Speaking of the leaked images of the Temple of Doom canceled/delayed set, I think it looked like a bad design. In my opinion, I would prefer they design it more along the style of 70922 The Joker Manor. Would it be large and expensive? Yes, but it should be. Can I wait a couple years to get it after the 2023 Indiana Jones trio release? Yes, and that's how it should be. Indiana Jones is an Icon style franchise, and it deserves Icon treatment for landmark movie locations. I can wait. Meanwhile, my favorite of this range for 2023 is 77012 Fighter Plane Chase. Smaller release sets such as this can invigorate the line without being enormous or expensive.

I kind of don't like the new Indy face. It looks too mean.

@MisterBrickster said:
"Ooh, it's my turn to be That Guy.

@EverybodyLovesReyna said:
"Indiana Jones himself has such a recognisable face print that they never dared to reuse it for anyone else. "

it's true that the original Indy face was only ever used for him, but the second, open-mouth smile turned up on sw0368 and poc018"

Thank you for pointing this out! As careful as I tried to be while factchecking everything, I forgot to check the second Indy face for reuses.

@MisterBrickster said:
"Ooh, it's my turn to be That Guy.

@EverybodyLovesReyna said:
"Indiana Jones himself has such a recognisable face print that they never dared to reuse it for anyone else. "

it's true that the original Indy face was only ever used for him, but the second, open-mouth smile turned up on sw0368 and poc018"

Don't forget that the original Indiana Jones faceprint is just 2006s Bruce Wayne modified with stubbles.

Just so you know licensed is spelled incorrectly in 9 paragraphs after the break

@Bricky_Dee_Williams said:
"Seeing brands like Hasbro releasing not one but two lines of action figures to cover the Indiana Jones franchise, plus various other toys and playtime accessories, it’s upsetting to see LEGO’s seemingly weak offering."

I still love Lego for at least sticking with releasing the german plane and a native, even if that last one is just one figure in an over 120$ set which is a middlefinger to fans in and of itself. The other toylines stay far away from german villains and any of the thug types leaving us with Priest Belloq and a likely also soon to be cancelled Mola Ram in the Hasbro Adventure Series.

We went back to the Power Rangers era where you see walls of heroes in stores with their different outfits but not a single grunt villain to fight, not even the main villain. This is what tells me that these things are intended for adults ONLY that merely display their toys like statues, not even dioramas. What is a child supposed to do, combine the figures of different toylines? Use their imagination to make up an entire character? If they keep this up with all lines it's no wonder that the entire toy market will die out within my lifetime.

@fakespacesquid said:
"Remember when you were a kid and everything was fresh and new and magical? Lego should just recapture that magic for me, an adult. Surely no circumstances have changed, either in the last 20 years of my life or the last 20 years of the world, that would make that more difficult than flipping a coin.

I appreciate the concept behind this essay, and I appreciate Brickset highlighting community voices that aren’t shouting, but I feel like the bottom half of this essay got cut off"

Was my writing partially influenced by my nostalgia for the time I grew up? Of course! It's inevitable. However, I tried my best to fairly compare that time to the present day. I was certainly not asking for TLG to recapture the magic I felt as a kid, so I'm sorry if it came off that way. Wishing the new Indiana Jones wave and other new themes could have more sets and more tie-ins, such as video games and short animations, is not asking TLG to bring back my childhood, it's expressing how I think new LEGO themes should be treated. I did acknowledge that this isn't always possible due to the amount of new themes in present day, but I thought I could bring up an interesting point of whether the variety of themes or the size of themes is more valuable. So again, I'm sorry if the intentions of the article were lost of you.

@RaiderOfTheLostBrick said:
"Fantastic essay!

I can totally relate to you. The LEGO Indiana Jones theme has had such a massive impact on my life that you probably couldn't even imagine. I was five or six when the sets first came out and in a time I mainly collected City. However, a friend brought in one of his Indiana Jones sets for show and tell in Kindergarten and it was love at first sight. I managed to get my hands on a few of the sets before they retired, and loved playing with them and the games as a kid. 7620 and 7622 were also the first of my older sets that I rebuilt after the end of my Dark Age.

However, it was when I discovered there were actual Indiana Jones FILMS that this love affair begins. My parents were a little resistant at first, but I finally got to see Raiders on TV one night (under supervision of course) after a long period of begging. My dad covered my eyes more than a few times, but I loved it so much that it started my obsession of film that still continues to this day. There was even a phase where I wanted to be a director, which unfortunately never panned out, all because of this fun adventure movie! If you want anymore proof, please read my username. So long story short, given the impact the original Indiana Jones film had on me, I was undeniably hyped for its return.

I was a little disappointed by the reboot especially with its limited selection of sets, but I'm kind of comfortable with that. As I am someone on a small budget, the limited number of sets suit me better than a full summer wave of Star Wars or Harry Potter, and I'm sure others can relate to this. I have a feeling the theme can last a few years at least, and the two smaller sets could sell pretty well given their decent value. Hopefully this is the case.

P.S the OG Indy figure is the greatest LEGO Minifigure of all time. Fight me."

I'm glad you enjoyed my writing and I love to hear how the original Indiana Jones line impacted you as well! I do agree that having less sets in the new wave, making it more affordable, is a positive. However, I personally like to have larger waves where I can just pick my favorite sets to buy. Smaller waves like the new Indiana Jones one means anyone who's favorite scene isn't in one of the three sets available just has to settle for one they aren't as fond of.

@WemWem said:
"It's nice to just have some new Indy sets, really. If the first 3 do well, maybe they'll make more. This sort of drip-drip approach is a good way to roll out product in a way that ensures LEGO never over-commits to an unsuccessful license, which was a problem about a decade ago with sets like THE LONG RANGER and THE PRINCE OF PERSIA.

Also, speaking as someone on a small annual Lego budget - $300 or less - mega-sized sets and massive waves of product don't strongly appeal to me. Enjoying a more curated approach to LEGO works well for me, and I don't have a need for massive waves of my favorite properties."

You imply that Lego will actually return to Indiana Jones at all after this year. The first line already didn't sell so good and Indiana Jones toys overall are very bad sellers which is why the 70s had less and less products for each consecutive movie.
The line didn't sell well for the vast amount of different products they made in 2008 and 2009 at least which is strange to begin with when back in 1997 and 2003 Johnny Thunder was able to sell identical sets and concepts to a large enough audience to be a franchise of his own.

Companies need to pay a large sum of money to even be able to use a license as a basis for new products. The past decade has seen many single-set licenses with Lego but likely because many of them are Disney products anyway which might fall under some larger umbrella license, a set up Lucasfilm likely does not have when it differentiates between Indiana Jones and Star Wars and has nothing attractive or relevant aside from those.

So I am thinking not only did Lego squander this chance for us but also for itself. Though Disney likely barred them from a large number of set concepts due to the sensible nature of modern day culture. There was a rumor 3 years back or so that Disney would not allow modern day looking guns but be okay with handguns and Wild West type rifles which is in line with what all of the Indiana jones toylines are doing.

Personally for me the sets are a step up from the old sets from a level of detail perspective and I am dying to get all three of them. However from a line of sets perspective it is still yet to be seen as to how they will compare. I have the majority of the old sets, with the exception of some crystal skull ones, and love them all (and there are a lot of sets). Here we have only three. Hoping this isn't the end of the line, and that will likely be dependent on how these sell. I cannot believe these won't sell well but who knows (I am approaching 50 and maybe am out of touch). The old sets definitely make up in quantity vs quality of these new ones. One additional drawback of the new ones is the abundance of stickers.

I'd forgotten about Raiders of the Lost Brick until you reminded me of it, and it quickly came flooding back! I must have seen it dozens of times too, cos every moment still feels incredibly familiar and nostalgic. Lego Indiana Jones was similarly formative for me, as it arrived when I was reaching an age when I became aware of what sets were coming out and started actively choosing which sets I wanted, as opposed to my parents choosing for me. It also came out when Indy was 'the big thing' in my school, likely because of the new film. I have vivid memories of playing a side scrolling Indy game on the Lego website.

As regards whether the new sets live up to the originals, I think the idol temple and the plane set are upgrades, but the lost tomb is unnecessarily large compared to the perfectly adequate older version. The older sets still hold up though. I would still buy them today if they were cheap enough.

I’m pleasantly surprised by the value in these new Indy sets! Heck, they even managed to make a remake of an old set cheaper than the original. That’s no small feat in this economy!

I think something worth considering is how different things are for this Indy film compared to Crystal Skull. The hype train was full-steam-ahead for that movie, so of course there was going to be a lot of merch and tie-in products.

However, this movie seems to have people a bit nervous. Especially with how badly Lucasfilm handles Star Wars. Maybe LEGO is being cautious and sticking to the movies they know will sell while making fewer sets at lower prices to sweeten the deal.

To be brutally fair, the second year only got about half a video game. If we’re being generous, that is.

@Anonym:
HA! Power Rangers. As if. Before them, Batman and that guy with the spider fetish each had one or more lines of action figures that consisted of not much beyond one character in endless variety of outfits. And long before that, the 12” G.I.Joes were basically just a bunch of soldiers from different branches of the same military. It may go back even further than that, for all I know.

"Can the new Indiana Jones line compare to the original?"

Yeah, you can compare (and contrast) any two things!

Snark aside for a second, the author brings up a very good point. Part of what made Indiana Jones so cool was seeing a new licensed theme in a hobby that, at the time, was still fairly niche, smaller-scale, and had rarer set releases. Seeing something not Star Wars or Harry Potter was a big deal and the imagination could run WILD with the possibilities.

Nowadays, new sets are a dime a dozen and interest in seeing what comes next seems to be concentrated to a small number of diehard fans who aren't weary of LEGO's constant release tactics. These tactics leverage the heavy interests of adult fans versus kid fans, who follow the releases more closely and include nostalgia in their expectations. So if anything, the contrast of 2009's Indy to 2023's Indy is more worthy of discussion. We live in a different age of the LEGO fandom entirely.

"LEGO seems to choose quantity of themes over the substance of themes, and some people likely prefer it that way." Mmmmm ... what a risky statement for the hobby whose motto is "only the best is good enough." But hey, be sure to keep your arms and hands inside the slippery slope at all times, hope you enjoy the ride!

I have read some excellent suggestions for what TLC should do.

Sadly the reality is simple: it is a business. Primarily to make money.

Cookies with a Elsa of Paw Patrol pictures on the box sell better. Kids demand the licensed cookies from mummy and daddy.

The same with LEGO. Elsa and other licensed themes sell, because kids (and adults, don’t fool yourself, we all fall for the same trick) recognize the theme, story, character, etc.

Unlicensed sets/themes have to tell their own story’s. With no reference material such as movies it is al lot more challenging for TLC to ‘sell it’.

So it makes sense TLC developes big themes like Nexo knights, Chima and Ninjago, because the whole of it tells a story functions as reference material for kids.

Some random stand alone sets won’t make enough money. Except maybe the adult sets such as Idea’s and Icons.

All these years I thought Dastan from the Prince of Persia theme had the same face print as Indy. But now that I compare them they are indeed different!

Star Wars won’t be evergreen much longer, unless Disney gets their act together. I don’t have a lot of hope. The numbers are all bad, and the fandom is on life support.

Indiana Jones isn’t in much better shape. If I were LEGO, I’d be leaning on Nintendo hard for more licenses. Snatch that Pokémon license from MEGA. Get Zelda going.

Nintendo is the near future. Disney is a dead end.

@Blondie_Wan:
You get a big bump (hopefully)when the new movie hits theaters. You get a smaller bump when it hits home video. In the past, these would typically occur about a year apart, cleanly setting up a second wave just as the first was largely retiring. In the post-pandemic world, low budget films may hit theaters one week, and store shelves the next, while big budget fare can still shorten that up to a couple months.

The shorter release window means you can’t count on that second bump a year later. However, this wave is early, so even with a short window, they should still have a half-year or so before home video hits. Six months will work in a pinch.

And regarding the Indiana Jones toys of yesteryear, I recall not being terribly interested in them because the selection sucked. You got a couple versions of Indy, Belloq as a priest…Sallah, I think, and maybe Toht? You could get more aliens from the Cantina than you could get characters from three IJ films combined, and the only playset I recall was the Map Room, which is basically just about using an antique laser pointer. With the LEGO theme, scale was small enough that big playsets were finally possible, and the parts were both versatile and generic enough that less molds were needed for the entire LEGO Indians Jones theme than for Hasbro’s tiny action figure line.

@waylander said:
"I would opinion that definitely some themes still have a lot of potential:
-LotR
-LotR
-LotR

Just for example:o)"

So many small sets they could do, too. A $20, $30 set with Sauron, Isildur and Elendil when he cuts the Ring off Sauron's hand. A brick-built Treebeard with Merry and Pippin. A "Riddles in the Dark" set (with way more details than the old one), a brick-built Balrog with Gandalf fight... Shelob?!?

@Huw
The Indiana jones print was reused 4 times, for sw0368 , tlr021 , sw0462 , poc018 .

sorry if the embed fail

@PurpleDave said:
" @Blondie_Wan:
You get a big bump (hopefully)when the new movie hits theaters. You get a smaller bump when it hits home video. In the past, these would typically occur about a year apart, cleanly setting up a second wave just as the first was largely retiring. In the post-pandemic world, low budget films may hit theaters one week, and store shelves the next, while big budget fare can still shorten that up to a couple months.

The shorter release window means you can’t count on that second bump a year later. However, this wave is early, so even with a short window, they should still have a half-year or so before home video hits. Six months will work in a pinch.

And regarding the Indiana Jones toys of yesteryear, I recall not being terribly interested in them because the selection sucked. You got a couple versions of Indy, Belloq as a priest…Sallah, I think, and maybe Toht? You could get more aliens from the Cantina than you could get characters from three IJ films combined, and the only playset I recall was the Map Room, which is basically just about using an antique laser pointer. With the LEGO theme, scale was small enough that big playsets were finally possible, and the parts were both versatile and generic enough that less molds were needed for the entire LEGO Indians Jones theme than for Hasbro’s tiny action figure line."

Agreed, with all that, but I think there’s more to it. Certainly toy and movie release schedules were sort of thrown out of whack by the pandemic and haven’t really gone entirely back to exactly what they were before, but even without that I suspect they may have wanted to do things differently from last time around. Back then, the movie released in May, and was preceded by both the launch wave of “classic” sets in January (which wasn’t embargoed to a particular date, so some of the sets were on store shelves and consequently in fans’ homes as early as Nov. ‘07), and then the “new movie wave” in April ‘08 - embargoed to a specific date in April, but still about a month before the film hit. I think LFL (or, now, its corporate parent Disney, which didn’t yet own LFL at the time) may have stipulated that the sets be shifted a bit later in regards to the film, for their own marketing purposes. If nothing else, having the set development and release shifted a few months later with respect to the movie production may help with both accuracy to the source material (note how of the six Crystal Skull sets from last time around, the only really film-accurate one was 7196, the one released more than a year after the film; see also the noted Iron Man 3 golf cart) and with spoiling plot points in a toy.

Kenner did do some nice stuff for Raiders that at the time was probably a harder sell back in ‘81, but I think the way the franchise became entrenched in the popular consciousness after that it would have been easier to sell toys if there’d been much in the way of ones that were good and available. There just wasn’t much for Temple, though, and even less for Crusade. Hasbro went in on Indy in a fairly big way in 2008 with a line embracing all four movies, but the earlier waves were marred by some odd choices for figures as well as quality issues, and it seemed that while the quality improved with each subsequent wave, the distribution / availability went down (perhaps as retailers checked out after being stuck with shelf-warmers from the lackluster early waves). By the time they got to Temple of Doom with Wave 4, the figures were great, but all but impossible to find.

LEGO had the advantages you describe, of course (plus, in the admittedly biased opinion of someone who comes here, LEGO is just a better toy line than any mass-market action figure line anyway). Despite a few quibbles (sticker reliance in half the sets, complete absence of such major characters as Sallah and Marcus, etc.), the line was generally quite well-received, hence lasting to a fourth wave - unusual for LEGO, who generally restricts its themes associated with new licenses to a single wave or two unless there a

Argh, sorry for the cut-off…

it's true that the original Indy face was only ever used for him, but the second, open-mouth smile turned up on sw0368 and poc018]]

Also tlr021]]

how do y'all know all these minifigure numbers

@Huw said:
" @person_that_uses_brickset said:
"Just so you know licensed is spelled incorrectly in 9 paragraphs after the break"

It's spelled correctly. We use British English here. "

I believe @person_that_uses_brickset is referring to "lichenised". :)

Hello All:

When the long delayed, new Indy film was finally happening, I highly anticipated his return to LEGO. I was a big fan of the films, growing-up and welcomed the LEGO Indy Jones game in 2008.

When the first 4 sets were leaked / announced in 2023, I was puzzled as to why Crystal Skull was omitted. Now, with the Temple of Doom set, delayed or canceled, this "wave" feels more like a few rain drops.

Am so puzzled, as to why the initial wave did not include 1 set, from each of the 4 films. Actually, it is unlike recent LEGO, to have not have launched with 5 sets: 1x 4+ set, 3x Mid-range sets and 1x 18+ set.

While I am likely not saying anything new, I just don't get why LEGO / Lucasfilm botched this re-introduction of Indy to LEGO fans, old and new.

Will LEGO release a 2nd wave that includes The Dial of Destiny as well as Krystal Skull and Temple of Doom? If relegated to just the 3 sets coming out on April 1st, this will likely be one of the weakest launches I can think of. Time will tell.

That said, I will be buying the 3 sets that will be released to add to my collection from 2008 and 2009.

Cheers!
Ron

Lichenised: Alternative form of lichenized.
Adjective. - Adapted to live as a symbiont in a lichen.
-Wiktionary

Perhaps as in a theme from a license not from recent times?

Three sets does seem underwhelming. Even if no more sets appear in future, I'm just happy to see the Indiana Jones theme revived for one last time.

@560heliport said:
" @Huw said:
" @person_that_uses_brickset said:
"Just so you know licensed is spelled incorrectly in 9 paragraphs after the break"

It's spelled correctly. We use British English here. "

I believe @person_that_uses_brickset is referring to "lichenised". :)"

That would be Britchesish English, yes?

@PurpleDave said:
" @560heliport said:
" @Huw said:
" @person_that_uses_brickset said:
"Just so you know licensed is spelled incorrectly in 9 paragraphs after the break"

It's spelled correctly. We use British English here. "

I believe @person_that_uses_brickset is referring to "lichenised". :)"

That would be Britchesish English, yes?"

Its Chewsday, innit?

I suspect we may get more Indy sets, just on the fact that they moulded him a brand-new hat element.

Wouldn't be unheard of to have 'one and done' new parts usages. But does feel an unnecessary expense for 3 sets.

@peterlmorris said:
"Star Wars won’t be evergreen much longer, unless Disney gets their act together. I don’t have a lot of hope. The numbers are all bad, and the fandom is on life support.

Indiana Jones isn’t in much better shape. If I were LEGO, I’d be leaning on Nintendo hard for more licenses. Snatch that Pokémon license from MEGA. Get Zelda going.

Nintendo is the near future. Disney is a dead end. "

Where do you get these "facts"? I'm always astounded when people make sweeping comments like this about SW and just things in general. SW has Mando, Andor S2, has BB, Ahsoka, Skeleton Crew, Acolyte, Lando - Fallen Order and a dozen books already published this year to name a few.

Certainly I wish that LOTR had the longevity and completeness of Star Wars, but I completely understand why it doesn’t. Star Wars always was and always will be a kid’s franchise. We have finally reached a point where the franchise is reaching its true potential of constantly offering new content, but even when we had to wait decades between new content, the original trilogy always appealed to kids regardless of when they were born. So while you may not need a 20th X-Wing, there will always be a kid who needs their first.

LOTR is very different. Yes, it might have just as passionate of a fan base. However, despite The Hobbit being written for kids, it is clearly not a kids franchise. Even The Hobbit movies are incredibly inappropriate for children. So while I love it and would love to see more of it, I can understand why economically that doesn’t make sense.

I feel like Indiana Jones leans more towards LOTR. While the movies may be targeted at a slightly younger audience, in a way they are less appropriate. While the stories may be fictional, the enemies are not, and in reality the enemies are much worse than how they are depicted in these movies. It’s difficult to show these films to a child knowing that the questions that may come from them will lead to discussions of actual genocide, and not fictional ones like Order 66.

Again I wish there were many more Indiana Jones sets, but I think releasing a few sets in conjunction with an upcoming movie release is very appropriate.

That said, I think it would be awesome if Lego released one set a year for these types of themes as the AFOL market would be very receptive to it so long as they were reasonably priced, but I have the feeling that licensing agreements are probably a major hindrance to this. After all, do you want to give an exclusive license to a once a year company, or do you want to keep your options open for when you get a better offer?

Considering there's a new Indiana Jones movie coming out it'd be odd if LEGO didn't release another wave later this year with sets based on the new movie (and maybe some more for the old ones).

I will always have a special place in my heart for the original Indiana Jones Lego sets. It was because of sets that I watched Raiders of the lost Ark for the first time. Because of it my father and I bonded over watching the trilogy. And Raiders became my favorite movie. The sets had a perfect blend of play and display to them at the time. I’m thankful that I was able to get several of them but sadly most of the sets did not last through the years.

I’m excited that Lego is bringing the theme back. I plan on foregoing other Lego purchases to buy any indy set they release. I really hope they produce more than the current three sets. I never got the original temple of doom and hope they release 77014 after all.

I hope the next generation can feel nostalgic about this wave like I was over the first. However Lego doesn’t support themes like they used to. I don’t think sets over the past 5-10 years will have the same fondness. I for one would love to see Lego Indiana Jones receive a handful of new sets over the next year’s like how Jurassic Park has been.

@Blondie_Wan:
Merchandising has traditionally gone hand-in-hand with marketing. Toy lines generate interest that helps fuel ticket sales, which fuels toy sales. The shortened release window may have caused studios to rethink the pacing of the merchandising in relation to the film release, and allowing stuff to hit shelves too early could result in what happened to Minions, WW84, and Black Widow, where toys were either on shelves, or headed that way, when release plans for the film changed too late to stop the product from going on sale. By the time the films hit, most of these toys were either out of production, or had been given extended releases that dragged on long past when most interested customers had bought their fill, or they vanished from shelves only to be re-released closer to the eventual final release date. In any of these cases, thunder was nonexistent.

I can’t agree with you on the Crystal Skull sets. I don’t know what else they could have done with 7624 , and the amphibious vehicle from 7625 looks really good. And when 7628 made RSotD 2.5 years ago, people gushed about how it was the best plane ever released as an official set.

Kenner got sandbagged by the nature of the villains. No way most parents were ever going to buy uniformed WWII German action figures, which doesn’t leave many options for original Raiders figures. Kenner was also eating their own chances of success with their line of SW action figures, which had built up over three years of steam by that point. I think I knew one kid who had any of them, and his family wasn’t hurting for money. For the rest of us, scale was a concern. Stormtroopers could drive a HISS Tank, and Snake-Eyes could fly an X-Wing, because the two lines were basically the same scale. I’ve only seen them in person once, but I think Indy was a noticeably different scale, plus they had goofy action functions built in that limited what you could do with them in a play setting. MASK got away with being a wildly different scale because they released a full range of heroes and villains, and the vehicles were more affordable due to the reduced scale.

I could be completely off on this, but I suspect the fact that we are only getting three sets (as far as we know) for the revived theme is more of a Disney/LucasFilm thing than a LEGO thing. Disney really struggled with how to market/merchandise the last couple of SW films, so I imagine they are purposely holding back for the return of Indiana Jones.

@PurpleDave said:
" @Blondie_Wan:
Merchandising has traditionally gone hand-in-hand with marketing. Toy lines generate interest that helps fuel ticket sales, which fuels toy sales. The shortened release window may have caused studios to rethink the pacing of the merchandising in relation to the film release, and allowing stuff to hit shelves too early could result in what happened to Minions, WW84, and Black Widow, where toys were either on shelves, or headed that way, when release plans for the film changed too late to stop the product from going on sale. By the time the films hit, most of these toys were either out of production, or had been given extended releases that dragged on long past when most interested customers had bought their fill, or they vanished from shelves only to be re-released closer to the eventual final release date. In any of these cases, thunder was nonexistent."

Oh, I agree. Are we getting our wires crossed? This next bit has me thinking so:

@PurpleDave said:
"I can’t agree with you on the Crystal Skull sets. I don’t know what else they could have done with 7624 , and the amphibious vehicle from 7625 looks really good. And when 7628 made RSotD 2.5 years ago, people gushed about how it was the best plane ever released as an official set."

There’s not much there with which I disagree, aside from “what else they could have done with 7624”, which is a nice enough set, certainly (I got two, and wish I’d gotten far more). I was just saying it and most of the other sets were inaccurate, not that they’re bad. The amphibious vehicle from 7625 does indeed look really good; it’s just that the same set has the Russian soldiers using an inflatable rubber raft and a net trap against the heroes, and both of those are nice enough for LEGO play functions but not really reflective of the final film, any more than the classic LEGO crocodilian also present in the set, though perhaps it reflects an earlier iteration of the scene than the one that made it into the final film. Similarly, 7624 is made up of elements that are indeed all present in the film - the jungle encampment, the duel between Mutt and Spalko, the ants - but commingles them together into one scene and moment, when the film presents them in succession. And I *love* 7628, myself - I bought two copies, as I did every other set from the Crystal Skull wave - and yes, it’s a very fine interpretation of the Panagra Airlines DC-3. I’m not dissing 7628. I like 7628. Some of my best friends are 7628. My point is merely that the set depicts the action significantly differently from what unfolds in the film, as is characteristic of the whole KotCS release wave and of lots of LEGO sets (or toys in general) released alongside new films on which they’re based. In this case, it has Indy and Mutt seemingly encounter Spalko and her minions right at the airport after getting off the plane, and the titular Crystal Skull is also there in the scene. Like 7624, it’s sort of a melding of a couple different scenes (and the plane that serves as the center of the set, whole lovely, has a pretty diminished role in the movie, being seen during a classic Indy line-on-a-map travel montage, as opposed to an action setpiece showdown between the heroes and villains. That’s not a complaint, though; the plane *is* in the film, and the set is great.

@Blondie_Wan:
I don't think so? I mean, we clearly disagree on the Crystal Skull sets, except perhaps the tree-chopper...thing. It _works_, which is pretty impressive, but this in no way improves its aesthetics. I guess we hold the sets up against slightly different criteria, though. I look more at the main model's visual accuracy, with the lone exception in this theme being that the action functions in the Raiders temple are an absolute must for any playset based on that scene to be considered "visually accurate".

The rest of the stuff, I'm basically just spitballing ideas for why the Indy action figures were such a flop. It does require thinking a lot about toys that I barely ever saw growing up, but I'm actually a bit surprised at how much I remember about them, all without having looked them up online. And...having finally looked them up, how much I misremembered about them. It looks like they were the exact same scale as Kenner's SW action figures, plus most had knee articulation, but I always hated built-in action features that limited what a character could do to _one_ action. Anyways, it's really weird to look at what was produced and realize how badly it translated to action figures, and how well it translated to LEGO sets.

@PurpleDave, I’m afraid you’ve lost me, then. I’m not really sure what we’re in disagreement over the KotCS sets (specifically the ones from the April ‘08 wave, the one made entirely of sets from that movie).

(And yeah, I do know the shared vendor exclusive 7628 was actually released a little after those others, if that’s part of what you’re thinking…)

Heh. I just spotted a bunch of Indiana Jones action figures at Target, and one of the lines they’re selling is reproductions of the first five action figures (you can tell they’re repros because the vintage line never did a 5-back card). I think I remember part of why the line flopped. They look _bad_. I mean like if you found some knock-off Star Wars action figures at a discount store bad.

I think this article should’ve been written by someone who actually knows what they are talking about. Can we please get someone who’s at least seen the movies to do a real comparison?

@WemWem said:
"It's nice to just have some new Indy sets, really. If the first 3 do well, maybe they'll make more. This sort of drip-drip approach is a good way to roll out product in a way that ensures LEGO never over-commits to an unsuccessful license, which was a problem about a decade ago with sets like THE LONG RANGER and THE PRINCE OF PERSIA.

Also, speaking as someone on a small annual Lego budget - $300 or less - mega-sized sets and massive waves of product don't strongly appeal to me. Enjoying a more curated approach to LEGO works well for me, and I don't have a need for massive waves of my favorite properties."

Are you serious?? You don't like The Lone Ranger and Prince of Persia Line? I think they are among the best ever (and I have never watched the movies).

@dylanmitchell said:
"Personally I’m happy there are only 3 sets. It makes the range more affordable and allows you to savor what’s provided without the exhaustion of a whole barrage at once. It’s more economical and meaningful, much like what ideas was back in the day"

If you only want 3 sets, only buy 3 sets; Them only releasing 3 sets is not a good thing because you only want three.