Oederland

There's a Chinese New Year parade in Hong Kong with floats (actually TLC has already taken part with an own float as well there). So it is not an event that you might only encounter e.g. in San Francisco, but it is still quite specific.

Seems they ran out of ideas. The Lunar New Year Ice Festival set looks like leftovers from Winter Village. I wouldn't mind, but even the implementation is boring, why not a nice ice sculpture instead of this mess with the slide? The small vignettes are okay, but that's it then. Not sure why they go with this cheap yellowish gold for the Caishen minifig and his treasures. Chinese brands like Decool and Pantasy are able to produce golden parts, but TLC can't?

Thank you! I only follow news for China Toy Expo, Toy & Edu, and Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair, didn't think of other more general fairs. Update: There is already a first preview report about the booth, see https://posts.careerengine.us/p/6185264db493c74ff4770ff1. No photos of the sets are shown, but one can see the displays used. Aside from the tiger costume minifig we can also expect a Caishen / God of Wealth minifig and a few more less interesting minifigs with interesting accessoires though (@ moderators: if this link is considered a leak please remove it, thank you).

If I may ask - which fair do you have in mind? The China Toy Expo was planned for late October, but it was shifted to Feb 23rd to 25th. I'm not aware of other Chinese toy fairs at the moment, but this doesn't have to mean much.

I could imagine that we get another dragon dance set and/or another reunion dinner set. After all, these are probably the most common associations with CNY together with lion dances. Since TLC has introduced their CNY theme in 2019 various Chinese brands have come up with their own sets as well. Actually TLC was not the first one, BanBao had released a dragon dance set with two dragons and a pailou (gate) a few years before, but this remained a single set - so it's really TLC which turned it into a major theme when it comes to bricks. Although there's a great variety of sets it boils down to just a few topics, reunion dinner, dragon dance, lion dance, decorated entrances. There have also been three pop-up books, a few brick-built figures similar to BrickHeadz (Chinese gods including Caishen, people dressed as lions / dragons) and a few music boxes (a dancing lion, rotating kumquat trees, a pavilion with a reunion dinner inside). Despite the many sets there are more or less only three "unusual" sets, 1) a square with some traditional Chinese architecture for lantern festival 2) a departure platform with a train (static) for when people go home to visit their families 3) a theatre pavilion. So while there is room for "creative" sets also with regard to content you risk that the association with CNY becomes too loose. Then again, with 80107 TLC has shown that they are options. I guess people were especially attracted by the set for being an Asian garden setting with some architectural elements and not so much for being a CNY set. After all, the statue and the banners could easily be replaced by other elements and then there would be no obvious relation to CNY / lantern festival anymore. Still, it also works well as CNY set.

Last year pictures became available in early November (if I remember correctly, which also corresponds to when this thread was started).

Can we already take for granted that the series continues into 2022?

Please keep in mind that the original novel has a strong focus on religious aspects. Based on the term "monkey kid" I was assuming TLC would focus on the first few chapters in which Wukong fools around with the other monkeys, trys to become immortal, fights with certain demons, shows up at the Dragon King's palace to obtain the pole weapon. This is basically what the mentioned sets by Chinese brand Winner focused on. Enlighten / Qman in turn had a single set reflecting the waterfall where the monkeys live, and the others were about him fighting against certain demons in the later chapters, including the Bull Demon King. The sets were all more or less like mythological sets should be, except two weird vehicles in the Enlighten theme and as far as I recall one weird vehicle for the Winner theme. Enlighten and Winner also had large brick-built mech-type figures, however, the traditional characters can transform, basically growing in size massively. Thus, these mech things aren't non-mythological at all. Now, TLC should be well aware of these sets, and I have strong doubts that they would come up with something similar just because those brands could make fun of TLC, stating that it's now them whose ideas are stolen. None of the two Chinese brands had focused on the journey itself, with the Buddhist monk, the sand monk, and Zhu Bajie (in fact, there were three other Chinese brands who released corresponding minifigs, but really just minifigs). However, I'm not sure whether TLC would like to come up with a Buddhist monk. I mean, we got a temple fair for Chinese New Year, but there is no temple. It's the entrance to a temple at best. The temple fair also doesn't have to do anything with a real temple fair. They would sell amulets or whatever, but not toy bears. There wouldn't be stalls with tiled roofs. However, two of the stalls resemble those small "towers" (bell tower and drum tower) which can readily be seen inside the temples. Thus, they do refer to certain elements, but it's far away from any religious meaning. Changing the context, e.g. switching to a certain sci-fi universe, might well help to solve that issue for the monkey kid theme as well. The characters could still be recognized as what they are in the novel, but they wouldn't be identical. It's also worth a note that it's a bunch of sets. Maybe it starts with the monkey being born, and then being shifted into another era. Or it's really a kid that turns into Monkey King, and fights against certain demons. Maybe the kid has to play different levels, some of these are in a mythological setting, others in a sci-fi setting (in which that bull minifig would fit very well), others take place nowadays. Or it's a complete mess, with some miracle leading to characters from different eras being confronted with each other. In any case, based on the logo, and based on the many sets, I could imagine we get different variants of the main characters.

As the brand was mentioned in this thread: The monkey king theme by Chinese brand Enlighten / Qman was introducted in late 2018. Enlighten / Qman has been around for a while, in fact since the late 90ies, and they have been doing several Asian-themed sets for a while now. This includes characters from Thee Kingdoms era (Enlighten 1501A and 1501B), typical wuxia characters (Enlighten 1504) and a few other "Asian" minifigs like a Buddhist monk. In 2017, they have released a whole theme based on famous novel Investiture of the Gods. It's futuristic with weird vehicles and such, but it includes several nice characters like e.g. Jiang Ziya or Nezha. Enlighten / Qman has received an official licence for the Nezha anime introduced last year, and they have another official licence for the anime Legend of Deification, with the movie being scheduled for Chinese New Year 2020 but now postponed due to shutdowns / coronavirus. The sets for the animes are sold under the "keeppley" brand, a new brand with which Enlighten / Qman tries to target somewhat older kids. For these themes, they use their new minifigs with super-large manga-style heads. Apart from that, Chinese brand Winner had a theme focusing on monkey king well before, dating back to 2016 or 2017. Thus, if anything, then TLC has tried to copy their Wukong minifigs (just like their official logo for their new theme sharing some "interesting" similarities with the Dragon Ball logo), as they are interested in growing big in China, and themes dedicated to Chinese culture should be helpful for that purpose (just like Chinese New Year). In general, the Chinese brick brands have advanced massively in the last one or two years. E.g. concerning CNY, they have introduced a bunch of original sets, and unsurprisingly, they focus on Asian culture in other contexts as well. Search for e.g. Xingbao XB-25002 to get an idea (there were ships like that in historic China, although the colour pattern might well be a bit over-the-top), there are modulars by Xingbao, there are sets with more traditional, historically accurate sceneries by Panlos and Sembo while Cayi has focused on characters from Chinese opera and so on and so forth. Thus, TLC has to throw in their own material to stay on top. Concerning the new theme, the monkey face in the logo looks like a "traditional" monkey king. Of course, it could well be combined with futuristic elements, or it could also be some kid from nowadays dressing up as a monkey, or being somehow transformed, ... The leaked bigfig could well be Sha Wujing. Traditionally he has black hair, but in more recent movies (there's a bunch of those) he also appeared with blue skin and red or reddish-brown hair (see the trailers for The Monkey King 2 and The Monkey King 3). Also check out this picture. Seems TLC was heavily inspired by Chinese movies. Anyway, it's funny to see that Chinese brands are turning to officially licenced themes (Wandering Earth, Shanghai Fortress, Detective Chinatown 3, The Rescue, The Untamed, Three Lives Three Worlds) while TLC switches to "inspirations" if "useful".

The monkey king looks weird. This red sausage-like thing extending from his hair, is it an extra long tail seen from a weird angle or is it meant to represent the feathers / hair decoration? In case of the latter, then TLC really did a very poor job. It should look like this: If one prefers less flexible parts, one could go with something like this: Anyway. Funny to see how TLC fails where "cheap" Chinese brands have created unique molds like those two seen above. The armour piece is also just plain boring, a Chinese brand has already released a monkey king with a unique, shiny golden armour several years ago, and last year another Chinese brand has released a monkey king with the gold ring (which allows the monk to control the monkey king) being part of the hair piece, not just being printed on the head. But let's see, maybe the printing is nice at least. Most of the other minifigs look interesting though, especially the flamingo piece. Just disappointed about the monkey king...

I was really looking forward to this set, but I can't help the designers of the set either have never seen a dragon dance in action before or they just didn't care. The mechanism is in no way incredible when considering how a dragon dance works. I'm not talking about sophisticated performances of a dragon dance. But considering the price, and assuming that the product is completely produced and packed in the Lego factory in China (which should decrease costs massively), I would have expected TLC to invest at least a bit more time into the mechanism, as this is the only play feature of the set. You can't do anything else, e.g. take off the minifigs and the dragon and let them run through your town or whatever, as it's only separate sections of a dragon. Now ignoring those big black bars, and ignoring that TLC was not willing to include additional minifigs for the remaining bars (and also unable to adjust the design so that four minfigs are sufficient to carry the dragon), you get a very bumpy up-and-down motion. The most ridiculous feature is the rotating pearl though. Well, it's great to see how one can "change directions of motion" with bricks, but this doesn't have to do anything with the real thing.

Articulated medium short legs have been released by clone brands years ago. The Chinese brand SY already had one in 2014, possibly earlier. Dunno why it took so long for Lego to come up with something equivalent.

Off-topic, but maybe a clarification, "winning" depends on point of view. That company had to change their logo and some boxarts, but that's it then. They can happily copy products like they did before. It was certainly not that all those brands are going to disappear (in fact, the number is increasing).

Interesting to hear different opinions, but let me ask a few questions: How long do children play with TLC Castle sets or castle sets in general? I would guess that it becomes "uncool" at some point, just because that's how children often behave. In case they have played with something at the age of 6 they might no longer be interested e.g. at the age of 10 because they want to show that they have "grown up". Children get in touch with the concepts of "classic" knights, pirates, cowboys very early (at least in Germany, at least based on my own childhood and that of my friends), be it a book or as a fancy dress, and they will stop at some point - either by turning to conceptually related PC games, books, series, or continue with that type of toy, but "upgrade" to a (vaguely) related theme with "cool" features like Ninjago, Nexo Knights. With regard to recycling, I'm not sure whether there is any difference between the two brands. The "Fantasy era" was certainly different, but the last two Castle lines were pretty conventional overall (leaving aside any juniorization aspects). I'm not saying that there were no new play features, but there wasn't really anything new which made the series appear like an innovation. Playmobil in the meantime also had some conceptual repetitions, but they also had new ones (the 2014 one is certainly a "Fantasy" one, while the one before was a "classic" one). And TLC in general is really master of recycling, consider tons of helicopters, police sets, ATVs and so on ;) Anyway. It's not simply about when a new line is introduced and how close it is to the previous one. If there are no sets or toys of a certain type at all, then children will skip that theme completely or go with that brand which is available. At least I can't imagine a kid looking for classic castle stuff in 2015, failing to find any brick-built theme, to switch to Castle a few years later just because TLC has decided to reactivate the theme. With regard to quality and costs, I have no idea about Playmobil material. It might well be cheaper, but you also get "more material" with a Playmobil fig compared to a TLC minifig. But leaving this aside, and even if a small TLC set has to cost xyz % more than a Playmobil set, then TLC could still provide a greater variety of small sets. Not one ~ 10 € Castle set, but several ones at the same time. Leaving aside that I don't believe in Lego having to cost as much as it does. TLC has made lots of profit, which is perfectly fine for a company. But considering the bunch of clone brands, with some of them even having more complex printing by now (more colours, back-printing on the whole legs, detailed side printings, ...) and still being much cheaper, I conclude that Lego is overpriced. Yeah, there's copyright infringement with regard to the minifig, the clone brands might just copy excisting molds, but TLC has been using the minifig and various molds for decades by now, so you can't claim that they have to spend any more money on that. It's basically just copying their past ;) The last time I checked the "Bricks & Parts" section their brown horse (without saddle) was about 5 €. This is just ridiculous. You get about 8 clone brand horses together with saddles for the same price. And well, this could be a problem in case of any Castle theme. For a Castle theme, you want to have lots of knights and horses and stuff, but in case that's unavailable (or only indirectly through large and expensive sets) then your parents will buy different toys.

It's important to be aware that Playmobil has a different strategy. Their sets are available in the shops for a much longer time than TLC sets, e.g. the two castles 6000 and 6001 were introduced in September 2014 and are still in the shelves. They also release a lot more smaller sets than TLC. Some details: The Playmobil Knights theme introduced in 2014 consists of eight sets within the range 8 - 25 € plus the two large castle sets (100 and 150 €). These sets were released at the same time, not split into different waves. In addition, there are usually several ways to get additional sets related to Knights, although not directly linked to the included fractions. E.g. in 2014, they also offered four sets with a mounted knight each, with a unique heraldy (10 €). Now and then they offer sets of two minifigs that help to expand the theme. They also have adopted TLC's CMF concept with their series of blind bags, most of the time with at least one minifig fitting into a Castle theme. Finally, there's a long tradition of so-called "special" or "specialPLUS" sets which cost about 3 - 4 €, usually providing a minifig and equipment (in the sense of TLC's polybags), in case of Castle / Knights usually with unique heraldy or otherwise "interesting" (e.g. a hunter). In the last few years those "special" sets haven't provided that many Castle minfigs though. The "Super 4" theme (it's accompanied by a TV series and basically mixes several themes = Castle, Pirates, Sci-Fi, Fairy Tale) introduced in September 2015 featured some more sets that fit into a medieval setting. Again, the emphasis was on small to intermediate sets, four sets between 4,30 - 11 €, one set with among others a king for 27 € and the largest set, a transportable caste, for 55 €. Thus, it's easier to become attached to the Castle theme in case of Playmobil, as it's easier / more likely to receive small presents, keeping the theme attractive. And the theme is available all the time (similar to TLC's City). Basically Playmobil Knights is like the old TLC Castle, which also offered a great variety of small sets. Personally, I also have to admit that the last few Castle themes turned out to be a bit boring. I have mentioned some clone brands before, as I think this is very useful to see what other companies offer. Why has TLC never ever released anything like e.g. a throne room like this set? Castle is much more than the usual "wall section / tower" and carriage sets with rather crappy design, the infantile catapults. It would be so easy to offer a great variety of sets, as LEGO is about BRICKS (in contrast to Playmobil). Then again, the main focus nowadays seems to be rather "special parts", not generic pieces.