BrickJagger

I don't think that giving the next Castle theme a storyline and a bunch of named characters would be in anyone's best interest. For example, the Nexo Knights model wouldn't work in a normal Castle theme because it was difficult to army build one of the factions. You ended up with as many Clays and Aarons as you did generic Knighton soldiers. I suspect that people who are into Castle themes want to create large armies, which is starkly different from a small team that battles monsters in most of Lego's current themes. If there need to be named characters, just name the king, a knight or two and the main villain and be done with it. That would open up some roleplaying that would appeal to younger kids while the named characters wouldn't be spammed in every set. If it were up to me, the next Castle subtheme would be the last, because there wouldn't be a reason to discontinue it in favor of a similar take a few years later. Start out with two factions, ideally ones that AFOLs are familiar with but still appeal to kids as generic knights, like the Falcons and Crusaders. Over time, Lego could phase in new factions with fantasy elements and whatnot. While Lego could release 4-5 smaller sets a year to appeal to kids mostly, they could simultaneously start a modular-style series of village buildings or adult-oriented Castles to hit the older demographic as well. The CMF line could round it out by continuing to produce more loosely related figures like Romans and Vikings that wouldn't otherwise appear in the main line but are still desirable. It wouldn't be anywhere on the scale of a Big Bang theme, but it would be enough to keep the interest up and bring in a steady stream of fans to sustain the theme. 5-6 total sets a year with minimal design and/or branding turnover should appeal to Lego. In fact, they should feel free to take this as a pitch

Welcome to the boards, Daniel! Do you have any current favorite themes or sets?

Summer set images are starting to leak. No sign of the castle yet but other Creator sets have been published so it should be close.

I remember being surprised when I saw the first Creator set with a minifigure period. Hopefully the upward trend continues and we get four or more figures this time around. Three soldiers, a king or queen of some kind and a skeleton would do the trick. I hope that they bring the Black Falcons out of retirement full-time at some point but until then I would prefer a new faction. I would not be surprised if the Falcons show up again in this set though.

Congratulations again @povoq on reaching 10k supporters! The next review period could have the most projects coming from a single theme in the history of Ideas. There are several Castle projects that are pacing the reach 10k in the next few weeks: The King's Castle by BrickHammer https://ideas.lego.com/projects/2b61f410-1199-4022-bdbc-3ba34941385b Fantasy Castle by LEGO Monkey https://ideas.lego.com/projects/f7743e0f-cfbf-45b0-a89f-8e72680f7a02 The Tavern Under the Snow by Lego_Is_Art https://ideas.lego.com/projects/1a332343-0a29-4f8a-adeb-761836aa903f Please give these projects a boost to get them to 10k as well: Medieval Marketplace by DominikQN https://ideas.lego.com/projects/71efca0f-11ae-4695-8139-2825c891770b Medieval Harbor by Namirob https://ideas.lego.com/projects/ee5ee170-1f80-4135-a2b9-68561badc5a6 As far as I can see, Castle is now far and away the most popular category on Ideas. This is great news for those of us that are anticipating a fully-fledged return of the theme. Between the 90th Anniversary vote, the Blacksmith selling out in mere hours and the incredibly strong numbers on Ideas, we're making it clear to Lego just how popular Castle is.

Just got mine in the mail today! Looking forward to building it

I think it actually smacks of "More individual users voted for Castle themes than Bionicle, so it's only fair to add it to the final vote since it was really in first place by a landslide". https://ideas.lego.com/blogs/a4ae09b6-0d4c-4307-9da8-3ee9f3d368d6/post/6c5a05b4-e29c-47ec-8841-a2bce1f8933e I have nothing against Bionicle , but they both got enough votes to move on. If anything Pirates is the poser because it had the fourth most total votes.

I don't agree with this at all. Since then, Pirate and Castle Ideas projects have routinely reached the review stage, and they were two of the most popular themes in this poll out of a wide variety of options. In fact, the number of unique users who voted for Castle was nearly double that of any other theme. I doubt AFOL attitudes to Pirates or Castle have shifted much since 2013/15. That being said, I'm not sure why Lego is so hesitant to bring those themes back full time.

I was thinking the same thing. If I had to guess, we're going to end up competing with Bionicle in the last round, but we have to agree on three Castle subthemes that we all vote for in order to get there. I've ruled out Black Falcons and Crusaders (Lion Knights) because they're most likely coming this year, and I intend to vote for Wolfpack since we haven't gotten anything from them since the 90's. I'd like to hear from some people here before we cast our votes though.

Welcome to the boards! This is an interesting topic for your first post. We'll probably never know the answer but it's fun to speculate. Personally, I don't get why they went through the hassle of designing a similar, but inferior line in 2013 to replace Kingdoms. There was a brief moment when people thought Kingdoms was coming back instead of being replaced, which would have made more sense, and that red dragon could have been a green one just as easily. Given that he's a wizard, an old scroll referring to a modern army doesn't really work. There's even a baby dragon in the set

Yes, it's a summer theme for next year. The good news is that there's clearly a dragon in the trailer, and given Lego's current slate of themes, I think there's a pretty low chance that it's going to be similar to Nexo Knights. The bad news is that after reading the description I highly doubt that it's a Castle theme, or at least a traditional one. Like you, I think the whole "parallel universe" bit is a huge red flag. If I had to guess I think we're dealing with some sort of high fantasy theme, maybe with some magic thrown in. The minifigures are the biggest wild card here.

Trailer is out: https://www.instagram.com/p/CG2pjPkJysr/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CG2uWrjJ3p3/

Is it this? I've never seen this guy's videos before but he does have a sizable following. He's also claiming that it's called "Castle of Allatok", which was in the fake post on the last page, but he said that there are six sets, not eight. Apparently he posted the names in a private discord but I'm not paying for that. The name overlap is interesting because the original source has said that the retailers he talked to did not give him a specific name, and so far that name has only appeared in the fake post.

Lego is cracking down hard on leaks these days and I'd rather not put anyone in their line of fire. I didn't have anything to share other than that rumor.

That would usually be the smart money bet, but I have heard from several people that this is in fact a theme that is coming out next summer. I'm not sure what it is beyond that, but it's something.