+ Wolfman
I’m sure there’s more, but as I said I had to go before exploring more. The themes is ‘Classic Monsters’ and the humans who are trying to investigate and stop them.
Interstingly, the LEGO site doesn’t (yet) have these sets on display. If I find out more, I’ll update.

I can see that I am going to be eating instant noodles for the next few months, just to afford the whole collection!!!

Here’s what I’ve come up with.  Have your own ideas?  COMMENT!

Take kilt and put it on pop singer from earlier series for “Britney” look in “Oh Baby Baby” video.

Buy random heads to individualize figures from PAB and form bagpiper band.

Apply Darth Vadar helmet to bagpiper and insist it be called “Darth Piper” or “Lord Piper.”

Mingle with maraca player from previous series in unholy musical alliance.

Replace face and arms with Zombie parts to form Zombie Piper.  Bagpipes become creepy music of the dead.

Contemplate why if there is a bagpiper and a sub theme of animal dressed minifigures why we have yet to see someone dressed up as a kanagroo with a didgeridoo.  That would be freaking awesome.

Apply bagpiper hats to Kingdoms themed army… just because that’d be freaking hilarious as a visual.

Give bagpipers space style guns because how awesome would it be to see someone in a kilt with a blaster?

Anyway… I ended up with what I’m just going to go ahead and refer to as my Space Platoon.  4 out of 10 packs were the Space themed soldier.  It’s cool, and if I was more into the space sets (City Space or Starwars) I’d probably be in heaven.  But I’ll focus on the other figures I managed to get.

Tennis Guy – not loving it.  He goes on the short list of figures I couldn’t care less about for this series.

Viking Lady – not impressed with this either.  A plain shield, a stiff body so she can’t be bent and a hair/helmet piece that you can’t adjust in any way other than sticking some horns in there?  No thanks.  This would have been better with a unique decorated shield, maybe horns like the Minotaur from the last series that do the 90 degree angle, and how long do we have to wait for LEGO to make a dress like female torso with some sort of flexible mechanism?

Little Red Riding Hood – I don’t think the “hood” and the cape go together well and the shirt doesn’t really suit her but it should look good when I eventually reuse it in a castle/kingdom theme build in the future for another character.  I think the hood should find a new person to go to as well and to that end she’s great for parts.  The basket is kind of strange.  Doesn’t seem like a LEGO.

Bagpiper – I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY was looking forward to this figure and I have to say I like it.  My only complaints are that I do not like the minifigure skirt/dress/kilt sort of things.  Reminds me of the hula dancer from several sets ago wherein I had to really fight to get on the skirt.  As parts I really think the bagpiper’s hat has great potential… especially if I ever want to build a tacky golfer figure.  The bagpips are just fun, period.

Hippy – I wasn’t prepared to like this much.  Turns out I LOVE it.  It’s just an awesome novelty character.  I can see myself putting it into a forest build for kicks too.

Boar Knight – I don’t know what LEGO is officially calling these but the knight in black with the shield covered by a large boar logo is my favorite of the ones I’ve got so far.  I’d take an army of these for my castle/kingdom builds.  His shield is HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE with other shielded characters, like the Viking Lady…  when shields are not unique an opportunity is lost.  So he rocks.

More will come as I order them online later or if Walmart keeps this up.  Walmart is pricing them well compared to Toys R Us locally so they have my business in that case.

The troopers don’t need paddles nor does the boat need sails or a motor.  The Force is all that is needed to take this boat out for a spin on a relaxing day after conquering hostiles.  And yes, as usual I set out to build something entirely different and this just sort of happened.

On an amusing side note my six year old nephew was over the other day and I showed him my castle as it stands since ceasing module production.  His eyes got wide and then he asked that question…that one question that irritated me:  “How many Snow Troopers do you have?”  That means he doesn’t give a crap about castles, just Star Wars and happened to see a single Snow Trooper on my siege tower which was just there for fun.  I’ve probably got 50 freaking storm troopers and their kin in boxes around here somewhere but I don’t have them out, go figure. I may have to take a few dozen storm troopers and arm them with fantasy weapons before he comes over next time to see if I can provoke some sort mixed reaction from him when he sees his obsession modified.

Castle burnout aside I wanted to post because I came up with a hilarious but workable new theme idea:  “LEGO Ren Faire” – it would be a combination of castle/kingdom stuff mixed with city allowing for a really hilariously tacky set of builds.  Examples I’ve come up with:

A stage build that features some of the performers from the Kingdom’s series (plus a couple notables from the Minifigure series like Mime), some midevil decor on the stage, and then just nearby a bunch of watching City theme figures.

Police attending a crime scene at a Ren Faire where someone is hurt in a joust, booking the “knight” in question.

A city style big rig type truck decorated on the sides to indicate it is the Ren Faire’s truck to move junk around, sort of like seeing a circus truck.

Turkey Leg Vendor Stand!

Fantasy Weapons dealer booth.

So yeah, this idea amuses me.  I’m not ready to do any new projects just now but that’s been on my mind.  What it all comes back to design wise, and a cause of some of my own burnout, is that it seems damn near impossible that I’ll ever have enough castle looking gray brick pieces to build the castle setup I really want.  Something like this theme would let me have an excuse to integrate other random junk I’ve accumulated at least.  Ultimately my own personality won’t let me be happy with anything, and of course LEGO is made to be repurposed constantly, but I digress for now.

If nothing else I suspect I’ll either start back up randomly or when the LOTR stuff starts coming out I’ll find new motivation toward midevil stuff because from what I’ve seen those sets are going to be freaking awesome.  I’ll admit I also keep eyeballing my Series 6 Bandits and then looking at this Cuusoo project ( click here ) as well with a temptation to go all Western happy.  I think I really just have a thing for whatever seems rural and lawless…

The other issue I’ve had is that I saw Blockman’s castle and got a bit jealous that it was so… well hell, it matches itself and the actual Kingdom’s theme.  I dig that.  I can’t have everything, but I decided I need to be a little more uniform in my building so I’ve spend some time already working some of my wall connector modules to be uniform and the like – we’ll see where that goes.  At least it gives me something to do while trying to figure out a brick supply.  Add to my compulsion the need to make my castle more “epic” if you will and it has caused me to start smashing up a few parts that I didn’t think were making the cut.  The bridge module is gone, I’m already picking at the parts on the 3 incarnation of the blue module, and most notable of all my castle gate, the ONLY thing that really looked like the original “Kingdoms” castle most of its pieces were derived from is now gone.  I intend to rebuild it in a stylish manner but I had failed with what I had because it looked good except didn’t fit well onto the view presented on my high shelf.  If it can’t be displayed it is no good to me.  Are these excuses valid for tearing this stuff down or is it true that I just cannot settle?  I don’t know… I don’t know.

In other news I should have the whole of Series 6 soon.  Let’s hope we get a break for the sake of our wallets before 7 comes out!