January 28, 2023

An update to the Shields pages today with the first two new shields for 2023.

From the new Museum set 70955 comes the old small black shield 30 02 7230 with a new sticker 30 81 6686.

The sticker includes images for the banners and other pieces as well.

From Figures Series 23, the Viking shield is the usual silver one but with a new sticker having just the one image. The image is a repeat of one seen in a pair of shields from the 3157 Viking Shelter set.

A final addition for this update is a new shield size - the XXL Kite Shield. This comes with XXL figures, but no known part number is available.

This shield type comes with promotional XXL figures and not in a released set as yet. The 4895 XXL Knight had a sword but no shield.

This one has the crowned lion head heraldry from the knight theme releases done around 2004.

There are believed to be other heraldries on this shield size as well. It's not known how many.

Thanks once again to Bob for his help with the above images and part numbers.

In other general news, some early promo materials for the second half of 2023 have been leaked online. Generally speaking in my opinion it's a pretty weak second half. There is another horse stable theme, and the expected additional Wiltopia sets but overall feels not well developed. I've heard that turn around times between development and release of sets have been drastically shortened, and this second half year release seems to bear that out.  Lack of planning time seems to be resulting in recycling of previous concepts, reuse of existing parts in simple ways, and lack of connecting design elements. Hopefully the simplified and smaller sets will result in lower price points. The many large sets from the second half of 2022 could have been slow sellers due to prices and the smaller sets are a reaction to that. Speculation about our favorite toy company is a constant for collectors. :D

Thanks for reading - Tiermann

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