Please use our links: LEGO.com • Amazon
Recent discussions • Categories • Privacy Policy • Brickset.com
Brickset.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, the Amazon.com.ca, Inc. Associates Program and the Amazon EU Associates Programme, which are affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Comments
We already got the Double Decker Couch in MetalBeard's Sea Cow. Overall the set is really unnecessary the car would have been better in a £4.99 set with Emmet, It really a minifigure pack: new additions such as Ghost Vitruvius, Siting Uni-Kitty are great and Benny for £19.99 is good for those who cannot buy the larger sets. We should have got some string.
Bad Cop Car Chase:
We really could have got this build in the Bad Cop's Pursuit set as a 2 in 1.
Batman & Super Angry Kitty Attack:
Super Angry Kitty is the only reason this set was made.
I think that LEGO is really stretching The LEGO theme now. Can we have other stuff that was featured in the movie? An expansion of Cloud Cuckoo Land or the submarine...
The Batman/Angry Kitty looks like a glorified polybag. Another non-descript micro-manager and robo-skeleton - wow, thanks Lego. Angry Kitty is nice but surely there is a new vehicle/building she could have been released with.
Bad Cop's car is probably the best of the three but as someone has already said why wasn't this part of a 2 for 1 with 70802. Having not done that it seems a pointless release at this stage. And the car looks the same as the MOC in this video
And finally the double decker couch. Surely this is fake as well. None of it makes sense. Why pair Emmet's car with the couch? Why is President Business part of the set? Ghost Vitruvius is great (if real) but again what connection does he have with the car and/or couch? The couch made perfect sense when included with Sea Cow and included all the characters (apart from Batman) who were on it in the sea. To be honest I could have Photoshopped that cover and I really hope that is what it is.
Especially as it will be a year since the film is out, they need something cheap and exciting for kids to get the sets moving again.
I do wonder if this is the last we'll see of the LEGO Movie theme until the next installment of the film franchise, or whether it will have enough momentum for a summer wave with potentially larger sets. There are definitely some big and distinctive subjects in the LEGO Movie that haven't yet appeared as sets, namely the submarine, the twin-rotor Super Secret Police helicopter, and the western race car Of these, I think the latter is the least likely to show up as a set, since it is a rickety and not very flashy-looking design. The submarine would be difficult to release as a set due to its size and inevitably high price point, but it's definitely the sort of thing that would have plenty of shelf appeal.
Character-wise, I am very satisfied with the new wave. It's great that it includes a lot of the characters with new expressions. They are still basic enough that most of them can be the definitive versions of the characters for people who missed out on previous versions, but also unique enough that they won't be completely redundant for people who have the previous versions. Also, as I observed with the previous versions of Emmet, people who make Brickfilms are going to love the wide range of expressions that will now be available for many of the characters!
All in all, I'm just glad that the Angry kitty was not a stupid Comicon exclusive and is going to be in a regular set.
I'm sure you've put a lot of thought into whether or not it's worth it to get the Sea Cow, but I can say that my younger brother has it and to me it seems entirely worth the high cost. The set is huge, creative, and packed with detail. Still, I can definitely agree that the Sea Cow is outside a lot of people's means and this Double-Decker Couch set will be a great way for people who can't justify getting the Sea Cow to get not only the couch but also Emmet's car and an assortment of major LEGO Movie characters!
Also, I'm glad President Business finally gets a smiling face in the new sets. There are plenty of points in the movie that he smiles, and yet all the sets this year have him looking angry or upset (probably to help kids understand that he's a bad guy with a bad attitude).
I really think, as absurd as I know it will sound to some people, that if the set had cloth sails it would sell a lot more and I would have been more interested in it. It would have also justified the large price on it to me.
Also really, ship without cloth sails aside, the only thing I really wanted was seasick kitty after that, and just broke down and bought one off of BL for about 15 bucks.
So while a neat set, I just realized there are other sets I want to buy with that money.
I think it definitely is good value for that double-decker couch if one 19.99 USD though. Kinda glad for myself there is no seasick kitty, but you would think if there was one set besides the ship to have it it would have been this set coming out. Guess they are still seeing the kitty as a reason to buy the Ship though. Nice to see a sitting kitty though
I can definitely see why the Sea Cow does not have cloth sails — it's based on the ship's appearance in the movie, and part of the movie's appeal was the idea that everything (except, of course, the relics) was made of LEGO. If everything up to and including explosions and water effects is brick-built, then to many viewers it would feel like a cop-out to use giant single-piece cloth sails for the Sea Cow rather than a more creative brick-built solution.
Not saying people are wrong to like cloth sails. They have very real advantages in terms of their texture and flexibility. But it's pretty clear to me why the Sea Cow didn't have them, and sacrificing the set's uniqueness and accuracy to the film to make it more "realistic" seems to run counter to the whole idea behind its design.
Slight simplification is something I can understand when converting an impractically huge set to something that can be sold at retail without asking customers to take out a mortgage on their homes to pay for it. But a fundamental change like turning elaborate brick-built sails into billowy single-piece cloth ones just to make it more appealing to fans of traditional LEGO pirate ships would be a different beast entirely.
The Sea Cow is most definitely value for money IMO, I can understand why some people just plain don't like and don't want the set, but I don't think value for money is a sensible argument against it. If you like the design, then it's really well priced for what you get.
Designers from The LEGO Group were heavily involved in the design of the vehicles and other subject matter in the movie itself (you can see footage of some of the designers' creative workshops in the special features to the Blu-Ray version of the movie), so it's a whole different beast than a typical licensed theme where the LEGO Group will be charged with creating sets based on a franchise that they had no creative involvement with. The LEGO Group didn't get to help design the ships in Guardians of the Galaxy — they just had to work with the designs and concepts they were given. But with the LEGO Movie, they were involved throughout the design process.
More likely WB licenses the relevant Lego IP off TLG and TLG gets to retain rights to the sets such that WB gets whatever profits the film makes after the license fees have been paid to TLG and TLG gets to make whatever they can off the sets + the Lego IP licensing to WB.
You see far higher value for money from TLM sets than you do from other Warner owned IPs like LotR/The Hobbit for example so it doesn't make sense to think TLG has some license fee to pay out for each and every set to Warner like they do other IPs even before you discount the insanity that would be TLG effectively paying Warner to produce characters that they largely created themselves in the first place (Benny, Emmet, etc. are all tiny variations on existing well established Lego characters).
Aanchir's point is basically exactly that- that Warner hasn't designed the theme by itself and sold it back to Lego, that Lego has designed much of it itself and so isn't going to pay license fees for something it put much of the capital into designing in the first place - it's not like LotR or Star Wars where an external company designed the entire IP from scratch and Lego adapts for it's own products, it's something that is very much based on Lego's IP from the outset.
"Throughout the moviemaking process, Wilfert’s team was invited to weigh in on almost every aspect of the film. “My pitch to them was, ‘There is the contract, and then there is reality,’” says Lin. “You guys may not have certain approvals per the contract. But I’m working with your baby, and I want to treat it right. I want to make you partners.”
Here's a good article from Wall Street Journal that further states the situation.
When you call TLG Customer Service and ask for a replacement part for a TLM set or fig, they will tell you it is not allowed as it is a licensed part.
1. How much of a financial stake lego took in actually funding the movie.
2. Who was pushing who? Were Lego desperate to get a movie made, or were Warner Brothers one of a string of movie companies competing for their signature.
3. The deal could have been as simple as, you make the movie, we'll keep the merchandising. Warner could have paid Lego to make it. Lego could have paid Warner to make it.
You'll never know the answers to any of the above.
The only thing you can say with any certainty is that since Lego owned the IP behind the movie, in the same way that Marvel owns the IP behind it's superhero movies, Lego would get a cut of this money.
And they they used non-Lego IP within the movie, such as Simpsons, Star Wars, Batman. That will be REALLY complicated in terms of licencing fees!
Presumably this is the WSJ article you intended to link? If so it still says nothing about it being a wholly owned production of WB, nothing close to that even:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303553204579347031590079364
If it were true, it still doesn't change the fact that TLM sets don't have the licensing premium on them that licensed sets normally do. Not being able to get them as licensed parts does not mean that they are paying a license fee - just that WB has to jointly agree how the IP can and can't be used with them to prevent say, TLG going off track with the sets from the movie making it hard for WB to fit their sequel in.
#70818
#70819
The nice thing is that many will likely be hung over on Jan 1st so if you get to the store early then you will have a chance for all the new sets.
Must have 'very angry' Unikitty.