Karalora

I guess I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this wish some people have to see LEGO juxtaposed--on an official basis--with "dark" or "mature" media. Obviously I understand very well the wish to have LEGO versions of things one loves on a more general basis (or I wouldn't be in this thread), but specifically applying that to the 18+ stuff is just weird to me. LEGO has a vibe that I feel is inherently incompatible with genuinely dark, gritty material.

I don't know, would it? I don't follow The Witcher, but if the "Leshy" from there is anything like the one from Eastern European folklore...yeah, that would be cool. But by that token, if it's from existing folklore then we don't need the specific IP, do we? We'd just need a fantasy theme that could potentially cover that base. Heck, they could probably fit a Leshy or similar type of creature in DREAMZzz.

I confess to being a bit puzzled as to why some people are so keen to have LEGO versions of R-rated franchises, especially as minifig themes. I try to picture the little plastic trapezoid people in conjunction with realistic violence or sexuality or horror and the absurdity just makes me giggle and I can't take it seriously.

This. As much as we romanticize the "unbridled" creativity of kids, they generally benefit from having a defined starting point.

That's always going to be subjective, but in any case profit margins don't care about better. I get how frustrating it is when something you have loved for years finds increased success by changing into something you don't like as much, but if you had to choose between LEGO that less reliably caters to your tastes, and LEGO that is struggling to stay in business and maybe can't be obtained as easily as you're used to, which would you prefer? It's ironic, isn't it? A very high proportion of these licensed brands are themselves driven by nostalgia for the childhood favorites of now-adults. You'd think people would be willing to cut out the middleman and just dive into nostalgia for LEGO itself.

Sooner or later, every long-running franchise has to decide whether it wants to continue to cater to its existing fans or open up in the hope of attracting new ones. Both are risky--the existing fans might be alienated by any pivot to a new market which may not even respond, but the existing fans are likely to drop off over time anyway--and it is nigh-impossible to do both at once. There is no way to predict in advance which path will be the safer or more profitable one...but I think we can safely say LEGO is much bigger now than it was 25+ years ago.

It's not just LEGO. Visual media--movies, TV shows, and video games--have become almost the only things people respond to with their imaginations anymore. Even LEGO's in-house themes are promoted with animated series in order to get traction.

For that matter, I'd probably pick one up if it were available, for the lulz. But it's not something I feel any deep need to have, you know?

It's understandable, really...it's the flagship franchise for the company and he's the mascot character. Mario is basically synonymous with Nintendo in a way that I don't think any other character is--not Link, not Kirby, not Donkey Kong, not even Pikachu. That merits a level of trademark guarding above and beyond the norm. Of course, this doesn't answer my actual question...are there a lot of Nintendo/LEGO crossover fans who really want minifigure!Mario? I'm certain there are some...for any nerd franchise and character you can think of, there's probably someone who wants a minifigure. But I'm not really in that corner of gaming and I'm wondering whether there's anywhere near the demand that clearly exists for Link.

Is there a lot of demand for Mario in minifigure form? I always felt the digi-figures were pretty gimmicky but they did kind of give the crossover a reason to exist--they made the theme LEGO Mario and not just LEGO that looks like Mario. Not that "LEGO that looks like <choice of IP>" is a bad thing in itself...but LEGO has its strengths and I think licensed themes work better when they manage to play to those strengths along with the strengths of the licensed IP. That's why I'm really hoping we get more Zelda...dungeon sets with Technic functions to create puzzles, etc.

Saves me from recklessly ordering another one, I guess. For now...

Lately I've been wishing to get Jose Carioca and Panchito Pistoles, to group with Donald Duck for The Three Caballeros! Panchito would probably be a real sticking point though since his signature items are his twin six-shooters--he's even named after them! (Maybe if they just call him Panchito and give him a guitar instead...)

Mario and Animal Crossing have their own threads already. Unless there are starting to be rumors of more...?

If it's going to be an actual multi-set theme, should it get its own thread? Should we wait until further sets are confirmed? Am I just looking for more places to geek out about Zelda and LEGO joining forces?

Haven't there been parts in an inbetween blue-violet shade before? It would be interesting to see that revived; I think it would suit the Master Sword very well.

Oh, yes, please. (And maybe a CMF line or two to bulk out the character roster?) Any of the 3D games could support an entire theme on its own, and even the 2D games have some extremely iconic moments and visuals and/or gimmicks that would be fun to brickify.

Nintendo still controls distribution of the video game spinoffs, and the movie is still in pre-pre-pre-production, so we have no idea what that's going to look like or how much input Nintendo will insist upon. Probably not representative examples, in other words. In any case, even if they didn't overcharge for the license, I still get the impression that the development road for this set was a lot longer and more difficult than usual. How long ago did they start auto-nixing LoZ concepts on IDEAS? A few years, right? That suggests to me that the set has been in development at least that long. I don't know how long the cycle usually is, but that seems excessive. I imagine Nintendo drove a pretty hard bargain to make sure the characters and signature items looked right, which would mean meticulous design standards for the new molds and prints, and maybe a certain amount of trial and error before they got it just right. And maybe there is an element here of the company going "Those game nerds are so hungry they'll pay whatever we ask for any crumbs we choose to throw," but that strikes me as out of character for them. TLG does not have a reputation of abusing customer trust and it seems weird that they would start now when this is bound to be a very high-profile set among the AFOL collectors. I don't fault anyone for going "Phew, too rich for my blood" and giving it a miss, but I don't think anything sinister is involved with the pricing. It's just very far to the specialty end as these things go.

The hair color on OoT Link is a little startling, as well as the puffiness of the bangs--those are both uncharacteristic for LEGO, but they do match the game design pretty well. I think people tend to forget just how saturated the palette in OoT really is, probably because some of the most memorable (i.e. traumatic) moments take place in darker or color-tinted environments.

True enough...although they can't really gauge interest in sets per se based on people just buying unique parts and minifigures on BL. It might seem obvious, but corporate folks can be remarkably clueless in how they interpret sales data that doesn't immediately point to the answer they're hoping for.

That's the rub, isn't it? You can only give the one set a thumbs-up or thumbs-down in its entirety. But we can keep our fingers crossed...when we're not using them to build, that is!

I've been speculating that this was a very difficult, and possibly unusually expensive, license for LEGO to acquire. Nintendo is known to be protective of their trademarks, and Zelda in particular is one they can get quite finicky about because the fans take it so seriously (far more seriously than it takes itself IMO). Here's hoping it at least sells well enough to open the gates for more, hopefully more affordable, sets in this franchise. There are so many unique visuals in the Zelda series that would be delightful to build.

Yeah, but what would you do with half an X-jet? *rimshot*

I think it's darling (if you couldn't tell by all my heart eyes above). I know a lot of people have been hoping for a Hyrule Castle model...but how iconic is the castle, really? It doesn't even have a consistent design from game to game, and there's nothing especially distinctive about any of the designs vs. a generic fantasy/fairytale castle. If we can only have one set, I'd rather have something that screams Zelda, and this certainly does that. Even without the minifigures, the Great Deku Tree is instantly recognizable in both the forms presented.

PRE-ORDER IN LET'S GOOOOOOOOO!!!

I'm going to recommend YouTuber octane thermoplastic again. The guy does marvelously at condensing iconic Zelda scenes and scenarios into...well, not usually $20-30, but often $60-70 set concepts. Incidentally, this is another reason I think a more generalized version might be the way to go for playsets (as opposed to display sets). Creating a set of the OoT Water Temple might result in pressure or expectations to have the exact style elements from that setting, some way to mimic the water-lowering and -raising mechanism, etc. Inventing a unique "water dungeon" concept would avoid that pressure whilst still allowing the designers to draw on the OoT Water Temple for inspiration if it served the needs of the set. (Zelda games crib off each other all the time!) Even better might be "modular dungeon designer" sets with setups for different types of puzzles, but alternate pieces to change the "set dressing" for different dungeon themes. Say the puzzle is pushing a block onto a switch in order to lower a barrier. In a fire dungeon, the block might be reddish or black stone and the barrier made of fire jets. But an ice dungeon would instead use an ice block and a smooth sheet of ice, a forest dungeon would have a wooden block and thorny vines, etc. I'm envisioning a set where the basic structure is neutral gray but the details have several alternate forms and colors. Then multiply that over several different sets featuring different puzzle types and provide ways to link them up into sequences.