As I posed over in the Middle Earth section, I hit up another Walmart Sat afternoon, mostly looking for more sale items.  Found and bought the Shelob and Moria set.  They had the Dino Defense for half off and some misc City sets on discount but I don't think they were all 50%. 

All of the SW sets that have seen markdowns were sold out.

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Heard there were some good finds at Walmart and Target on Lego over the last couple of days.  Of course, we were snowed in yesterday so I didn't get out, and Target had already been picked clean, but I stopped at Walmart on the way to work this morning.

I scanned the Jabba's Palace and Millennium Falcon sets, which have been found on markdown, but they were scanning at normal price.  I also checked the Avenger Quinjet set and it wasn't marked down either.

But, I found the Triceratops Trapper and Space Center sets for 50% off and bought them. 

The price scanner at my WM is not that close so I got tired of making trips, but I think I'm going back over after work because some stores have had the Malevolence and Republic Frigate marked down also and I want to check them.  Also sounds as if some LOTR and quite a few of the City sets are marked down so I'm going to check them also.

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...and the "Under the Mountain" song the dwarves sing right after that was freaking awesome.

That was one of my favorite parts of the movie.  That song was perfect.

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There was definitely some creepiness to Axel when he was talking to Beth but then after Carol pulled him aside he made the comment about thinking she was gay.  When she said she wasn’t, he seemed a little more interested in her before she shut him down.  So I think there was a moment there where it could have gone one way then didn’t.  I think it wasn’t so much he’s a pedophile as, like he said, he hadn’t seen a woman in a long time and started with the one he thought the most available.

But here’s a fun tidbit; the chick that plays Beth?  She’s about 27.

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Saw this last night in 3D and really liked it.  There are quite a few changes from the book but I was mostly okay with them.  There's a whole extra villain introduced into the movie that's not in the book and the Dwarves are a little more bad-ass than in the book.

I thought that the higher frame rate was supposed to cut down on motion blur, but I noticed a few placed where the blur was terrible; some of the beginning scenes in Dale, during their run through the Goblin layer in the mountian and one other that I'm forgetting now.  Otherwise, I thought the film looked gorgeous and the 3D made some things really pop.  Jackson also, IMO, did a good job in letting the 3D enhance things and didn't play it as a gag so he could throw stuff "out" of the screen at you, sort of like how Cameron treated Avatar, but unlike how pretty much everyone else treats it.

There's a decent article over on The Daily Beast pointing out 19 changes from the book to film.  I think the writer is nitpicking on a couple of them, meaning yes, they are changes, but they're so minor I probably wouldn't think to point them out, and I think she missed the point on at least one of them...still a good article, though.

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Ordered my ticket last night.  Opted to see this in 3D which I normally don't do.  Even my relatively small local theater has sold out several showings of both 2D and 3D viewings for midnight tomorrow.  Starting to get excited for this.

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I could see Hasbro basically punt in 2014 but I hope not.  If they do let the VC figures ride until the middle of 2013 and then roll out the new BaD figures we've seen, they could use late 2013 and 2014 to do a couple of waves of OT and PT characters from their parking lot to sort of clear them out to concentrate on Sequel Trilogy figures from there on out. 

The easier approach, of course, would be just to re-pack a lot of crap in 2014 and basically not do any new tooling.  If they put out the right characters it could work, but I don't trust them to do that, they'll keep Maul, Vader, Luke, Obi-Wan and Anakin in the mix, and we really don't need any more of them, basically, ever.  Or at least until they've had a good break.

Jeff might be onto something though, about the figures that have recently started showing up at WM and TRU again.  This plan may already be in motion and that's why we're seeing them.  I guess it's always possible that Hasbro worked with the retailers, said they'd hold onto the new stuff and maybe gave them a deal on the VC stuff so they'd take them.  Might be better for Hasbro to cut a deal with the big 3 retailers rather than cutting a deal with the Five Below, TJ Maxx/Marshalls, Ross type stores.

"Fan favorite" is definitely marketing spin but really, there are some good characters in those cases.  Some good army builders, Vizla, Tarkin, Anakin, Luke...they're good figures and from reading the forums, it seems like there is still room in the market for more.  Lot of people haven't seen some of these and even though they've been online, you have to think that there are still collectors out there not on the forums and that don't order online and they've probably not haid their fill of these yet.

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