I told you about it as soon as the new catalog came out LEGO Collector 2nd Edition in July 2001: the two 3in 1 Super Packs 66395 et 66396 show themselves a little more in pictures.

Ideal gifts for a kid-fan of LEGO, they allow good playability right out of the box by providing two well-rounded opposing factions and some nice gear.

The selling prices are not yet known, but when we see the prices on Amazon (accessible from the links below) for the sets contained in these two Super Packs, we say to ourselves that the price of the set is better to be competitive .....

The 3in1 Super Pack 66395 consists of the following sets:

7957 Sith Nightspeeder (20.32 € on Amazon)
7913 Clone Trooper Battlepack (9.27 € on Amazon)
7914 Mandalorian Battle Pack (10.12 € on Amazon)

The 3in1 Super Pack 66396 consists of the following sets:

7877 Naboo Fighter (58.75 € on Amazon)
7929 The Battle of Naboo (19.99 € on Amazon)
7913 Clone Trooper Battle Pack (9.27 € on Amazon)

These are accessories under development thatarea light alias Bluce Hsu presented long months ago on his flickr gallery. These capes molded in resin, presented here on Batman and Robin, are the most beautiful effect, and would advantageously replace those provided by LEGO which have an unfortunate tendency to age badly and fade over time.

The floating effect is striking and makes it possible to have a minifig entirely in plastic, manipulable by the youngest without risking the fatal tear or the annoying fold ...

With the arrival of the new LEGO Superheroes range, let's hope that Arealight will soon offer these capes again in its catalog, they also seem to have been marketed on its Bricklink store for some time, and that we can keep those provided by LEGO in their little white cardboard box with no regrets ....

I may alienate some of you, but I have to write this article. You probably already know, MegaBrands has had the Marvel license since 2004 in its range. Mega Blocks. I would not launch the debate here on the quality of the range Mega Blocks but I would venture on the other hand to a comparison between two ranges of direct competitors.

The Marvel range at the direct competitor of LEGO is clearly oriented towards mini sets sold at an affordable price and composed of either a minifigure and a vehicle (Marvel build vehicle) , is several miniatures from different factions and various and varied gear or backgrounds. There are also characters sold blind and individually in a bag under the name Marvel Character Building, on the same principle as what we know with the series of collectible LEGO minifigs.

LEGO arrives in 2012 in this Marvel niche and will have to consider what its competitors are doing. Today, an original idea is quickly taken up or even plagiarized outright: Playmobil has just been released a range of characters to collect whose bag is strangely similar to that of the LEGO range.

LEGO will he mind the aging license of Mega Blocks for its Marvel Superheroes range? I think so, to a certain extent. Yes Mega Blocks is very poorly distributed in France, even in Europe, we must not forget that the brand is a hit in the United States and Canada. LEGO must take this into account and offer affordable products to those countries where the culture of superheroes far exceeds that of other licenses, Star Wars included. 

Will we see characters sold in sachets? Mini sets with a single character and a vehicle? I think so if the license lasts beyond the first year of operation. The sale of super heroes in sachets would make it possible to offer a very wide range of characters from the Marvel team, which has several hundred of them, beyond the most famous. Vehicles are also a good way to offer small sets at competitive prices. If we look beyond traditional and historical comics and are interested in cartoons for example, each super hero has his motorcycle, his flying machine, his car, his jetpack or his jet-ski ...

With the arrival of Disney at the helm, the Marvel license should take, in the opinion of all specialists, a turn even more general public than what we know and generate a cohort of derivative products intended for the youngest who do not. weren't necessarily the intended audience for the original comics. LEGO, like all manufacturers holding this license, will have to follow suit and meet market expectations. After all, who predicted that LEGO would launch a Star Wars range based on mini planets resembling a pokeball?

You are going to say to yourself again: But why is this MOC dating from 2009 released to us? Well, there's a silly reason: I was quietly browsing Brickshelf when I stumbled upon this rather successful MOC of this AV-7 Anti-Vehicle Cannon also nicknamed Republic Artillery Cannon and made by Pedro. And there, I was seized with a doubt. I had seen this thing somewhere in the last few weeks, or at least something close to it. 

And indeed, the set 9488 Elite Clone Trooper & Commando Droid Battle Pack planned for 2012 offers us a remake lightened and miniaturized version of this cannon used during the Battle of Christophsis and able to move (Those who played Lego star wars iii know this machine well).

In fact, even though the LEGO version is ridiculously undersized in relation to length canonical of 15 meters defined by the structure Star Wars The Clone Wars: Incredible Vehicles, it still has a certain family resemblance with the original model, and that's good.

To admire this quality MOC in close-up, go to the Brickshelf gallery dedicated to him.

Nobody really talks about these sets about which we don't know much about to date. Appeared for the first time online with their LEGO references on the site brickshop.nl, they were then withdrawn, probably under pressure from the manufacturer, before the reference 10225 R2-D2 does not appear again in the catalog of this Dutch dealer.

The product sheet does not contain more information than when it was first put online and always mentions the same availability date: 01/01/2012. We can however expect an R2-D2 in the minds of the various known MOCs representing this astromech droid.

About the set 10227 B-Wing Starfighter, no information has filtered for the moment, while we already know in detail and in pictures the entire first wave of the Star Wars 2012 range...

We can without taking too much risk predict that this set will contain minifigs despite its belonging to the UCS range, as it is now a habit launched by the sets 10212 Imperial Shuttle released in 2010 and the set 10221 Super Star Destroyer released in 2011. The little story is that the presence of these minifigs in these UCS sets is due to the will of Georges Lucas himself ....

Since we are now entitled to minifigs in the UCS range, the 10225 R2-D2 set could be equipped with motorized functions via LEGO Power Functions kits like the set 8293 Motor Set and the remote control of the set 8879.... This is not official information or rumor, just a wish on my part. Being able to move R2-D2 forward, backward and turn would be a lot of fun and would surely boost sales of this type of model.

As usual, I'll point out for all intents and purposes that the two visuals above are not visuals from sets 10225 and 10027. This is a Cavegod MOC from 2009 for the B-Wing and from a LEGO model from 2006.