It's confirmed, the set 9674 The Orc Forge will include an identified Orc: Lurtz.
As shown in the visual of the box below from the presentation of the range at the New York Toy fair 2012, the set will contain three generic Mordor Orcs, an Isengard Uruk-Hai and Lurtz, the Orc specially created by Peter Jackson for the movie The Fellowship of the Ring and which does not appear anywhere in Tolkien's books. You even have to refer to the long version of the film to hear his name pronounced by Saruman ...

Note that this set is identified as hard to find for the US market and that it should be exclusively distributed by the Target chain of stores. Which probably means that for the French market, it should be an exclusive available at Toys R Us or La Grande Récré.

I don't want to give the impression of being biased or being in bad faith, but here is what has caused so much turmoil in the LEGO community and should delight the 10.000 Minecraft fans who voted on CUUSOO : The and 21102 LEGO® Minecraft ™ Micro World with its 480 pieces and which will be sold for the modest sum of 34.99 € from summer 2012. If you can not wait any longer, you can pre-order it now at Jinx, it will not be delivered to you until summer 2012.

I remind you that the official press release presents everything as follows: ... LEGO Minecraft Micro World is designed to celebrate the essence of the LEGO concept and the Minecraft gaming experience ... Just that ... and at LEGO we even add that when Markus “Notch” Persson, the creator of Minecraft, would have seen this thing, he would have exclaimed, I quote:  Woohoo!

How to tell you .... Okay, come on I'm not going to be mean. Next ....

The official press release (with images at the bottom): LEGO® Minecraft ™ Micro World details unveiled, available for pre-order

It seems so, thanks to this poster displayed on the LEGO stand during the New York Toy Fair 2012 and which did not raise tons of remarks on the surrounding forums. Still, we can assume that it openly announces the launch of the next LEGO video game based on the The Hobbit license for the end of 2012. 

The timing seems consistent: the game will undoubtedly resume the scenario of the film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which if it is already known to all those who have read Tolkien, is much less known by the general public who will discover the adventures of the Hobbits in the cinema.

Nothing more about this video game for now, we will have to wait for an official announcement or at least a trailer.

The flagship of this Lord of the Rings range, in this case the set 9474 The Battle Of Helm's Deep will need reinforcements in terms of minifigs. And that's where the set comes in 9471 Uruk-Hai Army with his 6 minifigs including 4 Uruk-Hai, a generic Rohirrim Soldier and Eomer, Théoden's nephew and king of Rohan, with his golden helmet.

This set which almost looks like a well supplied Battle Pack delivers all the elements to allow to give some density to the 9474 with a well designed catapult and a piece of wall generic enough to be duplicated and intended to be connected to the fortifications of set 9474 . 

Expected at the US price of $ 29.99 or around thirty euros with us, this mega Battle Pack should quickly become a bestseller among army-builders keen to reenact the epic battle of Helm's Deep. The necessary budget will however be substantial and not within the reach of all budgets.

The photos are from FBTB, you can find more about this set in the flickr gallery dedicated.

Well, if you are not an AFOL who follows the news LEGO Star Wars, this title must seem very sybillin to you. For others, I already savor my shameful satisfaction to see Americans deprived of a LEGO Star Wars set because of obscure licensing issues.

It seems that the board game 3866 Battle of Hoth is not ultimately distributed in the USA and Hasbro could be no stranger to this state of affairs ... This is the site boardgamegeek which reveals to have this information from a reliable source. The whole thing is to be taken in the conditional, however, pending further information. It is true that this set was not presented at the New York Toy Fair 2012 while it was in London and Nuremberg.

If this information turned out to be correct, I admit that I would not shy away from my pleasure to see the Americans, always better served than us when it comes to promotions or exclusives, deprived of one of the sets of the Star Wars 2012 range. It's mean, I know ....