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9 hours ago, Fenghuang0296 said:

So, one question that I haven’t seen anyone mention yet; the trailer they revealed shows a fifth protagonist alongside the four in the sets; a guy in what looks sort of like a kilt with massive glasses. Who is he and why isn’t he in any of the sets?

The teaser said his name. His name "Mr. Chang" according to the teaser.

28 minutes ago, doclord said:

Feels like a lot of people want this line to fail.

I agree. If this line sells half as well as Ninjago it is going to succeed.

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1 hour ago, doclord said:

Feels like a lot of people want this line to fail.

Personally, I just find having another Ninjago-like series disappointing as I'd prefer more variety in themes. 

Taking the successful Ninjago formula of historical fantasy mixed with technological vehicles and mechs, and shifting the fantasy side from Japanese Ninjas to Chinese mythology seems to make great business sense for expansion in China, but the net result is way too many sets with this formula. I would much rather LEGO have one line with the best couple set designs from each of these themes, and a separate completely unique theme (castle, pirates, scifi, heck Monkey King set in the past without tech, whatever)

So while I'm not exactly rooting for Monkey King to fail I am rooting for some of the resources it took to design these two themes to be diverted to other more unique themes in the future.

As for whether it will fail or succeed I think it's a hard call.  Ninjago has been a hit. On the other hand Nexo Knights was the same concept with Arthurian Legend and it was a bust.

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1 hour ago, doclord said:

Feels like a lot of people want this line to fail.

I think that's mainly because we don't see half of this care on other themes. Star wars is overpriced garbege with a bunch of minifigures. Harry Potter has turned from half buildings to quarter buildings which are sill good but only from a single side. Other licensed themes are also pure garbage and even their minifigures are less detailed. Even ninjago is somewhat less detailed when you compare it to monkie kid. And they literally say that they are for Chinese Market. At least for me, this shows that lego sees us and Europe as guaranteed markets and they think they can sell everything with any price. The new "adult" sets with even more inflated prices are also a proof for that(again, its my opinion). 

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2 hours ago, doclord said:

Feels like a lot of people want this line to fail.

I don't,it's a great theme offering great minifigs and builds.I'm just critical of Lego's decisions regarding this theme from being exclusive to Lego shops to the heavy prices.

But my biggest criticism is that it follows the Ninjago formula and ever since Ninjago's success Lego has been trying to replicate this success with Chima and Nexo Knights.But both of those themes after their 3 year run retired,meaning that Ninjago is a once in a blue moon success.I would prefer if Lego continued applying the Ninjago formula only with Ninjago and expirement with other action themes.

But no it seems Lego keeps insisting on applying this formula to every new action theme,the newest being MK.Honestly I'm rather suprised that Hidden Side is even a theme that exists considering it's quite different to the current action theme trends.

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5 hours ago, Harkonen said:

This. I really don't understand why the sets are so expensive in the rest of the wolrd. I wonder if this is more like a test to see how much are people willing to pay...

The prices are great in the UK.

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I hope this theme would fail. No hard feelings toward Monkey King though, don't get me wrong. I just wish all this making everything high tech and putting mechs into everything would stop.

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4 hours ago, Mizyaz said:

I think the main problem is that Chinese people don't have the money. Minimum wage there is like 350$. I won't be surprised if it sells better in Europe or US. 

 

Some Chinese people will have the money. Just like in other countries, there is a vast distribution of incomes in China. LEGO mainly targets the better off end of society in any country, especially with their larger sets. 

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3 hours ago, doclord said:

Feels like a lot of people want this line to fail.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like this theme, and I fully appreciate the attempt. While I do have my concerns and criticisms, I still really want it to succeed. At the end of the day, it's an original theme, and in the modern era where licensed themes seems to dominate LEGO's market, any new original theme is more than welcome.

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12 hours ago, Roebuck said:

Thanks! I see why it’s so mech heavy now. :tongue: Not only Ninjago Movie designers, but some Superheroes mechs thrown in as well. 

5 hours ago, TeriXeri said:

True, but right now I'm personally leaning toward the Fire-Stone Mech 968 pieces €70 (+ potential discounts) , so around half price or less compared to the Monkey King mech set.

Of course it's smaller, but I'm almost liking the other Ninjago sets this summer so it'll go better with that theme, would be the first time collecting Ninjago for me as well.

Price to part ratio on the Monkey King Mech isn't the real issue, moreso that it's exclusive to LEGO so no expected discounts (for now).

Maybe I'll eventually pick up the White Horse bike set.

The Fire-Stone Mech is definitely one I have my eye on. I feel like the size of Monkey King Mech will make, at least in part, the price more bearable. I saw a picture of it in a LEGO store display, and it’s massive. Yeah, the probable lack of discounts sucks, especially on higher priced sets like that. 

4 hours ago, doclord said:

Feels like a lot of people want this line to fail.

Yeah. It’s understandable that people don’t like any given theme, but it doesn’t mean one should be rooting for its demise. 

 

Honestly, other than it being mech/vehicle heavy & Asian aesthetics, I don’t see how it’s comparable at all to Ninjago. I don’t see a single dragon. The first wave had 4, and the however many in the following years. And a gimmick like the Spinnerz is non existent. They don’t have a matching team, color aside, of good guys. It’s not like mechs weren’t a thing in LEGO before Ninjago showed up. Is that the standard now? Have mechs...must be Ninjago! Superheroes has a lot of mechs throughout the years... I understand it’s subjective whether one sees it’s a Ninjago clone or not, and my ramble is a bit unnecessary, but when I see comments of it being like Ninjago, there’s a negative connotation to it. Maybe TLG went this direction because they know mechs & vehicles sell to the target.  

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4 hours ago, Lacdaran said:

So while I'm not exactly rooting for Monkey King to fail I am rooting for some of the resources it took to design these two themes to be diverted to other more unique themes in the future.

I think this way too although reading some of the background, it seems they pulled in random designers from all over the place (ones with workload capacity you’d guess) under a manager/lead rather than put a dedicated team together, so I’m less concerned about the lack of resource diverted moving forward.

There’s a big difference between wanting to see the theme fail, and just expecting it to. Personally I think this will be a one-wave swing and a miss. Better A&A themes than MK have met similar fates after all. 

Then again, TLG have been pretty blatant about chasing the Chinese yuan of late and there’s also the feeling with this home-grown theme of wanting to beat certain clone companies at their own game in their own backyard, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see them persevere. 

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What pleases me about the background information they released is the fact that this theme is apparently the brainchild of their first designer hired from mainland China.  So it's not so much that the higher-ups at Lego said "we want to make a boatload of money in China, now all you European and American set designers get busy cooking up something Chinese" and this is the best they could come up with, it's more that the Chinese designer (I don't recall his name at the moment) came on board wanting to make the sorts of Monkey-inspired sets that he would have wanted as a kid, and the higher-ups said "good idea, that fits with our strategic direction, now here's a humongous budget so go to town."  That makes me more confident that there are all sorts of authentically Chinese details and references that I just don't see as an American, and that the whole theme is more than a "pandering cash grab."  That said, my introduction to the Monkey King stories was reading the unabridged Journey to the West in translation, so I'd much rather see mystical mountain temples and heavenly peach trees than giant mechs.  To repeat a hypothetical example I used when talking to a friend of mine, if you told me Lego was making a theme based on "Hamlet" and it turned out to be "loosely inspired by Hamlet, featuring singing lions and warthogs aka The Lion King" instead of "castles based on sixteenth century Denmark," I'd be a little disappointed - not that the Lion King sets wouldn't be fun in their own right, just that they wouldn't be anything close to what I was hoping for.  But if this authentically Chinese designer that helmed the Monkie Kid theme and co-produced the Monkie Kid TV show wanted to go in this direction with the source material - well, that's his choice and I hope the theme is successful.  It's just not my cup of tea.

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4 hours ago, Mizyaz said:

I think that's mainly because we don't see half of this care on other themes. Star wars is overpriced garbege with a bunch of minifigures. Harry Potter has turned from half buildings to quarter buildings which are sill good but only from a single side. Other licensed themes are also pure garbage and even their minifigures are less detailed. Even ninjago is somewhat less detailed when you compare it to monkie kid. And they literally say that they are for Chinese Market. At least for me, this shows that lego sees us and Europe as guaranteed markets and they think they can sell everything with any price. The new "adult" sets with even more inflated prices are also a proof for that(again, its my opinion). 

Just curious how long have you been into lego?.  I think a lot of the sets this and year and the past few years have been very detailed and at great price points.  The new pirates idea set,  a lot of the creator expert sets are great, Stranger things, many of the idea's sets all have great builds and price points.  The new Ninjago sets look great and are quite detailed.  Yeah some of the super heroes sets don't have detailed minifigs.  Yes Lego is a business they are into making toys for kids and recently have made a larger effort making sets for AFOL's.  I really don't see your complaint here this has always been the way lego has been.  When I was a kid in the 1980's my parents couldn't afford those huge castle sets with 9-10 figs and a couple of horses or the really large city sets.  The dynamic is still the same it has been, it's just grown with the inflation of the worlds economy.  I guess it's all how you look at it but if your that angry why even buy lego?

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5 hours ago, Mizyaz said:

And they literally say that they are for Chinese Market. 

Where have they said that these are for the Chinese market? Everything I have read says they are based on Chinese folklore but not that they are for the Chinese market. Presumably this is because they are not for the Chinese market as they are sold worldwide. 

24 minutes ago, Takanuinuva said:

Is that a new length of bar on Monkie Kid's staff? It looks longer than the standard lightsaber blade. 

Yes, it is.

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It makes me laugh that people want to see this theme fail and then people wonder why LEGO doesn’t have more original themes. 

Also this is not a one wave swing and miss theme

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1 minute ago, Falconfan1414 said:

It makes me laugh that people want to see this theme fail and then people wonder why LEGO doesn’t have more original themes. 

Also this is not a one wave swing and miss theme

I agree. I just believe this theme will fail like it or not. Fear with China, the closing of most Lego stores, long wait times for sets, and the overwhelming prices will possibly make this theme release one of the worst in modern Lego history. Also, what is this theme's aesthetic?  The bike, bull king, mech and cloud jet look like they come from anime, but the food truck and the HQ look like they belong in a city. Red Son's truck looks like a Mad Max vehicle with a retro color scheme, and the Iron Bull tank looks like an early Chima set. At least Ninjago had clear theaming in it's first wave. Depending on how the story goes, I would like future waves with a clearer idea, especially if Lego wants this theme to do well. 

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22 minutes ago, Falconfan1414 said:

Also this is not a one wave swing and miss theme

With respect, you don’t know that. Plans are one thing but if a new theme sells poorly and doesn’t make a good return on the obvious investment, then LEGO may cut their losses as they’ve done before and move on. These are very difficult times and not every theme is a perennial Ninjago.

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43 minutes ago, Lucarex said:

With respect, you don’t know that. Plans are one thing but if a new theme sells poorly and doesn’t make a good return on the obvious investment, then LEGO may cut their losses as they’ve done before and move on. These are very difficult times and not every theme is a perennial Ninjago.

For LEGO to cut loses and cancel a theme earlier then planned, it would have to sell terrible and yes they have had themes before do that but they haven’t been as big for LEGO. Considering how with this it is a gamble for lego, they won’t let a few months of sales define it 

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47 minutes ago, Lucarex said:

With respect, you don’t know that. Plans are one thing but if a new theme sells poorly and doesn’t make a good return on the obvious investment, then LEGO may cut their losses as they’ve done before and move on. These are very difficult times and not every theme is a perennial Ninjago.

Not every theme is a perennial Ninjago, and to be honest expecting any theme to be is perhaps being even more optimistic than Lego themselves (who set pretty modest initial goals, usually three years of product launches at most, compared to that). At the same time, I think expecting a theme with this level of investment put into it to falter after one wave is, if anything, too pessimistic—Lego has yet to have any of their "big bang" themes fail to to last more than a year, even including early pre-Ninjago ones like Atlantis and Power Miners that were not planned with more than one year of sales in mind! They have a pretty strong track record in that respect, with even themes that fall short of expectations (Legends of Chima, Ultra Agents, etc.) tending to last two to three years.

Yes, these are difficult times, but from many indications so far Lego's struggles so far have been to meet surging demand despite interruptions at the production, distribution, and retail stages, rather than struggling to find buyers for its products. With many families spending more time at home the demand for toys like Lego seems almost like it has risen compared to "normal" circumstances.

Edited by Lyichir

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33 minutes ago, summicron said:

I hope this theme would fail. No hard feelings toward Monkey King though, don't get me wrong. I just wish all this making everything high tech and putting mechs into everything would stop.

Hate to say it because I'm a big supporter of original themes, but I hope it does too. The "mechs and bikes" thing is beyond played out and it's time to stop. This era of Lego is going to age horribly in the future because every single theme they put out now is Sci-Fi.

Additionally, it looks like they used all of their resources perfecting Monkie Kid's designs, while they left some interns behind to slap together sets for the summer wave of Hidden Side. Now that we know they're capable of this much attention to detail and commitment to fleshing out a theme, I'm going to hold them to that standard in the future, but I'm pretty sure they're only doing this because they're desperate to finally break into the Chinese market.

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We'll see where this theme will end up, but overall this year has been different, and we're only months into it, the economic situation will continue to have a market effect for some time.

Many people were negative about Nexo Knights at launch , and while it was canceled early (it still had 5 waves and like 100 sets, a 2-year TV show , and many books/magazines, I don't consider that a fail), it also never had a 40% off "sale" compared to like LEGO Movie 2 sets.

I'd Imagine LEGO will be careful with overproduction in the markets outside of Asia, as their overall production capacity is already lower then usual.

But really, the theme is only 2 days old, so way too early to judge any sales, but if this theme will end up getting larger % discounts around Christmas or Black Friday we might know more.

I don't want it to fail, but I do hope for more location sets in future waves, like a big set that consists of more of those shops, or a Fortress.

Edited by TeriXeri

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4 hours ago, zoth33 said:

Just curious how long have you been into lego?.  I think a lot of the sets this and year and the past few years have been very detailed and at great price points.  The new pirates idea set,  a lot of the creator expert sets are great, Stranger things, many of the idea's sets all have great builds and price points.  The new Ninjago sets look great and are quite detailed.  Yeah some of the super heroes sets don't have detailed minifigs.  Yes Lego is a business they are into making toys for kids and recently have made a larger effort making sets for AFOL's.  I really don't see your complaint here this has always been the way lego has been.  When I was a kid in the 1980's my parents couldn't afford those huge castle sets with 9-10 figs and a couple of horses or the really large city sets.  The dynamic is still the same it has been, it's just grown with the inflation of the worlds economy.  I guess it's all how you look at it but if your that angry why even buy lego?

I never said that lego is getting worse on every single theme. The themes I give examples from are star wars and super heroes. Which are obviously lacking in the recent years. Just look at the superheroes sets of 2014-2015. Star wars has no new vehicles that isn't a tie for a long long time. I am not against remakes I am definitely against a remake thats 50% overpriced like the grievous ship. 2 years ago my collection was 90% star wars. Now its only ~40% and I never even bought a single sw set since May 2019. But I want to. I love star wars and I want better sets for it. Lego is getting more expensive over time and it makes it harder and harder to get new sets. But making spesific themes even more expensive and less detailed while making an incredibly detailed new theme for China that is also overpriced is unacceptable. 

But all these talking has no meaning because I will continue to buy new sets including monkie kid. And I won't be sad as long as I can somehow afford it. 

Edited by Mizyaz

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2 hours ago, TeriXeri said:

 

I don't want it to fail, but I do hope for more location sets in future waves, like a big set that consists of more of those shops, or a Fortress.

It seems highly likely we will get more locations both for the bulls and of the city the show takes place in. Looking at the current sets, the bull fort in the bike set includes pins at both sides of it, as well as the ability to separate it into 3 modules which all have connections to 2 sides. In the king mech set, the same dual pin connectors are used for the noodle shop/apartment, with a corner of sidewalk that has pins on 2 sides. I’m assuming the same will be true of the convenience store in the inferno truck. The sets also seem to be better than any other action theme so far in terms of giving us civilians to save, so it would be logical that more civilians will require more buildings to fill out. 

I doubt they would have done this using a dual pin connector instead of the single pin that themes like creator and modular use if they didn’t expect to develop more into that system of buildings. I’d expect atleast one or two more side build buildings in the next wave if not a full set of some important show location we haven’t seen yet, and atleast one fort set for the bulls that can be expanded with that entrance gate.
 

Given the size of sets this wave, I’m almost expecting some kind of battle set based on the show with a few smaller vehicles And buildings the same way city puts out the various city square/doughnut shop/whatever sets. 

if we don’t get anymore, I’ll atleast be mocing up some more locations from the show or adapting the given builds into my (Ninjago styled) city somehow. 

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1 hour ago, Mizyaz said:

I never said that lego is getting worse on every single theme. The themes I give examples from are star wars and super heroes. Which are obviously lacking in the recent years. Just look at the superheroes sets of 2014-2015. Star wars has no new vehicles that isn't a tie for a long long time. I am not against remakes I am definitely against a remake thats 50% overpriced like the grievous ship. 2 years ago my collection was 90% star wars. Now its only ~40% and I never even bought a single sw set since May 2019. But I want to. I love star wars and I want better sets for it. Lego is getting more expensive over time and it makes it harder and harder to get new sets. But making spesific themes even more expensive and less detailed while making an incredibly detailed new theme for China that is also overpriced is unacceptable. 

But all these talking has no meaning because I will continue to buy new sets including monkie kid. And I won't be sad as long as I can somehow afford it. 

I get that these prices are high for Monkie Kid.  But There is still great value sets even with the smaller star wars and even the $20-$30 sets in super heroes have had some great value recently.  Most hobbies are expensive anyway, Lego has always been an expensive hobby with collecting, storing, and displaying your sets or MOc's.  There are definitely some better detailed figs in the marvel line recently.  I really like the Monkie King mech even though its $150.00 but it also has over 1,600 pieces and looks great for that price is really good.  I guess what I'm trying to say is recently AFOL's have been saying they are willing to pay extra for really detailed sets and now lego is giving us some and people are still complaining about the price.  Or Lego makes a more affordable model but people cry it doesn't have enough detail and they would pay extra for a better model so I don't know how lego would please everyone since it's never going to happen.  

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5 hours ago, Falconfan1414 said:

It makes me laugh that people want to see this theme fail and then people wonder why LEGO doesn’t have more original themes. 

Also this is not a one wave swing and miss theme

Right? Not liking a theme is one thing, hoping for it to fail doesn’t help anyone. If this theme fails, they may be even more hesitant to go out on a limb for a bigger departure from their norm. 

3 hours ago, TeriXeri said:

We'll see where this theme will end up, but overall this year has been different, and we're only months into it, the economic situation will continue to have a market effect for some time.

Many people were negative about Nexo Knights at launch , and while it was canceled early (it still had 5 waves and like 100 sets, a 2-year TV show , and many books/magazines, I don't consider that a fail), it also never had a 40% off "sale" compared to like LEGO Movie 2 sets.

I'd Imagine LEGO will be careful with overproduction in the markets outside of Asia, as their overall production capacity is already lower then usual.

But really, the theme is only 2 days old, so way too early to judge any sales, but if this theme will end up getting larger % discounts around Christmas or Black Friday we might know more.

I don't want it to fail, but I do hope for more location sets in future waves, like a big set that consists of more of those shops, or a Fortress.

Me too. What little we get of buildings in this first wave, I’m liking what I’m seeing. Some of that background art is really nice as well. 

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