kelceycoe

Halloween & Spooky 2020 Sets

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For those who look forward to my posts about Halloween sets, I wanted to make a current one reflecting all of the available Halloween and Spooky sets available. This includes books as well.

  • Earlier this year Hidden Side released Wave 2, noteworthy was the Lighthouse which is many ways was similar to the Lighthouse from Scooby Doo.
  • Also earlier this year we saw one of the first sets based on a more mature licensed media, Stranger Things, with the set called Upside Down, complete with its own line of promotional products.
  • Hidden Side has finally released 3rd Wave sets, specifically noteworthy is the castle set, echoing the previous Monster Fighters and Scooby Doo castle sets. They also have an activity book available from major retailers and you get a Jack minifigure.
  • After almost 20 years, Lego has released official Universal Studios Monsters set with the Frankenstein Brickheadz (yes it should be Frankenstein's Monster). Recall that the 2002 "Scary Thriller" monster sets released under the then Studios theme weren't officially licensed but inferred in some way due to Lego's then licenses with Universal Studios, specifically as it related to the then Studios theme.
  • For the first time in 8 years, Lego has re-released a Haunted House set (not counting the Creator Fall set from years ago). The set resembles the 2012 Monster Fighter's Haunted House set, is lower-priced than the MF set, but changes it into an elevator ride.
  • One of my favorites and original idea, that can fit with the new Haunted House and Haunted Fairground, is the Haunted Hayride vignette set.
  • A Halloween Ideas Book has been released containing a build for a "spooky scene," pretty much a tombstone with a skeleton.
  • Super Mario Bros contain some scary characters and levels based on the video game.
  • Another new and great idea for this year are the inclusion of two Halloween ornaments for people who put up "Halloween trees," depicting a bat and pumpkin. Of course if you own a Creator tree house set or even the Stranger Things set you can use those to hang the ornaments.
  • Harry Potter has re-released updated sets where many contain spooky elements and characters.

 

Edited by kelceycoe

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Great post!! 

Now that HD has reached it's end I really hope that the next spooky theme won't be years off.

Because if you ignore the Scooby-Doo theme then we had to wait 7 years from MF 2012 till HD 2019.

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I thought the next spooky theme were Ghostbusters sets based on Afterlife?

I mean, on the plus side it's great for my wallet. Except for the Juice cart and Photo lab I just bought all of the HD sets just so I could have all the spooky sets. I really super hated HD in the beginning but in some ways it grew on me. It's definitely a direct rip-off but kid-friendly version of Stranger Things and I was browsing all the boxes today and couldn't help but to notice sooo many sets from this theme were literally built upon existing Lego sets from mostly other Haunted themes:

Light House: Scooby Doo

Fairground: What should have been Scooby Doo and some of Jokerland

Mystery Castle: Vampyre's Castle

Photo Lab / Subway / portal: Ghostbusters 2016

Prison: Ghostbusters 2 and 2016 (although this set used the idea of the prisoners from these mediums since there were no prisons in these films, only a jail cell in the first film)

Shrimp Boat: Scooby Doo Lighthouse

Haunted School Bus: Nightmare on Elm Street (ok not an existing them but it's the first film franchise that comes to mind)

Haunted School: I feel like this was inspired by Goosebumps and I don't know why

 

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There is a new book

It's called "Halloween Ideas" and it comes with a skeleton and a grave

 

Some of the ideas look pretty good. Like the ghost pirate ship

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In your history, you seem to have missed an entire series of CMF, individual CMFs from other series, and there have been specific Halloween sets in just about every year recently.

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23 hours ago, tomorrowboy said:

I'm pretty disappointed the Halloween ornaments are sold out online already.  : (

Hopefully they come back. They are definitely worth it.

23 hours ago, Robert8 said:

There is a new book

It's called "Halloween Ideas" and it comes with a skeleton and a grave

 

Some of the ideas look pretty good. Like the ghost pirate ship

I mentioned it. Yea some of them were good and some were way to kid-ish.

23 hours ago, MAB said:

In your history, you seem to have missed an entire series of CMF, individual CMFs from other series, and there have been specific Halloween sets in just about every year recently.

This isn't a history post. This is about the spooky/Halloween sets for 2020. I observing many HS sets are identical or loosely based on existing sets.

If you want a brief history of spooky themes (ignoring all seasonal sets and the themes with random spooky sets, specifically Castle, except for Fright Knights):

* 1997-98 Fright Knights

* ?? Skeleton Army Sets

* 2002 Studios - "Scary Thriller"

* 2012 Monster Fighters

* 2015 Scooby Doo

* ?? CMF Monster Theme

?? CMF Costume Party Theme (some consider that Halloween)

* 2019-2020 Hidden Side

Obviously there are tons more, from the several Ghostbusters-themed sets to Stranger Things to the hordes of seasonal Halloween sets to the rare Halloween gear (like the Halloween Pen and Scary Clock) to the ghost subtheme of Ninjago to a lot of Nexo Knights sets plus all the themes with spooky elements from time to time, from indiana Jones to Jurassic Park to Harry Potter to Pirates of the Caribbean to Mario to Batman to even Star Wars.

Edited by kelceycoe

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Appreciate this information.  I purchased the Ultimate Halloween Collection (book) last year and did not know there was a new Halloween book out this year.  Thanks!

I certainly love all things spooky, esp. in LEGO.

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On 10/7/2020 at 12:19 AM, kelceycoe said:

I really super hated HD in the beginning but in some ways it grew on me.

I think you nailed my own feelings toward Hidden Side, though I don't know if I ever hated it, so to speak. Given how the last big "spooky" theme was Monster Fighters, which basically featured classic Universal movie monsters along with quasi-steampunk/cyborg monster slayers was very much my jam in every way. Nothing against Hidden Side, but it was just a bit jarring after Monster Fighters, where we're suddenly moving from the early 20th Century to a more contemporary setting for a "horror" theme.

But as someone who frequently detests how entire shelves of LEGO are often made up of nothing but vehicle-based sets, Hidden Side was refreshing to me for featuring a number of location-based sets, ones that honestly looked very nice, and even had some good play features to boot when it came to transformation actions. Plus if you're a big collector of LEGO City or Town, it's incredibly easy to integrate it into your normal city, or if you collect some Hidden Side parts from Bricklink or another vendor, you can build a whole bunch of "possessed" vehicles or buildings, which is cool. So that's a definite plus for Hidden Side for me.

On the other hand, the number of hero minifigures was...not ideal. The fact that most of the sets, with the exception of the larger, more expensive ones featured only Jack or Parker (or if you're lucky, Jack AND Parker) meant it was easy for anyone collecting these to quickly reach saturation levels, which is too bad. If they could've just thrown in JB or El Fuego in a few more sets instead of the two teen protagonists, I think that would be less annoying. Although in the larger scheme of things, minifigure saturation isn't that big of a deal (after all, I already have way too many Johnny Thunder minifigs), so on the whole I'd say Hidden Side is a great addition to the spooky LEGO stable.

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On 10/21/2020 at 11:36 PM, Mr Maniac said:

I think you nailed my own feelings toward Hidden Side, though I don't know if I ever hated it, so to speak. Given how the last big "spooky" theme was Monster Fighters, which basically featured classic Universal movie monsters along with quasi-steampunk/cyborg monster slayers was very much my jam in every way. Nothing against Hidden Side, but it was just a bit jarring after Monster Fighters, where we're suddenly moving from the early 20th Century to a more contemporary setting for a "horror" theme.

But as someone who frequently detests how entire shelves of LEGO are often made up of nothing but vehicle-based sets, Hidden Side was refreshing to me for featuring a number of location-based sets, ones that honestly looked very nice, and even had some good play features to boot when it came to transformation actions. Plus if you're a big collector of LEGO City or Town, it's incredibly easy to integrate it into your normal city, or if you collect some Hidden Side parts from Bricklink or another vendor, you can build a whole bunch of "possessed" vehicles or buildings, which is cool. So that's a definite plus for Hidden Side for me.

On the other hand, the number of hero minifigures was...not ideal. The fact that most of the sets, with the exception of the larger, more expensive ones featured only Jack or Parker (or if you're lucky, Jack AND Parker) meant it was easy for anyone collecting these to quickly reach saturation levels, which is too bad. If they could've just thrown in JB or El Fuego in a few more sets instead of the two teen protagonists, I think that would be less annoying. Although in the larger scheme of things, minifigure saturation isn't that big of a deal (after all, I already have way too many Johnny Thunder minifigs), so on the whole I'd say Hidden Side is a great addition to the spooky LEGO stable.

I have built every HS set except the train and castle and I felt the theme was very heavy on vehicles. How many do Jack and Parker need? A lot of these sets were either vehicle only or had some sort of vehicle, even if it were small (the lighthouse, the shrimp diner, the submarine set).

While I do love this theme more that I own it, there are a lot of cons I'm not fond of. For one, the color mismatches between the sets, instructions and boxes. While the love the idea of violent sets I am also surprised this theme went straight off the radar as it contains monsters who's intentions are eating kids, even if they are teens. While that seems to fly in horror nowadays (see IT films or Child Eater film) it's still rather odd it made it into a theme. Even the Monster Fighter theme got accused of bringing Satanism to children.

I still feel a lot of the sets are unnecessary but I really haven't opened the app too much, read the activity book despite owning it or even watched the "online series" so I am in the dark about it all. And I am a huge opponent of the augmented reality. Right now it's a cool concept... but I remember a lot of things Lego did 20 or more years ago that were cool then but the parts are either not working (like my light-up lightsaber minifigures or the 9V batteries from the old space/town sets) or break easily (rubberbands, the very old palm trees). There were a lot of games and activities Lego had on their site that you have to deep-search Google to even find the offline flash versions, if you are lucky. I'd hate to have loved the Monster Fighters game... 6 years later and it's gone. And this theme seemed to rely too much on the app for a full understanding of the story and whatnot.

I also realized that while the Lighthouse looks similar to the Scooby Doo one on the outside, the build is different and this lighthouse is angled. Plus the inside of the lighthouse isn't as exciting as the Scooby Doo version.

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