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LEGO The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies

by Thita (admin) on December 17, 2014

To commemorate the release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies film in theatres today, LEGO featured a couple of really nice poster on their Facebook page, highlighting all of the heroes of the film. 🙂

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the last of the three The Hobbit movies directed by Peter Jackson based on the original The Hobbit book by Tolkien. Having reclaimed Erebor and vast treasure from the dragon Smaug, Thorin Oakenshield sacrifices friendship and honor in seeking the Arkenstone, despite Smaug’s fiery wrath and desperate attempts by the Hobbit Bilbo to make him see reason. Meanwhile, Sauron sends legions of Orcs in a sneak attack upon the Lonely Mountain. As the fate of Middle Earth hangs in the balance, the races of Men, Elves and Dwarves must decide whether to unite and prevail… or all die…

Whether you agree with Peter Jackson’s interpretation of Tolkien’s books, I highly recommend watching the movie at least once. It is big, epic, full of adventure, and looks great on the big screen. Sadly, this is the end of this epic saga, and also very likely the end of the LEGO Lord of the Rings and LEGO The Hobbit line (although some LEGO fans still hope against hope that there will be more). So if you are interested in any of the sets, I recommend you check them out before they get retired.

There are still some LEGO Lord of the Rings sets left from previous releases, with the #10237 LEGO The Lord of the Rings The Tower of Orthanc being the largest. There is also some nice selection of smaller sets. Although there has been complaints from LEGO fans the LEGO Lord of the Rings sets are too small compared to the epic scale depicted in the movies, this is understandable due to logistic and price constraints. However LEGO did an excellent job with the minifigures in this line; they are accurate, highly detailed and beautiful. You can check out all the still available LEGO Lord of the Rings sets at the Online LEGO Shop.

As far as the LEGO The Hobbit sets, there has been a brand new wave released just recently to be in line with The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies film. The largest of these sets is the #79018 LEGO The Hobbit The Lonely Mountain with an awesomely large Smaug. There are also some great sets depicting other scenes from the films like the Dol Guldur battle, the activities in Lake Town, and the Mirkwood elves. I highly recommend you check out the sets and get the ones you would really like before they get retired. All the LEGO The Hobbit sets are available at the Online LEGO Shop.

So what do you think? Have you seen The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies film yet? How did you like it? And what do you think of the latest wave of LEGO The Hobbit sets? Are you planning to get some? Which one is your favorite? Feel free to share in the comment section below! 😉

And you might also like to check out the LEGO Lord of the Rings section for more news, reviews and discussions, or select from these recent posts:

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LEGO Mixels stop-motion videos

by Thita (admin) on December 16, 2014

in Other LEGO Sets & Themes

LEGO Mixels – the crazy little characters introduced this year – have become quite popular with both collectors and LEGO fans who like to build their own models. Collectors like them because LEGO Mixels come in a series of numbered collectable packets, and LEGO free builders enjoy them because the sets contain some very interesting and useful pieces. And LEGO Mixels are also very cheap, so it is easy to collect them even on a small budget, and an inexpensive way to get a good selection of parts and colors. 🙂

While the LEGO Mixels sets are popular with all age-groups for the above mentioned reasons, there is also a TV show related to LEGO Mixels on Cartoon Network that is geared towards small children. The basic idea of LEGO Mixels is that there are various tribes, each with primary characteristic (we have talked about the tribes previously – see links at the end of this post). Tribe members can combine themselves to accomplish larger tasks that they can’t do alone, or different tribes can mix up to pool together their strengths.

And just like in the TV show, the LEGO Mixels sets can be built individually, or mixed up into combined models. The official LEGO Mixels website has many ideas and building instructions for these alternate models, and of course you can also come up with your own. In fact, there is a whole sub-culture that developed around LEGO Mixels where LEGO fans compete against each other in their Mixels building skills.

While LEGO Mixels have been incredibly fun, one criticism against them has been that the characters in the TV show don’t match the characters in the actual LEGO sets. Many other LEGO themes have accompanying TV-shows and short films (LEGO Legends of Chima, LEGO Ninjago, LEGO Star Wars, LEGO City, etc.), and in most of them the various characters look unmistakenably like LEGO minifigures, and often the background also looks LEGO-built. On the other hand in the LEGO Mixels TV-show the art-style has absolutely no resemblance to LEGO. The only similarity is that characters can be taken apart and combined in different ways.

However now LEGO released a series of short films where the actual LEGO Mixels sets were used. Whether this was in response to the criticism, or was it the plan all along, I don’t know, but I found them to be a lot more interesting than the TV show. They are still incredibly goofy with a very simple story-line that adults will likely not enjoy, however if you play close attention you can see some really clever building techniques in the mixed models. So far I have found six LEGO Mixels stop-motion videos on the official LEGO YouTube channel, and there will probably be more. The six videos are a LEGO Mixels Scorpi and Torts Mix, LEGO Mixels Glorp Corp Max, LEGO Mixels Gobba & Tentro Mix, LEGO Mixels Kraw & Flurr Mix, LEGO Mixels Jawg & Lunk Murp and LEGO Mixels Infernite Max. Each of the videos is less than a minute long, and you can watch them all below:

If you haven’t gotten any LEGO Mixels sets yet, I would highly recommend that you pick up at least a couple to try them out. Again, they are cheap little pocket-size sets with an excellent selection of very useful parts and nice colors. They make great little desk-pals and provide an excellent way to learn interesting building techniques. They can also be used for friendly building contests, birthday-parties, get-togethers, or just for messing around. So far three series of LEGO Mixels have been released (each with three tribes and a total of nine characters), with a fourth series one coming early next year – see links at the end of this post to read more about them. LEGO Mixels are available at most LEGO retailers and also at the Online LEGO Shop.

So what do you think? How do you like the LEGO Mixels sets and characters? Do you mix them up and make your own characters? Or do you use the parts to build something else? And what do you think of the new stop-motion videos? Do you like these or the TV-show better? Feel free to share and discuss in the comment section below! 😉

And you might also like to check out the following related posts:

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LEGO The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies

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