So, have you seen Iron Man 3 yet? I just got a chance to catch it last night and it was just as fun as one and two.
One thing I was disappointed with **warning: slight spoiler** was that of the three Iron Man 3 LEGO sets, only the Malibu Mansion has anything to do with the movie. I realize that the sets are often designed while the movie is still in production, and perhaps there is a small chance that the other two sets may have been left on the Editing room floor, but considering the continuity of the movie, I really doubt that.
On that note, LEGO Marvel Super Heros the video game is coming out at the end of the year. And for this one Walmart, not Gamestop, has the exclusive figure — Iron Patriot. Via FBTB
Its a pretty sweet fig, although I still think that the helmets look a little on the big side.
Iron Patriot is available with the preorder of the game on PS3, XBox, or WiiU — all for just a hair under $50 each. Sadly it doesn’t look like it works for Nintendo DS or 3DS.
The weird thing is that it says that the game will be available for shipment on Dec. 31st, everywhere else it says Oct. 31, which makes more sense. So we’ll see what the actual date is.
I was at Toys R Us last night and I saw this. I almost thought about getting it, but the pricey price tag (is that a thing? ) at $40 USD put me off buying it — that,and my earlier purchase at the LEGO store. Its cute and the minifig clown pen, if totally impractical, is pretty cute.
Update:I’ve now learned the label was wrong. If I’d bothered to look at my own picture, I would have noticed sooner. The price is actually $12.
I don’t know if I like the minifig pens or not. If you haven’t seen them you pull the head off and the pen is in the middle of the body. I have a Ninjago one that I still haven’t decided if I want to use it or not. I like all these new forays into the stationary accessories, and if was a kid going to school I would have loved to have them to use.
My only complaint is the quality of the accesories. The notebooks and journals are okay, but the markers and erasers are lousy. I guess a kid wouldn’t care or notice, but when I write or draw I like to have good quality pens, pencils and erasers. I suppose most themed pens, pencils, etc. that are made for kids are not made for quality, just advertising, but even so it is something to note. So, if you want them for their collectiblity factor or to accessorize your child in proper LEGO writting impliments than go right ahead. But at that price, I’d prefer something that works better.
The LEGO Batman Movie may not be out on DVD till May 21st, but I got to see the West Coast preview at WonderCon! Not only did they show the movie, but there was a Q&A afterward with the director Jon Burton of TT Games and several of the voice actors.
If you haven’t seen the trailer, here it is:
I’ll get back to the Q&A part in a minute. Now for the review — if you haven’t played LEGO Batman 2 yet, or don’t want to know what happens, you might not want to read this review. Spoilers ahead –
If you have played LEGO Batman 2 like I have, read my review of the game here, and read the description of the movie you would think what I thought — that the LEGO Batman Movie is basically the cut scenes from the game.
That is both true and not true. The story line is the same, but an interesting fact that I discovered from the Q&A is that the game is based off the movie!
According to Jon Burton, the director, they were working on the movie and then realized it would be a great game. But the game took less time to make than the movie and that’s why it came out first.
So in watching the movie, the plot is not really a surprise for those of us that played the game. Even so, this is worth watching. I have to admit I enjoyed it a lot more than any of the latest LEGO Star Wars mini movies. It was cute, fun and funny.
And watching a Gotham that’s built of LEGO is just plain cool. One of the coolest scenes is something that isn’t in the game — Lex’s airship. Its massive, shiny and “built” of over 20,000 parts. Like Jon Burton said, all the models in the games and the movie can be built in real life. TT Games actually has LEGO Master Model Builders on staff to ensure this.
What I like about the movie is that you can just watch it, you don’t have to do anything like in the game, and when you get the DVD you can pause it to look at the models more closely.
If you want to watch the Q&A here it is: (more spoilers)
After the panel I was able to meet both Jon Burton and Christopher Smith (the voice of the Joker)
Here’s a picture of Christoper
It was awesome seeing it on the big screen and meeting some of the talent behind it. I highly recommend it!
And don’t forget that you get this awesome minifigure with the movie
Overall 5 out of 5 stars! Fun movie, and I’ll be wanting to watch this one more than once.
Hi all, as you can see I’m still not fully recovered and not posting at all regularly yet. I did get back home finally after an almost 3 week trip up and down the West Coast. And once I’ve managed to upload all my images to Flickr I’ll be posting about the trip in more detail.
But I wanted to post about the recently released Hobbit movie on Blu-Ray and the Target exclusive version with the Bilbo Baggins minifigure.
I won’t go into a full review of the movie, as others such as FBTB have done a very good review already.
No what I want to talk about is the small featurette on the making and designing of the LEGO Hobbit Models that is on the Target Blue Ray and the Bilbo figure — cause let’s face it, that’s really the main reason I got it at Target.
Its not that I “must have all minifigures!” But since I was going to get the movie anyways, I might as well get it with a Bilbo minifig.
Its a pretty cool fig, with a nice blue waistcoat and printing on the back. There’s even an alternate scared expression on the other side of his head.
What I found that interested me more than I thought was the featurette about how they designed the LEGO Hobbit models.
Now as I’m not as tech savvy as some, I took pictures from my TV while I watched the feature so that you could get an idea of what it shows.
The thing I thought that was coolest to me was the original prototype of Bag End, Bilbo’s house.
You can see how it differs from the actual set and what stayed the same.
They also talked about how they designed the Goblin king and his minions.
Its only about 15 minutes long, and there’s scenes from the LEGO Lord of the Rings Video Game at the start and end of it. What I’m hoping and predicting will happen is a LEGO Hobbit game about the time the 3rd Hobbit movie finally gets released.
The Blu-Ray / DVD combo pack is on sale at Target.com for $24.99 in the US. I found it at my local Target for $22.99 so if you want it, I’d recommend getting it there before the week is over and they jump the price up to $29.99.
Is it worth it? Well the feature was interesting, I don’t see myself watching it over and over again. I’m of the reluctant Blu-Ray crowd. I don’t care all that much that my image is that much crisper than the DVD version. However, it seems that is the way the world is going and that’s why I picked up a PS3, so at least I could play games and watch movies.
I do like the exclusive figure, and I imagine that it will cost as much as the movie once it starts making its way to Bricklink. But if you are going to buy the movie any ways, you might as well get this one.
BrickCon isn’t the only time you can see awesome LEGO displays in Seattle. Emerald City Comic Con is just two weeks away and for the second year in a row SEALUG will have all kinds of LEGO coolness for attendees to see.
And that’s not all — several LEGO vendors will be there too, including your’s truly!
I will be partnering with BrickShirts and AltBricks. So if you are attending, stop and say hi.
Not only that, but I will be giving a presentation at 3:20 pm in Hall C all about my career as a Freelance LEGO Artist.
But if you want to attend the Con, buy tickets soon. The full Con passes and Saturday passes are already sold out but Friday and Sunday are still available.
Have you gotten one? I wish I could say that this one in the picture was mine, but sadly I’ve yet to receive one. I’m really hoping I do, but nothing in the mail so far.
According to BrickSet this promo is running in North America and Europe for VIP members.
If you don’t know what the VIP program is you can read about it on the LEGO website (this is the US link, you might have to change country region to find out the details for where you live). But the basics of it is that for every $100 you spend, you get $5 in credit (USD).
Its a great program and I can honestly say that I’ve gotten several large sets for “free” using VIP credit.
Sadly, even if you are a VIP member that doesn’t guarantee you’ll get one — only “the most active and engaged VIP members based on a list of criteria including purchase frequency (will get one)” — whatever that means. Many are still trying to figure out what the “list of criteria” is exactly.
One of the comments on BrickSet said that they called LEGO and was told you needed to spend at least $500 in the US to get one, but even that might not guarantee that you will find one of these rare ruby figs in your mail box.
This is one of those good / bad promos. We all want one, but not everyone will get one. There are listings on both Ebay and Bricklink selling them for $25 and up, but I’m not really one to pay for something that others got for free.
I much prefer promos where if you spend “X” you get “Y.” And I think there would be less frustration if whoever in LEGO that came up with this promotion would explain what the criteria was.
Back in the days before the internet LEGO (or any company for that mater) could run whatever limited run promos they wanted and it wouldn’t be instantaneously known worldwide. This however is not that age. We know, we all know. One post on BrickSet, Flickr, or Facebook and it goes viral.
Sure super special limited LEGO promos are very cool and when you are lucky enough to get one its an awesome thing. And I’m still hoping I’ll find one of these in my own mail box (if I do I promise to let you know). But for those that don’t get one, especially all the kids that read the posts and see the shiny red keychain but don’t end up being one of the lucky ones, it brings more frustration than happiness.
Have nothing to do the second weekend of March? Why not come and join us at BricksCascade in Portland, Oregon?
For full attendees, the fun starts on March 7th and goes through March 10th. Last year was a lot of fun and this year looks like it is shaping up to be a good one too. And of course there will be public hours Saturday and Sunday. I’ll be there all weekend. Its the first of 4-5 LEGO Cons I plan on attending this year, and I always have fun at them.
Need another reason to come? You can purchase this awesome shirt created by the one and only Doctor Mobius (aka Jason).
If you can’t come, I will of course be there and do my best to cover it here on my blog.
I will also be attending Emerald City Comic Con for the first time the week before that in Seattle March 1st-3rd. I’ll be talking more about this event soon. If you happen to be going to that, I will be at the BrickShirts booth or at the LEGO layout so come by and say hi.
Okay Yaramanoglu has created the ultimate show down between Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars. I’m not exactly sure who is on who’s side, or even who is winning, but I don’t think it really matters.
Ever since Disney annouced that they were buying LucasFilms the inevitable desire for all the characters to prove who’s the favorite would occur.
Put even more confusion J.J. Abrams is set to direct the newest Star Wars moive. Picture Via FBTB
Some said a collaboration between Marvel and TT Games could never happen. Apparently, nobody told the studio behind the popular series of Lego games. After all, Warner Bros. is the parent company of both TT Games and DC Comics, which made many people assume that a Marvel Lego game was off the table. As our cover story shows, those people were wrong.
Via: Gameinformer.com
Not much news is available yet, but just the name LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Video Game conjures excitement! How can it be anything but cool? Especially after watching this video
LEGO Lord of the Rings Video Game was a pleasant surprise for me and I really enjoyed it. Of course to be honest I’ve enjoyed pretty much every Travler’s Tales LEGO game out there. But the Lord of the Rings story just isn’t my cup of tea. Marvel on the other hand — well lets just say I went and saw Avengers three times in theaters and leave it at that.
The one thing I’m hoping, and they probably have fixed this if LEGO Lord of the Rings is any indication, is that the Marvel game will be about more than one character. I loved LEGO Batman 2 but its one failure was that you only got to be Superman at the very end of the story portion of the game. Once you got into Free Play, it was much cooler. I mean who doesn’t want to fly around the city looking for citizens to save?
Lord of the Rings was very different, and had to be, since it was the Fellowship of nine characters traveling around together for the most part. So you got to use all the different characters with all their different abilities much more frequently, even if it that can also get a tad old after awhile. I have to admit, I still haven’t finished the game. A week is about my limit on playing a game constantly. I don’t know of any of the games that I’ve fully finished except maybe the old LEGO Star Wars video games, but that was many years ago when I didn’t have quite so much going on in my life.
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Video Game won’t be out till the fall, so we have a while to wait. LEGO City Undercover exclusively for the Wii U game console is set to come out March 1st and although it looks like fun, I don’t have a Wii U and don’t have plans to get one any time soon.
Even if we do have a bit of a wait I’m looking forward to being Iron Man, Spiderman, and Wolverine when it finally does come out. And of course as soon as I know more info I’ll let you know.
I'm Mariann Asanuma, a former LEGO Master Model Designer and now a Freelance LEGO Artist and Author. Thanks for checking out my blog dedicated to all things LEGO. ;)
Feel free to contact me if you are interested in a custom LEGO model.
Via FBTB
) at $40 USD put me off buying it
