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I procrastinated again by working on the statistic of new molds for each ninjago season: 2012 they brought out 28(!) new molds.

Some pieces we still use now (katana, the 2 mech blades, "new" Samurai helmet) and some I didn't even think are based on ninjago (several claw pieces or so).

Interestingly they brought out a lot of snake-accessory pieces, that I always thought belonged to "pharaoes quest" - but they only appeared in ninjago.

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On 5/17/2021 at 10:48 PM, Lego David said:

The second wave saw the Spinners taking a step back and more focus on the actual sets, and I have to admit, they have indeed improved upon what they had in wave 1, but that came at the expense of the contrast between heroes and villains, and from this point on, realizing how profitable they are with kids, LEGO has never stopped pumping out repetitive oversized hero vehicles.  

I was going to disagree with you, since in my opinion 2012 was the quintessential Ninjago year. However, looking back at the sets themselves, I can see why they aren’t super desirable now. Almost all of the ninja vehicles have been redone (either in idea or the exact vehicles themselves) and the newer versions are often better. If I were a new Ninjago fan, the only set I think still worth trying to get from that year purely for the build would be the Samurai X Mech. Everything else would be an easy pass. 
 

That said, I do still think 2012 was a very important and impressive year for Ninjago. At the time, the sets felt very fresh and were super flashy. I remember wanting nearly all of them. To this day, I think 2012 saw some of the best minifigures we’ve gotten, including the ZX and NRG ninja and of course the 17 unique Serpentine. Can you imagine if we got 17 uniquely printed/moulded antagonists in one year now? These days, we’re lucky to get more than 4 in a wave. 


2012 also set the tone for Ninjago much better than 2011 did, which probably led to the theme’s success. Don’t get me wrong, I loved 2011, but TLG certainly got something right with the Rise of the Snakes waves. The emphasis on ninja vehicles and snake antagonists continues almost yearly now, surely due to immense popularity with the target audience. 2011 was a great ninja theme, but 2012 was a brand new theme that defined what we’ve come to expect from Ninjago. 

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You know. Save for the Island wave. Every new wave of this soft reboot so far has given us a new ally fig for the Ninja

Fire Chapter- Clutch Powers

Ice Chapter- Akita

Prime Empire- Okino

Master of the Mountain- Princess Vania

Island (None but should have been Twitchy Tim. Maybe in the Catamaran Sea Battle Set)

Seabound- Benthomarr.

 

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1 hour ago, Rolyat24 said:

I was going to disagree with you, since in my opinion 2012 was the quintessential Ninjago year. However, looking back at the sets themselves, I can see why they aren’t super desirable now. Almost all of the ninja vehicles have been redone (either in idea or the exact vehicles themselves) and the newer versions are often better. If I were a new Ninjago fan, the only set I think still worth trying to get from that year purely for the build would be the Samurai X Mech. Everything else would be an easy pass. 

I actually do genuinely like the Serpentine vehicles though. With cleverly designed snake faces on them they still feel genuinely unique even today. The Wrecking Ball is probably my favorite, I have always wanted that set ever since it came out. 

The clear lack of more Villain vehicles has been a real turn off from the current era of Ninjago for me. Even Ninjago Legacy for whatever reason completely avoided remaking any of those 2011-2012 Skulkin and Serpentine vehicles which I would genuinely love to see them re-imagined. 

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1 hour ago, Takanuinuva said:

You know. Save for the Island wave. Every new wave of this soft reboot so far has given us a new ally fig for the Ninja

Fire Chapter- Clutch Powers

Ice Chapter- Akita

Prime Empire- Okino

Master of the Mountain- Princess Vania

Island (None but should have been Twitchy Tim. Maybe in the Catamaran Sea Battle Set)

Seabound- Benthomarr.

 

Prime empire: Scott or what the name of the dude with cap/hood combo was.

 

 

2 hours ago, Rolyat24 said:

I was going to disagree with you, since in my opinion 2012 was the quintessential Ninjago year. However, looking back at the sets themselves, I can see why they aren’t super desirable now. Almost all of the ninja vehicles have been redone (either in idea or the exact vehicles themselves) and the newer versions are often better. If I were a new Ninjago fan, the only set I think still worth trying to get from that year purely for the build would be the Samurai X Mech. Everything else would be an easy pass. 
 

That said, I do still think 2012 was a very important and impressive year for Ninjago. At the time, the sets felt very fresh and were super flashy. I remember wanting nearly all of them. To this day, I think 2012 saw some of the best minifigures we’ve gotten, including the ZX and NRG ninja and of course the 17 unique Serpentine. Can you imagine if we got 17 uniquely printed/moulded antagonists in one year now? These days, we’re lucky to get more than 4 in a wave. 


2012 also set the tone for Ninjago much better than 2011 did, which probably led to the theme’s success. Don’t get me wrong, I loved 2011, but TLG certainly got something right with the Rise of the Snakes waves. The emphasis on ninja vehicles and snake antagonists continues almost yearly now, surely due to immense popularity with the target audience. 2011 was a great ninja theme, but 2012 was a brand new theme that defined what we’ve come to expect from Ninjago. 

As I wrote in the comment above yours: 2012 we got a crazy amount of molds!
For almost any snake there was a unique headpiece or attatchement.

I think it's even unnecessary to produce that many molds. But it would be cool anyway to get a larger amount of different face prints and hairpieces. For the SoG or the dragon hunters there was so much diversity in the show. And the actual (less diverse) figures were still quite divers, compared to the two current waves.

 

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I agree most of Hero vs Villain themes are a bit too one sided in terms of vehicles , but I guess that's what happens if there's a team of ninjas/knights(nexo).

But that's why I especially loved S13 sets, the mech was pretty much optional from the rest, didn't have a huge part of the board game either, the 3 other sets were pretty much villain location or a big dragon + more terrain, or a Rhino Beast.

 

And while generic non-licensed action theme sets do still exist within IDEAS or Creator 3-in-1 lately, most sets nowadays have some named team attached to it.

Nexo Knights, Hidden Side, and now Monkie Kid being the most recent follow a similar path.

 

As for the future of Ninjago , I'd love to see more Legacy versions of location sets like Garmadon Fortress, Enter the Serpent, Battle for Ninjago City , Lighthouse Siege or City of Stix with focus on the Locations.

 

 

Edited by TeriXeri

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7 hours ago, Takanuinuva said:

You know. Save for the Island wave. Every new wave of this soft reboot so far has given us a new ally fig for the Ninja

Fire Chapter- Clutch Powers

Ice Chapter- Akita

Prime Empire- Okino

Master of the Mountain- Princess Vania

Island (None but should have been Twitchy Tim. Maybe in the Catamaran Sea Battle Set)

Seabound- Benthomarr.

 

Technically mamatus and the islanders would count as allies by the end of the story and into seabound

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18 minutes ago, mrfang2 said:

Technically mamatus and the islanders would count as allies by the end of the story and into seabound

Garmadon: good guy in many seasons

snake: "good" in later seasons

nindroids - depending on program (white nindroids are good for example)

stone warriors - depending on if Dareth has the helmet

Phytor: helps heroes in S4

elemental masters in s4 were treated a bit like villains but are allies in s4 and later

Morro: redeems himself and helps out in DotD

sky pirates: help out in the last episodes and are mostly pretty nice fellas

Zane: not really villain as ice emperor

Unagami: redeems himself

master of mountains: the goblins and mirks or murks or whatever were never villains in the first place. Even spiders are "good guys" in the end.

+ keepers.

Also I think for the last/current season they planned on doing more with the villains. Like explanations for the water snakes or a purpose for the Benthomar character. Maybe that he would have convinced the snake warriors to go against the main bad guy.

I would also mention that Nardakhaan may be a dick but he had really good intentions for what he was doing. Except for the last episode, you could almost say he was a good guy with questionable means for a different side. Most villains weren't purely "bad" I think or at least cartoony.

irredemable villains I would only say are: Overlord, Oni, Kalmaar.

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3 hours ago, Kim-Kwang-Seok said:


I would also mention that Nardakhaan may be a dick but he had really good intentions for what he was doing. Except for the last episode, you could almost say he was a good guy with questionable means for a different side. Most villains weren't purely "bad" I think or at least cartoony.

I always wondered if Nadakhan explained his reasons that the ninja could use one of their wishes to bring back Djinnjago. Or if that would be out of Nadakhan's power. (Or it would require bringing back the cursed realm as well)

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11 hours ago, Lego David said:

I actually do genuinely like the Serpentine vehicles though. With cleverly designed snake faces on them they still feel genuinely unique even today. The Wrecking Ball is probably my favorite, I have always wanted that set ever since it came out. 

The clear lack of more Villain vehicles has been a real turn off from the current era of Ninjago for me. Even Ninjago Legacy for whatever reason completely avoided remaking any of those 2011-2012 Skulkin and Serpentine vehicles which I would genuinely love to see them re-imagined. 

I agree, in terms of villain vehicles, the sea bound wave has been a real let down. However Im more of a ninja vehicle person myself. Im pretty sure the island is one of the only waves where we get an almost 50/50 split of villain and good guy things, but only because it was so small. Seabound only really has 1 villain set, the temple. We don't even really get any cool side builds anymore. Apart from the mini subs, and Kalmaars chariot, and I don't really count the MOTM waves as the side builds where part of the game. In all lego themes, I've always enjoyed side builds. Whether its small catapults or just straight up chunks of rock. They bring a lot of playability into the sets, and its nice giving the antagonist at least some chance when they have to fight against a massive 4x4 or some flying ship. The only side builds I really remember disliking where the Monkie kid cloud roadster demon vehicles, and at that it was only the trike thing. All other lego side builds have been pretty solid IMO.

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Ever since the soft reboot, we’ve seen very few villain vehicles. In fact, the only notable one that comes to mind is the catamaran. That said, we’ve also gotten some great villain dragons and locations, much more than we got in the early days of Ninjago. I think the designers have settled into a pattern for each wave that doesn’t leave much room for villain vehicles. It’s a shame too, because early Ninjago relied heavily on them, and they really differed from wave to wave, keeping the new sets fresh every year.

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Maybe LEGO wants to not oversaturate the market with vehicles,  Chima, Nexo, Hidden Side and now Monkie Kid likely played a role in the distribution of vehicles.

2011 and 2012 had multiple large Skeleton and Snake vehicles and that was before Chima appeared.

 

I can see some overlap in set design for sure, where currently Monkie Kid seems to take continue some styles from those other themes in various ways 

Even within the same year, 2021 , the Red Son Inferno Jet basicly has the same set type as the Boulder Blaster (perhaps closer to the original 2015 size & design however)

And then Monkie Kid also uses Ninjago-like Mechs and Motorbikes, and some Nexo-inspired big wheelers and Jets.
 

The Spider Queen Base Monkie Kid set is a big villain set this year, very much feels like a blend of Nexo, Chima and Nindroids in design.

Wouldn't surprise me if Hidden Side was retired earlier in favor of pushing Legacy and Monkie Kid further, the Hidden Side Castle wave was one of the shortest lived ever, even shorter then 2018 Nexo.

 

While the influence of Licensed themes is just speculation, especially Marvel has been launching a lot of Vehicles, Mechs and Motorbikes in recent times (and even Duplo has spiderman/ironman/batman(DC) now, and not Ninjago)

Maybe that's part of the reason that Ninjago went on the very different side of themes , starting with the Video Game wave (before Monkie Kid launched), into something mostly non-vehicle (Season 13), and now Islanders + Underwater sets.

I don't follow the exact story/episodes, I just roughly compare sets from various years.

 

Edited by TeriXeri

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While the Island sets were certainly light on villain vehicles, personally I feel like the catamaran was a pretty excellent one (fitting for the faction, able to deploy smaller boats, and very distinct from anything we'd had before). It's a little hard for me to conceptualize what sort of other vehicles might have worked for that particular faction. As for Seabound, it feels like a case where the air-breathing ninja have much more need for vehicles than their aquatic foes. Perhaps it could have had more brick-built sea creatures as antagonists like the Aqua Raiders or Atlantis themes to compensate, but then again having other large antagonists like that might have detracted from Wojira feeling as much like such a large threat.

I certainly wouldn't mind a few more villain-focused sets in the Legacy theme to balance things out a little, though. New takes on things like the Garmatron, Great Devourer, or Nindroid Mech Dragon could be great. And if Legacy continues to move forward, it might be hard to properly represent a subtheme like Skybound without doing some of the villain vehicles, since that subtheme had the opposite problem of being quite light on vehicles for the ninja.

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7 minutes ago, Lyichir said:

While the Island sets were certainly light on villain vehicles, personally I feel like the catamaran was a pretty excellent one (fitting for the faction, able to deploy smaller boats, and very distinct from anything we'd had before). It's a little hard for me to conceptualize what sort of other vehicles might have worked for that particular faction. 

Considering the Keepers were all about primitive vehicles and things related to storms I'd say some type of primitive balloon/zeppelin or a hang glider could've been cool.

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6 hours ago, Lyichir said:

While the Island sets were certainly light on villain vehicles, personally I feel like the catamaran was a pretty excellent one (fitting for the faction, able to deploy smaller boats, and very distinct from anything we'd had before). It's a little hard for me to conceptualize what sort of other vehicles might have worked for that particular faction. As for Seabound, it feels like a case where the air-breathing ninja have much more need for vehicles than their aquatic foes. Perhaps it could have had more brick-built sea creatures as antagonists like the Aqua Raiders or Atlantis themes to compensate, but then again having other large antagonists like that might have detracted from Wojira feeling as much like such a large threat.

I certainly wouldn't mind a few more villain-focused sets in the Legacy theme to balance things out a little, though. New takes on things like the Garmatron, Great Devourer, or Nindroid Mech Dragon could be great. And if Legacy continues to move forward, it might be hard to properly represent a subtheme like Skybound without doing some of the villain vehicles, since that subtheme had the opposite problem of being quite light on vehicles for the ninja.

I would absolutely buy a Legacy MechDragon or Garma-Tron. And, yeah how will they handle Skybound? Even the ninja-focused sets had small gliders for the Pirates. Skybound was also when they really leaned into the elemental dragons, making ones for Cole, Jay and Lloyd. Maybe we’ll see more Legacy dragons? I really hope they don’t go and make a Legacy ‘Kai and Nya’s motorcycles’ set; we get enough sets like that already and it’d be the single worst thing from that season to adapt. 

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37 minutes ago, Fenghuang0296 said:

I would absolutely buy a Legacy MechDragon or Garma-Tron. And, yeah how will they handle Skybound? Even the ninja-focused sets had small gliders for the Pirates. Skybound was also when they really leaned into the elemental dragons, making ones for Cole, Jay and Lloyd. Maybe we’ll see more Legacy dragons? I really hope they don’t go and make a Legacy ‘Kai and Nya’s motorcycles’ set; we get enough sets like that already and it’d be the single worst thing from that season to adapt. 

I think there's little trust to make Nya focussed sets (unfortunately). Though in this instance there'd maybe a Kai cycle as well.

I think with Samurai X mech there might be a chance due to its uniqueness. And I do think her current focus sets also have something more unique to them which makes TLG trust these more (it's like the coolest figure ever for Nya here).


As for elemental dragons; I also think they fall under "too weird"/abstract. They'd rather do the old elemental dragons for anyone I guess. Lloyd and Kai are already served. 

As for the Sky pirates: I'd love some sets based on the villains; who knows if we could get a flying boat again as ninjago likes their boats.

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6 hours ago, Takanuinuva said:

A much larger Legacy Misfortune's Keep perhaps?

That would be awesome. They really need to do more villain-focused Legacy sets in general, I'm getting sick of the ninja vehicle rehashes.

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One interesting thing I have looked at is the fact that all the flashback scenes are from wu’s memories, so in theory that means the scene in merlopia was before we saw them in seabound. Curious that wu knew about the trench and what inhabited the area, but didn’t say anything when the ninja departed. It also doesn’t give us a straight answer to what happened to the twins, as we know wu survived the explosion, so does that mean they did too? I guess they still do have potential to be back. On a lighter note, 10 days to the sets! Reviews should be coming soon hopefully!

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Definitely the most interesting short so far.

57 minutes ago, a guy from somewhere said:

One interesting thing I have looked at is the fact that all the flashback scenes are from wu’s memories, so in theory that means the scene in merlopia was before we saw them in seabound. Curious that wu knew about the trench and what inhabited the area, but didn’t say anything when the ninja departed. It also doesn’t give us a straight answer to what happened to the twins, as we know wu survived the explosion, so does that mean they did too? I guess they still do have potential to be back. On a lighter note, 10 days to the sets! Reviews should be coming soon hopefully!

It's probably safe to assume Wu wasn't paying much attention to his surroundings as the fighting went on and more so just trying to keep Krux and Acronix from messing with the timeline. As for the Time Twins' fate it looks as if the Iron Doom (and presumably the Twins) are "frozen" within the time vortex while baby Wu is just floating around normally, they're probably still trapped there while Wu somehow managed to get out. 

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@thepixalated on instagram is building the hydro-bounty and has a closer look at kalmaar and the mask-belt rubber piece 

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Well this isn't good. Just saw on instagram a pic of the scuba tank piece. And it shows the belt and tank being connected. It seems the airbreather part is the bendable one. 

(Is it safe to link it since the sets are revealed? Asking since it's a blurry photo)

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Yes, because the sets have been officially reveal already.

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8 hours ago, Takanuinuva said:

Well this isn't good. Just saw on instagram a pic of the scuba tank piece. And it shows the belt and tank being connected. It seems the airbreather part is the bendable one. 

(Is it safe to link it since the sets are revealed? Asking since it's a blurry photo)

Where can you see those pictures? I was looking at this persons IG but didnt see closer pictures.

About scuba gear: I feared so. Both belt and tubes seemed to look like the same rubber material - and also they don't have to do extra molds.

Sad though; I think it could have been much more useful if the belt for example would have had just a connection with the tank.

Also I never saw a rubber piece that can contain a Katana too well.

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