Karalora

I'd buy it just to support any and all LoZ stuff we get from LEGO. I often enjoy the lore and theorizing too, but I'm weirdly specific about the way I do it. I keep in mind at all times that these are video games, and the top priority in making them was to be fun to play, with any compelling story secondary, and inter-game continuity below that. The fact is that there are a lot of things that don't make sense if you try to treat it as one long interconnected narrative. I'm more interested in potential symbolism and storytelling themes than I am in the supposed cosmology of the LoZ universe. They retcon it every few years anyway!

Just make a logo for each game and let people create their own timeline! It would make as much sense as the "real" one. (I get why there's an official timeline. I just think people make too much of it. Nintendo mostly seems to develop games first and then assign them to a point in the timeline, so it's not like it really matters when they take place relative to each other. It's a cyclical narrative, not a sequential one.)

Welcome to the madhouse! Just ignore anything Nintendo (or anyone else) says about "the official timeline" and you should be fine. I've been replaying Ocarina myself. It holds up surprisingly well for a 26-year-old game. I'm debating getting the Switch-compatible N64 controller to make the controls a little easier to deal with though.

I sometimes throw on a playlist of thematic or score music related to whatever theme I'm building in. If I'm just fiddling around with parts in a general sense, the soundtrack for the 2008 Nintendo Wii game Boom Blox is something I find inspirational--it's whimsical and cheerful, and as it happens, was composed by Mark Mothersbaugh, who would go on to compose the score for The LEGO Movie.

My point is that people will gripe about packaging changes that make it harder to find their desired figures but then in the next breath complain about scalpers snapping up all the good ones. My guys...you are operating using the same playbook.as them. At the extreme end, if LEGO stopped using any kind of blind packaging at all and just sold CMFs or battle packs or any other "just the figs" concept with complete transparency...the scalpers would still make a killing at everyone else's expense. It's just the nature of the beast when a retail product is in high demand. The best way to defeat the scalpers is honestly more "blindness" in the process. Don't let buyers pick them off the shelves at all--keep them behind the counter and on the website, limit quantities, and have the employees do the picking. It would be frustrating for everyone, but more so for the scalpers because they're the ones trying to operate at scale.

The fact is that any tool regular collectors can use to find their desired figs more easily--barcodes, QR codes, raised-dot codes, hypersensitive postage scales, even feeling the bags--is a tool scalpers can use to ply their exploitative trade more efficiently. For some reason, this seems to be a tough pill for some AFOLs to swallow.

What a magnificent fellow! This forest is in good hands!

But it wouldn't be "generic" Zelda...it would be LEGO Zelda. The variety in visual direction of the existing games should be no more of an impediment than it is when Nintendo makes a new Zelda game. It depends on the scene being portrayed. I think most of the truly iconic Zelda "moments" center on major characters, so the fan-pleaser display sets replicating visuals from specific games would largely feature character minifigs. Anyway, if you're jonesing for TotK LEGO, might I recommend the YouTube channel octane thermoplastic? He's a LEGO channel who specializes in LoZ theme content, and he has been creating a staggering variety of superbly well designed playsets based on TotK.

Wolf Link has some pretty distinctive facial markings that would make him a weird choice for a "normal" wolf. I would hope that if TLG did decide to keep going with this stuff, they'd come out with actual sets to include most of the character favorites, and leave the CMF for secondary characters and army-builder monsters. For example: Toon Link: King of Red Lions Wolf Link and Midna: "Twilight Bug Hunt" or something of that kidney. OoT Ganodorf and Zelda: the climactic scene in OoT where he's playing the organ and she's inside the pink crystal Skull Kid: A forest clearing with a tree stump OR the MM Clock Tower Ghirahim and Fi: Something something Ghirahim Duel something? Also people get so hung up on the big console releases. You know what would be super-cute? A Minish Village playset, with Toon Link wearing Ezlo as his hat, a couple of Minish, and maybe a "giant" (actually normal-sized, it's the village that's tiny) Chuchu or Octorok that Link is defending them from. Or a Four Swords modular dungeon building set, with four color-coded Links and the means to put together different configurations of dungeon puzzles. Or a Spirit Train set!

"Much ado about nothing" overly dignifies the situation by describing it in terms that remind us of Shakespeare. It's clickbait, is what it is. For this "theory" to have any merit, you have to assume that a) someone at TLG wants to get the kiddies on board with recreational drug use, b) they decided the best way to do that was to arrange for one set to have a piece count that is a number which is sometimes used as a joking reference to recreational use of a particular drug, and c) there is enough of a chance of it working to be worth getting bothered about. It's stupid all the way down. It's fractally stupid.

I think I've said this before but it bears repeating: My ideal LoZ line would include both a series of display models of iconic scenes and things from the game, and a range of playsets that don't copy any specific game but have the right vibe, as if it were a new adventure in the franchise--dungeon playsets loaded with play features, village scenes with familiar and new characters, etc. A CMF on top of that would be lovely, of course. I know the highest demand is for familiar things, but it would be a shame not to replicate one of the Zelda franchise's strongest assets--the way it remixes its own material each time to give us something both familiar and new.

Wasn't it going to have two alternate builds? Or is that now in question?

That is...odd. I'm sure if you sat down a bunch of Zelda fans and told them "We can get a unique mold for either the Master Sword or the Hylian Shield but not both," they would unanimously prefer to have the sword and accept the design of the shield printed on a conventional flatiron shield. If they're going the other way around, it is a bizarre decision by both TLG and Nintendo. But let's try to stay optimistic and consider some non-disappointing possibilities: The person leaking the details saw the shield, but not the sword, and is only announcing what they can 100% confirm. They're treating the Master Sword as a foregone conclusion and telling us "Don't worry, we're getting the Hylian Shield as a new mold also!" because it was in doubt. This won't be the only LoZ set and the Master Sword will be included in a different one. (<--the best possibility!)

Some kind of sauropod would be fun, with the long neck sticking up over the head like in the giraffe costume. Or a pterosaur (not a dinosaur but usually lumped in with them) with specialty wing-arms.

TotK probably came along too late for the development of this set, but I could have vibed with SNES/GBA Link, who also encounters sentient trees on his adventures.

Any word on which iteration of Link? If it's just the grown version of OoT Link, that's a little disappointing, since he would be easy enough to kitbash using parts from the other two. Ganondorf would have been more interesting, but then they would have to decide which version of him to use. Plus, he's typically so big compared to Link and Zelda that he would look odd as a minifigure in the same scale as them. The TotK version of Phantom Ganon would have worked, since you actually encounter him inside the GDT.

Christmas could be fun, though there aren't a lot of instantly familiar archetypes left to be done at this point. There are a lot of themes I'd love to see. Classical mythology is a good one. Fairy tales. Musicians. World cultures. I'd even take a second round of monsters; there are plenty of those to explore!

How are LEGO bricks like the Mr. Universe competition? Lots of exposed studs!

There are some truly rancid takes in that thread, starting with OP. To paraphrase: "Please tell me LEGOs aren't really good for my child's mind so I don't have to feel guilty about not letting them have any."

The show really got short shrift back in the 2000s, didn't it? Two sets, neither very carefully designed, cheaped-out minifigures. They really should have tried to re-acquire the license in order to tie in with the Netflix adaptation (while still using the cartoon as the basis for the sets).

I guess it depends on to what extent the shape of the licensed part is necessarily tied to the trademark(s) associated with the license. Rabbit's head shape is a distinctive part of his character design which is trademarked, but a roughly ovoid helmet is only "Iron Man's helmet" if colored red and gold in that distinctive way, and if that is achieved via printing then the overall shape can be reused.

Or conversely, what if the D&D minifigs possibly point to more Zelda sets in the future? *fingers crossed* I mean how much difference is there, really, between an Aarakocra and a Rito?

Could be pretty cool if we got more than just the standard dinosaurs and smilodons.

Kim seems to be holding, not wearing, the handcuffs--perhaps she made the arrest?

...probably because in my collection, it's stored with the holiday sets and minifigs, not the rest of the animal costumes. Thanks for the catch!