BrickJagger

Future Castle Sets?

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6 hours ago, Brick_Rattlehead said:

I believe some of the old castle/kingdomes minifigs also has name (Majisto, Leo, Mathias, Vladek, Danju, Basil),

They are some of the least popular Castle figs.

6 hours ago, Brick_Rattlehead said:

As for limited budgets of the parents, this wouldnt be a problem if they ever come up with new Castle theme (with proper and bigger promotion) that is aimed for adult fans. These people  (including many of us here) would even buy multiple of the same sets.

So you want an entire theme aimed at adults, not at kids. With a media tie in? Who would the media be aimed at if the sets are for adults?

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33 minutes ago, MAB said:

They are some of the least popular Castle figs.

So you want an entire theme aimed at adults, not at kids. With a media tie in? Who would the media be aimed at if the sets are for adults?

Both, its not like Lego will ever makes it solely for adults if they really come up with a new Castle theme .

The media tie in can also lure the kids fans. So its certainly not gonna be something which a 10 year old kids wont be able to build. When I was a kid I also have some of the technic sets even though its actually aimed for older people.

If its solely for adults, then it would be something like  "ideas" Medieval blacksmith which is a full fledge adult set . It could be something like Medieval  market village which 10-12 year old can also build but its more complex than the usual Castle sets.

Edited by Brick_Rattlehead

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On 2/22/2021 at 6:30 PM, Brick_Rattlehead said:

Now you may ask why I am writing about the obvious? It was yesterday that I came across a popular  german youtube channel. The guy in the vids tends to bash lego products (he quite often has a point though) and also presents products by the competition. While browsing through his channel I spotted a couple of sets that made me think: If these were made by Lego I would buy them! And that made me sad. 

Can I get a link to this German YouTube channel? I have heard several people mention it across forums before, but I haven't checked it out myself. 

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7 hours ago, Brick_Rattlehead said:

Both, its not like Lego will ever makes it solely for adults if they really come up with a new Castle theme .

The media tie in can also lure the kids fans. So its certainly not gonna be something which a 10 year old kids wont be able to build. When I was a kid I also have some of the technic sets even though its actually aimed for older people.

If its solely for adults, then it would be something like  "ideas" Medieval blacksmith which is a full fledge adult set . It could be something like Medieval  market village which 10-12 year old can also build but its more complex than the usual Castle sets.

I cannot see LEGO having both a TV cartoon based Castle theme at the same time as having sets aimed at AFOLs in the same theme. The two don't link together. What one group tends to want, the other doesn't. Of course, there are always some AFOLs that like particular kids' themes, which is fine. However, what most kids and most adults would want for a specific theme are quite different. 

They did produce some online comic style videos for KK2, for example, some are here:

(1) Lego Knights' Kingdom Comic 1: The Missing King - YouTube

AFOLs hated the theme. Even though it had reasonably good castle sets in it like this one ...

8877-1.png

there was a lot of criticism over the theme and the use of "Jellybean knights" and big parts / LURPS and BURPS.

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15 minutes ago, MAB said:

I cannot see LEGO having both a TV cartoon based Castle theme at the same time as having sets aimed at AFOLs in the same theme. The two don't link together. What one group tends to want, the other doesn't. Of course, there are always some AFOLs that like particular kids' themes, which is fine. However, what most kids and most adults would want for a specific theme are quite different. 

They did produce some online comic style videos for KK2, for example, some are here:

(1) Lego Knights' Kingdom Comic 1: The Missing King - YouTube

AFOLs hated the theme. Even though it had reasonably good castle sets in it like this one ...

8877-1.png

there was a lot of criticism over the theme and the use of "Jellybean knights" and big parts / LURPS and BURPS.

I do like some of the Vladek sets, but the colour scheme of the sets and minifigs, even the helmet designs does looks silly. But I noticed  that out of all the castle & kingdom sets , that one seems the most hated by the castle fans.

 

 

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14 hours ago, Brick_Rattlehead said:

As for named characters, I believe some of the old castle/kingdomes minifigs also has name (Majisto, Leo, Mathias, Vladek, Danju, Basil), but obviously it was never planned as long running series unlike NInjago, Chima and Nexo. 

There is a difference though between a couple of the minifigures having names and the theme having a full-blown storyline to it. I think I've given this as an example before, but I have never bought any of Lego's Batman sets because it's not a license I'm familiar with, so I have no investment to the stories and thus little interest in the sets. I've bought exactly one Ninjago set for the same reason (and even that one was more for the parts than the set itself). If you're invested in a license, often most or all of its sets are great, but if you're not invested many of the sets are pointless. How many people have bought, say, "Aragog's Lair" without being interested in Harry Potter?

When it comes to it, what's the difference functionally between a licensed theme and an in-house theme based on a TV show? Both rely on characters and settings from a medium other than plastic bricks, but in one case the IP belongs to Lego and in the other case it doesn't. And yes, you can use the bricks and minifigures for other purposes than recreating a specific scene, but it's not the same. You even get the same characters - the main characters - over and over. A quick look at Bricklink tells me that, excluding an item marked for deletion, there have been fifty variants released of a Ninjago character called "Cole". If you had an in-house Castle subtheme run for the same amount of time with a TV series, your main character (let's call him "Sir Brick") would probably appear just as often. Likely he'd have special armour that would distinguish him from a run-of-the-mill knight, and even though he wouldn't be in every set, there'd probably instead be another character (call her "Lady Mondegreen"). I bet there'd be no or very few sets without either, and a great many with both. So people buying the lot end up with more commander and lady minifigures than generic soldiers. If the theme didn't have named characters, each of those times Sir Brick or Lady Mondegreen appeared you could get a different figure instead. A more useful army-building knight, maybe, with a new face print.

We're not in the 80s or 90s anymore, where one generic soldier with a smily face and perhaps some form of moustache was enough for every set in the range. A modern subtheme not tied to named characters with TV series could have a greater variety of minifigures. It would also be easier to have an adult-focused set or two every year. When the theme is tied to a cartoon, a lot of the audience for the theme is going to be the demographic that don't buy adult sets. I've done no market research, but I bet most people here would absolutely love a well-designed Castle theme with a big set like the Blacksmith every year and a load of smaller kid-focused sets to build armies/parts.

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Most of the panning of KKII was the "jelly bean" knights in the first two waves, and a few ridiculous small builds. The third wave gave us better designed good guys. It just took too long for the fig design to truly work.

The structures in the sets were pretty good, even though they relied on a couple of pieces that could get warped easily. The larger of the two seems to have been permanently retired.

Vladek and his army were awesome, and still make it into my builds today (literally). Dracus had one of the best dragon heraldry shields ever, even though he and his minion's legs made it seem like they were only wearing thong underwear. Even the large figure shields and armor are great pieces for MOCs.

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17 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

How many people have bought, say, "Aragog's Lair" without being interested in Harry Potter?

75950-1.original.png

I did. A good little tree and a great giant spider (ideal for LOTR/Hobbit fans). And the licensed minifigures sell easily to recoup some of the money for the set.

You might as well ask how many people are buying Sandy's Speedboat if they are not invested in LEGO's in-house Monkie Kid theme.

80014-1.png

To me, the licensed vs non-licensed aspect doesn't really make any difference. I'm not into any of the characters, they are all way too specific except for the spider witch to be useful to me, and the other parts of the set are a not so great tree/cave and a not so great spider and some brightly coloured vehicles, and even their parts don't look too useful to me. The licensed HP set to me is way better than the unlicensed MK set.

27 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

We're not in the 80s or 90s anymore, where one generic soldier with a smily face and perhaps some form of moustache was enough for every set in the range. A modern subtheme not tied to named characters with TV series could have a greater variety of minifigures. It would also be easier to have an adult-focused set or two every year. When the theme is tied to a cartoon, a lot of the audience for the theme is going to be the demographic that don't buy adult sets. I've done no market research, but I bet most people here would absolutely love a well-designed Castle theme with a big set like the Blacksmith every year and a load of smaller kid-focused sets to build armies/parts.

I agree here, this would be good for AFOLs. But would it sell to kids without marketing? And would it sell as well as the theme next to it on the shelves where there is a media tie-in. Probably not.

 

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1 minute ago, MAB said:

You might as well ask how many people are buying Sandy's Speedboat if they are not invested in LEGO's in-house Monkie Kid theme.

Agreed. Truth be told, I used a Harry Potter set because I'm personally invested in Harry Potter and so I know what the sets are. I'd have a hard time giving a fair example for Monkie Kid, because I don't have that investment in the theme.

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I find HP and SW sets are often better value as parts packs than a lot of in-house themes, despite their apparently higher prices. I have had a number of HP sets, but I'm not really a fan of it. I know what it is, I just don't care too much about it. But often the parts are very useful as they are castle type parts, in often monochromatic or muted colours. And I know the figures typically sell for a substantial part of the set cost price - some people only collect them as they are HP not because they are lego. Compare that to in-house themes, where parts tend to be a bit brighter and the non-licensed characters are not of interest to buyers. They either have the sets and have the figures, or are not into the theme. So yeah, there are sales of license sets to people that aren't into the theme.

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It wouldn't be hard to rework the idea that became Knights Kingdom II with a more modern design sensibility. To do it right, though, would require a significant time frame commitment, and a serious budget. You could even use the old factions and named characters to great effect. To avoid character repeats, each knight could have a number of characters in their livery. Plenty of possibilities for townspeople, bandits of various flavor, and other folk. If it needs some media content, short 2D animated videos made available across Lego's media platforms would do.

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30 minutes ago, gedren_y said:

It wouldn't be hard to rework the idea that became Knights Kingdom II with a more modern design sensibility. To do it right, though, would require a significant time frame commitment, and a serious budget. You could even use the old factions and named characters to great effect. To avoid character repeats, each knight could have a number of characters in their livery. Plenty of possibilities for townspeople, bandits of various flavor, and other folk. If it needs some media content, short 2D animated videos made available across Lego's media platforms would do.

somebody could try to do that in worldbuilder, if they had alot of castle parts and maybe print decals for custom knights

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3 hours ago, MAB said:

But often the parts are very useful as they are castle type parts, in often monochromatic or muted colours

One small point I would make in argument to this is that the usefulness of Harry Potter sets for providing castle parts diminishes when there's an active Castle theme around at the same time. The 2010/11 Kingdoms range was more bang-for-your-buck imo if you want castle parts than the 2010/11 Harry Potter range, even allowing for the fact that the latter had two Hogwarts sets in its limited run.

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Out of curiosity.... are kids these days even interested in a non-fantasy castle/medieval TV show with tie-in products? That seems to be a niche market. 

I agree with the previous posts about what happens when you have a theme based on an IP and you end up with 50 variants of the same character. That's no good to me, I hate wasted minifigures. Nothing like having a dozen Darth Vaders and Harry Potters in your collection.

Like others I too buy licenced sets (in-house or otherwise) for parts. To fill my space theme void I started buying Star Wars sets with damaged boxes and minifigures with good resale value to get cheap parts packs. I might do the same with HP sets too in the future if we don't get a proper castle/medieval theme in the next year or two.

However, I still think the best marketing strategy is for LEGO to have a castle/medieval theme with a range of sets that appeal to all FOLs. Like a Kingdoms range but with more MMV (which still seems more Kingdoms than Castle to me) and Joust sets (and Blacksmith style too) in the $100-200 range. You can get traffic from each spectrum of the theme to the other with this strategy. The KFOLs ask for expensive sets for Christmas to match with the smaller sets they got during the year, and the AFOLs buy the small sets to tie in with the large sets they purchase and to army build. Sounds like a win-win to me. No need to kiddify the designs either, lots of kids have Harry Potter and Star Wars sets with muted color scemes and detailed realistic minifigure printing - no reason castle/medieval can't do the same.

Edited by The_Creator

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9 hours ago, Alexandrina said:

One small point I would make in argument to this is that the usefulness of Harry Potter sets for providing castle parts diminishes when there's an active Castle theme around at the same time. The 2010/11 Kingdoms range was more bang-for-your-buck imo if you want castle parts than the 2010/11 Harry Potter range, even allowing for the fact that the latter had two Hogwarts sets in its limited run.

It depends what you do with the figures. Sell them, and licensed ones tend to get better return value making the price per part of the building parts cheaper.

 

38 minutes ago, The_Creator said:

I agree with the previous posts about what happens when you have a theme based on an IP and you end up with 50 variants of the same character. That's no good to me, I hate wasted minifigures. Nothing like having a dozen Darth Vaders and Harry Potters in your collection.

It depends what you do with them. I have three complete sets of The Fellowship from LOTR. I display multiple vignettes at once, so having multiples is good. But you can say the same thing about unlicensed sets. If you have a dozen identifiable characters such as kings or queens, they are also less useful than generic characters.

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15 hours ago, Rattlebricks said:

do like some of the Vladek sets, but the colour scheme of the sets and minifigs, even the helmet designs does looks silly. But I noticed  that out of all the castle & kingdom sets , that one seems the most hated by the castle fans.

The reason the helmet designs look so oversized and silly was because they were conceptualized as Large Figure masks first, and then downscaled to fit minifigures. So personally, I can't blame them for that. 

I can understand the criticism regarding the Knight's color scheme, as their bright colors don't blend very well with the rest of the theme's generally muted color scheme. It probably would have worked better if instead they used Dark Red, Dark Blue, Dark Green etc for the Knights, though I can still understand the desire to appeal to kids with more colorful knights. 

But personally, I still love the uniqueness of KKII, and especially the Large Buildable Figure parts, which are incredibly useful for Bionicle MOCs. I really wish LEGO did more with the Constraction Knights concept. 

 

Edited by Lego David

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1 hour ago, MAB said:

If you have a dozen identifiable characters such as kings or queens, they are also less useful than generic characters.

This is true, but usually doesn't happen in a generic Castle theme (stuff like Pirates seems to be different, as the pirate crew in each mini wave is set in stone). Take the last two Castle themes. The 2013-14 range had named/identifiable characters in only two sets, and it was different ones each time. Most sets were only the two bands of Knight. Kingdoms before that was slightly worse, in that the King appeared three times - but only once a year, and every other identifiable character appeared once. Most of the minifigures were knights of one faction or the other.

Can you imagine a Harry Potter wave where Harry only appeared once per year and no other character was in more than one set in the whole theme? 

Yes, you can sell the figs. But for something like Castle, I would rather get more knights and unique individuals, instead of characters that I either sell or keep as a duplicate. 

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1 hour ago, Alexandrina said:

This is true, but usually doesn't happen in a generic Castle theme (stuff like Pirates seems to be different, as the pirate crew in each mini wave is set in stone). Take the last two Castle themes. The 2013-14 range had named/identifiable characters in only two sets, and it was different ones each time. Most sets were only the two bands of Knight. Kingdoms before that was slightly worse, in that the King appeared three times - but only once a year, and every other identifiable character appeared once. Most of the minifigures were knights of one faction or the other.

 

Yes, and that would mean going back to mainly unnamed characters in the theme - and presumably no character driven media support - which is a very different model to most modern themes such as Monkie Kid, Ninjago, Chima, Nexo Knights, and so on. Chima had 9 or 10 Lavals, NK had a similar number of Aarons, and so on. It doesn't matter that they are an external IP like SW or HP, or an internal theme. Named characters (which would be necessary if there was going to be a media drive to promote it) mean repeated characters at the expense of unnamed generic army building type characters.

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11 minutes ago, MAB said:

Yes, and that would mean going back to mainly unnamed characters in the theme - and presumably no character driven media support - which is a very different model to most modern themes such as Monkie Kid, Ninjago, Chima, Nexo Knights, and so on.

This is exactly what I have always argued should be the case for a Castle theme. Named characters work for some themes, but imo not for Castle. 

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The repeated character issue is easier to solve in Castle than in any other theme. Give each named knight their own demesne, with characters in their livery (squire, cavalry, swordsmen, pikemen, archers) and the citizenry they are charged with protecting. Villains can range from evil lords and knights, through bandits (Wolfpack?), to dangerous creatures.

This opens up things so that mid to large sized fortresses belonging to the named knights could be spread across multiple waves. With this kind of set-up you'd have soldiers in livery protecting carts delivering goods from bad guys, soldier training sets, a royal outpost manned by figs in various livery, blister packs galore, knights' field tents, a tavern, the obligatory blacksmith, a faire, and a royal tournament with events that could be spread across multiple sets (think A Knight's Tale). With the advent of newer base parts, a shepherd with his flock vs. a beast could even be a set, or just let the sheep be grazing around a ruin of some previous Castle theme.

Call it Kingdoms II, and keep the fig and heraldry realism standard we know Lego is capable of.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And back to reality. With themes like Harry Potter, the current direction of Ninjago, the upcoming Raya and the Last Dragon, and even Monkie Kid filled with so much that could fall under Castle, a true theme isn't going to happen anytime soon.

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i agree, also named charcters can be used for building army. if you have this knight, who is named sirdraco LEGO CUSTOM CRUSADER BLACK DRAGON KNIGHT WITH SHIELD SWORD AND HELMET |  #1731610176

and this knight who is named sir jeff LEGO CUSTOM CRUSADER GREEN CASTLE KNIGHT WITH SHIELD SWORD AND HELMET |  #1735202830

 

although they are named characters, you can still easily use them in armys, even if they have specific armor

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9 minutes ago, valon said:

i agree, also named charcters can be used for building army. if you have this knight, who is named sirdraco LEGO CUSTOM CRUSADER BLACK DRAGON KNIGHT WITH SHIELD SWORD AND HELMET |  #1731610176

and this knight who is named sir jeff LEGO CUSTOM CRUSADER GREEN CASTLE KNIGHT WITH SHIELD SWORD AND HELMET |  #1735202830

 

although they are named characters, you can still easily use them in armys, even if they have specific armor

I don't know if it's just me, but your images aren't displaying.

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Whew...  3 months of posts to catch up on and still no castle theme in the forseeable future...  Ugh!  I suppose there is 2022 to look forward to?  and I have been saying that for years now...  I am losing hope and it is really hindering my hobby.  

2013 castle was awful because of the minifigs and more specifically the heraldry was cartoony.  They could have released ten more years of sets with those awful print designs and I wouldn't like any of them.  Why?   I am an AFOL.  Sure, sets are parts packs, and I do appreciate good set design, but I buy castle sets for the minifigs, animals, and accessories that I can't get anywhere else.  I could care less if a set has a catapult, a cool castle, skeletons, carts, or whatever TLG needs to include to get kids to buy it.  I just want the heraldry, minifigs, animals, and accessories to be good because those are irreplaceable and I can't MOC them.  I also really don't do third party stuff.  TLG is never going to make a set to actually match the skills of AFOLs and that is cool.  I don't need them to.

So...  I purchased TONS of Fantasy era sets with cool heraldry, figs, animals, and new molds.  I purchased TONS of Kingdoms sets with cool heraldry, figs, animals, and new molds.  And I purchased a few of the 2013 sets mostly because I am a completist.  

The problem that TLG has is they do too many polls for children and too few for the parents who have control of the purse strings.  Kids want everything, and ask for everything!  Parents control what the kids actually get.  Because when mom and dad think the set looks pretty cool they are more likely to say yes.  Especially to the larger purchases.  If the set looks dumb to the parents they think it is a novelty that the kid will lose interest in quickly.  If it looks interesting to the parent that is a purchase with staying power.  

Thanks for the tip on the lavender torso.  The christmas torso and dress might be appropriate for a medieval scene if the character is somewhat hidden as the candy cane wasn't invented until the late 1600's.  The new blacksmith set is fantastic!  I need to get out to the LEGO store now that I am fully vaccinated.  

The thing I most desire like so many others is peasant garb on some figures.  I have more than a half dozen of both the MMV and Mill village raid and purchased tons of those very same figs on bricklink back in the day.  I have between 100-200 plain clothes peasants (some are from star wars) but with the size of my display they are still way too few and most are much too similar.  This is especially true for the female figures.  So I need new designs.  Blacksmith torsos from fantasy era and kingdoms are the cheapest way to get some medieval appropriate attire for shop keeps and artisans.   

There shouldn't really be any debate.  Fantasy era sold great.  Kingdoms sold pretty well.  2013 castle not so much.  Lesson... Don't dumb down print designs for kids.  The kids liked the realistic heraldry that came with Fantasy era and Kingdoms just fine and it keeps AFOLs happy too.  It is a win win!  

All this talk of sets can't sell without cartoons or a strong media push is silly.  Did all of the themes with cartoons sell well?  No.  For goodness sake Fantasy era came out in 2007 and Kingdoms in 2010.  That was less than a generation ago.  Have things changed that much in toyworld?  Castle can sell just fine as long as it doesn't have multiple castle centric licensed themes to compete against.  That was the real problem.

As there is no castle to look forward to until next year.  I suppose I have another year in a mild dark age.  In the meantime, everyone stay safe and I hope we can all get together real soon at an actual live LEGO event!

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12 minutes ago, DaleDVM said:

Castle can sell just fine as long as it doesn't have multiple castle centric licensed themes to compete against.

That's a good point. If there was a castle on the shelves alongside the Hogwarts sets, some people would buy them both (I suspect a large chunk of that demographic also likes to chime in on EB from time to time!) but some people would only buy one - thus splitting each set's market. If Lego wait until the end of Harry Potter and bring out a castle, they'll get all the sales from people who bought Hogwarts when it was the most castle-ey set around and now want the real thing - and also from people who bought all the Harry Potter sets and now want bricks to expand their own Hogwarts.

So perhaps there'll be a medieval theme in 2022 or 2023.

On another note, unless I've missed something there's been no news on the summer 3-in-1 castle set for a while. I was still coming out of my Dark Ages a twelvemonth ago: does anyone remember when concrete details on the 3-in-1 pirate set began to surface last year?

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1 hour ago, DaleDVM said:

2013 castle was awful because of the minifigs and more specifically the heraldry was cartoony.  They could have released ten more years of sets with those awful print designs and I wouldn't like any of them.  Why?   I am an AFOL.  

I thought these ones from 2013/14 were fairly decent.

850889-1.jpg?2

The crowns on the blue faction were a bit too prominent for me, but I don't think kids were put off by that.

1 hour ago, DaleDVM said:

Kids want everything, and ask for everything! 

Castle can sell just fine as long as it doesn't have multiple castle centric licensed themes to compete against. That was the real problem.
 

It is not just castle-centric licensed themes that compete with Castle. All the other in-house themes also compete against Castle. As you say, kids want everything. I find with my kids, often they don't really care what theme it is, they will want and play with it if it looks good on the box. Hence brightly coloured action based themes selling well. 

1 hour ago, DaleDVM said:

All this talk of sets can't sell without cartoons or a strong media push is silly.  Did all of the themes with cartoons sell well?  No.  For goodness sake Fantasy era came out in 2007 and Kingdoms in 2010.  That was less than a generation ago.  Have things changed that much in toyworld?

I think the simple answer is yes. Since the massive growth in LEGO after The LEGO Movie, so much of the output for kids is now backed up by other media/cartoons and that has become the new format for themes. Castle may have sold OK more than a decade ago, when it was not competing against media driven advertising for the other in-house themes. That is no longer the situation though. Put Castle with no media up against Ninjago and Monkie Kid, and I doubt it will do very well in sales to kids.

 

Edited by MAB

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