Wardancer

Latest impact of other themes on historic themes

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5 hours ago, MAB said:

That is not down to community, it is down to moderation on Eurobricks. We are told Nexo Knights is action and adventure - it is named in the contents - and off topic posts get moved. Plus there is no Castle forum on EB. There is this wider historic theme, but Nexo Knights doesn't fit into that being futuristic.

My memory is a little fuzzy and the search function is not great, but as far as I can recall, there was a thread from moderators discussing where Nexo should go, and we as a group made the case for it not being here, and mods obliged. Wish I could find that thread. 
 

3 hours ago, gedren_y said:

This whole recent discussion about Nexo Knights stems from a comment about how long Castle has been in hiatus. The point was that Lego internally considers Nexo Knights to be a Castle theme, so they do not consider Castle to have been gone as long as most AFOLs do. The original comment was making both points. There is no need to argue.

Right, and that point is delusional. I believe it to be revisionist history. They see a benefit to making the case that they didn’t abandon Castle for the sake of their timeline and we who have been here all along know that’s BS. 

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3 hours ago, gedren_y said:

This whole recent discussion about Nexo Knights stems from a comment about how long Castle has been in hiatus. The point was that Lego internally considers Nexo Knights to be a Castle theme, so they do not consider Castle to have been gone as long as most AFOLs do. The original comment was making both points. There is no need to argue.

I made the post to encourage us (and remind us) that LEGO did budget a large number of sets to what they consider "Castle", just 4-7 years ago. Don't be discouraged, we may get a full lineup soon.

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23 minutes ago, Follows Closely said:

I made the post to encourage us (and remind us) that LEGO did budget a large number of sets to what they consider "Castle", just 4-7 years ago. Don't be discouraged, we may get a full lineup soon.

Again, love the optimism, just wish I could share it. I believe this to be a false hope. 

Being discouraged is the emotionally safer position. The last decade has taught me that. 

Put another way, if Nexo was castle, how could it inspire a 40-year castle fan like myself go into an almost-dark age for 6 years at the beginning of the Nexo run? We had very high hopes of what the follow up to the ok-but-not-great 2013 theme would be. Turns out it was tanks, helicopters and light blue armor. 

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1 minute ago, Follows Closely said:

That would make a solid motivational poster.

Hahah! It’s true though. Hope can be good, but false hope can gut you. 

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4 minutes ago, Follows Closely said:

That would make a solid motivational poster.

  • I see it before me already: in some pseudo gothic script "Hope", with the Village Raid goat as the main object on the poster. :sarcasm_smug:

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1 hour ago, SirBlake said:

My memory is a little fuzzy and the search function is not great, but as far as I can recall, there was a thread from moderators discussing where Nexo should go, and we as a group made the case for it not being here, and mods obliged. Wish I could find that thread. 

Was HISTORIC ever considered though? As Nexo Knights is clearly not historic, even if there was a great big Castle logo printed on it. In that sense, a LEGO theme can be split between different EB forums (it happens with City having a home in both Town and Train). The Historic category for a community that builds outside of the constraints of LEGO themes is much better than aligning with LEGO themes. If this was Castle instead of Historic, there would not be a place for things outside of what LEGO calls Castle, so LOTR would need to go presumably into licensed, fantasy builds would need to go elsewhere, there would be no home for Vikings, Romans, or Ancient History, same with Chinese and  Japanese style builds. There are even some people that complain if you put a musket in the hands of a minifigure and call it Castle. Whereas Historic gives so much more freedom.

 

29 minutes ago, SirBlake said:

Put another way, if Nexo was castle, how could it inspire a 40-year castle fan like myself go into an almost-dark age for 6 years at the beginning of the Nexo run? We had very high hopes of what the follow up to the ok-but-not-great 2013 theme would be. Turns out it was tanks, helicopters and light blue armor. 

There was quite a lot of good in Nexo Knights, especially on the villains side if you like fantasy. Jestro's volcano could easily fit into a fantasy castle theme, if the heroes' vehicles were removed and replaced by horses.

Edited by MAB

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9 minutes ago, MAB said:

Was HISTORIC ever considered though? As Nexo Knights is clearly not historic, even if there was a great big Castle logo printed on it. In that sense, a LEGO theme can be split between different EB forums (it happens with City having a home in both Town and Train). The Historic category for a community that builds outside of the constraints of LEGO themes is much better than aligning with LEGO themes. If this was Castle instead of Historic, there would not be a place for things outside of what LEGO calls Castle, so LOTR would need to go presumably into licensed, fantasy builds would need to go elsewhere, there would be no home for Vikings, Romans, or Ancient History, same with Chinese and  Japanese style builds. There are even some people that complain if you put a musket in the hands of a minifigure and call it Castle. Whereas Historic gives so much more freedom.

 

You can slice it and dice it a million ways. To your point, the Middle Earth (in no way historic) stuff ended up here rather than licensed. I personally think that was a wise choice. Ultimately, there are many ways to enjoy Lego, and while it can be hard to organize it all, you know it when you see it. Action/adventure themes have a substantially different feel with much different builds and style. It makes much more sense to slot the action/adventure themes together because they all have tanks and helicopters and mechs, and that’s something that’s never going to fit with “historic”, even if history isn’t the best label. 
 

Edit: sorry I neglected to address the opening question. Nexo was certainly considered for the Historic themes forum when it was rumored. Seeing the sets made it for a pretty short conversation as far as how well it did/didn’t fit in this forum with “real” castle. 

11 minutes ago, MAB said:

There was quite a lot of good in Nexo Knights, especially on the villains side if you like fantasy. Jestro's volcano could easily fit into a fantasy castle theme, if the heroes' vehicles were removed and replaced by horses.

That’s certainly subjective. From my perspective Nexo was an irredeemable, steaming pile of failure. And that’s a big “if”. I mean, listen yourself… “that’s a really good set for castle once you remove the JET PLANE and ROBOTS”. 

Edited by SirBlake

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5 hours ago, Roebuck said:

If we get a normal wave of e.g. Castle sets aimed mostly at kids it would probably get around the same budget as e.g. City has, so a few new moulded parts. A similar set as the 90 year castle under the Icons theme would most likely only have a maximum of 1 new part (same as 10305). However in both cases they could make use of all the new printed parts in 10305 and make more different minifigs etc instead 

So Icons has less of a budget for new molds?

Well as long as they still have a budget for new prints, I think that's the more important thing to me.  Like if they do a new Wolfpack or Black Knights set, I wouldn't really expect any brand new parts as much as new prints or updated use of current/modern parts like new hoods, visors and weapons that weren't used back in the 90's.

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Just now, Triceron said:

So Icons has less of a budget for new molds?

Well as long as they still have a budget for new prints, I think that's the more important thing to me.  Like if they do a new Wolfpack or Black Knights set, I wouldn't really expect any brand new parts as much as new prints or updated use of current/modern parts like new hoods, visors and weapons that weren't used back in the 90's.

D2C sets (which are the main content of Icons/Creator Expert) generally have less budget for things like new molds in part because they're produced in much smaller quantities compared to smaller, more affordable sets that are sold at a wider variety of retail locations. Because sets like that are produced in smaller quantities, it's harder for new molds to "pay for themselves" in the long term due to selling fewer sets overall. That's not to say there's NO budget for things like that, but when there is, it helps for the molds to be more general-use (like the new arches, for instance) so that they can better justify the investment.

You're right though that new prints/recolors can be just as appealing and far more likely to appear in those sorts of sets.

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17 hours ago, SirBlake said:

That’s certainly subjective. From my perspective Nexo was an irredeemable, steaming pile of failure. And that’s a big “if”. I mean, listen yourself… “that’s a really good set for castle once you remove the JET PLANE and ROBOTS”. 

Everything LEGO does tends to be subjective, as it depends whether you like it or not. Fantasy based Castle sets were good for historical castle fans, if you remove the dragons or the trolls and all the other bits that don't fit with what you want. I guess it depends on whether you focus on what you can use or what you can't.

10 hours ago, Black Monarch 88 said:

Looks like there is a plain version of the Viking helmet from series 20 that comes in the Sanctum Santorum. 

Yeah, someone else posted about it about a month ago. Let's hope it appears on online PAB.

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23 hours ago, MAB said:

There was quite a lot of good in Nexo Knights, especially on the villains side if you like fantasy. Jestro's volcano could easily fit into a fantasy castle theme, if the heroes' vehicles were removed and replaced by horses.

Agree, people are fine to hate on it, and I'm certainly not trying to force the idea of "Nexo was a Castle theme" onto people here, the villain side indeed had a lot of fantasy going for it.

There were plans for Forest and Sea monsters at one point but that got cut as the TV show ended after 2017, I think some of those concepts got moved to Hidden Side instead, as it had evil trees, lighthouse, fishing boat and submarine.

I read a lot of the nexo books and the idea behind the theme was quite nice, but only a small amount of those ideas got made into sets, especially in terms of locations.

 

 

Even as a big fan of the theme, I do think in hindsight, they went overboard on trying to be too much like Ninjago and then some on top of that, as in giving each main character a main vehicle each wave, a hover horse, a battle suit, etc, which took away from location sets.

The 2018 wave was just weird, even compared to year 1 and 2, and really does feel like a filler to end the story, it turned from magic monsters to some tech virus.

 

At the same time, Elves showed how a theme that focused on locations could look, sure it had this Friends/Minidoll colorschemes and styling but I'm more speaking of how that theme was focused on trees/caves/castles and civilian buildings line inns and bakeries etc. Elves had a 4 year lifespan as well.

 

 

The 2020 Ninjago wave was a lot closer to Fantasy Castle , there was a mech in that wave of sets, but it was pretty much seperate from the rest of the theme that had dragons and beasts and dungeons, I also like the 2 Crystal King sets from this year, and I do think they fit in a Fantasy Dungeon vibe without going overboard on sci-fi/tech.

The way I see the 2014-2021 era, was that it was full of experiments, 2 LEGO Movies , 18+, Icons, IDEAS Barracuda Bay/Blacksmith, 3-in-1 "Classic" set like the Pirate Ship/Castle, Ninjago Legacy etc. some succesful, others not so much.

 It's too early what the future will hold with the "Icons" rebranding, but at least for AFOL I do think things start to look a bit better with sets like the Galaxy Explorer and Lion Knight's Castle.

For historic themes specifically, LEGO revived 3 old Castle factions within 2 years , but only time will tell if this is a short or long term trend, or just something meant to appeal to AFOL with bigger sets and GWPs. 

Edited by TeriXeri

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On 7/21/2022 at 3:40 PM, Triceron said:

Nexo Knights is enough of an outlier to consider them part of Castle's history, but not of the Classic/Historic Castle lineup which we're all here for.

Yeah, this is my take as well. Nexo Knights was Castle-inspired through and through (specifically designed with the premise "future Castle", borrowing plenty of its heraldry and iconography from previous Castle themes, and focusing on a society that traced their in-universe heritage back to the Yellow Castle). In that regard, it's relevant to the history of LEGO Castle whether you count it as a "true" Castle theme or not.

I imagine that even an AFOL-written retrospective on the Castle theme's history would probably at least mention Nexo Knights, albeit in a negative light, just as an AFOL-written retrospective on the Pirates theme would likely mention the 4+ Pirates sets of the early 2000s.

Of course, an AFOL-written retrospective might mention licensed themes like The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit as well, but including them here in a non-licensed set's manual would've probably required approval from and/or royalty payments to the owners of those IPs, which would be more trouble than it's worth. So their omission from this manual is no more surprising than their omission from the "90 Years of Play" set.
 

And truth be told, I don't think the LEGO Group cares nearly as much as we do about clearly categorizing the various themes they design! One look at the history of space themes from 2000 onward should make it clear that they are not always designed to adhere to any fixed definition of "LEGO Space", let alone any sort of shared universe. From what I've seen, LEGO's perspective on new theme development tends to be more like "This will be a space/castle/pirate/underwater/underground/spy theme" than "This will be part of the Space/Castle/Pirates/Aquazone/Rock Raiders/Alpha Team theme". The genre and focus are treated more as an attribute of the theme than as a parent category.

On 7/21/2022 at 4:37 PM, SirBlake said:

Fair points. I’ll do my best to reign in my patronizing attitude. 

Boiling this all down, I like the optimism that if Nexo = Castle, it sets a precedent for a larger “big bang theme” budget that could be applied to something that we may all define as Castle. 

Unfortunately I can’t share that optimism. Because the parameters for a bedrock theme (Castle, Space, Pirates) are so very different from a big bang theme (Ninjago, Chima, Nexo) based on TLG’s past actions. As much as I hate to say it, none of those bedrock themes will ever get that kind of budget or attention, even if we were to get a whole real theme like Kingdoms for example, history would indicate that a Nexo-like level of set volume, new parts, media, etc. just isn’t a realistic expectation.

I think you're viewing "big bang" themes through a bit too narrow a lens, myself. While we often associate "big bang" themes with various sorts of wacky mashup genres, in reality it refers more to a particular a marketing and development strategy than to a particular sort of subject matter. Sure, Ninjago, Legends of Chima, and Nexo Knights are all "big bang" themes, but so were Power Miners, Atlantis, and Elves — themes that each adhered more strictly to a particular established genre. Even the Friends theme ended up implementing "big bang"–like development and marketing approaches by the time of its release.

And while there are some shared characteristics of these sorts of themes that are a natural outcome of their strategic roadmap (for instance, a multimedia marketing strategy tends to pretty much necessitate named characters with clearly-defined personality traits), those are not fundamentally incompatible with Castle, Space, and Pirates themes, at least not any more than they are with underwater and underground themes.

To expand on what my brother said earlier, Knights' Kingdom 2 already shared a lot of its development strategies, marketing strategies, and other characteristics with more modern "big bang" themes, even if it did so half a decade before those approaches were codified or given a name:

  • It had a cast of named characters with individualized personalities, skills, colors, and motifs.
  • It was marketed through various types of products and media including online games and story content, a Game Boy Advance game, a board game, chapter books, and comics.
  • Its standard playsets were accompanied by a range of lower-priced sets with eye-catching packaging and a focus on social/competitive play and collecting/trading elements (the constraction figures and trading cards) — not unlike LEGO Ninjago's spinner sets, Legends of Chima's Speedorz, or Nexo Knights' "Ultimate Knight" sets.
  • It followed a three-year release timeline that concluded with a fresh, new theme with similar character-driven multimedia marketing (in that case, Exo-Force) taking up the torch.

I think the biggest reason there hasn't been a historical fantasy "big bang" theme yet (unless you count Elves, of course), and may not be one for some time, is just that there are so many options for LEGO to choose from for each new "big bang" theme, and they usually only introduce one new "big bang" theme every few years! But that doesn't mean they're any less likely to make the next "big bang" a castle theme than any of the other hypothetical genres they could pursue, like a spy or dinosaur or space or time travel theme. It's just a matter of what they feel will stand out most and make the biggest splash at any given time.

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@Aanchir, as usual, a solid and well thought-out response, most of which I agree with. The volume does make it difficult to address point by point though, lol. 

The only area I think we really differ on there is that the examples you used (Power Miners, Atlantis, Elves) are all pretty old, and Elves has a bit of an asterisk on it being a minidolls theme. TLG doesn’t handle those the same way.

It seems clear to me that in the last decade or so, Big Bang themes have evolved in a singular direction, and continue to evolve. Informed by Ninjago, Chima and Nexo were defined by their jelly bean helicopters, jets and mechs. Now Monkie Kid is doing the same thing.

Sure, castle or pirates or space could theoretically be the jumping off point for a Big Bang theme, but I’ve seen no recent evidence that it wouldn’t also include the aforementioned jelly bean/power rangers vehicle-dominant sets, 

I can surely envision a castle based Big Bang theme that could still follow the named character track, but it would be more like Heroica or a D&D type thing. While that seems like a great idea to me, I don’t think that fits with TLGs formula, so we’re left with your example of KKII, the undisputed last-place finisher when it comes to themes in the history of castle. Unless you include Nexo, :D 

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Currently the only rumor of a potential theme that might follow a different formula is a trademark named Dreamzzz , and I do hope it won't follow the same vehicle-conflict type of formula as the last 5+ years of "action" themes, also would be nice if it won't have a team of characters yet again, I mean, Ninjago, Nexo, Monkie Kid pretty much repeat the same main characters every time and each character gets their own vehicle type of sets most of the time.

Chima was a bit different as it had more characters split into tribes, but eventually turned into a Fire v Ice type of thing.

That said, out of all those action themes, Nexo did the worst in terms of amount of location sets, and was the most power-ranger of them all if we take the theme as a whole.

Out of current action themes, while Monkie Kid does make some big location sets like Fruit Mountain, City of Lanterns and Heavenly Realms, they are also making quite a few mobile bases (i do think the whole Container folding out to modular rooms is kinda unique though).

I'd like to see LEGO try a minifig theme that's a mix of Elves and the Ninjago Dungeon/Dragon wave but for minifigs and no focus on tech, vehicles, mechs.

 

Edited by TeriXeri

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2 hours ago, SirBlake said:

so we’re left with your example of KKII, the undisputed last-place finisher when it comes to themes in the history of castle. Unless you include Nexo, :D 

I think you are overstepping a little with your opinion there. KKII had some of the best heraldry designs, and some of the figs just needed a bit of swapping in of neutral colors underneath the bright bodywear and visors. Some of the set designs are a somewhat ridiculous, but how many of we AFOLs actually keep playsets as Lego designed them? A handful of the builds from the sets, though, are usable in diorama builds. The Castle of Morcia set had the idea of swapping faction control, and included the parts to do so, which is something I wish Lego would have continued with. Even the giant figure builds offered some useful parts in interesting colors.

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27 minutes ago, gedren_y said:

I think you are overstepping a little with your opinion there. KKII had some of the best heraldry designs, and some of the figs just needed a bit of swapping in of neutral colors underneath the bright bodywear and visors. Some of the set designs are a somewhat ridiculous, but how many of we AFOLs actually keep playsets as Lego designed them? A handful of the builds from the sets, though, are usable in diorama builds. The Castle of Morcia set had the idea of swapping faction control, and included the parts to do so, which is something I wish Lego would have continued with. Even the giant figure builds offered some useful parts in interesting colors.

LMAO, I wasn’t aware there were bounds on opinions.

KKII = garbage all the way around, including the worthless heraldry. In my opinion, of course.  :)

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31 minutes ago, SirBlake said:

LMAO, I wasn’t aware there were bounds on opinions.

KKII = garbage all the way around, including the worthless heraldry. In my opinion, of course.  :)

I wasn't trying to devalue your opinion, but the way you worded it implied it was an overwhelmingly held one.

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40 minutes ago, gedren_y said:

I wasn't trying to devalue your opinion, but the way you worded it implied it was an overwhelmingly held one.

Based on observation I believe it is a true statement that KKII is the least favored theme in the history of castle themes. Whether you base that on values or how it’s represented in the MOC community (it isn’t present, pretty much at all), I feel it is a safe statement. To be clear, I’m not saying nobody likes it, just that it is overwhelmingly thought to be the worst theme in general. If you disagree, I would love to hear your reasoning. 
 

As an example of my position, I offer this poll:


Scroll down to “least favorite theme”. I would call those results “overwhelming”.  

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The first year of KKII had some nice heraldry designs, the bear and wolf in particular:

Spoiler

 

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but years 2 and 3 were just plain terrible:
 

Spoiler

 

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Aside from this one:

Spoiler

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That one's just really cool to me since it's essentially a factionless shield. Shame it wasn't in a better colour.

Edited by Sir Dano

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5 hours ago, Sir Dano said:

 

but years 2 and 3 were just plain terrible:
 

  Hide contents

 

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I'm surprised to see these described as just plain terrible.

It shows the issue LEGO has if they are to bring anything back, as I like the heraldry on those ones.

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21 hours ago, Sir Dano said:

but years 2 and 3 were just plain terrible:

@MAB Same! Those look far better to me, with their less flashy colours and less cartoony style. 

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26 minutes ago, Exetrius said:

@MAB Same! Those look far better to me, with their less flashy colours and less cartoony style. 

Yeah, I like all the year 2 and 3 shields a lot, those are some useful shields to make custom figs. 

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I have small armies approximately 25 strong of the year 2 and 3 factions.  Those shields and heraldry are epic!  I also have 5-10 knights of each of the year one factions in all of their jelly bean colored awesomeness???  Actually if I look at all of them at the same time my eyes bleed.  But like a true castle collector, I bare the burden of owning the knights kingdom guys.  I even bought a couple copies of the Kingdoms chess set.  So many baby blue men at arms...  :pir-sick:

A point to be made about both Nexo Knights and Knights Kingdom...  The bad guys in both themes are incredibly cool IMHO!  Vladek's forces as a great evil human faction.  The Lava and Rock creature Nexo factions are fantastic fantasy armies unlike anything else LEGO has ever released.  And therefore I bought many hundreds of all three of those factions.  So even themes that don't do justice to the castle theme certainly have some redeeming qualities!

Here is one of those KK2 armies.  I added some dinos and turned them into dragons because they were the right color...

Do my knights look like they have no pants?

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