Let's go for the first show of the year with the London Toy Fair which is being held from January 24 to 26, 2012. There is little chance of obtaining visuals of products presented by LEGO during this event: photos are not allowed inside the show. However, this should not prevent those who go there to bring back some new information on what 2012 has in store for us in terms of LEGO.

To be continued, the Spielwarenmesse International Toy Fair to be held from February 1 to 6, 2012 in Nuremberg, Germany and the New York Toy Fair which will take place from February 12 to 15. Exhibitors are generally more permissive when it comes to photos during these two events.

Hopefully LEGO will take the opportunity to finally present new products like the Super Heroes Marvel range or a few sets from the next Lord of the Rings range. Regarding Star Wars, let's hope that LEGO will present the highly anticipated sets in UCS format: 10225 R2-D2 (expected to be marketed in March 2012) and 10227 B-Wing Starfighter.

As you probably already know, LEGO is hunting images of preliminary versions of sets that are published on the internet as soon as a retailer leaves his catalog lying around in the hands of AFOLs anxious to share their findings. Often times, LEGO is accused of organizing these leaks intentionally, it is not, it is an urban legend. The leaks come exclusively from these catalogs intended for resellers and which allow them, long months before the official release of the products, to organize their supplies.

In general, when such images are published, LEGO community eaters Jan Beyer et Kevin hinckle take care of informing you by email that the images you publish are stamped with the CONFIDENTIAL seal and ask you, sometimes politely, to remove them without delay from your flickr space, your blog, etc ... Do not kid yourself, denunciation is obviously in order. A certain number of AFOLs consider that the publication of these images is prejudicial to the manufacturer and do not hesitate to warn these community managers or the LEGO Ambassador in France, who will also send you an email in French asking you to remove the visuals concerned under penalty of being prosecuted if you do not comply as soon as possible. The competition between the different sites or blogs dealing with LEGO news is also a determining factor in the process of denouncing the neighbor who publishes images that will generate a very large audience.

If you do not act quickly, then LEGO will shift into high gear and mandate the law firm Hogan Lovells to inform you via a formal notice that you are breaking the law by posting these images and that you expose yourself in order to the closure of your site / blog, legal action for infringement and a request for compensation on behalf of LEGO for the damage suffered. At the same time, your host is warned that you are committing a serious offense and is threatened with being held responsible, or in any case an accomplice, for the damage suffered by the manufacturer. Is. It is fair game, even if I refute the arguments used by the lawyers of Hogan Lovells concerning industrial injury.

But where all this gets more dangerous is that the same law firm informs you that you do not have the right to publish anything that relates directly or indirectly to LEGO products: Logo, official visuals and audiences, instructions, photos of sets, minifigs, parts, etc ... The simple act of posting a LEGO set visual exposes you directly to infringement proceedings.

If we stick to the arguments developed by master Marie-Aimee de Dampierre, lawyer at Hogan Lovells in charge of the case and who signs the formal notice that was communicated to me, it is impossible to talk about LEGO products, in any form whatsoever, without exposing yourself to legal proceedings. It is forbidden to publish the logo of the company, to speak about the products by mentioning the brand explicitly and the posting online of visuals of the products yet in the catalog of the toy manufacturer and presented in thousands of online shops is under an offense punishable by criminal penalties.

Should we take this legal argument seriously? I wouldn't take the risk of checking it out, Hogan Lovells is a firm that has the means to put you through the worst hassles, as can be seen from the history of legal actions carried out by this firm on behalf of LEGO, and it is better not to go too far otherwise you will find yourself at the helm of a court following a summary action aimed at obtaining the withdrawal of all the content in dispute. But this type of threat puzzles me. If I stick to the arguments developed in this formal notice, I should immediately close my blogs and steer clear of any mention of the brand in the future in any form. And I'm not the only one, every site, forum or blog dealing with LEGO products, the passion for these construction toys, should do the same.

So, as requested in this formal notice, I have removed the visuals stamped CONFIDENTIAL, you will find them anyway in the Google cache and on many other blogs that have not yet suffered the wrath of LEGO. But it would be too much to ask of me to self-censor the entire content of this blog.

If LEGO wants to sue me because I blog about my passion, so be it.

Below is the formal notice received from the cabinet Hogan Lovells :

Formal notice - French version

Formal notice - English version 

Are you allergic to Shakespeare's language? Or do you have a child who does not yet master English? Your problem will be resolved on March 23, 2012 with the release of the French version of the book LEGO Star Wars The Character Encyclopedia (still available on Amazon for 14.94 €) whose title therefore becomes LEGO Star Wars The Encyclopedia of Characters...

The entire work will be translated, hoping that the level of translation will be satisfactory so as not to distort the original texts. Even if these are only descriptive sheets, it would be a shame to lose quality in order to gain in understanding.

You can pre-order this book on Amazon for € 18.95 and shipping is free: LEGO Star Wars The Encyclopedia of Characters.

It is Huw Millington who presents on brick set the microfigs and the machines present in the board game 3866 Battle of Hoth. I don't know what you think about it, but I really like this Star Wars micro-universe which has nothing to envy of some of the pitiful creations of the Star Wars Advent calendar 2011. The microfigs are superb, well screen printed and the 32 copies included in the game box will allow the bravest to create a few dioramas on a reduced scale ...

As for the gear, the format limits creativity, but the result is still interesting. The AT-AT is quite credible and the Snowspeeder is successful if we remove the two microfigs perched on it. I am less indulgent with tauntaun and AT-ST, which are too unlike to be credible. The set therefore consists of 272 pieces and 32 microfigs.

If you want to treat yourself to this board game, it is currently available in stock at Amazon at a price of 36.60 €. 

For those who do not know the animal, the Boga is a species of the family of varactyls fromUtapau. LEGO produced a minifigure in the set 7255 General Grievous Chase released in 2005. We discover this Boga in theEpisode III Revenge of the Sith when Obi-Wan launches in pursuit of Grievous and the animal hit by enemy fire carries its rider in a fall of several hundred meters.

For the anecdote, the animal would have survived this fall, even if the film does not say it, and it is even said that the cry launched by Obi-Wan to keep the Between Raiders in L'Episode IV A New Hope would be inspired by that of Boga ...

Omar Ovalle delivers here a version of this Boga at the scale of Action Figures that he stages. Some people criticize the mix of genres, I see this association more as a possibility to vary the scale of the frames, or the speeders and to stage them.

In short, if you want to know more about this series of creations by Omar Ovalle, go to his flickr gallery, he notably produced a fairly convincing Shadow ARF Trooper Speeder Bike. I'll let you discover the rest.