Modular Building Sets - Rumours and Discussion

[legojeroen]

Looks like you are right. I really need to update my recent set knowledge, I could not remember seeing anything like that

[The_Nev]

Good spotting! Shame it isn't likely to be the next modular, but imagine if that was how it leaked! Not that we can tell much from the picture...

[Aanchir]

Beginning to think all the Asian-inspired minifig leaks lately that aren't recognizable from the Ninjago movie might be from the next modular building. It's too soon for another Ninjago City expansion (plus, there's not a whole lot of unique civilian designs in those that haven't shown up in either the movie or TV show) and they don't seem to correspond to any of the upcoming Ninjago Legacy sets.

My first thought when those started leaking was that maybe they might be tied to promotional items for one of the flagship stores in China, like Lester is for the flagship store in London. But the Shanghai exclusive grand opening keychain had a different outfit than any of them, and by now there have been too many unique figure leaks for me to believe it's from a single promo set. So at this point I'm thinking Creator Expert, and realistically the next modular building is probably the most likely to be coming out soon enough that we'd be seeing leaks for it right now.

Wouldn't be surprised if next year's Bright Bluish Green (Dark Turquoise/Teal) brick separator recently shown off at the LEGO House also makes its debut in next year's modular building.

Edited November 3, 2018 by Aanchir

[DeanLearner]

Interesting, you make good points, though I wonder what the building would be. In terms of buildings that might be stereotypically associated as Chinese, a restaurant might be too similar to PR/DD, and there is already a laundry (BB). Maybe a tea room would be different enough though.

[Aanchir]

Teahouse is definitely an option. Some other examples that wouldn't be strange to see in various parts of the globe would be a Chinese embassy or Chinese market (both of which you might find in any country with any substantial Chinese immigrant population, and maybe even some without). But there are also plenty of possibilities for those figures that aren't "stereotypically associated as Chinese", like a hotel (whether Chinese-based or just with a family of Chinese guests), tailor shop, antique shop, spa, or even just a townhouse/apartment in a different style than we've seen in previous modulars. After all, buyers in plenty of countries can relate to the idea of a neighborhood with multicultural homes and businesses, and an early to mid 20th century time period like we've seen for other modulars would only further justify the family's more traditional style of dress than Asian people that buyers from any part of the world might encounter in their day-to-day lives.

[Robert8]

I already suggested that idea a couple of pages back but I was told this:

On 10/28/2018 at 7:58 AM, mackset said:

Of course those Chinese minifigures are not for mudular

As for modular 2019, the theme is one LEGO had and released for years~

[Bricked1980]

10 hours ago, Aanchir said:

Beginning to think all the Asian-inspired minifig leaks lately that aren't recognizable from the Ninjago movie might be from the next modular building. 

I've not seen these Asian style minifigs. Can anyone suggest where to find them online?

[paupadros]

11 hours ago, Bricked1980 said:

I've not seen these Asian style minifigs. Can anyone suggest where to find them online?

These: and these 

or just search on Instagram "legoleak", everything leaked pops up there

Edited November 4, 2018 by Captain Nemo
Leaked figures

[Bricked1980]

Thanks @paupadros if the modular does turn out to be chinese based then I wondered if there might be something in the design of the figures that provided a clue to the theme of the set. But they just look like fairly generic Chinese people to me.

Not sure what to think about a chinese modular building. It worries me that Downtown Diner might have started a trend where each year we will see the modular buildings diverting further and further away from their original style. 

Edited November 4, 2018 by Bricked1980

[Bainter-ban]

Why are people so sure that they’re produced by lego and not by Lepin or other replicators?

[The_Nev]

Not sure if I believe that those figs are from the 2019 modular. 

Usually the modulars come with a real variety of people, each with a unique character, and from all walks of life. These are all too similar to each other, there's not the diversity that we usually see. 

But who knows, things could be drastically changing, after all, who would've predicted that they would move away from the standard smile faces? Time will reveal the mysteries I suppose, I just hope it isn't too long a time! And if this is a real leak of the modular minifigs, then hopefully that means that Lego will come out with an official release very soon!

[BrickyBoy]

3 hours ago, Bainter-ban said:

Why are people so sure that they’re produced by lego and not by Lepin or other replicators?

The baseplates where those minifigs are presented on, don't have the Lego logo on it...  (I don't see) So maybe they're indeed not the real thing.

[Bricked1980]

19 minutes ago, The_Nev said:

Not sure if I believe that those figs are from the 2019 modular.

Not sure I believe they're from the next modular either. Normally the figures in the modular sets would have a specific role in the set itself, for example the boxer and singer in DD, the dentist, baker etc in Assembly Square. There chinese figures just look like generic people and there is nothing about them that suggests they'd have a role to play in any kind of Chinese set, whether it be a hotel, restaurant, tea house or whatever, apart from the fact they're Chinese of course.

Having said this I could definitely imagine Lego going down this route and producing a Chinese modular, so we will have to wait and see. I do wonder if it would clash with Ninjago though, assuming they might release another modular style follow up to Ninjago City docks next summer.

Out of interest I wonder what the translation is of the Chinese words on the minifig pics and could that suggest the purpose of these figs?

[Withacee]

Chinese New year promotional set, perhaps?

Some nice figs, though, hope they're by LEGO.

[The_Nev]

39 minutes ago, Bricked1980 said:

Not sure I believe they're from the next modular either. Normally the figures in the modular sets would have a specific role in the set itself, for example the boxer and singer in DD, the dentist, baker etc in Assembly Square. There chinese figures just look like generic people and there is nothing about them that suggests they'd have a role to play in any kind of Chinese set, whether it be a hotel, restaurant, tea house or whatever, apart from the fact they're Chinese of course.

Having said this I could definitely imagine Lego going down this route and producing a Chinese modular, so we will have to wait and see. I do wonder if it would clash with Ninjago though, assuming they might release another modular style follow up to Ninjago City docks next summer.

Out of interest I wonder what the translation is of the Chinese words on the minifig pics and could that suggest the purpose of these figs?

Just ran it through google translate as Chinese, top right text is "full hundred", centre text is "Integrity People's Paradise". out of curiosity, I also ran it through Japanese, centre is "Shunsin Magazine", top right is "Luo". Google doesn't return any notable results for Shunsin magazine or integrity people's paradise.

[Aanchir]

7 hours ago, Bainter-ban said:

Why are people so sure that they’re produced by lego and not by Lepin or other replicators?

Some of the parts from these figures definitely showed up on the BrickInside parts database back when they had some kind of access to official renders and part information for unreleased parts (many of which were later confirmed as authentic in other leaks). Now that LEGO has caught on to that security issue, though, the BrickInside database no longer shows those future parts, but I can verify that some of these parts were among those that had shown up there.

7 hours ago, Bricked1980 said:

Not sure what to think about a chinese modular building. It worries me that Downtown Diner might have started a trend where each year we will see the modular buildings diverting further and further away from their original style. 

The idea that there ever was a consistent "original style" has been disproven time and time again anyway. The series has included buildings that were variously Amsterdam-inspired, San Francisco-inspired, New York-inspired, London-inspired, Los Angeles-inspired, Paris-inspired, Chicago-inspired, Miami-inspired, etc. Even the attempt to define pre-Downtown Diner buildings as "pre-1940s" implies more consistency than was actually present. The cornerstone on Fire Brigade implies it was built in 1932, while the one on Town Hall implies it was built in 1891, a difference of over 40 years. For that matter, one of Grand Emporium's most likely inspirations, Harrod's Department Store in London, specifically the design it's had since being rebuilt after a fire in 1883! So even the "time period" that supposedly unified those earlier buildings represents architectural styles varying by around 50 years, if not longer!

Any idea that the modular buildings were all meant to reflect a uniform real-world place and time is just AFOLs trying to impose order on a line that has ALWAYS thrived on variation and defying expectations. The same can be said of other theories that try to predict/make sense of the modular buildings like the idea that "every modular building set contains a clue to the next one". With Downtown Diner being groundbreaking in some of the biggest ways to date, I hardly think that we can expect the buildings to begin showing greater consistency in their designs/inspirations than they ever had to begin with.

And anyhow, I don't know that I'm comfortable with the idea that a Western pastiche of Chinese architecture (Grauman's Chinese Theater) is somehow a more valid source of inspiration for a modular building than ACTUAL Chinese architecture…

14 hours ago, Robert8 said:

I already suggested that idea a couple of pages back but I was told this:

Hmmm, interesting. If that's true then I wonder what it could be… let alone what those figures could actually be for…

Back to the drawing board, then!

[paupadros]

37 minutes ago, Aanchir said:

And anyhow, I don't know that I'm comfortable with the idea that a Western pastiche of Chinese architecture (Grauman's Chinese Theater) is somehow a more valid source of inspiration for a modular building than ACTUAL Chinese architecture…

Wasn't this the main inspiration for PC?

[phoenix416]

11 hours ago, The_Nev said:

Just ran it through google translate as Chinese, top right text is "full hundred", centre text is "Integrity People's Paradise". out of curiosity, I also ran it through Japanese, centre is "Shunsin Magazine", top right is "Luo". Google doesn't return any notable results for Shunsin magazine or integrity people's paradise.

The top right text means "free shipping for purchase over 100rmb". The middle text is the name of the shop selling this minifigure...

[The_Nev]

2 hours ago, phoenix416 said:

The top right text means "free shipping for purchase over 100rmb". The middle text is the name of the shop selling this minifigure...

Thanks for clearing it up! Google Translate is often dodgy, and I suspected that this translation was pretty inaccurate.

[phoenix416]

3 minutes ago, The_Nev said:

Thanks for clearing it up! Google Translate is often dodgy, and I suspected that this translation was pretty inaccurate.

No problem :) Google translate is cool when doing paragraphs, but for short sentences it is totally different. Also, Chinese characters are so flexible that when people use them they do not often write a full "grammatically correct" sentence, which will be too hard for machine translator.

[Bricked1980]

11 hours ago, phoenix416 said:

The top right text means "free shipping for purchase over 100rmb". The middle text is the name of the shop selling this minifigure...

If the text in the middle is related to the shop selling them, then does that suggest that they are already for sale? If that's the case I wonder if these are custom minifigures and not official ones.

I've been thinking more about the idea of whether these could be part of the next modular. They do seem to be a just a generic Chinese family and don't look as if they've got specific roles or jobs connected to any particular theme of building.

Considering that most Moduars, have around 5 or 6 minifigures included then that would mean that these three characters would take up half of the total minifigs for the new set. It would only leave space for 2 or 3 other figures to represent all the workers, business owners etc that we'd normally see in the modular buildings.

[koalayummies]

22 hours ago, Aanchir said:

And anyhow, I don't know that I'm comfortable with the idea that a Western pastiche of Chinese architecture (Grauman's Chinese Theater) is somehow a more valid source of inspiration for a modular building than ACTUAL Chinese architecture…

Me either. Really surprised how little controversy there is over that building especially built at the time that it was and that it has become so famous and representative of hollyweird. Pastiche is a polite way of putting it, cultural appropriation alongside legal segregation of the very people who's culture inspired that architecture is closer to reality.

21 hours ago, paupadros said:

Wasn't this the main inspiration for PC?

Without question. So yeah its already been done for an official modular.

[DeanLearner]

1 hour ago, koalayummies said:

Me either. Really surprised how little controversy there is over that building especially built at the time that it was and that it has become so famous and representative of hollyweird.

Agreed. And while this is undeniably a subjective opinion, PC remains my least favourite modular in part due to the very specific nature of the inspiration (though the colour-blocking and unfinished roof and interior don’t help). As an aside, PC is at least the modular most amenable to modding, to the extent that I designed an entire cleaned-up Art Deco refit.

[jus1973]

14 hours ago, DeanLearner said:

Agreed. And while this is undeniably a subjective opinion, PC remains my least favourite modular in part due to the very specific nature of the inspiration (though the colour-blocking and unfinished roof and interior don’t help). As an aside, PC is at least the modular most amenable to modding, to the extent that I designed an entire cleaned-up Art Deco refit.

I’d love to see the results of that Art Deco refit.  I agree that the PC is the weakest of the currently available modulars, but it is representative of a number of cinemas I’ve seen on my travels across the USA, although LAs graumans is clearly the lead inspiration.

[Bricked1980]

Think I've found the source of those chinese minifigs. I've just seen a new leaked image of a set called "Chinese New Years Eve Dinner". On the picture it seems to include one of those chinese minifigs (the little girl). It looks like it is possibly a promotional set of some kind and the text on the image says it will be available from 1st January.

EDIT: There is a second chinese set too called "Dragon and Lion Dance."

Edited November 6, 2018 by Bricked1980