Karalora

As regards the price, I think TLG and Nintendo just want all us whiners to put our money where our mouths are.

I really thought that if we just got one BotW set, it would be a Guardian battle scenario, which is easily the signature situation of that game. I have seen some utterly gorgeous MOCs of Guardian Stalkers, so it can clearly be done with existing parts. I can so easily visualize an official set with the Guardian, Link in his Champion's tunic with a few different weapons and a shield (and perhaps a paraglider), a section of ruins with some foliage bits and a treasure chest, and a terrified NPC to rescue.

Oh ho ho, do not get me started on the concept of a Legend of Zelda theme park, because I have THOUGHTS.

As a side note, since I figure this will be appreciated here, the other day I got to wondering how large a complete minifig-scale model of BOTW's Hyrule would be, so I got some numbers and crunched them and it came out to a little over 12 acres. 12 acres of LEGO! A compelling thought, isn't it? Wouldn't that be magnificent to see? You'd have to rig up some kind of gondola ride or ski lift to get a good look at it!

Oh, to be sure, there are some individual scenes and setpieces from some individual games that are so absolutely iconic that they would be fools not to address them in an extended line. I don't just want "Link's red boat," I want the King of Red Lions. If they do a Temple of Time set, the exterior architecture should be recognizable as the design presented in OoT and BotW. It was smart of them to design a Deku Tree that could be either/or instead trying to be both at once. But I would definitely want to also see sets that have a certain amount of flexibility built in. The bulk of the LoZ vibe isn't in the few absolutely iconic moments; it's in the widespread stuff like recurring place-names and dungeon puzzles. And for those I don't think it's so vital that they look a certain way, especially considering that they'll have to be stylized just to be converted into LEGO to begin with. Now I'm imagining a very basic customizable "dungeon module" consisting of a stretch of hallway in dark gray bricks with a few side studs, and a switch that raises and lowers a barrier. By including just a handful of alternate pieces, the theme can be changed. Put trans-orange studs on the side studs and build the barrier out of flames, and it's a fire dungeon. Leaf pieces and vines make a forest dungeon. Blue crystals and trans-light blue spikes get you an ice dungeon, and skull-printed tiles and long bones make it the spooky dungeon. Scale this concept up to different sizes of sets and add a variety of enemies (perhaps sold in battle packs or as their own modular mini-sets), and you could recreate the vibe of probably 80% of LoZ dungeons. And I'd rather have that than highly accurate replicas of just a few specific dungeons.

Zelda and Mario are very different game franchises and the potential pitfalls for adapting them as LEGO sets are also very different. I don't follow Super Mario all that closely so I don't know what people find lacking about the LEGO version, but the impression I get is that there's a consensus "baseline" for the franchise, and then various installments experiment with levels of distance from that baseline, but the baseline itself doesn't change. Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Toad, Yoshi, Bowser, the Koopalings, Goombas, Koopa Troopas, Shyguys, Birdo, Cheep-Cheeps, Bullet Bills, Lakitu, question mark blocks, coins, mushrooms, Fire Flowers, Invincibility Stars, Tanooki Suit...I know there's more and I could continue, but hopefully you get the picture. With Mario, there's a standard, and then there are variations on the standard, with the occasional new character or enemy type getting elevated to status within the standard. So if the LEGO adaptation sticks to the baseline, that's only to be expected, and if someone is disappointed that the unique elements from their favorite Mario game aren't included, that's unfortunate for them but they kind of have to recognize the sets as being "regular" Mario. Zelda doesn't really have that, I don't think. If there is a consensus baseline among fans, it's probably Ocarina of Time, but as far as Nintendo is concerned, the Zelda standard is whatever main console release is the most current. For 30 years Link wore a green tunic and stocking cap as his iconic outfit, now it's a light blue tunic and no hat (but a cute short ponytail), and that's official. Each new game changes the status quo of the series, in part because of Nintendo's stance but also because the franchise is so much more lore-driven. People get very invested in the lore and mythology and iconography of LoZ, and that means adaptation into any new medium--including LEGO--has to contend with the changes in that lore over time. If they pick one version to be the "official" one, they'll piss off everyone who doesn't consider that game the baseline, and if they try to address all of them, the size of the project can quickly get out of hand. That's why I think the best way to go would be to take a third option--create new enemy designs and a composite lore that draws on multiple games for inspiration, and make that your baseline for the purposes of the adaptation. For example, instead of designing an Ancient Cistern dungeon set just to satisfy the Skyward Sword fans, you have the water-themed dungeon set include elements taken from the Ancient Cistern, like a whip for Link to use and some zombie Bokoblins, and meanwhile there are also enemies and visuals from the water dungeons in other games. I...did not mean to let this get so long. I have a lot of Feelings about this.

One thing I would hope for is that they don't just design sets to replicate specific scenes and setpieces from individual games, but maybe attempt some more "generic LoZ" sets based on recurring motifs. So many locations, characters, enemy types, and dungeon themes appear across multiple games, and it would be really neat to see a unique LEGO variation on the common themes.

What a difference three or four video game console generations makes, huh?

Oof, that is the question, isn't it? I love both games and the interaction with the Great Deku Tree in both. If I can justify it, I might just have to get two so I can display both at once!

I'm with you. I prefer the fairytale/classic heroic fantasy vibe of the older LoZ games, and lately I feel like the franchise has been getting a little too "worldbuilt" for its own good, as well as ditching fairy tales for serious mythology and letting more and more sci-fi elements edge out the pure and simple fantasy. But at the same time, I will certainly take what I can get, and even if we wind up with a wave of TotK vehicle-focused sets, we may be certain that there will also be bands of monsters and their funky stone-and-plank lairs for Link to fight. (And in the meantime, YouTuber octane thermoplastic has designed some terrific LoZ models and sets for which he has promised to put the instructions on Rebrickable during the first half of this year. Am I allowed to mention that?)

I just re-built my old Fire Nation ship to display while my sister and I binge ATLA on Netflix. Ah, nostalgia...

There is that. It makes me wonder whether the Deku Tree is intended as the one concession to long-term fans, while everything else produced under the license will be directly TotK-related. Which would...not be ideal, tbh. At the very least, we deserve a little $15-20 brick-built King of Red Lions, don't we? We deserve some sort of dungeon set with puzzle play features! We deserve Wolf Link with a little saddle that a Midna minifig can slot into! And so on.

Fingers crossed anyway! (I feel silly for being this desperate, but that's life when two things you're a fan of are finally coming together.)

I have to say, that Deku Tree is quite a bit more than I was hoping for. I was pretty sure that Nintendo, at least, would want the sole focus on TotK as the upcoming/current/most recent game, given their poor recent track record with supporting older titles. As a set to represent LoZ, I think it's a pretty good choice--OoT has been the signature game of the franchise pretty much since it came out, until BotW muscled its way onto the stage and started sharing the spotlight. You can consider those two games the tentpoles of LoZ as far as most of the fandom is concerned, and what's one major iconic thing they have in common? The Great Deku Tree! That said, I would sincerely hope that it's not the only thing we get. This franchise is so huge, with so many memorable visuals and setpieces, that it practically demands more attention.

I seem to recall that instruction booklets used to print the black parts in solid black with white outlines, making it trivially easy to distinguish them from the dark gray. What happened to that?

No doubt he cared more about Disneyland--once it had opened--than the movies. He'd been making cartoon shorts and later animated films for over 30 years by the time Disneyland opened and he was eager to move on to something new, something no one else was doing. We often lament that Walt Disney died in 1966, just as Disneyland was really getting good, and wish we could have seen what he would have done with it for another decade or two, but ironically, he was already starting to move on to the next big project (the original EPCOT concept--the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow) at that point. I think it's quite possible that he would have lost interest in Disneyland and passed its management on to his Imagineering team, with minimal personal involvement, within a few years even if he'd lived longer. On another note, it is both weird and a little sad to me that most people seem to think "Disney" begins and ends with movies and cartoons, and that the theme parks only exist as spinoffs of the film content. Because when I was a young kid in the early to mid-80s, Disney's animation and live-action film divisions were in a serious slump and the theme parks were the best things the company had going on, and were still packed with all kinds of cool rides and attractions that had nothing to do with any existing movies. I'm talking stuff like Adventure Thru Inner Space, the Submarine Voyage, America Sings...rides that existed for their own sake, not to promote movies. Nowadays I hear people asking "what's the point" of anything that doesn't have a movie attached and it hurts my heart.

Because most of them don't get big establishing shots that show off the whole structure so the shape of it can be imprinted on everyone's memory. Aladdin and Frozen are exceptions, helped by the fact that the castles in question have very unusual designs that stand out. But I would wager that very few people can summon up an accurate picture in their heads of the castles in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or The Little Mermaid, or even Beauty and the Beast, where the structure of the castle is more of a "character" than usual. Even Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty themselves--the films for which the theme park castles were named, do not themselves contain especially memorable-looking castles. On the other hand, the theme park castles are major advertising images for the company--the film studio's logo is based on Disneyland's castle! That means, among other things, that everyone who has the opportunity to see what one of the movie castles looks like, also gets at least a silhouette of Sleeping Beauty Castle to pore over during the vanity plate. Maybe not everyone can visit a Disney theme park, but everyone who does gets to eyeball its castle for several minutes, first thing when they arrive. Googling "Disney castle" will get you pages of photos from theme parks long before you arrive at a movie screencap. The theme park castles are orders of magnitude more familiar, even to people who have never visited, than the vast majority of the castles in the Princess movies.

I do want to point out that even though both of these are called Sleeping Beauty Castle, the designs are completely different: Anaheim Paris

I'm pretty pleased with this CMF wave. Good spread of representation across the eras of Disney animation, they're keeping the Pixar down to a minimum (I have Opinions, a'ight), and they seem to have gotten over their fear of standalone characters. Plus...ahem... ...SORCERER MICKEY!!! Sorry for shouting, but my favorite iteration of Mickey Mouse, finally in minifig form? Try to stop me!

Thanks!

Any idea which torso the magenta crayon man has under his crayon? I see magenta arms, but there are a few like that in the towers lately.

The LEGO website has changed the order limit to a far more reasonable 16, so I ordered 10 today. We'll see how it goes!

I was going to order them on lego.com yesterday but there was a limit of two per order! Hardly worth the time it takes to click Complete Order if I can only get two. I'm just going to wait until I can make it into a brick-and-mortar store, whether it's the LEGO Store, Target, or wherever.

10. Ever had a set that had you apply one sticker across multiple pieces (e.g. 7621-1, which calls for a 2 x 4 sticker to be applied across two 2 x 2 tiles). It's a rare but infuriating situation, because once you disassemble the set, you will have the devil's own time keeping that little assemblage in good condition for the next time. 11. The instructions typically call for you to put a piece in place first and then apply the sticker. This means that next time, the sticker is already applied, but the instructions depict it without, which can be confusing, especially if the same piece without a sticker is used elsewhere in the build.

*backs away slowly*