elves, but I know better than to assume laziness on the part of the designers when there are plenty of more plausible reasons for the designs.

Indeed, there are sensible business reasons besides gouging for a lot of what TLG does. Too many molds and colors was part of the company's business problems around 2000.

Hanzo

I've often wondered the same thing, why lump the Jungle and Volcano theme under city, why not bring back the Adventurers name (or whatever it was).

Shib

Paperballpark said:

^ Interesting. The person I spoke to said it was the tiger. No prompting.

Interesting, I wander if the person you spoke to had already taken a lot of calls asking for it so recognised the name as the tiger, or if they have a way to show the images that requires pressing a reveal button or something. The person I was speaking to did sound a little nervous so
might have been relatively new and not know all the ins and outs

Hanzo said:

I've often wondered the same thing, why lump the Jungle and Volcano theme under city, why not bring back the Adventurers name (or whatever it was).

The City theme has come to represent the more "real life" type subject matter. While City Jungle theme sounds ridiculous without that context, once you have that context it makes perfect sense.

I suspect that the Adventurers theme wouldn't play out so well these days as the characters were distinctly Indiana Jones looking - so they would need to be updated to modern explorers so essentially again just falling into the city theme.

I also didn't understand these City subthemes on coming out of dark ages, but once you get your head around he marketing side of things (including loosing the skewed AFOL view) then it's all a lot more logical.

snowhitie

Thanks for the tip @Shib! Got some animals underway too. Wanted to order the tiger over the phone, but can't get through to the number on my mobile. Will have to look up how I did that last time.

@TheOneVeyronian have you seen this topic? I know you were looking for some of the animals, so if you can't do trades, maybe this is a way to get them?

mh3490

Ordered my tiger and panther yesterday before they got backordered in the US 

piratemania7

I was able to call [email protected] and order all 3 cats.  The guy actually laughed because he said he has been seeing these orders come through the past couple of days and knew exactly what they were. He said since it is "prepackaged" that the tiger shows as out of stock online.

Good Job brickset community.  Good job.

LostInTranslation

Shib said:

Paperballpark said:

^ Interesting. The person I spoke to said it was the tiger. No prompting.

Interesting, I wander if the person you spoke to had already taken a lot of calls asking for it so recognised the name as the tiger, or if they have a way to show the images that requires pressing a reveal button or something. The person I was speaking to did sound a little nervous so
might have been relatively new and not know all the ins and outs

Hanzo said:

I've often wondered the same thing, why lump the Jungle and Volcano theme under city, why not bring back the Adventurers name (or whatever it was).

The City theme has come to represent the more "real life" type subject matter. While City Jungle theme sounds ridiculous without that context, once you have that context it makes perfect sense.

I suspect that the Adventurers theme wouldn't play out so well these days as the characters were distinctly Indiana Jones looking - so they would need to be updated to modern explorers so essentially again just falling into the city theme.

I also didn't understand these City subthemes on coming out of dark ages, but once you get your head around he marketing side of things (including loosing the skewed AFOL view) then it's all a lot more logical.

I like the retro vibe of Adventurers and Pharaohs Quest. I'd like more stuff done set in the early 20th century (my dream being a Poirot Orient Express). But I guess kids like modernity. 

Also joined the Big Cat Buyer's Club today :-) 

Shib

Don't get me wrong I like that style - Monster Fighters used it a little too and I loved that theme, but for a character like Johnny Thunder to sell to kids these days it needs a succesful Indiana Jones type franchise being popular at the same time, otherwise it's too much of a "boring history" basis for kids to take much interest. 

Think about it, it's an archaeologist based in the early 20th century style you are basically talking two layers of History, they might as well just do some homework instead :-P

starfire2

I was able to order the Leopard and Panther. OOS on Tiger. 

piratemania7

^you have to call customer service and they can do it all for you.

Aanchir

Re: branding, it's also worth noting that Adventurers was a fantasy-heavy, character-driven series. City, on the other hand is comparatively light on fantasy. The most major breaks from reality are non-specific crystals as the objective of basically every type of research expedition, as well as the complete lack of guns. City also has had basically just one named character in sets. It has never had a highly structured narrative like Adventurers' various quests.

And despite complaints among adults that LEGO is becoming too structured and that kids will no longer play with anything that doesn't have its own TV show, all these things seem to work pretty well in City's favor, since it's routinely one of the top-selling themes. So why revive a defunct brand when it's much easier to wrap these exploration-type sets up in a package that already appeals to an eager, truck-and-helicopter-crazy demographic?

What's more, as I pointed out about the volcano sets when people criticized those… there are probably a lot more real-world cities in the vicinity of volcanoes or jungles than in the vicinity of space centers!

madforLEGO

piratemania7 said:

I was able to call [email protected] and order all 3 cats.  The guy actually laughed because he said he has been seeing these orders come through the past couple of days and knew exactly what they were. He said since it is "prepackaged" that the tiger shows as out of stock online.

Good Job brickset community.  Good job.

All of the animals are 'prepackaged', the panther was available online before the leopard, then the leopard became available online. I'm guessing the Tiger will be available online eventually.

SirBen

I guess I'm calling back in the morning to check on my order.

AllBrick

Looks like I need to spend $£€¥ soon, nice tip off.

Can anyone confirm the Snake Pliskin teddy from #42070 is available through this service.

stlux

@AllBrick The teddy bear is listed as out of stock online, but you might have more luck when calling them? (which you need to do anyway for the tiger)

tomahawker

AFAIK the "Snake Pliskin" teddy never went into production.  All the reviews show the standard version.  :-(

madforLEGO

Yeah, if you see the part inventory it shows the regular teddy bear.

piratemania7

Of course once I have the cats it will be a question of how to display them/integrate them to my city layout without actually having a "zoo".

willobee498

Pets for the ultra rich?

mh3490

@stlux such an enabler lol 

stlux

@mh3490 Just being helpful! And as @yodalicious stated a bit earlier in this thread, we're all enablers on this forum ;) 

@piratemania7 I'm collecting Ninjago dragons to terrorize the citizens of my future Lego city layout. Adding some large cats roaming the streets will be a nice bonus!

(Or yes, I could add building a zoo to my long list of MOC-projects-that-might-one-day-happen...)

Paperballpark

Members of Northern Brickworks LUG did a collaborative zoo this year. 32x32 baseplates (or multiples thereof), with a walkway around the edge to connect with other modules.

I did polar bears and crocodiles.

Paperballpark

madforLEGO

Man, that is a footprint!!! Seriously though, awesome job.
Would love to see the Elephants in a set again at some point in the future. I get they would not be cheap, but even still.

Paperballpark

The elephants were Duplo ones...

stlux

The Adventurers theme had some non-Duplo elephants. But agreed that in that zoo displayed at Bricktastic, the Duplo elephants fitted right in.

Shib

I'm a sucker for Duplo animals - for some of the larger animals like elephants they can even feel better scale to minifigures too.

madforLEGO

Paperballpark said:

The elephants were Duplo ones...

I get that, but still does not change my comment

AllBrick

tomahawker said:

AFAIK the "Snake Pliskin" teddy never went into production.  All the reviews show the standard version.  :-(

Well, that's a let down. Why wouldn't they include that then? 

Same reason there's no birds in the jungle I guess.
Answers on a postcard.

Paperballpark

The panthers and leopards which I ordered two weeks ago turned up today! :) Along with a couple of venus fly traps which I'd ordered at the same time. Given I ordered the tigers about 2 or 3 days later, I'll expect them later in the week :)

Shib

My big cats have just arrived! Bring on the mountain lion/cougar in the the mountain police set! ;-)

Paperballpark

My tigers arrived today :) Looking forward to the mountain police one!

Paperballpark

Walk like a...

Shib

^ha, I put mine in exactly the same pose but I was thinking they need to cast them in grey and use them as temple guard statues...maybe Ninjago!