Last Hobbit Wave

klatu003 · October 2014

Now that we have them in hand, rather than just pictures, what do people think of the sets? Here is my take:

79018-1: The Lonely Mountain. I just put Smaug together and I am rather pleased with him. He is much more elegant and larger than the dragon from #70403: Dragon Mountain. All the major parts are new molds and the color is dark red. He can be put in many poses and has a lot of attitude. His leatherish wings fold in or extend. I haven't finished the building, but it is shaping up nicely with gold and sand green throughout.

79015: Witch-King Battle is obviously a minifig pack and satisfying. Galadriel's sparkly cape is pretty, I'm very happy the witch king's crown is separate, so I can make more Ringwraiths.

79016: Attack on Lake-town expands the Lake town environment with a pleasant building. The orcs and elves can just be evicted and I'll ignore the bolt-action tower thingee.

79017: The Battle of the Five Armies - I like the dwarves! Dain and Thorin with crown are nice additions to the theme. The catapult is another rendition of *a catapult.* Are there any other weapons in Lego worlds of this era? The building is ok. Nice colors for Dale, but pretty insipid. Azog, again, bleh.

CCC · October 2014

It's a different Azog, just like it is a different Thorin.

Venunder · October 2014

Although I want the sets I don't want them at RRP.
Lego really need to learn a lesson: -
Sell more Lego by setting a reasonable price for your products.

squarebear47 · October 2014

Agree with you for the most part. I think it can be considered a good wave, although the actual builds for both Attack on Lake Town and The BOFA sets are a little smaller than I'd like, but isn't that how it always goes. I'd rather see a second structure in BOFA set instead of the catapult.

binaryeye · October 2014

klatu003 said:
79015: Witch-King Battle is obviously a minifig pack and satisfying. Galadriel's sparkly cape is pretty, I'm very happy the witch king's crown is separate, so I can make more Ringwraiths.

The minifigures in the set are fantastic (though I prefer Galadriel without the cape) but as a set I think it's pretty awful for the price. I appreciate that the build incorporated a function given the relatively small part count. But when said function could be just as well achieved by holding the minifigure in your fingers and turning it side to side, I'm not impressed.

Venunder said:
Lego really need to learn a lesson: -
Sell more Lego by setting a reasonable price for your products.

Why produce more to sell at a lower price? If they can make as much by producing less for a higher price, they may as well.

Venunder · October 2014

Except the sets are not selling well at RRP.

Most AFOLS or savvy shoppers, are only buying at 25% or more discount, from whichever shop/online trader will sell at a reasonable/trade price to get rid of it.

I'm not saying the Lego policy is failing, just that they could sell more Lego and make more profit by selling at more reasonable RRP's.

mathew · October 2014

Agreed. It's almost as if Lego expects these to be heavily discounted thus being skimpy with the bricks and overpricing them.

ThirdBuckEye · October 2014

Licensed sets will always have a lower piece count at a higher retail price than non licensed sets. The value for those sets is in the unique minifigs.

yys4u · October 2014

These sets are great.
But the price kills it. I wont be buying any of these until I see some discount.
The only one that comes close to being worth the price is Attack on Lake town.
Although I might end up getting the Witch King battle cause the figures are fantastic and its the cheapest set. It still should have been a couple dollars cheaper though.

Jarakin · October 2014

I've only bought LotR and Hobbit sets at 50% or more discount, will continue to do this for this wave if at all possible. I do kinda want to complete the collection though. All I'm missing so far is Mines of Moria from LotR and the Tower of Orthanc.

Legoboy · October 2014

Well, ordered the final four sets today from [email protected] Kids are dead excited about getting Smaug.

Bumblepants · October 2014

If the largest set goes the way of Goblin King and has a million copies on discount after christmas I will buy them all for love of sand green,

Sethro3 · October 2014

I agree that prices could always be lower, but Licensed sets typically are a little higher. Now ultimately large scale figures add into the cost since it has more specialized molds. One exception comes to mind: Mos Eisley Cantina. Almost 700 bricks, 8 figures, and a large molded creature for $70. That is a steal (in my opinion).

As far as Hobbit goes, I've purchased all of the Middle Earth sets at full MSRP, but I'd prefer discounts. Either stores around here haven't received many Middle Earth sets or they have just sold out quickly, so I've never seen any discounts on any of them. By the time I see discounts on amazon, it's much later after I purchased the set.

With that said, I did pick up 2 of the Galadriel set. One for my collection, one for my daughter. I'll pick up the rest eventually, but I doubt I'll build any of them other than Laketown.

It either seems silly they decided to add in some new Orc prints plus new hair since it is the final wave OR they are grasping at straws and hoping that little detail will make people buy more. I don't see it working out for them.

roostercogburn · October 2014

The price is about right for most of the sets. The LOTR and Hobbit sets are always expensive because of licensing and for most of the sets, there are unique moulds.

Galadriel's cape and the Witch King's crown in the first set (and a high number of minifigures for the sets size) in the smallest set made it worth while for me.

Lake Town had a number of minifigures, a spring loaded missile launcher, those hair pieces for the orcs (I think those are new...no?) and the general cost to pieces are all reasons for me.

Dain's helm, Thorin's crown and repackaging Azog and the eagle are reasons for some people to have gotten BOTFA, but I just threw money at it to get the whole wave. The tower/bridge is cool, but another catapult is meh...but it does have a new launch mechanism for the Middle Earth sets. Still, I would rather have a new building, or a gate, or house, or an overturned cart...or well, anything.

The play features could be neat, the the build was kind of fun, but the only reason I dropped $150 Canadian on this set was for Smaug. Unique moulds for the wings and body, as well as the head, increase the price a great deal. It's probably still over priced, but the set, overall, is my favourite of the wave.

Superheroes, movie based licenses and Star Wars are always expensive. Unique pieces, the cost of acquiring rights, the time it takes to build a set around something that everyone has an interpretation of makes for more costs. I don't like it, but gas is going up in price, food costs have gone up, the cost of media has gone up...I can't complain about Lego in good conscience.

monkey · October 2014

I thought the Witch King Battle was a bargain given how good the figures are! I bought four of them (so that I can use the figures for MOCs), and plan to buy more..

klatu003 · October 2014

@ccc LOL. I didn't even notice that he was sh**t-eating-grin Azog.

monkey · December 2014

Went to the store yesterday and #79018 was on display so I finally saw Smaug live and was disappointed! Really liked him on pictures, but in real life it just comes across as combination of huge pieces of plastic, rather bland I thought... The colour is nice, the face expression is gorgeous, but the whole thing just oozes of being "non-lego" and it spoiled it for me.

Next to it on display was the dragon from minecraft and I thought it looked so much better, except for the wings being huge pieces of plastic again that just jump to your eyes somehow as if they don't belong. Fierce flyer from #31004 comes to mind as a comparison, simple and perfect from this point of view.

I know there is a debate about brick-built v solid animals etc, and I don't mind horses and pigs - but maybe its because those are smaller and therefore can better fit in while dragons are huge and it makes a difference?

mountebank · December 2014

I thought #31032 was more interesting as a candidate for Smaug. A bit of refinement and it would be much more suitable.

Venunder · December 2014

31032 needs scaling up to make a proper Smaug. But it is a better beginning than the official model.

CupIsHalfEmpty · December 2014

I'm not a huge fan of the larger animals either. But alas the collector in me will have to own one Smaug.

I never built any, but Ninjago has tonnes of Dragons that I figured could lend some techniques to a wonderful brick built Smaug. I guess that is one of the advantages of Lego is if they don't give it to us, we can just go build it.

jediami65 · December 2014

Went to see Battle of the Five Armies: I know creative liberties were taken by Jackson that some are not happy with but I thought it was a great ending to the trilogy. The Lego sets for this movie do not do it Justice.

mathew · December 2014

mountebank said:
I thought #31032 was more interesting as a candidate for Smaug. A bit of refinement and it would be much more suitable.

Agreed. For $130 we should have gotten a brick built dragon. It would have made the set worth the money. What we got was aimed at the Brickpicker, low thread count crowd.

piratemania7 · December 2014

I've recently been selling off my Hobbit sets if that means anything....

CircleK · December 2014

mathew said:

mountebank said:
I thought #31032 was more interesting as a candidate for Smaug. A bit of refinement and it would be much more suitable.
Agreed. For $130 we should have gotten a brick built dragon. It would have made the set worth the money. What we got was aimed at the Brickpicker, low thread count crowd.

The price tag on Loney Mountain is a killer, but the molded Smaug is pretty damn great. I almost always prefer brickbuilt beast to molded, but i was glad they went with a molded Smaug in this case. The figure captures his likeness perfectly and is very posable - something that would be more difficult to pull off in brickbuilt form. Ultimately, I think the version we got is a much better toy and/or display piece.

I fully expect the price to come down as well. The set has only been out a couple of months and I was already able to pick it for around $80 during a Meijer sale.

matticus_bricks · December 2014

jediami65 said:
Went to see Battle of the Five Armies: I know creative liberties were taken by Jackson that some are not happy with but I thought it was a great ending to the trilogy. The Lego sets for this movie do not do it Justice.

Just saw it as well, and I agree that the sets did not do it justice. While I'm thankful to have gotten those characters that we did get, it would have been nice to have minifigures for Bolg, armed Elves, some men of Lake Town and generic Dwarves. As it is, there aren't really enough official minifigures from each faction to recreate an accurate Battle of the Five Armies. I also would have liked armed versions of Thranduil and Azog, as they looked simply stunning in the movie.

Andor · December 2014

I would have enjoyed that as well. LEGO would a bunch of money more money from me than they already have. Because I would be large amount of those generic minifigures.

piratemania7 · December 2014

As with the first and second waves the minifigures really make the sets. They could have experimented and added more minifigures to the sets but that would only serve to increase the price on an already overpriced set overall.

msanders · December 2014

I watched the film and enjoyed it. There's lots of fighting and I agree that Lego should have included a generic elf (they had great armour in the film) and dwarf for army building - there's not much really to battle with and recreate scenes from the film. I love the lonely mountain set.

Is it just me or is there a distinct lack of availability of these sets? There hasn't been much since their release in October. It's really difficult to get hold of the sets outside of a Lego shop itself meaning you have to pay full price! Have stores cut back on ordering these sets because of the previous flop of the second wave when they went to 50% discount in the UK?! It's going to be hard getting these at discount which is disappointing considering the high price and poor price to parts ratio. It's all about the minifigures I suppose!

CircleK · December 2014

^ I've wondered the same. I haven't seen the two larger sets any where but Meijer. The two smaller sets did show up at my Walmart and target in small quantities. I haven't looked at Kmart or TRU but I'm sure the latter has them.

Last Hobbit Wave

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